Letter to Vera Zasulich, March 8, 1881

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The reply to Zasulich, March 8, 1881

8 March 1881
41, Maitland Park Road, London N.W.

Dear Citizen,

A nervous complaint which has periodically affected me for the last ten years has prevented me from answering sooner your letter of 16 February. I regret that I am unable to give you a concise account for publication of the question which you did me the honour of raising. Some months ago, I already promised a text on the same subject to the St. Petersburg Committee. Still, I hope that a few lines will suffice to leave you in no doubt about the way in which my so-called theory has been misunderstood.

In analysing the genesis of capitalist production, I said:

At the heart of the capitalist system is a complete separation of ... the producer from the means of production ... the expropriation of the agricultural producer is the basis of the whole process. Only in England has it been accomplished in a radical manner. ... But all the other countries of Western Europe are following the same course. (Capital, French edition, p. 315.)

The ‘historical inevitability’ of this course is therefore expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe. The reason for this restriction is indicated in Ch. XXXII: ‘Private property, founded upon personal labour ... is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on exploitation of the labour of others, on wage­labour.’ (loc. cit., p. 340).

In the Western case, then, one form of private property is transformed into another form of private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, however, their communal property would have to be transformed into private property.

The analysis in Capital therefore provides no reasons either for or against the vitality of the Russian commune. But the special study I have made of it, including a search for original source­ material, has convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.

I have the honour, dear Citizen, to remain
Yours sincerely,
Karl Marx

Drafts of the reply to Zasulich

First draft

(1) In discussing the genesis of capitalist production, I said [that the secret is that there is at bottom ‘a complete separation of ... the producer from the means of production’ (p. 315, column l, French edition of Capital) and that ‘the expropriation of the agricultural producer is the basis of the whole process. Only in England has it been so far accomplished in a radical manner. ... But al/ the other countries of Western Europe are following the same course’ (loc. cit., column II).

Thus I expressly restricted the ‘historical inevitability’ of this process to the countries of Western Europe. Why did I do this? Please refer to the argument in Chapter XXXII;

‘The transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated means of production, the transformation, therefore, of the dwarf-like property of the many into the giant property of the few, this terrible and arduously accomplished expropriation of the mass of the people forms the pre-history of capital. Private property, founded on personal labour ... is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on exploitation of the labour of others, on wage-labour’ (p. 340, column II).

In the last analysis, then, one form of private property is transformed into another form of private property; (the Western course). Since the Russian peasant lands have never been their private property, how could this tendency be applied to them?

(2) From a historical point of view, only one serious argument has been given for the inevitable dissolution of the Russian peasant commune: If we go far back, it is said, a more or less archaic type of communal property may be found everywhere in Western Europe. But with the progress of society it has everywhere disappeared. Why should it escape the same fate only in Russia?

My answer is that, thanks to the unique combination of circumstances in Russia, the rural commune, which is still established on a national scale, may gradually shake off its primitive characteristics and directly develop as an element of collective production on a national scale. Precisely because it is contemporaneous with capitalist production, the rural commune may appropriate all its positive achievements without undergoing its [terrible] frightful vicissitudes. Russia does not live in isolation from the modern world, and nor has it fallen prey, like the East Indies, to a conquering foreign power.

Should the Russian admirers of the capitalist system den y that such a development is theoretically possible, then I would ask them the following question. Did Russia have to undergo a long Western-style incubation of mechanical industry before it could make use of machinery, steamships, railways, etc.? Let them also explain how they managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, that whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries in the West.

If, at the time of the emancipation, the rural commune had been initially placed under conditions of normal prosperity, if, moreover, the huge public debt, mostly financed at the peasants’ expense, along with the enormous sums which the state (still at the peasants’ expense) provided for the ‘new pillars of society’, transformed into capitalists – if all these expenses had served for the further development of the rural commune, no one would be dreaming today of the ‘historical inevitability’ of the annihilation of the commune. Everyone would see the commune as the element in the regeneration of Russian society, and an element of superiority over countries still enslaved by the capitalist regime.

[The contemporaneity of capitalist production was not the only factor that could provide the Russian commune with the elements of development.]

Also favourable to the maintenance of the Russian commune (on the path of development) is the fact not only that it is contemporary with capitalist production [in the Western countries], but that it has survived the epoch when the social system stood intact. Today, it faces a social system which, both in Western Europe and the United States, is in conflict with science, with the popular masses, and with the very productive forces that it generates [in short, this social system has become the arena of flagrant antagonisms, conflicts and periodic disasters; it makes clear to the blindest observer that it is a transitory system of production, doomed to be eliminated as soc(iety) returns to... ]. In short, the rural commune finds it in a state of crisis that will end only when the social system is eliminated through the return of modern societies to the ‘archaic’ type of communal property. In the words of an American writer who, supported in his work by the Washington government, is not at all to be suspected of revolutionary tendencies, [’the higher plane'] ‘the new system’ to which modern society is tending ‘will be a revival, in a superior form, of an archaic social type.’ We should not, then, be too frightened by the word ‘archaic’.

