Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/90

 10. The complete emancipation of all the rural workers can be brought about only by a proletarian revolution which confiscates without compensation the land and implements of the big landowners, while leaving intact the land of the working peasants, freeing it of rent, mortgages, taxes, etc., and all other feudal liabilities.

The workers are to decide themselves about the method and manner in which the confiscated land shall be worked. In connection with this question, the Theses of the Second Congress set forth the following:—

"The Communist International is of the opinion that the big agricultural estates in the advanced capitalist countries should be to a great extent maintained and that they should be carried on on the model of the Soviet agricultural farms in Russia.

Support should also be given to collective farming (co-operatives, communes, etc.).

The maintenance of the big farms is in the interest of the revolutionary rural population, of the landless agricultural labourer and of the semi-proletarian small holders who earn their living partly as hired labourers on these farms. Moreover, the nationalisation of the big agricultural estates ensures to a certain extent the independence of the food supply of the urban population from the peasantry.

On the other hand, it might be necessary under certain circumstances to hand over to the peasants part of the big estates. This applies to the countries with survivals of the mediæval social order, of indentured labour or of a motayer system, which lead to various forms of exploitation.

In countries and territories where big agricultural estates do not play an important part, but which have a large number of small land-hungry peasant proprietors, the distribution of the big landowners' land will be the best means for winning the peasantry for the revolution, while to maintain the big farms out of consideration of food supply of the cities is of no great importance in countries like these.

In any case, wherever a partitioning of the big estates takes place, the interests of the rural proletariat should be of prime consideration.

From the organisational viewpoint, all Communists engaged in agriculture and in the industrial concerns connected with it, must join the organisations of the agricultural labourers in order to rally and lead the revolutionary elements within them, with the purpose of turning these organisations into effective weapons for the revolutionary struggle. Wherever trade unions do not exist, the Communists must endeavour to bring them into being. They must carry on an energetic educational campaign in the yellow, Fascist and Christian counter-revolutionary organisations, in order to disintegrate them. Estate workers' councils must be formed in all the big agricultural estates for the defence of working-class interests, for control