Publications / Article

On Scale in Agricultural Progress

DECENTRALISM FILE

Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) was born in Prague and studied at the University of Vienna. In 1875 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria, and from 1883 founded and edited the influential socialist journal Die Neue Zeit. From 1885 to 1890, he lived in London, where he worked with Engels. In Germany, he became active in the SPD and wrote the theory section of the party’s Erfurt Program (1891), which became a major influence on other European socialist parties. He briefly left in 1917 to join the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) because of his opposition to the increasing collaboration of the SPD with the war effort, but rejoined in 1922. By the 1930s, his influence and involvement in politics was dwindling, and he died in Amsterdam in 1938. He became a leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International, Kautsky advocated orthodox Marxism, which emphasized the scientific, materialist, and determinist character of Karl Marx’s work. This interpretation dominated European Marxism for two decades, from the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Kautsky’s interpretation of Marxism held that history could not be “hurried” and that politically workers and workers’ parties must wait for the material economic conditions for a socialist revolution to be met. Under his influence, the SPD adopted a gradualist approach, taking advantage of bourgeois parliamentary democracy to improve the lives of workers until capitalism was brought down by its internal contradictions. 

His positions lead to disputes with other leading Marxists, including Eduard Bernstein, who favored a reformist approach; Rosa Luxemburg, who advocated revolutionary spontaneity, and Vladimir Lenin, who Kautsky believed had initiated a premature socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 and led the Soviet Union toward a dictatorship.

 American socialist scholar Sidney Hook wrote that “Kautsky was indisputably the theoretical leader of international social democracy… His piety toward Marx and Engels didn’t prevent him from revising or improving upon them in detail, but from first to last he considered himself a faithful disciple.” (Marx and the Marxists, 1955)

Characteristically, Kautsky disfavored immediate violent revolution, believing that History, though inexorable, could not be hurried, and motivating people to move into socialism voluntarily was preferable to the use of state force. This preference is illustrated by Kautsky’s views on agriculture, (The Agrarian Question, 1899). There are conditions, he wrote, where decentralized rural land ownership of family farms was more desirable than forced amalgamation into industrial collective farms. The following is from his Bolshevism at a Deadlock, 1931.

The main conclusion which I formed in 1899 was that I had to agree on some points with [Eduard] David, and had to give up the view held by Marx and Engels, only, however, to cling to the essential points of the latter far more firmly. I had to agree that the progress of large scale production in agriculture, noticed by Marx and Engels, had stopped, and that it never really made much headway. On the other hand, I could not observe a progressive replacement of large-scale undertakings by small holdings, but noticed that the relative sizes of the undertakings remained stable. The one or the other gains ground in turn, but the movement is always very slow and never continues for long in the same direction.

Generally speaking the relationship between the relative sizes of the holdings alters little if only influenced by purely economic factors and not by external forces. It is difficult to define precisely the superiority of large-scale agriculture as compared with small holdings or vice versa; sometimes one, sometimes the other proves to be more profitable all according to the social conditions prevailing.

Marx and Engels had already recognized this. They did not consider that every large holding was necessarily superior to the small, but only included those which had at their disposal all the appliances provided by modern technique and modern agrarian science, which are partly inaccessible and partly inapplicable to small holdings.

Where large and small holdings are worked with the same appliances and the same knowledge, the small holdings always prove to be superior, for the interest of the peasant in the output from his holding is far deeper than the interest of the hired laborer in the working of large holdings. Only the better appliances and greater knowledge used in the large holdings can counterbalance this superiority of the small holdings. Moreover, large-scale agricultural undertakings developed on lines which very strongly resisted the application of highly developed machinery and knowledge; this is an important difference between large-scale operations in agriculture and in industry. This is pointed out here as little attention has been paid to it. 

Big estates originated very differently from capitalistic big industry. The latter is of relatively recent date, being only a few centuries old, whereas big estates and large holdings are already found at the beginning of written history. Capitalistic big Industry develops as a result of the economic and technical advantages which it offers over handicraft. The low prices which it makes possible are its irresistible weapons.

Landlordism on the other hand is the product of force of Conquest …

There  was no great change when forced labor was replaced by hired labor on the big estates. The educational facilities and possibilities of organizing to obtain proper wages, housing and hours and conditions of work are inferior in the country to those in the large town. It is, therefore, especially difficult for the farm laborer to attain that degree of intelligence, independence, and interest in his work without which the successful application of modern technique and science in agriculture is far less possible than in industry. The work is not always carried on under the same conditions requiring the same handling as in a factory, but is done in the open fields where conditions change very quickly and where machinery and methods of modern agriculture must be adapted accordingly. 

Modern large-scale organization, in agriculture then, demands a higher degree of intelligence and independence from the paid worker than most branches of big Industry. The social conditions under which the big estates have been managed hitherto make it more difficult than in the towns for the paid laborer to acquire more knowledge, to get accustomed to independent thinking and acting, to form big organizations, and to influence the process of production through them. This is the main reason why large scale agriculture has not yet attained the economic superiority which is due to it by virtue of modern technique and biological discoveries.

Share: