46
most important step on the road towards Communism consider to be the nationalisation of banks and the nationalisation of large-scale production.
CHAPTER X.
COMMUNAL CULTIVATION OF PUBLIC LAND.
The October Revolution accomplished that for which the Russian peasants had been striving during many centuries. It deprived the landowners of the land and transferred it into the hands of the peasants. The question now is how to allot this land. And here, too, we Communists must take up the same position as we did regarding the question of arranging industrial production. Unlike a factory, land can, of course, be divided. But what would be the result of dividing up land into private allotments amongst individual peasants? The result would be that the man who had managed to save up a little money, being stronger and richer, would soon become a "personality" and turn into a shark, a land-grabber or a usurer; then he would aim still higher and begin buying up the land of those who were getting poorer. Before long the village would be again divided into big landowners and poor peasants, the latter having no alternative but to go to town in search of work or hire himself out to the rich landowner.
These new landowners would not, it is true, belong to the gentry, being only rich peasants, but the difference is after all a small one. The exploiting peasant-landowner is a real vampire; he will sweat the poor worker even harder than the representative of the degenerating, impoverished, and thoroughly incapable nobility.
This shows us that the plan of dividing or sharing the land offers us no way out of the dilemma. The only solution is in a communal national holding of land; in land being declared the common property of the labourers. The Soviet Government has made a law of socialisation of land; the land has in fact been taken from the landowners, and it has become the common property of the toiling people.
But that is not enough. We must aim at such an arrangement as would ensure the land being not only owned in common, but also be cultivated in common. If that is not done, then no