But at least we should be thoroughly acquainted with all the historical twists and turns. We know nothing about them. In one way or another, this commune perished in the midst of never­ ending foreign and intestine warfare. It probably died a violent death when the Germanic tribes came to conquer Italy, Spain, Gaul, and so on. The commune of the archaic type had already ceased to exist. And yet, its natural vitality is proved by two facts. Scattered examples survived all the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages and have maintained themselves up to the present day- e.g. in my own home region of Trier. More importantly, however, it so stamped its own features on the commune that supplanted it (a commune in which arable land became private property, while the forests, pastures, waste ground, etc., remained communal property), that Maurer was able to reconstruct the archaic prototype while deciphering the commune [of more recent origin] of secondary formation. Thanks to the characteristic features inherited from the prototype, the new commune which the Germans introduced into every conquered region became the only focus of liberty and popular life throughout the Middle Ages.

We know nothing of the life of the [Germanic] [rural] [archaic] commune after Tacitus, nor how and when it actually disappeared. Thanks to Julius Caesar, however, we do at least know its point of departure. In Caesar’s time, the [arable] land was already distributed on an annual basis- not yet, however, among individual members of a commune, but among the gentes [Geschlechter] and tribes of the [various] Germanic confederations. The agricultural rural commune therefore emerged in Germania from a more archaic type; it was the product of spontaneous development rather than being imported ready-made from Asia. It may also be found in Asia- in the East Indies- always as the final term or last period of the archaic formation.

If I am [now] to assess the possible destinies [of the ‘rural commune'] from a purely theoretical point of view- that is, always supposing conditions of normal life – I must now refer to certain characteristics which differentiate the ‘agricultural commune’ from the more archaic type.

Firstly, the earlier primitive communities all rested on the natural kinship of their members. In breaking this strong yet narrow tie, the agricultural commune proved more capable of adapting and expanding, and of undergoing contact with strangers.

Secondly, within the commune, the house and its complementary yard were already the farmer’s private property, whereas the communal house was one of the material bases of previous communities, long before agriculture was even introduced.

Finally, although the arable land remained communal property, it was periodically divided among the members of the agricultural commune, so that each farmer tilled on his own behalf the various fields allocated to him and individually appropriated their fruits. In the more archaic communities, by contrast, production was a common activity, and only the final produce was distributed among individual members. Of course, this primitive type of collective or co-operative production stemmed from the weakness of the isolated individual, not from socialisation of the means of production.

It is easy to see that the dualism inherent in the ‘agricultural commune’ may give it a sturdy life: for communal property and all the resulting social relations provide it with a solid foundation, while the privately owned houses, fragmented tillage of the arable land and private appropriation of its fruits all permit a development of individuality incompatible with conditions in the more primitive communities. It is just as evident, however, that the very same dualism may eventually become a source of disintegration. Apart from the influence of a hostile environment, the mere accumulation over time of movable property, beginning with wealth in livestock and even extending to wealth in serfs, combines with the ever more prominent role played by movables in agriculture itself and with a host of other circumstances, inseparable from such accumulation, which would take me too far from the central theme. All these factors, then, serve to dissolve economic and social equality, generating within the commune itself a conflict of interests which leads, first, to the conversion of arable land into private property, and ultimately to the private appropriation of forests, pastures, waste ground, etc., already no more than communal appendages of private property. (dl Accordingly, the ‘agricultural commune’ every­ here presents itself as the most recent type of the archaic formation of societies; and the period of the agricultural commune appears in the historical course of Western Europe, both ancient and modern, as a period of transition from communal to private property, from the primary to the secondary formation. But does this mean that the development of the ‘agricultural commune’ must follow this route in every circumstance [in every historical context]? Not at all. Its constitutive form allows of the following alternative: either the element of private property which it implies gains the upper hand over the collective element, or the reverse takes place. Everything depends upon the historical context in which it is situated.... Both solutions are a priori possibilities, but each one naturally requires a completely different historical context.

(3) Coming now to the ‘agricultural commune’ in Russia, I shall leave aside for the moment all the evils which weigh upon it, and only consider the capacities for further development permitted by its constitutive form and its historical context.

Russia is the only European country in which the ‘agricultural commune’ has maintained itself on a national scale up to the present day. It is not, like the East Indies, the prey of a conquering foreign power. Nor does it live in isolation from the modern world. On the one hand, communal land ownership allows it directly and gradually to transform fragmented, individualist agriculture into collective agriculture [at the same time that the contemporaneity of capitalist production in the West, with which it has both material and intellectual links . . . ], and the Russian peasants already practise it in the jointly owned meadows; the physical configuration of the land makes it suitable for huge-scale mechanised cultivation; the peasant’s familiarity with the artel relationship (contrat d'arte) can help him to make the transition from augmented to co-operative labour; and, finally, Russian society, which has for so long lived at his expense, owes him the credits required for such a transition. [To be sure, the first step should be to create normal conditions for the commune on its present basis, for the peasant is above all hostile to any abrupt change.] On the other hand, the contemporaneity of Western [capitalist] production, which dominates the world market, enables Russia to build into the commune all the positive achievements of the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute.

