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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY393determine what lands can serve for colonisation or mayrequire special intervention (“forests and waters of nationalimportance”, as our present programme puts it), i.e.,all that is left is what even the “municipalisers” deem necessaryto put in the hands of the “democratic state” (they shouldhave said: republic).Comparing the talk about norms with the economic facts,we see at once that the peasants are men of deeds, whereasthe Narodnik intellectuals are men of words. The “labour”norm would be of real importance if attempts were made toprohibit hired labour. The majority of the peasants haveturned down these attempts, and the Popular Socialistshave admitted that they are impracticable. That beingthe case, the question of “norms?” does not arise, and thereremains division among a given number of farmers. The“subsistence” norm is a poverty norm, and in capitalistsociety the peasants will always flee from such a “norm”to the towns (we shall deal with this separately later on).Here too, then, it is not at all a matter of a “norm” (which,moreover, changes with every change in the crop and technicalmethods), but a matter of dividing the land among agiven number of farmers, of “sorting out” the real farmerswho are capable of “cherishing” the land (with both labourand capital) from the inefficient farmers who must not beretained in agriculture—and to attempt to retain them init would be reactionary.As a curiosity, showing what the Narodnik theories leadto, we shall quote Mr. Karavayev’s reference to Denmark.Europe, you see, “was handicapped by private ownership”,whereas our village communes “help to solve the problemof co-operation”. “In this respect, Denmark provides a splendidexample.” It is indeed a splendid example that tellsagainst the Narodniks. In Denmark we see the most typicalbourgeois peasantry, which concentrates both dairy cattle(see The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx”,Chapter X*) and the land. Of the total number of cropfarms in Denmark, 68.3 per cent occupy up to 1 hartkorn,i.e., up to about 9 dessiatins each. They account for 11.1per cent of all the land. At the other pole are 12.6 per cent* See pp. 171-82 of this volume.—Ed.