Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 18:48:28 -0500 (EST) From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: M-I: Same old crap about Peru On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, Paul Zarembka wrote: > Given three posts today regarding Peru, but little questioning of where > the proletariat stand regarding leadership, I offer the interview below. (from the interview) > > In the past, Sendero Luminoso attacked legal left-wing > organizations. Such actions have not been carried out by the > MRTA. The Peruvian left generally regards the Senderos to be > terrorists, whereas the MRTA are guerrillas. Sendero never > thought twice about murdering members of leftist organizations. Louis: It just amazes me how Paul Zarembka is intent on raising all of the issues that turned M-1 into a raging forest fire. Most people with common sense realize that charges that "Sendero Luminoso" is terrorist tend to bring out the most angry and polarized responses from PCP supporters on the list. How can we deal with this very sensitive question? My recommendation is very simple. If Paul Zarembka wants to develop a Marxist appreciation of events in Peru, he should take the kind of time and trouble that Adolfo Olaechea did. I include the final paragraphs of Adolfo's address to the meeting at Liverpool University. This is what must be engaged: the an analysis of a Peruvian Maoist. It is a deeply serious and political contribution to the question of Peru. I understand that JJ Plant tried to provide a Trotskyist analysis. What ever happened to that? Is he still trying to find something in the Transitional Program that applies? 40 hours pay for 30 hours work? That will have a great appeal for all the street vendors. Cross-posting the usual charges from usenet about how "Senderoso" kills its opponents, as Paul does, doesn't advance our understanding of Peruvian politics. We have heard these things a million times. Even if these charges were true, there is no way that a mailing list on the internet can render an honest verdict. What a mailing list on the internet can do is elicit Marxist analysis of revolutionary situations. I don't expect Paul Zarembka to be able to do this. His understanding of Peruvian politics is probably pretty minimal. What he lacks in understanding, he more than makes up for in self-indulgence. Yes, Paul, that's a good chap. Brownie points for bringing the news to us that the Shining Path is a bunch of killers. If it weren't for you, all the rest of us would have gone on thinking that they were angels. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- (from Adolfo Olaechea's address) THE MECHANICS OF EXPLOITATION AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE VELASCO AGRARIAN REFORM: How was the robbery of the peasantry accomplished? The very data supplied by Lewis Taylor proves the very opposite he wanted to prove. If the share of the GNP of agricultural production in Peru only amounts to 10% - that proves most strikingly that they are now fleecing the peasantry to an extreme degree. How is that accomplished? By the expropriation of the landowners the Peruvian state undertook directly the pumping of profits from the countryside in an unprecedented scale to the benefit of the new "landowner" - the Peruvian state led by the bureaucrati c bourgeoisie, and also to benefit all the other sections of the ruling classes of Peru, by means of an increase in the amount of the ground rent for the land extracted from the labour power of the peasantry. This is what Marxist Political-Economy teach es in this respect: "Under capitalism the owner" (in Peru's SAIS, CAPS, etc., the owner of the land is the state) "receives rent". "Anyone who wants to engage in agriculture" (say a cooperative, CAP, or SAIS in Peru) "and has the necessary capital for it, must first of all rent a piece of land at a definite rental and for a definite period of time, from the one that owns this land. The owner of the land exercises his rights of ownership to collect tribute from all those who need land". (12) In Peru's case, the old "social-estates" received the land from the state in exchange for the "agrarian debt" - compensation for the "injured" landowners - and for payment of taxes, interests on loans, shares in capital gains, administration salaries, cos ts and other services which they pay to the different state enterprises that now act as so many other "pumps" draining profits from Peruvian agriculture on the behalf of the state and the bourgeoisie from the cities. Sometimes - there where the industrial complexes of large states (for example in Ica) have remained in the "capitalist hands" of the old landowners - the former serf-owners themselves benefited directly as well by the increase of the price of their "indus trial services" in processing the crops, and by making economies of scale, allowing them to draw additional profits from the peasant's labour power. "This monopoly of land ownership prevents the free transition of capital >from industry to agriculture. In order to work the land, the permission of the landowner must be obtained. Technically, agriculture is on a lower level than industry. Therefore the organic composition of capital in agriculture is lower than in industry. This means that with the same capital invested, more