MARXISM AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION VOLUME 1 Also by Athar Hussain Marx's 'Capital' and Capitalism Today Also by Keith Tribe Land, Labour and Economic Discourse MARXISM AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION Volume 1 German Social Democracy and the Peasantry 1890-1907 Athar Hussain Keith Tribe © Athar Hussain, Keith Tribe 1981 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 978-0-333-24143-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1981 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo ISBN 978-1-349-03963-0 ISBN 978-1-349-03961-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03961-6 Contents Preface Vll Acknowledgements X 1 The Agrarian Question 1 2 Some Aspects of German Agriculture 20 International Competition in Agriculture 20 Tariffs 29 The Prussian Road 40 Rural Labourers and the Flight from the Land 51 Rural Indebtedness 58 Differentiation in the Countryside 60 3 Landagitation 72 4 Theoretical Writings on the Agrarian Question 102 5 Conclusion 133 Notes 139 Bibliography 146 Index 150 v Preface The cases of German and Russian Social Democracy as exemp lars of Marxism's treatment of agrarian issues have been selected for study here primarily because the problems that arose gave rise to writings which have today become classical sources of Marxist analysis. Reference to the work ofKautsky and Lenin has become obligatory in discussion of Marxist approaches to agrarian politics; but paradoxically, despite their status as monuments of Classical Marxism, Die Agrarfrage and Development of Capitalism in Russia are more often referred to in passing than studied in any depth. Furthermore, the habitual treatment of Marxism as a developing system of ideas, rather than a series of discourses developing around specific political and economic issues, obscures the particular value of such textual monuments. Serious study of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and the peasantry in the 1890s only began in the 1960s, and there is as yet no work in English dealing with such issues that supersedes Bertrand Russell's German Social Democracy. A similar situation exists in the case of Russia, despite the extent of the studies of Bolshevism and Russian Social Democracy. Lenin's agrarian writings, which Harding has recently shown to be seminal, meet with almost universal neglect in such studies. As a result of this situation the two volumes that make up this book are devoted to an exposition and discussion of the manner in which German and Russian Social Democracy confronted a diversity of issues that became known generically as 'the agrarian question'. However, just as the 'Marxism' ofGerman and Russian Social Democrats developed in different ways, so the issues constituting this 'question' were distinct for each movement. The 'agrarian question' that we are to discuss below is not the timeworn problem of the neglect of the peasantry by Marxists, a mythical conception fostered by Mitrany among others. Our examination of the debates and forms of organisation current among German and Russian socialists at the turn of the century VII Vlll PREFACE will show that on the contrary a number of problems related to the state of agriculture and the condition of the peasantry were a major concern of Marxists. Indeed, there is so much material available that this book can in no way be treated as an adequate or comprehensive historical analysis of the movements which we examine. Such is in any case not the object: we propose not to write a history of aspects of German and Russian Marxism, but rather select a limited number of problems which either illuminate features of Classical Marxism or raise important issues for agrarian politics and economic organisation. This book was written as a single text, in which Athar Hussain wrote up the material on the SPD and Keith Tribe the chapters dealing with Russia. The bulk of the manuscript dictated that either serious alterations be made, or it be divided in two; and so, following the latter course, the book appears as two volumes, the first on Germany and the second on Russia, Athar Hussain taking responsibility for the first volume, and Keith Tribe for the second. In each volume, four chapters deal substantively with the issues raised; but as the reader will notice, there is no uniformity between the two volumes in terms of the manner in which the issues have been isolated. This is not the outcome of an authorial division of labour, however, for it should be apparent that the arguments advanced through the two volumes are by and large consistent. The differences in organisation of the material of the two volumes are the result of the difference in the political and economic conditions under which the two movements operated, combined with a consideration of the English language sources available to the reader. In volume 1 therefore the first chapter deals with aspects of the political development of the SPD before in the second chapter providing a lengthy account of the structure of German agriculture in this period. Only in the third chapter is the agrarian policy of the SPD directly considered, dealing with the years 1891-5. Chapter 4 deals with Kautsky's Agrarfrage, and this is followed by a brief conclusion to the first volume. In volume 2 the treatment of the structure of the Tsarist agrarian economy in the first chapter is relatively brief, more space being given in chapter 2 to the development of Russian Social Democracy to 1899, the date of publication of Lenin's Develop ment of Capitalism in Russia. Chapter 3 considers the role of agrarian politics in the drafting and revision of the programme of PREFACE ix The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) up to 1907, while chapter 4 outlines some aspects of state policy from the Stolypin Reform of 1906 to collectivisation. The continuity of the arguments presented through the two volumes is then emphasised in the conclusion. In addition, there is a reader in preparation by the authors in which translations related to the material of volume 1 will be presented, and it is hoped that this will in some measure compensate for the relatively cursory treatment that some points receive in the present texts. Finally, in volume 2 some readers might notice that no effort has been made to standardise Russian orthography; in particular, German versions of Russian names are retained. The reason for this is that it was felt that only confusion would result if the names of authors were altered from the form in which they appeared originally to a more acceptable modern form. On the other hand, while one form is consistently used for individual authors, there is no uniformity across persons. All translation from foreign-language sources found below is the work of the authors. Keele April 1979 A THAR HUSSAIN KEITH TRIBE Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following individuals for the help and advice they have offered while we have been working on this book: Dave Blackbourn, Liz Brown, Tony Cutler, Geoff Eley, Les Fishman, Barry Hindess, Paul Hirst, Jill Hodges, Caroline Humphrey, Peter Lawrence. We would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance re ceived from the Research Fund of the University of Keele, and also a grant from the SSRC which enabled us to visit the Bayerische Staatbibliothek in Munich. X