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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY427Russian Social-Democrats from this correct agrarian programme.First, P. Maslov, the initiator of “municipalisation”in Russia, “revised” the theory of Marx, repudiatedthe theory of absolute rent, and revived the semi-decayedbourgeois doctrines about the law of diminishing returns,its connection with the theory of rent, etc. To repudiateabsolute rent is to deny that private landownership has anyeconomic significance under capitalism, and, consequently,this inevitably led to the distortion of Marxist views onnationalisation. Secondly, not having before them visibleevidence that the peasant revolution had begun, RussianSocial-Democrats could not but regard its possibility withcaution, because the possible victory of the revolutionrequires a number of especially favourable conditions andan especially favourable development of revolutionary consciousness,energy, and initiative on the part of the masses.Having no experience to go on, and holding that it is impossibleto invent bourgeois movements, the Russian Marxistsnaturally could not, before the revolution, present a correctagrarian programme. But even after the revolution hadbegun, they committed the following mistake: instead ofapplying the theory of Marx to the special conditions prevailingin Russia (Marx and Engels always taught thattheir theory was not a dogma, but a guide to action), theyuncritically repeated the conclusions drawn from the applicationof Marx’s theory to foreign conditions, to a differentepoch. The German Social-Democrats, for instance,have quite naturally abandoned all the old programmesof Marx containing the demand for the nationalisation ofthe land, because Germany has taken final shape as a Junker-bourgeoiscountry, and all movements there based onthe bourgeois order have become completely obsolete, andthere is not, nor can there be, any people’s movement fornationalisation. The preponderance of Junker-bourgeoiselements has actually transformed the plans for nationalisationinto a plaything, or even into an instrument of theJunkers for robbing the masses. The Germans are right inrefusing even to talk about nationalisation. But to applythis conclusion to Russia (as is done in effect by those ofour Mensheviks who do not see the connection betweenmunicipalisation and Maslov’s revision of the theory of