156 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE LAND QUESTION 157 istic as to renounce their own private property in land. forcible nationalization of their lands might even deprive the Revolution of their support.
Nor would it be correct, on the part of the Social Revolutionaries, to consider the transfer of private property in land to public ownership, which is advocated by them, as a socialization.
In the capitalist system, during which they outlined their agricultural transformations, it is impossible to have a socialization, a complete economic equality of agrarian conditions. It would be conceivable in Russia at this time, only in case the present revolution succeeds in accomplishing a complete socialistic reconstruction of Russia. And its success in this is at present doubtful.
The hope of the Social Revolutionaries to do away with wage labor and the class struggle in the country, without a complete Socialist system in the cities, as well as in the country, which would eliminate all classes and all class struggle altogether is utopian. The program of the Social Democracy is, in this connection, free from such utopias; it states clearly that the party considers it its task to organize the village proletariat in independent class bodies, the elucidation to them of the opposition of interest between them and the peasant proprietors, and guiding them to a complete socialistic upheaval, which will abolish all exploitation and poverty.
What should be our position with regard to the division of the great country estates that is announced by the Russian Social Democracy?
From the socialist democratic standpoint, the large scale administration of agriculture is preferable to one on a small scale, and therefore a division of the estates of the nobles will tem porarily be a setback for agrarian production. But this applies only to about 7, 000, 000 dessyatins of noble estates, whose own proprietors have introduced cultivation on a large scale. The remaining suitable noble lands either have not been cultivated at all, or they have been rented, and their allotment to the share of the peasants could only serve to increase the total of agricultural products. However, the Russian Revolution has no reason to spare the larger scale model farms of the nobles from confiscation.
Their confiscation and division, as well as that of the other noble lands, would be a final blow to the economic, and simultaneously, the political power of the Russian nobility, and this is one of the tasks of the Russian Revolution, for the nobility was the pillar of the whole Tsarist régime and of all reaction. democratic republic is impossible so long as any remnants of a nobility still exist.
Consequently, if the peasants do not agree to a nationalization or municipalization of the land of the great estates, but insist on its division, the Russian Social Democracy has every reason to support (and has already supported) this demand, in order to bring the peasants to the side of the Revolution and to clear the way for the complete rule of democracy.
To what extent the division of the land will be undertaken in Russia is difficult to prognosticate. Most likely, it will be chiefly resorted to in the regions of peasant land poverty, and will not apply to the remote lands of the state, the appanages, and the cabinet.
After analyzing the agrarian demands of the Social Democracy and the Social Revolutionaries it becomes clear, that in spite of their differences, they have many principles in common, thus indicating that these demands cannot be (and in fact, have not been) the basis of the existing serious schism between the Socialist parties of Russia. Their common principles are these: confiscation of the great landed estates in the interests of the people, their transfer to public ownership in some form or other, and the enlarging of the parcels of the peasants. These common principles serve as a guarantee that the Social Democracy and the Socialist Revolutionaries, differing between them in theory, and, in some particulars, on the agrarian question, may nevertheless to a serious degree together solve the fundamental tasks of the agrarian revolution, e. the confiscation of cabinet, appanage, noble, church and monastery lands, and their transfer to the control of the people. And the possibility of such common aspirations of the two great tendencies of Russian Socialism