Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY355by the peasantry in a peasant revolution has been completelyborne out in subsequent literature. And that fundamentalerror in the tactical line was bound to affect theMensheviks’ agrarian programme. As I have repeatedlypointed out above, municipalisation does not in eitherthe economic or the political sphere fully express the conditionsof a real victory of the peasant revolution, for thereal conquest of power by the proletariat and the peasantry.In the economic sphere, such a victory is incompatible withthe perpetuation of the old system of allotment landownership;in the political sphere, it is incompatible with mereregional democracy and incomplete democracy in the centralgovernment.6. IS LAND NATIONALISATIONA SUFFICIENTLY FLEXIBLE METHOD?Comrade John said at Stockholm (p. 111 of the Minutes)that the “draft providing for land municipalisation is moreacceptable, because it is more flexible: it takes into accountthe diversity of economic conditions, and it can becarried out in the process of the revolution itself”. I havealready pointed out the cardinal defect of municipalisationin this respect: it rivets allotment ownership to the propertyform. Nationalisation is incomparably more flexiblein this respect, because it makes it much easier to organisenew farms on the “unfenced” land. Here it is also necessaryto refer briefly to other, minor arguments that John raised.“The division of the land,” says John, “would in someplaces revive the old agrarian relations. In some regionsthe distribution would be as much as 200 dessiatins perhousehold, so that in the Urals, for instance, we wouldcreate a class of new landlords.” That is a sample of an argumentwhich denounces its own system! And it was thatkind of argument that decided the issue at the MenshevikCongress! It is municipalisation, and it alone, that is guiltyof the sin referred to here, for it alone rivets the land toindividual regions. It is not the division of land that is toblame, as John thinks, thus falling into a ridiculous logicalerror, but the provincialism of the municipalisers. Inany case, according to the Menshevik programme, the mu-