Bread and Labour

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Bread and Labour has been translated, prepared, and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the pamphlet published by the Communist Printing and Publishing Collective, Switzerland, 1921.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a pamphlet written by Comrade Jakob Herzog during his imprisonment following the 1918 General Strike. It was first published as a pamphlet by the Communist Printing and Publishing Collective, Switzerland, 1921.

Comrade Lenin had instructed Comrade Herzog to conduct a study of the agrarian question in Switzerland, on the basis of which Herzog wrote this pamphlet. After its publication, Lenin remarked that it should be studied by every class-conscious worker.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#PREFACE TO THE 1921 SWISS EDITION

#Jakob Herzog

#1921

#★

In its struggle for liberation, the working class always has to concern itself with the national economy. Socialism isn't merely a struggle for higher wages and shorter workdays, it is a struggle for the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, which ultimately culminates in the takeover and independent management of the entire economic life by the working class. The ever-increasing food prices, a consequence of the unbridled private-capitalist mode of production, and the increasingly precarious conditions of existence of the proletariat are forcing it to change its tactics of struggle and its day-to-day politics. Thus, we must state today that we have to use all wage struggles to keep up with inflation, to roll up the whole national economy, to get influence on the organization of the production and the operation of the commodities. The ever-louder call for bodies of proletarian control of production, for factory and workers' councils, is a consequence of the whole national economic plight in which we find ourselves. The following articles are an attempt to show ordinary Swiss proletarians a piece of the Swiss national economy. The purpose of this little text is to stimulate the discussion of the solution of the food question, which is essentially related to the agricultural question, and the necessary measures to be taken by our organizations. The author is well aware of the shortcomings and immaturity of the paper, which is a prison work, but the public discussion will correct the mistakes and make use of the good parts of it.

#The Author

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#BREAD AND LABOUR

#A CONTRIBUTION TO SOLVING THE FOOD QUESTION

#Jakob Herzog

#Between November 1918 and the Beginning of 1919

#★

The food that the people need is as sacred as life itself. All that is necessary to sustain life is the common property of the whole society. [Maximilien Robespierre (1791)]

#1. THE RELATION BETWEEN SWISS AGRICULTURE AND THE PEOPLE'S NUTRITION

With its current methods of production, our agriculture is not able to ensure the nourishment of the Swiss people. Switzerland has to obtain the majority of the food it needs to feed its people from abroad. If the countries surrounding us close our borders, we will starve. This is a very saddening fact and the experience of the last few years confirms it. Only 10 to 20% of the country's cereal needs can be met by our agriculture. According to the estimate of the Farmers' Secretariat, the national harvest in the years 1914 and '15 was:

In addition, 4'824'408 quarts of cereals had to be imported. Our own production barely covers two months' demand.

The only demand that can almost be met is the one for potatoes, meaning that, in normal times, no more than 1/10 of the total demand has to be imported.

There is also sufficient production of dairy, but more than 1/4 of our own requirements for butter have to be supplied from abroad.

In 1914, we obtained 38% of our meat supply from abroad.

In 1912, Switzerland imported sugar at a cost of CHF 50'000'000, which is almost all the sugar the country consumes, since very little sugar beet is grown in Switzerland. Almost all commercial crops — tobacco, hops, flax, hemp, chicory — every single one of them plants that would flourish in our climate — are purchased by Switzerland from other countries, as is most of the wool.

With our total export of agricultural products, we cannot even pay for the cereals that have to be imported. The average annual export of agricultural products — cheese, milk, fruit, wood — amounted to CHF 191'300'000 in the last three years before the war. The import of grain, flour, malt, however, in the same years, averaged CHF 229'500'000. In the first half of the 19th century, the majority of the population still lived off the agricultural products cultivated in the countryside. The enormous expansion of the world economy in the last century, which opened up all continents to commerce, also radically reshaped our national economy. It changed from basic production to an export industry. Rural workers and small farmers left the fields in droves and migrated to the factories. Of the 3'019 municipalities in Switzerland, 1'260 have fewer inhabitants than 50 years ago. In various mountain communities, the population has declined by up to 65%. This depopulation of the countryside happened at the expense of agricultural productivity. In 1850, 50% of the Swiss population still lived off agriculture, but, in 1910, only 27,7% did so, compared to the 59,1% living off industry. In 1892, Switzerland imported CHF 189'678'000 worth of food, but, by 1909, it was importing CHF 326'313'000.