surplus value is produced in agriculture than in industry. If there were a free flow of capital between agriculture and indust ry the rate of profit would be equalised by means of competition. But such freedom does not exist because of the private ownership of land. Hence agricultural products are sold at prices above the price of production. The excess thus obtained goes into the pockets of the land owner and is called absolute ground rent. Marx says that absolute ground rent is tribute paid to the landowner". (12) "With the development of capitalism" - which occurs within the semi-feudal and semi-colonial conditions in Peru, and precisely because there is such growth about which Taylor is right for the wrong reasons - "there is a very rapid GROWTH OF THE AMOUNT OF GROUND RENT. This is easily understood. Absolute rent grows with the increase of the area brought under cultivation. Differential rent, however, grows very rapidly, as with every new piece of land bought under cultivation the difference in the fertilit y of the land and its location, as well as the difference in the productivity of the various investments of capital on one and the same land, grow apart. Ground rent is also very much increased by the circumstances that the quality of land long under cul tivation is improved by the tremendous amounts of labour in the manifold improvements (irrigation, fertilization, road building, stump clearing, etc.). Ultimately, the fruit of all this labour goes to the landowner". "The growth of ground rent, a growth which keeps pace with the development of capitalism, means an increase in the tribute that society pays to the parasite landlords. The increase in ground rent makes the development of agriculture even more difficult, still further perpetuates its backwardness, still further widens the gulf between industry and agriculture". (12) "Capitalist crises" - of which Peru since Velasco's "Reform" has experienced many - "shaking the entire economy, often have the most ruinous consequences in the sphere of agriculture. The growth of capitalist contradictions embraces agriculture as well as industry".(12) And as far as the consequences of this process on the small farmer: "The small farm maintains itself only by the most exhausting labour of the farmer and his entire family. At the same time, the small farm leads to the land being robbed of its fertility: it is poorly fertilized and improperly tilled. The quality of catt le becomes lower. The small farmer and his family lead a half starved existence while performing almost inhuman labour. He lives in constant fear of the next day. Every increase in taxes, every fall in the price of his products, every rise in the prices of industrial goods raises the question of the possibility of his further independence. Masses of small farmers are ruined every year in spite of their almost super-human efforts....." (12) And Lenin: "......this crowding out also includes the ruin and worsening of conditions of the small landowner, which may last for years or decades. This worsening of conditions is evidenced by the excessive labour, the insufficient nourishment......his en cumbrance with debts, .... inferior fodder and poorer general upkeep of his cattle, by the deteriorated condition of his land with respect to tilling, fertilization, etc." (13) SEMI-FEUDAL EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION IN URBAN AND RURAL PERU Another element in the "Maoism in the Andes" saga, is the assertion that Peru is an urban country, inferring - for the unaware or for anyone who has never visited Peru - that because an alleged ratio of 70% of people live in urban areas as compared to onl y around 30% live in the countryside, Peru is some sort of modern capitalist society composed mostly of urbanites, and that is really worthy of a world record for philistine platitudes. When the Communist Party of Peru speaks of the peasantry, it is speaking of a social class - a class that has its subdivisions, rich, poor and middle. Professor Taylor has come out with the "class of urbanites" to deny the role of the peasantry as the ma in force of the revolution in Peru. Note here that I say main force, not leading class. The leading class of the revolution in Peru is the proletariat. This is another element that "Maoism in the Andes" obscures and mystifies. Therefore, how are classes defined? By their geographical location? If you live in the city you cannot possibly be a peasant though you still have your family back in Andahuaylas tilling the land from sunrise to sunset? Let us imagine that they suddenly kidnapped and took us all here to be marooned in a desert island and were because of that forced - like Robinson Crusoe - to live by cultivating the land for our sustenance, since because of some freak reason no one ever found us or came to rescue us. Will that make of us peasants? According to "Maoism in the Andes" it would! That if we were to live the rest of our lives in such situation we would come to understand and learn much about husbandry and agricultural labour would not in the least change people from Western sociologists into third world peasants. We would not have the peasants outlook, his relations of production, his social status and class relationships, no matter how much we came to understand the