If the spokesmen of the ‘new pillars of society’ deny that it is theoretically possible for the modern rural commune to follow such a path, then they should tell us whether Russia, like the West, was forced to pass through a long incubation of mechanical industry before it could acquire machinery, steamships, railways, and so on. One might then ask them how they managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries [elsewhere] in the West.

One debilitating feature of the ‘agricultural commune’ in Russia is inimical to it in every way. This is its isolation, the lack of connection between the lives of different communes. It is not an immanent or universal characteristic of this type that the commune should appear as a localised microcosm. But wherever it does so appear, it leads to the formation of a more or less central despotism above the communes. The federation of North Russian republics proves that such isolation, which seems to have been originally imposed by the huge size of the country, was largely consolidated by Russia’s political changes of fortune after the Mongol invasion.

Today, it is an obstacle that could be removed with the utmost ease. All that is necessary is to replace the ‘volost’, a government institution, with a peasant assembly chosen by the communes themselves – an economic and administrative body serving their own interests.

Historically very favourable to the preservation of the ‘agricultural commune’ through its further development is the fact not only that it is contemporaneous with Western capitalist production [so that it] and therefore able to acquire its fruits without bowing to its modus operandi, but also that it has survived the epoch when the capitalist system stood intact. Today it finds that system, bath in Western Europe and the United States, in conflict with the working masses, with science, and with the very productive forces which it generates – in short, in a crisis that will end through its own elimination, through the return of modern societies to a higher form of an ‘archaic’ type of collective ownership and production.

It is understood that the commune would develop gradually, and that the first step would be to place it under normal conditions on its present basis.

[The historical situation of the Russian ‘rural commune’ is without parallel! Alone in Europe, it has preserved itself not as scattered debris (like the rare and curious miniatures of an archaic type that were recently to be found in the West), but as the more or less dominant form of popular life spread over a vast empire. While it has in common land ownership the natural basis of collective appropriation, its historical context – the contemporaneity of capitalist production – provides it with read y-made material conditions for huge-scale common labour. It is therefore able to incorporate the positive achievements of the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute. The commune may gradually replace fragmented agriculture with large-scale, machine­ assisted agriculture particularly suited to the physical configuration of Russia. It may thus become the direct starting-point of the economic system towards which modern society is tending; it may open a new chapter that does not begin with its own suicide. [Indeed, the first thing to do would be to place it under normal conditions.] [But it is not enough to eliminate the dualism within the rural commune, which it could eliminate by ... ]

It is confronted, however, by landed property, which controls nearly half the land, and the best at that, not to mention the state holdings. In this respect, the preservation of the ‘rural commune’ through its further development merges with the general course of Russian society: it is, indeed, the price for its regeneration.

[Even from an] Even from a purely economic point of view, Russia can break out of its agricultural. ... ? ... .(e) through the evolution of its rural commune; it would try in vain to find a way out through [the introduction of) English-style capitalised farming, against which [the totality] all the rural conditions of the country would rebel.

[Thus, only a general uprising can break the isolation of the ‘rural commune’, the lack of connection between the lives of different communes, in short, its existence as a localised microcosm which denies it any the historical initiative.]

[Theoretically speaking, then, the Russian ‘rural commune’ may preserve its land – by developing its base of common land ownership, and by eliminating the principle of private property which it also implies. lt may become a direct starting-point of the economic system towards which modern society is tending; it may open a new chapter that does not begin with its own suicide; it may reap the fruits with which capitalist production has enriched humanity, without passing through the capitalist regime which, simply in terms of its possible duration, hardly counts in the life of society. But it is necessary to descend from pure theory to Russian reality.]

If we abstract from all the evils now weighing clown upon the Russian ‘rural commune’ and merely consider its constitutive form and historical context, it is immediately apparent that one of its fundamental characteristics, common land ownership, forms the natural basis of collective production and appropriation. Further­ more, the Russian peasant’s familiarity with the arte/ relationship would facilitate the transition from fragmented to collective labour, already practised to some extent in the jointly owned meadows for the drying of grass and other ventures of general interest. If in agriculture proper, however, collective labour is to supplant fragmented labour (the form of private appropriation), then two things are necessary: the economic need for such a transformation; and the material conditions for its realisation.

The economic need would make itself felt in the ‘rural commune’ as soon as it is placed under normal conditions – that is to say, as soon as its burdens are lifted and its land for cultivation expands to a normal size. The time has passed when Russian agriculture required no more than land and tillers of parcellised holdings armed with rather primitive instruments [and the fertility of the soil].... That time has passed all the more quickly in that the oppression of the farmer has infected and sterilised his fields. He now needs co-operative labour, organised on a large scale. Moreover, since the peasant does not have what is necessary to till his three desyatins, would he be any better off if he had ten times the number of desyatins?

