Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/40

 In the second place the semi-proletariat or small peasants, those who make their living partly by working for wages in agricultural and industrial capitalist establishments, partly by toiling on their own or a rented parcel of land yielding but a part of the necessary food produce for their family. This class of the rural population is rather numerous in all capitalistic countries, but its existence and Its peculiar position is hushed up by the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the yellow "Socialists" affiliated to the Second International. Some of these people intentionally cheat the workers, but others follow blindly the average views of the public and mix up this special class with the whole mass of the "peasantry". Such a method of bourgeois deceit of the workers is used more particularly in Germany and France than in America and other countries. Provided that the work of the Communist Party is well organised, this group is sure to side with the Communists, the conditions of life of these half-proletarians being very hard, and the advantages the Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat would bring them being enormous and immediate.

In the third place the little proprietors, the small farmers who possess by the right of ownership or on rent small portions of land which satisfy the needs of their family and of their farming without requiring any additional wage labour. This part of the population as