nature of his labour. And if instead of apprentice social scientists, we had a few engineers and other technical people among us to pass that knowledge on, it would not be long that we would have found the resources to take us back to civilization, and then our sojourn as "peasants" would have been no more than a rather long-ish stay in the countryside, away from th e cities. Let us see what Marxism teaches about this: "Hence in order to be able to influence the conditions of material life of society and to accelerate their development and their improvement, the party of the proletariat must rely upon such a social theory, such a social idea that correctly reflects the needs of development of the material life of society, and which is therefore capable of setting in motion broad masses of the people and of mobilising them and organising them into a great army of the proletarian party, prepared to smash the reactionary f orces and to clear the way for the advanced forces of society ..... That is the answer historical materialism gives to the question of the relationship between social being and social consciousness, between the conditions of development of material life a nd the development of the spiritual life of society". (4) "It now remains to elucidate the following question: what, from the point of view of historical materialism, is meant by the "conditions of material life of society" which in the final analysis determine the physiognomy of society, its ideas, views, polit ical institutions, etc." (4) "There can be no doubt that the concept "conditions of material life of society" include, first of all, nature which surrounds society, geographical environment, which is one of the indispensable and constant conditions of material life of society and whi ch, of course, influences the development of society. What role does geographical environment play in the development of society? Is geographical environment the chief force determining the physiognomy of society, the character of the social system of me n, the transition from one system to another? - Historical materialism answers this question in the negative...... geographical environment cannot be the chief cause, the DETERMINING cause of social development, for that which remains almost unchanged in the course of tens of thousands of years cannot be the chief cause of development of that which undergoes fundamental changes in a few hundreds of years". (4) "Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the concept "conditions of material life of society" also includes growth of population, density of population of one degree of another, for people are an essential element of the conditions of material life of soc iety, and without a definite minimum number of people there can be no material life of society. Is not growth of population the chief force that determines the character of the social system of man? - Historical materialism answers this question too in t he negative". (4) "Of course, growth of population does influence the development of society, does facilitate or retard the development of society, but it cannot be the chief force of development of society, and its influence on the development of society cannot be the DET ERMINING influence because, by itself, growth of population does not furnish the clue to the question why a given social system is replaced precisely by such and such new social system and not by another....If growth of population were the determining for ce of social development, then a higher density of population would be bound to give rise to a correspondingly higher type of social system. But we do not find this to be the case. The density of population in China is four times as great as in the USA, yet the USA stands higher than China in the scale of social development, for in China a semi-feudal system still prevails, whereas the USA has long ago reached the higher stage of development of capitalism....... It follows from this that growth of popul ation is not, and cannot be, the chief force of development, the force that DETERMINES the character of the social system, the physiognomy of society". (4) "What then, is the chief force in the complex of conditions of material life of society which determines the physiognomy of society, the character of the social system, the development of society from one system to another?" (4) "This force, historical materialism holds, is the METHOD OF PROCURING THE MEANS OF LIFE - food, clothing, footwear, houses, fuel, instruments of production, etc. - which are indispensable for the life and development of society". (4) "In order to live, people must have food, clothing, footwear, shelter, fuel, etc.; in order to have these material values, people must produce them, and in order to produce them, people must have the instruments of production with which food, clothing, fo otwear, shelter, fuels, etc., are produced; they must be able to produce wherewith material values and to use them". (4) "The INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION wherewith material values are produced, the PEOPLE who operate the instruments of production and carry on the production of material values thanks to a certain PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE and LABOUR SKILL all these elements jointl y