But the industrial boom has already overtaken itself. The foreign markets are beginning to clog up, because soon the last countries will have become independent in the industrial sense and now produce most of the industrial products that we used to supply them with themselves. The Swiss cotton industry has already been squeezed out, silk-weaving and embroidery are suffering the same fate today. How long the watch-making and machine-building industries will be able to maintain their current level is a question for the very near future: stagnation of production and steadily increasing unemployment are signs of this process of decay. A vast quantity of industrial products pile up, while there is a constant shortage of food. As a result of the law of supply and demand, these foodstuffs are constantly rising in price. Since the beginning of the war, the most important foodstuffs have risen by 200 to 500%. They are still rising, despite the so-called peace agreement. Not even the victorious States are able to ensure the food supply of their peoples. Victory has not been able to save their capitalist economies from bankruptcy and decay.

The apocalypse of the capitalist economic order has dawned. It is making itself (uncomfortably) felt by the peoples through wars, mass unemployment, famines, fuel shortages, currency difficulties, bank crashes. Feverish shivers are shaking the deathly ill capitalist social body. This disease is international. It has also seized our Swiss national economy. How can the peoples recover? What is to be done?

#2. HOW SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY WANTS TO DEAL WITH THE FAMINE

Swiss Social Democracy wants to solve the food question in a practical way. Firstly, through the monopolization, that is, nationalization, of the trade in food, and, secondly, through the reduction of prices. Despite the fact that it has been waging an energetic struggle for the latter demand for years, which has even been supported by mass actions, prices refuse to fall. To the mockery of all energetic protests and demands, they are constantly rising and will rise even more, simply because the private-capitalist mode of production does not allow itself to be deeply regulated. The grain monopoly, which the Social-Democrats demanded so much and which is now in place, has not been able to significantly improve the standard of living of the working masses. The federal government also made bread more expensive. This is exactly what will happen if the Grimm motion for the nationalization of exports and imports is adopted. The private capitalists would be replaced by the State, which would then take over the collection of surplus value for the banks, with the Social-Democrats still graciously providing their assistance. The individual private capitalists would then have to confine their work only to collecting the interest on capital and would be able to enjoy their lives carefree in the mountain hotels, summer and winter sports resorts, seaside resorts, and so on.

Through the abolition of competition, which in the private economy somewhat inhibited exploitation, the capitalist State would, still through the unhindered increase in the price of consumer goods, be able to satisfy its ever-increasing need for money for militarism, the police and its class-based justice system. The exploitation of the proletariat becomes more intense through State capitalism. And when the masses revolt against the omnipotent vampire, they are brought to heel by the State's instruments of power. This can be done very simply. The producers and consumers are militarized, they are robbed of the right to strike, the revolutionary press is banned, and the agitators and leaders are thrown in jail. Hunger remains, there is no more food. The only advantage is that the famine has been «organized». The State has had a little Social-Democratic cloak put on it, there are still some Social-Democratic ministers in the governments alongside openly bourgeois ones, and everything goes on in the same old way.

