Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/89

 the interests of the big landowners. We demand that the poor peasantry be freed of all taxation.

8. But the greatest exploitation of the landless peasantry in the non-colonial countries is caused by the private ownership of the land by the big landowners. In order to be able to exist, and to make full use of their labour power, the poor peasants are compelled to work for the big landowners at starvation wages, or to purchase or lease the lands at such high costs that a considerable part of the wages becomes a booty of the landowners. Lack of land compels the poor peasants to put up with mediæval servitude in modern form. Therefore the Communist Party strives for the expropriation of the land including agricultural implements, and the distribution of same among those who work on the land. Until the proletarian revolution has achieved this, the Communist Party will support the poor peasants in the struggle for the following immediate demands:—

(a) The betterment of the conditions of the small tenants by decreasing the share of the owner.

(b) Lower rent for small farms, unconditional compensation for the improvements made by the holder at the expiration of the lease, etc. The Agricultural Labourers' Union, under the leadership of the Communist Party, will support the small tenants in the struggle, by refusing to work on the fields of the landowner who has deprived the small tenant of his land owing to lease disputes, etc.

(c) The distribution of land, cattle and means of production among all the poor peasants on terms which insure their existence, the plots of land to be large enough to emancipate the peasants from the overlordship of the big landowners. At the distribution of land, special attention must be paid to the interests of the agricultural labourers.

9. The ruling classes are endeavouring to rob the movement in the rural districts of its revolutionary character by introducing bourgeois agrarian reforms, and allotting land to the influential peasantry. They have succeeded in bringing about a temporary lull in the revolutionary movement. But every bourgeois agrarian reform is hampered by the capitalist system. Under capitalism land can only be given at a price to those who are already in possession of means enabling them to carry on their agricultural work. Bourgeois agrarian reforms can give absolutely nothing to the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements. The hard conditions imposed on those who receive land under a bourgeois plan of land distribution, cannot lead to a betterment of their conditions, but only to further servitude under the system of mortgages. These form the basis for the further extension of the revolutionary movement, accentuating the contrasts between the rich and the poor peasants and agricultural labourers who do not get any land, and whom the partition of the big estates only deprives of their former means of earning a livelihood.