Lenin: 1907/agrprogr: 7. Municipalisation of the Land and M... https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/agrprogr/...

V. I.   Lenin

The Agrarian Programme of Social-

Democracy in the First Russian
Revolution, 1905-1907

7. Municipalisation of the Land and Municipal

Socialism

These two terms were made equivalent by the Mensheviks themselves, who
secured the adoption of the agrarian programme at Stockholm. We need
only mention the names of two prominent Mensheviks, Kostrov and Larin.
“Some comrades,” said Kostrov at Stockholm, “seem to be hearing about
municipal ownership for the first time. Let me remind them that in Western
Europe there is a whole political trend [!precisely!] called ‘municipal
socialism’ [England], which advocates the extension of ownership by urban
and rural municipalities, and which is also supported by our comrades.
Many municipalities own real estate, and that does not contradict our
programme. We now have the possibility of acquiring [!] real estate for the
municipalities gratis [!!] and we should take advantage of it. Of course, the
confiscated land should be municipalised” (p. 88).

The naive idea about “the possibility of acquiring property gratis” is

magnificently expressed here. But in citing the example of this municipal
socialism “trend” as a special trend mainly characteristic of England, the
speaker did not stop to think why this is. an extremely opportunist trend.
Why did Engels, in his letters to Sorge describing this extreme intellectual
opportunism of the English Fabians, emphasise the petty-bourgeois nature
of their “muncipalisation” schemes?[2]

Larin, in unison with Kostrov, says in his comments on the Menshevik

programme: “Perhaps in some areas the people’s local self-governing bodies
will themselves be able to run these large estates, as the horse tramways or
slaughter-houses are run by municipal councils, and then all [!!] the profits
obtained from them will be placed at the disposal of the whole [!]
population”[1] –and not of the local bourgeoisie, my dear Larin?

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The philistine illusions of the philistine heroes of West-European

municipal socialism are already making them selves felt. The fact that
the bourgeoisie is in power is for gotten; so also is the fact that only in
towns with a high percentage of proletarian population is it possible to
obtain for the working people some crumbs of benefit from municipal
government! But all this is by the way. The principal fallacy of the
“municipal socialism” idea of municipalising the land lies in the
following.

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians,

elevate municipal socialism to a special “trend” precisely because it
dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public
attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system
as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of
local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category,
the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which,
as we have shown, affects the very foundations of the class rule of the
bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary
utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless.
Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being
directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to
the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of
distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the “needs of
the population”. Naturally, since attention is focused on such questions
as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus
value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the
bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health (Engels
pointed out in The Housing Question that the bourgeoisie itself is afraid
of the spread of epidemic diseases in the towns[3]), or for education (the
bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a
high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such
minor questions, to hold forth about “social peace”, about the
harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can
there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the “needs of the
population”, on public health, on education? What need is there for a
social revolution if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies,
gradually, step by step, to extend “collective ownership”, and “socialise”
production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses referred to so
relevantly by the worthy Y. Larin?

The philistine opportunism of that “trend” lies in the fact that people
forget the narrow limits of so-called “municipal socialism” (in reality,

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municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly

point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so
long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any
encroachment, even from the “municipal” point of view, upon the
real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates,
“municipal socialism”, it is because the latter does not touch the
foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the Important
sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local
expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the “population” to
manage. It does riot need more than a slight acquaintance with
“municipal socialism” in the West to know that any attempt on the
part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of
their normal, i. e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial
relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is
invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central
authorities, of the bourgeois state.

And it is this fundamental mistake, this philistine opportunism of

the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that Is
taken over by our advocates of municipalisation.

“Municipal socialism” means socialism in matters of local

government. Anything that goes beyond the limits of local interests,
beyond the limits of state administration, i. e., anything that affects
the main sources of revenue of the ruling classes and the principal
means of securing their rule, anything that affects not the
administration of the state, but the structure of the state, thereby
goes beyond the sphere of “municipal socialism”. But our wiseacres
evade this acute national issue, this question of the land, which
affects the vital interests of the ruling classes in the most direct way,
by relegating it to the sphere of “local government questions”. In the
West they municipalise horse trains and slaughter-houses, so why
should we not municipalise the best half of all the land?—argues the
Russian petty intellectual. That would serve both in the event of
restoration and in the event of incomplete democratisation of the
central government!