These are not phrases. Did the nationalization of the railways reduce fares and freight tariffs? Have letter postage and telegram charges fallen as a result of the nationalization of the postal and telegraph services? Have the nationalized electricity and gas works brought us cheap electricity and cheap gas? Everyone knows from their own experience that the opposite has happened. Just as with these State institutions, the monopolization of commerce would not lower the prices of products. Capitalism would become more omnipotent and the proletarianized masses more powerless. A Swiss Noske would give them machine-gun bullets to eat instead of bread. And how will Social-Democracy socialize foreign trade if the social revolution breaks out in Western Europe, which is in any case more likely than that the Federal Council even seriously considering Grimm and Greulich's socialization motion? How then — in view of the general economic disorganization which a proletarian revolution must logically entail (for the time being) in the countries of Western Europe as a result of the sabotage of the bourgeoisie — does Social-Democracy intend to secure even the until now possible supplies? For the time being, the revolutionary peoples will have to use all their forces to end the civil war and to satisfy the needs of their own peoples, meaning that there would not be much left for us.

The means proposed by the Social-Democrats to solve the food question are useless. The problem must be tackled differently.

#3. THE SYSTEM OF OWNERSHIP AND THE WORKERS' QUESTION IN SWISS AGRICULTURE

In order to be able to deal with the solution of the food question, it is necessary to take a closer look at the system of ownership in agriculture.

In Switzerland, in contrast to most other countries, small-scale agricultural enterprises predominate — as we can see from the following figures.

We do not have large-scale farms with more than 1000 hectares, such as those in the neighbouring republic of Baden. The majority of farms over 70 hectares are pasture and forest farms, and most of them belong to cooperatives, corporations, and municipalities.

Most of our farms are worked by the owners alone or with their spouses and children, without the help of outside labour. The farmers often have to pursue another profession on the side, such as hand-knitting in eastern Switzerland, silk-ribbon weaving in Basle Country, embroidery and linen-house weaving in the Cantons of Lucerne and Berne. In the Jura, clock-homeworking still plays a major role as a side-occupation to agriculture. 86% of all homeworking businesses in the Bernese Highlands are linked to agriculture. 51,2% of all home-based enterprise in Switzerland has agriculture as its main or secondary occupation. In industrial areas, members of farmers' families go to work in the factories. In mainly agricultural areas, they help out the larger farmers as farmhands and maids.

Of the 464'403 persons employed in agriculture in 1905, 139'294 were farmhands, maids, and technical staff, and 3'720 were directors and administrators. In agriculture, there are on average two gainfully employed persons for every farm, and only one external wage-worker for every two farms. In a publication by the Farmers' Secretariat on the agricultural labour question, Dr. Laur said that, as a result of this predominant position of small-scale farms in Swiss agriculture, there was no class antagonism. However, this is contradicted by the economic and social conditions of the peasantry, since the mortgage debts of agriculture alone account on average for 40% of the total land value. So, half of the farm estates are over-indebted, subjugated by capital. And this very same Dr. Laur himself has to admit in the statement quoted above: «The farmhands know that, if they remain in agriculture, they can at best one day make it to the level of small farmers, and even this prospect is often uncertain.» In fact, the possibility for farmhands to become landowners later on is becoming more and more impossible, if only because the difference between wages and land prices is too enormous. Average annual wages of CHF 3,75 a day per farmhand and CHF 2,75 a day per maid, excluding room and board, make it impossible to set aside large savings. The fact that the rural proletariat itself expects little improvement in its situation in the future is shown by the high percentage of single people in the agricultural workforce. In 1900, 83% were unmarried.

According to a survey by the Swiss Farmers' Secretariat in 1909, the average daily worktime was 11 hours in the winter and 13,5 hours in the summer for stable personnel; 9,5 hours in the winter and 13,5 hours in the summer for other working personnel. 9 to 10% of all replies reported working more than 15 hours a day in the hay. Sunday work is common in agriculture. It amounted to an annual average of four hours per day for stable staff and one hour per day for other staff. The stable staff had 7,5 days off and the other staff 29,5 days off on average per year. Under such conditions, it is understandable that the farmhands and maids turn their backs on their profession and emigrate to the industrial areas as factoryhands, carters, and servants. In 1906, 86% of all municipalities reported a severe shortage of agricultural workers in the summer; 25% of these municipalities reported that there was also a considerable shortage of farmhands and maids in the winter.