But where is the peasant to find the tools, the fertiliser, the agronomic methods, etc.. – all the things required for collective labour? This is precisely where the Russian ‘rural commune’ is greatly superior to archaic communes of the same type. For, alone in Europe, it has maintained itself on a vast, nationwide basis. It is thus placed within a historical context in which the contemporaneity of capitalist production provides it with all the conditions for co-operative labour. lt is in a position to incorporate the positive achievements of the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute. The physical configuration of the Russian land is eminently suited to machine-assisted agriculture, organised on a large scale and [in the hands] performed by co-operative labour. As for the initial expenses, both intellectual and material, Russian society owes them to the ‘rural commune’ at whose expense it has lived for so long and in which it must seek its ‘regenerative element’.

The best proof that such a development of the ‘rural commune’ corresponds to the historical trend of our epoch, is the fatal crisis undergone by capitalist production in those European and American countries where it reached its highest peak. The crisis will come to an end with the elimination of capitalist production and the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type – collective production and appropriation.

(4) [In descending from theory to reality, no one can disguise the fact that the Russian commune now faces a conspiracy by powerful forces and interests. Not only has the state subjected it to ceaseless exploitation, it has also fostered, at the peasant’s expense, the domiciliation of a certain part of the capitalist system – stock exchange, bank, railways, trade....]

Life is the first requirement for development, and no one can hide from themselves that, here and now, the life of the ‘rural commune’ is in peril.

[You are perfectly aware that the very existence of the Russian commune is now threatened by a conspiracy of powerful interests. Overburdened by direct state exactions, fraudulently exploited by intruding capitalists, merchants, etc., and the landed ‘proprietors’, it is also being undermined by village usurers and the conflict of interests in its midst aroused by the situation in which it has been placed.

In order to expropriate the agricultural producers, it is not necessary to drive them from the land, as happened in England and elsewhere; nor to abolish communal property by some ukase. If you go and take from the peasants more than a certain proportion of the product of their agricultural labour, then not even your gendarmes and your army will enable you to tie them to their fields. In the last years of the Roman Empire some provincial decurions, not peasants but actual landowners, fled their homes, abandoned their land, and even sold themselves into bondage – all in order to be rid of a property that had become nothing more than an official pretext for exerting quite merciless pressure over them.

After the so-called emancipation of the peasantry, the state placed the Russian commune in abnormal economic conditions; and since that time, it has never ceased to weigh it clown with the social force concentrated in its hands. Exhausted by tax demands, the commune became a kind of inert matter easily exploited by traders, landowners and usurers. This oppression from without unleashed the conflict of interests already present at the heart of the commune, rapidly developing the seeds of its disintegration. But that is not all. [At the peasant’s expense, it grew as in a hothouse those excrescences of the capitalist system that can be most easily acclimatised (the stock exchange, speculation, banks, share companies, railways), writing off their deficits, advancing profits to their entrepreneurs, etc., etc.] At the peasant’s expense, the state [lent a hand to] grew in hothouse conditions certain branches of the Western capitalist system which, in no way developing the productive premises of agriculture, are the best suited to facilitate and precipitate the theft of its fruits by un productive middlemen. In this way, it helped to enrich a new capitalist vermin which is sucking the already depleted blood of the ‘rural commune’.

.... In short, the state [came forward as middleman] lent a hand in the precocious development of the technical and economic instruments best suited to facilitate and precipitate the exploitation of the farmer – Russia’s greatest productive force – and to enrich the ‘new pillars of society’.

(5) [One can see at a glance the combination of these hostile forces which are favouring and precipitating the exploitation of the farmers, Russia’s greatest productive force.]

[One can see at a glance that unless there is a powerful reaction, this combination of hostile forces will inevitably bring about the ruin of the commune through the simple pressure of events.]

Unless it is broken by a powerful reaction, this combination of destructive influences must naturally lead to the death of the rural commune.

It may be asked, however: why have all these interests (and I include the big government-protected industries) found an advantage in the present situation of the rural commune? Why should they knowingly conspire to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Precisely because they feel that ‘this present situation’ is no longer tenable, and that the present mode of exploiting it [is not tenable either] is therefore no longer in vogue. The land, infected by the farmer’s poverty, is already growing sterile. Good harvests [which favourable weather conditions sometimes draw from the land] are matched by periods of famine. Instead of exporting, Russia has to import grain. The average results of the last ten years reveal a level of agricultural production that is not only stagnant but actually declining. For the first time, Russia has to import grain instead of exporting it. And so, there is no longer any time to lose. And so, an end must be made to the situation. The more or less well-off minority of peasants must be formed into a rural middle class, and the majority simply converted into proletarians [into wage­ labourers]. – To this end, the spokesmen of the ‘new pillars of society’ denounce the very evils weighing upon the commune as so many natural symptoms of its decrepitude.

Since so many different interests, particularly the new ‘pillars of society’ constructed under Alexander Il’s benevolent empire, find an advantage in the present situation of the rural commune, why should they knowingly conspire to bring about its death? Why do their spokesmen denounce the evils weighing upon it as irrefutable proof of its natural decay? Wh y do they wish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Quite simply, the economic facts, which it would take me tao long to analyse, have uncovered the secret that the present situation of the commune is no longer tenable, and that, through mere force of circumstances, the present mode of exploiting the popular masses will go out of fashion. Thus, something new is required; and this something new, insinuated in the most diverse forms, always comes clown to the abolition of communal property, the formation of the more or less well-off minority of peasants into a rural middle class, and the straight­ forward conversion of the majority into proletarians.