And so we get agrarian socialism in a bourgeois revolution, a

socialism of the most petty-bourgeois kind, one that counts on
blunting the class struggle on vital issues by relegating the latter to
the domain of petty questions affecting only local government. In
fact, the question of the disposal of one half of the best land in the

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country is neither a local question nor a question of

administration. It is a question that affects the whole state, a
question of the structure, not only of the landlord, but of the
bourgeois state. And to try to entice the people with the idea that
“municipal socialism” can be developed in agriculture be fore the
socialist revolution is accomplished is to practise the most
inadmissible kind of demagogy. Marxism permits
nationalisation to be included in the programme of a bourgeois
revolution because nationalisation is a bourgeois measure,
because absolute rent hinders the development of capitalism;
private ownership of the land is a hindrance to capitalism. But to
include the municipalisation of the big estates in the programme
of the bourgeois revolution, Marxism must be remodelled into
Fabian intellectualist opportunism.

It is here that we see the difference between petty-bourgeois

and proletarian methods in the bourgeois revolution. The petty
bourgeoisie, even the most radical—our Party of Socialist-
Revolutionaries included—anticipates that after the bourgeois
revolution there will be no class struggle, but universal
prosperity and peace. Therefore, it “builds its nest” in advance, it
introduces plans for petty-bourgeois reforms in the bourgeois
revolution, talks about various “norms” arid “regulations” with
regard to landownership, about strengthening the labour
principle and small farming, etc. The petty-bourgeois method is
the method of building up relations making for the greatest
possible degree of social peace. The proletarian method is
exclusively that of clearing the path of all that is medieval,
clearing it for the class struggle. Therefore, the proletarian can
leave it to the small proprietors to discuss “norms” of
landownership; the proletarian is interested only in the abolition
of the landlord latifundia, the abolition of private ownership of
land, that last barrier to the class struggle in agriculture. In the
bourgeois revolution we are interested not in petty-bourgeois
reformism, not in a future “nest” of tranquil used small farmers,
but in the conditions for the proletarian struggle against all
petty-bourgeois tranquillity on a bourgeois basis.

It is this anti-proletarian spirit that municipalisation

introduces into the programme of the bourgeois agrarian
revolution; for, despite the deeply fallacious opinion of the
Mensheviks, municipalisation does not extend and sharpen the

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class, struggle, but,. on the contrary, blunts it. It blunts it,

too, by assuming that local democracy is possible without
the complete democratisation of the centre. It also blunts it
with the idea of “municipal socialism”, because the latter is
conceivable in bourgeois society only away from the high
road of the struggle, only in minor, local, unimportant
questions on which even the bourgeoisie may yield, may
reconcile itself to without losing the possibility of preserving
its class rule.

The working class must give bourgeois society the purest,

most consistent and most thorough-going programme of
bourgeois revolution, including the bourgeois
nationalisation of the land. The proletariat scornfully rejects
petty- bourgeois reformism in the bourgeois revolution; we
are interested in freedom for the struggle, not in freedom for
philistine bliss.

Naturally, the opportunism of the intelligentsia in the

workers’ party takes a different line. Instead of the broad
revolutionary programme of bourgeois revolution, attention
is focused on a petty-bourgeois utopia: to secure local
democracy with incomplete democratisation at the centre, to
secure for petty reformism a little corner of municipal
activity away from great “turmoil”, and to evade the
extraordinarily acute conflict over the land by following the
recipe of the anti-Semites, i. e., by relegating an important
national issue to the domain of petty, local questions.

Notes
[1] The Peasant Question and Social-Democracy, p. 66.
—Lenin

[2] K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence,

Moscow, p. 537.

[3] K. Marx and F.Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, 1955; p.

578.

6. Is Land 8. Some Examples of

Nationalisation a | the Muddle Caused
Sufficiently Flexible by Municipalisation

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Method?

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