We see a division into three strata among the Swiss peasantry:

The first is a small number of middle and rich farmers, if one can speak of these at all, for we do not have any actual big landowners. We count estates of 10 hectares and more as middle and big farms. But that is only 27,2% of all agricultural holdings in Switzerland. These estates, which comprise 64,7% of the total land used for agriculture, are probably mainly cultivated by wage-workers. But most of these landowners, together with their family members, still practically work on their estates themselves.

The second and most numerous stratum is the small peasantry. They own 72,8% of all agricultural enterprises, but only 35,5% of the agriculturally cultivated land. Outside workers find little or only temporary employment in these small estates. The farmers, their spouses, and their children cultivate the land themselves for the most part, and many small-holdings cannot employ and feed the farmers for the whole year. The limit of the farmers' ability to feed themselves and their family is three to four hectares of good cultivated land, which is cultivated intensively. The majority of Swiss farmers do not own that much land. They constitute a working stratum which owns some land, a few dwellings, tools, and livestock, but whose property belongs mainly to the mortgage banks and creditors. The small farmers are forced to toil year in and year out with their spouses and children on «their» patches of land with poor tools in order to pay the mortgage interest and earn a living for their families. Farming is often not enough for that. In addition to farming, they have to toil away at some kind of homework, hire themselves out as farmhands to rich farmers, or go to the factory themselves with their spouses and children. The work of the small farmers is hard, it takes up the whole day from early morning until late at night. In many areas, for example in the Canton of Zurich, a decline and concentration of small-scale agricultural enterprises took place due to the decrease in homework. In any case, the war, with its many military services and the further decrease in homework due to the restriction of exports and the tourist industry, did not improve the situation of the small farmers, despite the fact that agricultural products rose in price.

The third stratum is the real rural proletariat, which makes up 1/3 of the entire peasantry and lives under much worse social conditions than the industrial proletariat. The situation of this working class can hardly be improved by the fact that, due to the small number of large farms, common organizational action is very difficult. The estates with farmhands and maids are far apart. There are whole villages with no farmhands. Attempts to organize farmhands into trade unions, which began years ago in the Canton of Lucerne, have met with little success. Most recently, an organization of farmhands is said to have formed in the district of Affoltern. As in countries where large farms predominate, we, too, have a predominantly proletarianized peasantry, despite the small farms. Most of our farmers are subjects of the banks, merchants, and factory owners, are exploited by them, and 1/3 of those engaged in agriculture bend their necks under the yoke of a middle or rich farmer. Only in appearance is the exploitation and economic dependence less than that of the industrial proletariat. Materially, there is no difference. The industrial, commercial, and transportation proletarians should not, therefore, erect a barrier between themselves and the field workers for reasons of consumption. The urban workers have every reason to shake hands with the rural workers. The economic conditions form the basis for a common struggle against the common enemy: industrial, commercial, and agricultural capital. All the cries about the reactionary peasantry are not to be taken so seriously. On the contrary, the gulf that gapes between the farmers and the city dwellers has a very artificial character. It has come about as a result of the capitalist interest policy of the Farmers' Association, whose leaders are big landowners, shareholders in the Cheese Export Union, and professors, and who believe that they can bring about the solution to the social question of the peasantry by raising the price of land and dairy products. Equally short-sighted is the consumer-focused policy of Social-Democracy, which lets loose a deafening hue and cry every time the price of vegetables, milk, and meat rises, and thereby also turns the small farmers against the labour movement. As soon as the industrial workers set about transforming the present economic and social conditions on a wholesale communist basis, the greater part of the farmers will have no reason in their own interest to defend the big capitalists in power.

Economically and socially, the majority of Swiss farmers belong to one and the same camp as the industrial, transportation, and commercial workers.