[One cannot disguise from oneself that] On the one hand the ‘rural commune’ is almost at its last gasp; on the other, a powerful conspiracy is waiting in the wings to finish it off. To save the Russian commune, there must be a Russian Revolution. For their part, those who hold the political and social power are doing their best to prepare the masses for such a catastrophe. While the commune is being bled and tortured, its lands sterilised and impoverished, the literary flunkeys of the ‘new pillars of society’ ironically refer to the evils heaped on the commune as if they were symptoms of spontaneous, indisputable decay, arguing that it is dying a natural death and that it would be an act of kindness to shorten its agony. At this level, it is a question no longer of a problem to be solved, but simply of an enemy to be beaten. Thus, it is no longer a theoretical problem; [it is a question to be solved, it is quite simply an enemy to be beaten.] To save the Russian commune, there must be a Russian Revolution. For their part, the Russian government and the ‘new pillars of society’ are doing their best to prepare the masses for such a catastrophe. If the revolution takes place in time, if it concentrates all its forces [if the intelligent part of Russian society] [if the Russian intelligentsia (l'intelligence russe) concentrates all the living forces of the country] to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune, the latter will soon develop as a regenerating element of Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist regime.

Second draft

I. I have shown in Capital that the [transformation] metamorphosis of feudal production into capitalist production had its starting-point in the expropriation of the producers; and, in particular, that ‘the expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil is the basis of the whole process’ (p. 315 of the French edition). I continue: ‘Only in England has it (the expropriation of the agricultural producer) been accomplished in a radical manner. ... All the other countries of Western Europe are following the same course’ (loc. cit.).

Thus [in writing these lines] I expressly restricted [the development in question] this ‘historical inevitability’ to ‘the. countries of Western Europe’. So that there should not be the slightest doubt about my thinking, I say on p. 341: ‘Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where ... the external conditions of labour belong to private individuals. But according to whether these private individuals are workers or non­workers, private property has a different character.’

Thus the process I [described] analysed, substituted a form of private, fragmented property of the workers- capitalist property(a) of a tiny minority (loc. cit., p. 342), substituted one kind of property for another. How [ would it apply] could it apply to Russia, where the land is not and never has been the private property of the agricultural producer? [In any case, those who believe that the dissolution of communal property is a historical necessity in Russia cannot, at any event, prove such a necessity from my account of the inevitable course of things in Western Europe. On the contrary, they would have to provide new arguments quite independent of the course I described. The only thing they can learn from me is this:] Thus, the only conclusion they would be justified in drawing from the course of things in the West is the following: If capitalist production is to be established in Russia, the first step must be to abolish communal property and expropriate the peasants, that is, the great mass of the people. That is anyway the wish of the Russian liberals [who wish to naturalise capitalist production in their own country and, quite consistently, to transform the great mass of peasants into simple wage-labourers], but does their wish prove more than Catherine II’s wish [to graft] to implant the Western medieval craft system in Russian soil?

[Since the Russian peasants’ land is their common property and has never been their private property.... ]

[In Russia, where the land is not and never has been the peasant’s ‘private property’, the transformation metamorphosis of this of such private property into capitalist property has no sense is impossible is therefore out of the question. The only conclusion one might draw is that .... All that can be concluded from the Western data .... If one wishes to draw some indication lesson from the (Western) data .... ]

[The most simple-minded observer could not deny that these are two quite distinct cases. In any case, the Western process.... ]

Thus [the process I have analysed] the expropriation of the agricultural producers in the West served ‘to transform the fragmented private property of workers’ into the concentrated private property of capitalists. But it was always the substitution of one form of private property for another form of private property. [How, then, could this same process apply to the land in Russia to the Russian agricultural producers whose land is not and never has ... whose property in land always remained ‘communal’ and has never been ‘private’. The same historical process which [I analysed] such as it was realised in the West.... ] In Russia, on the contrary, it would be a matter of substituting capitalist property for the communist property [of the tillers of the land – a process that would evidently be quite ... ].

Yes indeed! If capitalist production is to establish its sway in Russia, then the great majority of peasants – that is, of the Russian people – will have to be transformed into wage-labourers, and hence be expropriated through the prior abolition of their communist property. But in any event, the Western precedent would prove nothing at all [about the ‘historical inevitability’ of this process].

II. The Russian ‘Marxists’ of whom you speak are completely unknown to me. As far as I am aware, the Russians with whom I do have personal links hold altogether opposite views.

III. From a historical point of view, the only serious argument [that may be invoked] in favour of the inevitable dissolution of communal property in Russia is as follows: Communal property existed everywhere in Western Europe, and it everywhere disappeared with the progress of society; [why should its fate be different in Russia?] how, then, could it escape the same fate in Russia?

