The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-11
The Agricultural Question and
the Communist Answer :

L. y ~ w VI ~
states 1920 of all farms were ten
ant farms in 1925. Robbed by land
lords, usurers and marketing ban
dts, the poor farmers are one of
the most explosive forces Of social
unrest.
What to Dot ~
But the question arises-what
shall we do about it? No Marxist-
feminist can wave the question
aside. Nor can we ignore the petty
bourgeois character of this sea of
agrarian discomfort. We must,
without illusion as to its petty
bourgeois character, organize and
direct it in a revolutionary strug-
gle against big finance capital.
We must take the class war to
the countryside with proposals for
action which will throw 80 these
petty-bourgeois masses into strug
gle with authority and teach, them
continually that only in an alliance
with the wage working revolution
airy proletariat can their ,condi-
tons be permanently bettered,
that only when agriculture is So
cialized under Workers and
Farmers Government can they be
free of the exploitation and in
security of life under capitalism.
Yet there are approaches TO, that
goal of understanding through
which these petty-bourgeois masses
must go. They must and can learn
only by struggle. Hence our slogans
are either good or worthless accord
ing to whether they will bring the
agrarian masses into struggle. Much
will depend upon the special regional
conditions.
Slogans Of Struggle. -
We must raise the demand for
reduction in rentals and seek to or
ganize wide mass strikes of renters
to enforce such reductions. We must
set a demand for cancellation of
debt and abolition of usury, and or
ganize a physical conflict against
foreclosures. We must demand aboli-
ton of taxes on small farms and
advocate a taxpayers strike of poor
farmers on a mass scale to gain
some relief from the grossly unequal
taxation.
With condition where more than
half of the crop lands are worked
by tenants, and mortgages Cypress
still wider masses, with only $50 Of
cultivated land being worked by
owners, it is folly to say that the
slogan "The land to the users of the
land' has no revolutionary meaning
in rallying such petty-boufgeois
masses to struggle against landlord
ism and the governmental power of
finance capital. With the teaching
of the Communists they will learn
in the struggle from us and from
experience combined, that we were
correct inadding to such a slogan
that all methods, short of Specialization
of agriculture under a Workers and
Farmers Government are unable to
emancipate the agricultural masses
from poverty.
But to dispense with the slogan
now of the Land to the users of the
land" and to set as in opposition to
that, as against that and against all
transitional slogans, the slogan of
Workers and Farmers Government
and specialization OF. agriculture, is a
means of evading the issue of pres
ent and immediate struggle for a
very cleft" sounding but actually
opportunist slogan. Especially so,
since no intermediate steps are Of
fered.
This terribly "leftp solution for
doing away with all struggle was
recently, it should be remarked, Of
fered by one who at the same time
used this excuse for withdrawing
from even the shadow of activity by
demanding that the United Farmers
Educational League take his name
off their letterhead. It is always the
mark of those who would quit the
fight for Communism when it begins
to promise a danger, to Justify"
themselves by accusing the Com
munists of not being revolutionary
enough for them. BY expressing a
violent distaste for anything short
Of Workers and Farmers Govern
ment, this person can now sit down
comfortably while Communists are
organizing an agrarian revolt.