#4. HOW SHOULD THE FOOD QUESTION BE SOLVED?

Through the continued stagnation of the capitalist mode of production and commodity distribution, the people are faced with more and more nutritional difficulties and economic chaos. All the Social-Democratic patch-jobs in the world cannot stop this process; on the contrary, they prolong and aggravate the sufferings of the masses of the poor. The only help is surely a radical surgical intervention, a thorough transformation of the whole national economy. And this cannot be done from above and from outside, especially not with the help of the Federal Council. This process must take place from the bottom up, from within. It is not the prices that must come down, but the whole capitalist economy, the State bureaucracy, at the head of which is the Federal Council, which is partly responsible for the dismal conditions in which our people find themselves. Not State monopolies, but the council system that organizes and administers the communist economy, must come.

What is needed is the confiscation of all food stocks and the rational distribution of all food and clothing by the working people. Furthermore, each people must produce much more from their own soil than has been done up to now. This is feasible in a rational national economy oriented along economic lines.

Today, Swiss farmers farm according to capitalist principles. The farmers must organize their farms in such a way that they produce from their land only those products that can be sold at the highest prices on the market. Their farms are businesses that produce soil products, not only for the farmers' own families. The mortgage interest, wages, and a net profit for the landowners must also be extracted from the fruits of the soil. Now, before the war, modern means of transportation brought many foodstuffs, especially cereals, into our country from Russia, Romania, and the United States at cheaper prices than the Swiss farmers, with their fragmented, backward agriculture, could produce. This is why, despite frequent government measures, grain cultivation in our country declined more and more in the last century. The fields have been turned into meadows and pastures. Our agriculture is shifting to cattle-breeding, which offers higher returns and requires less work than intensive farming in the meadow and pasture system. We are now faced with the fact that the soil is not even capable of feeding the population that inhabits it. This is the first drawback of capitalist conditions. The second harmful side of the present economic form is the poor cultural situation, in which the rural proletariat has to vegetate, which we have already explained in the third section.

In relation to the number of workers, and taking into account the lousy estatelets and the parcel economy, a lot of physical work is devoted to the Swiss soil. The farmers do rigorous and hard work, especially in the summer. They must devote a large part of their efforts to chasing after their parcelled-out estates. In no other country does such a parcel economy exist as in ours. According to the 1905 farm census, only 9,6% of all agricultural holdings are homogeneous. 8,2% have two plots; 20,9% have three to five plots; 21,4% have six to ten plots; 12,1% have 11 to 15 plots; 7,9% have 16 to 20 plots; 5,3% have 21 to 25 plots; 10,5% have 26 to 50 plots; 3,2% have 51 to 100 plots; 0,5% have 101 to 150 plots; and 0,4% have more than 150 plots. The smaller the farm, the more labour is needed. For example, according to the Swiss Farmers' Secretariat, on average, 132,4 persons are required per 100 hectares on estates of 0,5 to 3 hectares, of which only eight are external wage-workers; on estates of three to five hectares, 70,8 persons, of which 6,74 are external workers; for estates of six to ten hectares, 48,3 persons, of which 7,10 are external workers; for estates of 10 to 15 hectares, 35,7 persons, of whom 9,12 are hired labour; for estates of 30 to 70 hectares, 14,3 persons, of whom 6,75 are external workers; for estates of more than 70 hectares, 2,5 persons, of whom 1,72 are external workers.

The method of production is also adjusted accordingly. Despite all the efforts of the farmers, the soil is not cultivated enough. A glance at the soil cultivation statistics proves this. Of our total land area of 4'129'835 hectares, 77,6% is productive land. Of the total area of agriculturally used land, around 2'000'000 hectares, excluding forests and vines, account for 1,3%, cereals, pulses, root crops, vegetables, and commercial plants for 13,5%, meadows, including sedges, for 48,7%, pasture for 36,5%. Grass-farming, on which livestock-farming is based, covers 85,2% of all agriculturally used land. And this grass-farming requires the least labour of all forms of agriculture; it is also the least productive for the people's nutrition. The grass is left to grow as nature pleases. A little fertilizer is added here and there in spring or autumn. The work is limited to cutting and bringing in the fodder and herding the cattle.

