Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/84

 village hand-worker supplied the peasants with what the latter did not produce himself. They had scarcely any need of the towns.

To-day the peasant is dependent on large-scale industry, which manufactures his implements and often his manure, when it is of an artificial nature. It supplies him with his clothes, as well as furniture like iron bedsteads. The peasant is anxious to have the products of industry, and in exchange for them is prepared to produce a surplus. The greater the variety of goods that industry can furnish to him, the more intensively will he work his land, and the more he will be able to produce.

The development of native industries and of foreign trade, to stimulate the importation of foreign products, is essential if the peasant is to be induced to yield a surplus for the towns. The problem is not solved by the mere manufacture of paper money. The peasant whistles at this money if it does not enable him to buy industrial products.

At bottom, the Bolshevists know this. But their attempt to apply the policy of immediate socialisation has killed native industries, and their foreign propaganda in favour of the World Revolution has not achieved the latter, but brought them the blockade.

The extension of native industries and of foreign trade is the first condition for an augmented voluntary supply of food to the towns. The second is the raising of the productivity of agriculture itself. This is particularly necessary in countries where primitive agricultural methods obtain.

The Georgian Government had realised these facts. Alongside of their endeavours to extend industry and trade, efforts were made, to educate the peasants by means of model agricultural undertakings and schools, and to improve the means of communication and to construct drainage works, with which we have already dealt.

Of course, such a programme as this cannot be