First of all, in Western Europe, the death of communal property [and the emergence] and the birth of capitalist production are separated by a [centuries-long] huge interval which covers a whole series of successive economic revolutions and evolutions, [The death of communal property did not give birth to capitalist production,] of which capitalist production is but [the last] the most recent. On the one hand it has marvellously developed the social productive forces, but on the other it has betrayed [its transitory character] its own incompatibility with the very forces it generates. Its history is no longer anything more than one of antagonisms, crises, conflicts and disasters. Lastly, it has unveiled its purely transitory character to all except those who have an interest in remaining blind. The peoples among which it reached its highest peak in Europe and [the United States of] America seek only to break its chains by replacing capitalist with co-operative production, and capitalist property with a higher form of the archaic type of property, that is, [collective] communist property.

If Russia were isolated in the world, it would have to develop on its own account the economic conquests which Western Europe only acquired through a long series of evolutions from its primitive communities to the present situation. There would then be no doubt whatsoever, at least in my mind, that Russia’s communities are fated to perish with the development of Russian society. However, the situation of the Russian commune is absolutely different from that of the primitive communities in the West [in Western Europe]. Russia is the only European country in which communal property has maintained itself on a vast, nationwide scale. But at the same time, Russia exists in a modern historical context: it is contemporaneous with a higher culture, and it is linked to a world market in which capitalist production is predominant.

[It is therefore capitalist production which enables it to achieve results without having to pass through its. ... ]

Thus, in appropriating the positive results of this mode of production, it is able to develop and transform the still archaic form of its rural commune, instead of destroying it. (I would remark in passing that the form of communist property in Russia is the most modern form of the archaic type which has itself gone through a whole series of evolutionary changes.)

If the admirers of the capitalist system in Russia deny that such a combination is possible, let them prove that Russia had to undergo an incubation period of mechanical production in order to make use of machinery! Let them explain to me how they managed, in just a few days as it were, to introduce the machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries in the West.

[Although the capitalist system is past its prime in the West, approaching the time when it will be no more than a social regime a regressive form an ‘archaic’ formation, its Russian admirers are.... ]

IV. The archaic or primary formation of our globe itself contains a series of layers from various ages, the one superimposed on the other. Similarly, the archaic formation of society exhibits a series of different types [ which together form an ascending series], which mark a progression of epochs. The Russian rural commune belongs to the most recent type in this chain. Already, the agricultural producer privately owns the house in which he lives, together with its complementary garden. This is the first element unknown to older types which dissolves the archaic form [and which may serve as a transition from the archaic form to... ]. On the other hand, these older types all rest upon natural kinship relations between members of the commune, whereas the type to which the Russian commune belongs is emancipated from that narrow bond. For this very reason, it is therefore capable of broader development. The isolation of the rural communes, the lack of connection between the lives of different communes- this localised microcosm [which would have constituted the natural basis of a central despotism] does not everywhere appear as an immanent characteristic of the primitive type. But wherever it is found, it leads to the formation of a central despotism above the communes. It seems to me that in Russia [the isolated life of the rural communes will disappear] this isolation, originally imposed by the country’s huge expanse, may easily be overcome once the government fetters have been removed.

This brings me to the heart of the matter. One cannot disguise from oneself that the archaic type, to which the Russian rural commune belongs, conceals an inner dualism which, given certain historical conditions, may bring on its ruin [its dissolution]. There is common land ownership, but [on the other hand, in practice the work of cultivation or production is clone on small peasant plots] each peasant cultivates and works [his plot, reaps the fruits of his field] his field on his own account, like the small Western peasant.

Communal property and small-plot cultivation: this combination [which used to be a (fertilising) element of progress, the development of farming), useful in more distant times, becomes dangerous in our own epoch. On the one hand movable property, playing an ever more important role in agriculture itself, gradually differentiates the commune members in terms of wealth and gives rise to a conflict of interests, above all under state fiscal pressure; on the other hand, the economic superiority of communal property – as the basis of co-operative and combined labour- is lost, it should not be forgotten, however, that the Russian peasants already practise the collective mode in the cultivation of their joint meadows (prairies indivises); that their familiarity with the artel relationship could greatly facilitate their transition from small-plot to collective farming; that the physical configuration of the Russian land makes it suitable for large-scale and combined mechanical farming [with the aid of machines]; and finally, that Russian society, having for so long lived at the expense of the rural commune, owes it the initial funds required for such a change. What is involved, of course, is only a gradual change that would begin by creating normal conditions for the commune on its present basis.

V. Leaving aside all questions of a more or less theoretical nature, I do not have to tell you that the very existence of the Russian commune is now threatened by a conspiracy of powerful interests. A certain type of capitalism, fostered by the state at the peasants’ expense, has risen up against the commune and found an interest in stifling it. The landowners, tao, have an interest in forming the more or less well-off peasants into an agricultural middle class, and in converting the poor farmers- that is, the mass- into mere wage labourers- that is to say, cheap labour. How can a commune resist, pounded as it is by state exactions, plundered by trade, exploited by landowners, and undermined from within by usury!

What threatens the life of the Russian commune is neither a historical inevitability nor a theory; it is state oppression, and exploitation by capitalist intruders whom the state has made powerful at the peasants’ expense.

Third draft

Dear Citizen,

In order to examine in depth the questions raised in your letter of 16 February, I would have to enter into the relevant details and interrupt some urgent work. I do hope, however, that the brief account which I have the honour of sending you will suffice to clear up any misunderstanding about my so-called theory.

(1) In analysing the genesis of capitalist production, I said:

‘At the heart of the capitalist system is a complete separation of ... the producer from the means of production ... the expropriation of the agricultural producer is the basis of the whole process. Only in England has it been accomplished in a radical manner. ... But all the other countries of Western Europe are following the same course.’ (Capital, French edition, p. 315.)

The ‘historical inevitability’ of this course is therefore expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe. [Next, the cause.] The reason for this restriction is indicated in the following passage from Ch. XXXII:

‘Private property, founded on personal labour ... which is personally earned ... is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on exploitation of the labour of others, on wage­ labour.’

In the Western case, then, one form of private property is transformed into another form of private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, on the contrary, their communal property would have to be transformed into private property. Whether or not one believes that such a transformation is inevitable, the reasons for and against have nothing to do with my analysis of the genesis of the capitalist system. At the very most, it might be inferred that, given the present condition of the great majority of Russian peasants, their conversion into small-landowners would merely be a prologue to their swift expropriation.

(II) The most serious argument used against the Russian commune comes clown to the following:

If you go back to the origins of Western societies, you will everywhere find communal ownership of the land; with the progress of society, it everywhere gave way to private ownership; it cannot therefore escape the same fate in Russia alone.

I shall consider this line of reasoning only in so far as it [concerns Europe] is based upon European experiences. As regards the East Indies, for example, everyone except Sir H. Maine and his like is aware that the suppression of communal land ownership was nothing but an act of English vandalism which drove the indigenous population backward rather than forward.

Primitive communities are not all cut according to the same pattern. On the contrary, they form a series of social groups which, differing in both type and age, mark successive phases of evolution. One of these types, conventionally known as the agrarian commune (la commune agricole), also embraces the Russian commune. Its equivalent in the West is the very recent Germanic commune. This did not yet exist in the time of Julius Caesar, and no longer existed when the Germanic tribes came to conquer Italy, Gaul, Spain, etc. In the time of Julius Caesar, the cultivable land was already distributed on an annual basis among different groups, the gentes and the tribes, but not yet among the individual families of a commune; probably the land was also worked by groups, in common. In the Germanic lands themselves, this more archaic type of community changed through a natural development into the agrarian commune described by Tacitus. After then, however, it fell out of sight, disappearing in the midst of constant warfare and migration. Perhaps it died a violent death. But its natural vitality is proved by two indisputable facts. A few scattered examples of this model survived all the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages and may still be found today- for example, in my home region of Trier. More importantly, however, we find the clear imprint of this ‘agrarian commune’ so clearly traced on the new commune which emerged from it that Maurer was able to reconstruct the former while working to decipher the latter. The new commune – in .which cultivable land is privately owned by the producers, while the forests, pastures, waste ground, etc., still remain communal property was introduced by the Germans to all the countries they conquered. Thanks to certain features borrowed from its prototype, it became the only focus of popular life and liberty throughout the Middle Ages.

The ‘rural commune’ may also be found in Asia, among the Afghans, etc. But it everywhere appears as the most recent type – the last word, so to speak, in the archaic formation of societies. It was to emphasise this point that I went into some detail concerning the Germanic commune.

We must now consider the most characteristic features differentiating the ‘agrarian commune’ from the more archaic communities:

(1) All the other communities rest upon blood relations among their members. No one may join unless they are a natural or adopted relative. These communities have the structure of a genealogical tree. The ‘agrarian commune’ was the first social group of free men not bound together by blood ties.

(2) In the agrarian commune, the house and its complementary yard belong to the individual farmer. By contrast, communal housing and collective habitation were an economic base of the more primitive communities, long before the introduction of agricultural or pastoral life. To be sure, there are some agrarian commune in which the houses, though no longer sites of collective habitation, periodically change owners. Personal usufruct is thus combined with communal ownership. Such communes, however, still carry their birth-mark, being in a state of transition from a more archaic community to the agrarian commune proper.

(3) The cultivable land, inalienable and common property, is periodically divided among the members of the agrarian commune, so that each on his own behalf works the fields allocated to him and privately appropriates their fruits. In the earlier communities: work was clone in common, and after a portion had been set aside for reproduction, the common product was distributed in accordance with consumption needs.

Clearly, the dualism inherent in the constitution of the agrarian commune was able to endow it with a vigorous life. Emancipated from the strong yet narrow ties of natural kinship, the communal land ownership and resulting social relations provided a solid foundation; while at the same time, the house and yard as an individual family preserve, together with small-plot farming and private appropriation of its fruits, fostered individuality to an extent incompatible with [the structure] the framework of the more primitive communities.

It is no less evident, however, that this very dualism could eventually turn into the seeds of disintegration. Apart from all the malignant outside influences, the commune bore within its own breast the elements that were poisoning its life. As we have seen, private land ownership bad already crept into the commune in the shape of a house with its own country-yard that could become a strong-point for an attack upon communal land. But the key factor was fragmented labour as the source. of private appropriation. It gave rise to the accumulation of movable goods such as livestock, money, and sometimes even: slaves or serfs. Such movable property, not subject to communal control, open to individual trading in Which there was plenty of scope for trickery and chance, came to weigh ever more heavily upon the entire rural economy. ere was the dissolver of primitive economic and social equality. It introduced heterogeneous elements into the commune, provoking conflicts of interest and passion liable to erode communal owner­ ship first of the cultivable land, and then of the forests, pastures, waste ground, etc. Once converted into communal appendages of private property, these will also fall in the long run.

