: : [W]hen we are in possession of state power, we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. : Yeah... but I still have problems with the tone. Sounds like a command structure.
It is. But the command isn't really communism---it's the mode of production wrought by capitalism.
Who in their right mind would CHOOSE crushing individual poverty over collective prosperity?
Before you strive to answer that, observe that: as it stands now, it's the CAPITALISTS who will expropriate the last of the peasants, anyway...
: The accumulation of small holdings into large estates with a landless peasantry doing the work has become the norm. It is natural that the landless should desire that the self-sufficiency offered by their entire life-experience - a plot of land with which to provide for their sustainance - should be granted them.
IS it 'natural'? What would be the comparison for the landless peasant? Individual (starvation) farming or CAPITALIST large-scale (starvation-wage) farming? That's rather stacking the deck against collective socialistfarming, don't you think?
: You are now asking that they see The Big Picture - that they should become the Producers of the World's food, complete with modern mechanization. It is Not on Their behalf that we argue this case - But Our World View! I'm not against collectives - but I would rather see ithem evolve in the way it was done in Spain - from the bottom. If it comes from the bottom, the use determination of the collectivized surplus labor will be a democratic (and less alienating) process.
But global capitalism is doing the 'evolving.' The small outfits are always undersold by the larger ones, consequently they fall deeper into debt, go bankrupt, end up proletarianized, etc., etc... insert possibility for socialist transformation here...
: Marx covers a lot of ground. There's "Scientific Socialism" and there's the Marx of 1844.
I've never been in love with the 1960s liberal 'two Marx' theory.
First he analyzed capitalism, then he studied the communist example of the Paris Commune (which radicalized him) then he analyzed capitalism yet again.
It's all one Marx.
