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

430V. I. LENINPOSTSCRIPT 145The present work was written at the end of 1907. It wasprinted in St. Petersburg in 1908, but was seized and destroyedby the tsarist censor. Only one copy was saved, butthe end of it was missing (after page 269 of that edition).This has now been added.At the present time the revolution poses the agrarian questionin Russia in an immeasurably broader, deeper, andsharper form than it did in 1905-07. Knowledge of the historyof our Party programme in the first revolution will,I hope, contribute to a more correct understanding of theaims of the present revolution.It is particularly necessary to emphasise the following.The war has caused such untold calamities to the belligerentcountries and has at the same time accelerated thedevelopment of capitalism to such a tremendous degree,converting monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism,that neither the proletariat nor the revolutionarypetty-bourgeois democrats can keep within the limits ofcapitalism.Life has already overstepped those limits and has placedon the order of the day the regulation of production anddistribution on a national scale, universal labour service,compulsory syndication (uniting in unions), etc.Under these circumstances, the question of the nationalisationof the land must inevitably be presented in anew way in the agrarian programme, namely: nationalisationof the land is not only “the last word” of the bourgeoisrevolution, but also a step towards socialism. The calamitiesdue to the war cannot be combated unless such stepsare taken.