constitute the PRODUCTIVE FORCES of society". (4). Now the peasant driven from the land into the urban centres of Peru, does he have access - even as miserable wage labourer - to the instruments of production when everyone can see that unemployment and sub-employment in Peru reaches the 70 to 90 per cent as a regular feature? Does this peasant have the production experience and labour skills to operate those instruments of production even if they were to rain overnight into Peru >from heaven? What use is then in defining the physiognomy - the character - of Peruvian society on the basis either of geographical location or on population figures? The peasants whom semi-feudal conditions are driving off the fields carry the physiognomy of the countryside into the cities and urban centres of Peru in the same manner that our group of Robinson Crusoes would carry the University of Liverpool's physiogn omy to their putative island. The mere destitution of the popular neighbourhoods in Lima - for example - in relation as to such basic urban services such as water, electricity, fuel, shelter, etc. makes clear - for anyone with the slightest common sense - that such people are living medieval lives within the confines of, and laying seige to, a relatively modern but rather rachitic capitalist metropolis. Such peasant masses in transition are semi-peasants as well as semi-proletarians - an illuminating rad iography of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial condition which is indeed the hidden physiognomy, the character of 90% to 95% of Peruvian society, and therefore the true character of that society - the Peruvian people - as a whole presently. The masses of the urban poor gravitate towards the proletariat, just like the poor peasantry does. However it is the poor peasantry which at this stage of the revolution is its main force - while the proletariat is the leading class of the whole revolution of workers and peasants and the leader of all the oppressed classes and the democratic camp as well. WHY ARE THE PEASANTS - PRINCIPALLY THE POOR PEASANTS - THE MAIN FORCE OF THE PERUVIAN REVOLUTION IN ITS DEMOCRATIC STAGE? The rebellion of Tupac Amaru in 1871 initiated itself in Cuzco's Tinta province and precisely one of its main features is that at the time they had depopulated the countryside of that province at an accelerated rate due to the mita work in the Spanish min es. However, depopulated as it was, Tinta gave the clarion call and sustained the initial phase of Tupac Amaru's rebellion. It is the poor peasantry in Peru who can play this role, give sustenance and bases of support to the proletarian led armies. That is what is happening, and that is why despite setbacks in the cities, they cannot defeat the revolution in Peru. That is th e meaning of the strategic equilibrium achieved in 16 years of People's War in Peru which our opponents holding sway over the right wing of the petty-bourgeois democratic camp so much deride. Moreover, the bases of support in the countryside guarantee that the People's Republic of Peru will succeed again and again in restoring its positions in the urban areas whatever means of repression the reactionary army and police may use against them and whatever siren songs of "peace agreements" the Reactionary regime may invent. The reactionary regime's policies victimise the peasants, specially the poor peasants, and the middle peasants, the workers and the urban poor. That is why these are constant forces of the revolution whose destiny they already tie to the forcible overthrow of the social conditions that oppress them all. But in the end, it is the peasant poor who supplies the main forces, the richest recruiting ground for the proletarian armies. They have sustained this war not only for the last sixteen years, but in a certain way for centuries. The revolution is the continuation of their age old struggle for land and freedom! While that struggle goes on, and it will go on until its final victory, which now cannot long be delayed, the revolution will rise from its defeats strengthened, wizened, more combat ready. That is what is doing! A WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE The "Agrarian Reform" of Velasco - far from being a "boon to the peasants and democracy" was nothing but a declaration of war to the death - aiming at the fascistic genocidal extermination of the peasantry. Its sole objective, as well as the sole war aim of the current Peruvian regime is the obliteration of the Peruvian people. Here is how Lenin characterises the aims of the ruling class reforms that the bogus left has presented as "progressive and Left-wing" in order to deceive people into serving fascistic regimes and imperialist aims: This, the situation in Russia before the 1905 revolution, was in essence the situation described by Mariategui in 1930's Peru. "The owners of the latifundia are feudal landlords in the economic sense of the term: the basis of their landownership was created by the history of serfdom, by the history of land-grabbing by the nobility through the centuries. The basis of their presen t methods of farming is the labour-service system, i.e., a direct survival of the corvee, cultivation of the lands with the implements of the peasants and by the virtual enslavement of the small tillers in an endless variety of ways: winter hiring, annual leases, half share METAYAGE, leases based on labour rent, bondage for debt, bondage for cut-off lands, for the use of forests, meadows, water, and so on and so forth, AD INFINITUM". (14) This situation - without in the least affecting the semi-feudal basis of Peru's economic relations of production - and therein defining its semi-feudal mode of production - entered into a new and more acute stage of development, precisely with the Velasco "Agrarian Reform": "Serfdom may be abolished by the feudal-landlord economies slowly evolving into Junker-bourgeois economies, by the mass of the peasants being turned into landless husbandmen and Knetchs, by forcibly keeping the masses down to a pauper standard of living, by the rise of small groups of Grossbauern, of rich bourgeois peasants, who inevitably spring under capitalism from among the peasantry. That is the path that the Black-Hundred landlords, and Stolypin(*1*), their minister, have chosen. They have realise d that the path of development of Russia CANNOT be cleared unless the rusty medieval forms of landownership are forcibly broken up. And they have boldly set out to break them up IN THE INTERESTS OF THE LANDLORDS. They have thrown overboard the sympathy f or the semi-feudal village commune which until recently was widespread among the bureaucracy and the landlords. They have evaded all the "constitutional"laws in order to break up the village communes by force. They have given the kulaks CARTE BLANCHE to rob the peasant masses, to break up the old system of landownership, to ruin thousands of peasant farms; they have handed over the medieval village to be "sacked and plundered" by the possessors of money. They CANNOT act otherwise if they are to preserve their class rule, for they have realised the necessity of adapting themselves to capitalist development and not fighting against it. And in order to preserve their rule they can find no other allies than the "upstarts", the Razuvayevs and Kolupayevs. T hey have no alternative but to shout to these Kolupayevs: ENRICHISSEZ VOUS! - enrich yourselves! We shall make it possible for you to gain a hundred rubles for every ruble, if you will help us to save the basis of our rule under the new conditions. THAT PATH OF DEVELOPMENT, IF IT IS TO BE PURSUED SUCCESSFULLY, CALLS FOR THE WHOLESALE, SYSTEMATIC, UNBRIDLED *VIOLENCE* AGAINST THE PEASANT MASSES AND AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT. AND THE LANDLORD COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS HASTENING TO ORGANISE THAT VIOLENCE ALL AL ONG THAT LINE". (14) THE PEOPLE'S WAR IN PERU IS A WAR AGAINST THE REACTIONARY ANTI-PEOPLES WAR IN TODAY'S WORLD Take a good look at Peru today under Fujimori, and you will see unmistakeably this same process developing. The genocidal process set in motion by the old and decayed Peruvian state, and speeded up particularly >from the time of Velasco's "Reform". This is a process which - following its logical development - has now entered into an even higher stage of decay under the present "upstart" Fujimori regime: Its aim, however, continues to be identical: preserving the basis of rule of the exploiting classes in Peru. Its means for accomplishing these aims are today even more genocidal than ever: To preserve oppression and exploitation even at the cost of the extermination and utter starvation of the Peruvian people. However that is not enough. Take a good look too around the world today and you will see the halmarks of this same "path of development" being implemented everywhere by imperialism. And everywhere you turn your eyes to, you will see both, genocide, impe rialist, bureacratic bourgeois and landlord genocide, as well as resistance, principally peasant and workers resistance, setting the world aflame. The ballyhooed imperialist "peace" is but the leaden dead hand of that most "feudal" of modern autocrats, monopoly capital acting its last role as parasitic "landlord" and criminal policeman in the world stage. Its "peace", their "new world order", is such a "Junker path of development" that "if it is to be pursued successfully, calls for wholesale, systematic, unbridled VIOLENCE against the peasant masses and against the proletariat" - at the world level. And, for that purpose, the imperialist "counter-revolution is hastening to organise that violence all along the line": It is hastening to impose its "New Fascism". However, and with this we conclude, there is another path of development also mentioned by Lenin: "The other path of development we have called the American path of development of capitalism, in contrast to the former, the Prussian path. It, too, involves the forcible break-up of the old system of landownership; only the obtuse philistines of Russian liberalism can dream of the possibility of a painless, peaceful outcome of the exceedingly acute crisis in Russia". (14) "But this essential and inevitable break-up may be carried out in the interests of the peasant masses and not of the landlord gang". (14) It is ironic that, today, "the inevitable break-up" of the extremely parasitic - landlord like - and totally decayed imperialist system, which is precisely the motor implementing this Junker path of development in the world, and where US imperialism stand s at the