As [the most recent and] the latest phase in the [archaic] primitive formation of society, the agrarian commune [naturally represents the transition] is at the same time a phase in the transition to the secondary formation, and therefore in the transition from a society based on communal property to one based on private property. The secondary formation does, of course, include the series of societies which rest upon slavery and serfdom.

Does this mean, however, that the historical career of the agrarian commune is fated to end in this way? Not at all. Its innate dualism admits of an alternative: either its property element will gain the upper band over its collective element; or else the reverse will take place. Everything depends upon the historical context in which it is located.

Let us, for the moment, abstract from the evils bearing clown upon the Russian commune and merely consider its evolutionary possibilities. It occupies a unique situation without any precedent in history. Alone in Europe, it is still the organic, predominant form of rural life in a vast empire. Communal land ownership offers it the natural basis for collective appropriation, and its historical context – the contemporaneity of capitalist production ­ provides it with the ready-made material conditions for large-scale co-operative labour organised on a large scale. It may therefore incorporate the positive achievements developed by the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute. It may gradually replace small-plot agriculture with a combined, machine­ assisted agriculture which the physical configuration of the Russian land invites. After normal conditions have been created for the commune in its present form, it may become the direct starting­ point of the economic system towards which modern. society .is tending; it may open a new chapter that does not begin with its own suicide.

[It is confronted, however, by landed property, which bas in its clutches nearly half the land the best part, not to mention the state holdings, and the best part at that. In this respect, the preservation of the rural commune through its further development merges with the general course of Russian society: it is, indeed, the price for its regeneration. Even from a purely economic point of view ... Russia would try in vain to break out of its impasse through English-style capitalist farming, against which all the social conditions of the country would rebel. The English themselves made similar attempts in the East Indies; they only managed to spoil indigenous agriculture and to swell the number and intensity of famines.]

The English themselves made such attempts in the East Indies; they only managed to spoil indigenous agriculture and to swell the number and intensity of famines.

But what of the anathema which strikes the commune – its isolation, the lack of connection between the lives of different communes, that localised microcosm which has so far denied it all historical initiative? It would vanish in the general upheaval of Russian society.

The Russian peasant’s familiarity with the artel would particularly facilitate the transition from fragmented to co-operative labour – a form which, to some extent [in the jointly owned meadows and a few ventures of general interest], he already applies in such communal activities as tossing and drying the hay. A wholly archaic peculiarity, which is the bugbear of modern agronomists, also points in this direction. If you go to any region in which the cultivable land exhibits a curious dismemberment, giving it the form of a chessboard composed of small fields, you will have no doubt that you are confronted with the domain of a dead agrarian commune. The members, without studying the theory of ground-rent, realised that the same amount of labour expended upon fields with a different natural fertility and location would produce different yields. In order to [secure the same economic benefits] equalise the chances for labour, they therefore divided the land into a number of areas according to natural and economic variations, and then subdivided these areas into as many plots as there were tillers. Finally, everyone received a patch of land in each area. It goes without saying that this arrangement, perpetuated by the Russian commune to this day, cuts across agronomic requirements [whether farming is on a collective or a private, individual basis]. Apart from other disadvantages, it compels a dispersion of strength and time. [But it has great advantages as the starting-point for collective farming. Extend the land on which the peasant works, and he will reign supreme.] Still, it does fava ur [as a starting-point] the transition to collective farming, however refractory to the objective it may appear at first sight. The small plot ....

Fourth draft

8 March 1881

Dear Citizen,

A nervous complaint which has periodically affected me for the last ten years has prevented me from answering your letter of 16 February [ which you did the honour of sending me].

I regret that I am unable to give you a concise account for publication [of the problems] of the question which [you kindly] you did me the honour of asking. Two months ago, I already promised a text on the same subject to the St. Petersburg committee. Still, I hope that a few lines will suffice to leave you in no doubt [about the conclusions that have been] about the way in which my so-called theory has been misunderstood.

(1) The analysis in Capital therefore provides [ nothing] no reasons that might be used either for or against the vitality of the Russian commune.

[My personal opinion concerning the Russian commune, which I have studied for many years in the original sources, is as follows.] [After studying (for many years) the Russian commune in the original sources for.]

[In order to have a definitive view on the possible destinies of the Russian commune, one must have more than vague historical analogies. One must study it.] [I have studied it for many.] [I have made a study of it.]

[My persona! opinion on the possible fate of the Russian commune.]

The special studies I have made of it, including a search for original source-material, have [led me to the conclusion] convinced me that the commune is the natural [starting-point] fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia [for the regeneration of Russian society]. But [the first step must, of course, be to place it in conditions ... ] in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the conditions for spontaneous development.