apex of it all, will be carried out against the Kaisers of today by the masses of people, and that in this endeavour, it is a communist Party, the Communist Party of Peru, who - by breaking the ground and spearheading this struggle in the interes ts of the peasant and proletarian masses of the world "and not of the " imperialist "gang". - actually stands closer to the ideals of the founders of the American Republic. This Communist Party - so demonised by the phoney "democrats" - actually stands closer - spiritually, ideologically and practically - to the path of development of real democracy, and to the real meaning of the "American Way", to the very ideals and socia l and political achievements ushered in by the French revolution, than those phoney liberals, "democrats", "socialist" and such like, who trail behind the imperial chariot of the new "feudal masters of this world", and their "up-start leaders", the Clintons, the Fujimoris and the Yeltsins. On the other hand, those who are trying to restore, buttress and impose the untrammelled autocracy of imperialist capital, amid medieval witch-hunts and genocides, today, at the end of this XXth Century of ours, are - no matter what their words may sound like - driven by the very spirit of Torquemada while they have nothing but Hitler's swastica as their battle flag. IN SYNTHESIS: The Communist Party of Peru is a legitimate and correct party of the proletariat leading the just cause of social revolution in Peru. Its ideology is Marxism - Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Though as the application of the proletarian ideology to Peruv ian concrete conditions. The People's War in Peru, is a just and "holy war", against the most brutal of all wars - the war of genocide perpetrated by the semi-feudal and semi-colonial ruling classes of Peru with the support and under the direction, political, economic and militar y, of their imperialist masters. The People's War in Peru is the highest expression today of the class struggle of the world proletariat at the head of all the oppressed, and a beacon of hope, democracy, socialism and a communist future, for all suffering humanity. Whatever the twist and turns of the struggle, whatever the costs and the losses, the People's War in Peru will most definitely be victorious. It is a social development inscribed within the logic of history, and surges along with the grain of the main hi storical trend of the proletariat and the whole of oppressed humanity, towards the final consummation of its revolution. Liverpool 21/02/97 BIBLIOGRAPHY (1) A. Olaechea, "Valuable Admissions of Professor Milliband" - Published 1994, Sol Peru Committee - London). (2) V.I. Lenin - "Valuable Admission of Pitirim Sorokin" - Pravda N=A7 252, November 21, 1918 - Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 185-94 (3) F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature. (4) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course. - Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1939. (5) "Maoism in the Andes" - by Lewis Taylor, Published with the aid of a grant from the Latin American Publications Fund. (c) Lewis Taylor 1983. Printed in Great Britain by Coda Print, 5 Victoria St., Liverpool. (6) Karl Marx, Selected Works, Eng. ed., Vol I, p. 264). (7) Translated from the book "Peru, los Senderos Posibles", by Hernando Calvo & Katlijn Declerq (c) Txalaparta, editorial Txalaparta, Navaz y Vides kalea 1-2 31300 Tafalla, Nafarroa (Ediciones Gebara) (8) V.I. Lenin, "The Workers Party and the Peasantry" - Iskra N.3, April 1901 - Collected Works Vol 4. pp. 420-28 (9) V.I. Lenin, "The Proletariat and the Peasantry" - Novaya Zhizn N=A7 11, November 12, 1905 - Collected Works Vol 10. pp. 40-43 =09 (10) V.I. Lenin, "Revision of the Agrarian Programme of the Workers Party" - Published in pamphlet form early in April 1906 by Nasha Mysl Publishers - Collected Works Vol 10. pp. 189-95 (11) V.I. Lenin, "Reply to X", p. 29, - See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 6, p. 440. (12) A. Leontiev - Political Economy, 1936, Moscow. A Beginner's Course, Chapter VII (13) V.I. Lenin - Collected Works, Vol. XVII. New Data on the Laws of the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture p. 619. (14) V.I. Lenin - The Agrarian Programme of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907) (Conclusion). First printed in 1908, (confiscated); published in 1917 by Zhizn i Znaniye as a separate edition. Collected Works, Vol 13, pp. 421-29 NOTE (*1*) Stolypin, P.A. (1862 - 1911) - big landowner, Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of the Interior of Russia, 1906 - 11. His name is associated with a period of severe political reaction. "The regime of the knout and the gallows" =2E Stolypin carried out an agrarian reform enabling the peasants to leave the village communes and to set up separate farms. Under the new law of November 9 (22), 1906, the peasant received an opportunity to take possession of their allotments as private property and to withdraw from the communes. They could now sell their lands, which they were not allowed to do before. The reform was advantageous to the kulaks and completely ruined the rural poor.^Z --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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