The more work that is put into the soil and the plants, the more fruit can be harvested. According to the present state of agricultural science and technology, almost any desirable quantity of fruit can be drawn from the soil. It is assumed that hunters need a hunting area of 1'200 to 1'500 hectares each for their livelihood. Shepherds can make a living with the livestock they need on 120 to 150 hectares each. Farmers in the simplest form of agriculture will not be able to survive on less than 12 to 15 hectares each, in the form of modern agriculture already on an area of 1 to 2 hectares each, while the commercial gardeners will find plenty of fine sustenance with 1/4 to 1/2 hectares each. We take this division from the Book of Inventions, published by Oskar Spamer in Leipzig and Berlin in 1885. Since then, however, the art of cultivating the soil has made further progress, so that it can be calmly asserted that, with the best present-day soil cultivation methods, 15 to 20 people can feed themselves from one hectare. We now have 2'000'000 hectares of cultivated land, plus at least another 50'000 hectares of wasteland that could be converted into cultivated land, and a large part of the lowland forests could be cleared and put into intensive soil cultivation. If we compare the above figures with the available cultivated land and the number of inhabitants in Switzerland, we need have no fears that the soil cannot feed us, provided that it is properly cultivated.

To corroborate these figures, we quote a section from Mülller-Lyer's work, The Phases of Cultivation (Albert Langen Publishing House, Munich). Here it is explained why it is possible for China to feed an astonishingly dense population. China is the classical country of horticulture. This method of cultivating the soil has been practised there since ancient times. The Chinese peasants live in large villages whose houses are scattered over a wide area in fields and gardens. Each house is inhabited by an extended family, often consisting of three generations and about a dozen people. The house is surrounded by a piece of garden land, which is on average no larger than two hectares. This piece of land almost exclusively supports the whole family. Sufficient moisture is added to the soil through artificial irrigation. Farm waste and human excrement serve as fertilizer. The tools of the trade are wood, a watering can, a hoe, a small wooden plough, and, above all, a spade.

The intensity of the work that the Chinese do in their gardens goes beyond all European concepts. They work until the evening with the greatest diligence. [...] The Chinese horticulturists go so far in their zeal that they cultivate, not only useful plants, but also many other plants, especially flowers, as a feast for the eyes and as a hobby. Plants such as rice and wheat are even «pricked», that is, each individual stem is transplanted by the industrious hands, «plugged», whereby the yield is increased to colossal proportions: a grain of wheat, for example, can produce up to 60 ears by pricking. In order to keep all the members of the family busy, as many plants as possible are planted. The results are then quite extraordinary. The amount of rice, tea, sugar, oranges, wheat, maize, oil, buckwheat, tobacco, cotton, silk, yams, turnips, cabbage, beans, and other vegetables and fruits that a Chinese gardener's family produces from its two hectares of garden land would seem quite unbelievable to our farmers. [...] The animal food, which of course is considerably less important than the vegetable food, is procured through the breeding of pigs and birds, which can be combined particularly well with horticulture. Meat from other animals is hardly ever eaten, for horticulture everywhere displaces pasture, because horticulture is disproportionately more productive than animal husbandry. The family also provides for almost all other needs: they produce their own oil and sugar, they spin their own hemp, cotton, and silk, and make their own clothes, and so on. Their own production covers almost all their needs, so that only little is bought and has to be sold. This is how the many millions of families live and feed themselves, to whom China owes the bulk of its enormous population.

Now China has a population density that is astonishing by European standards. On average, 133 people live there per square kilometre. In particularly fertile areas, there are even 200 to 300 people. China still has little industry. The majority of these people live from tilling the soil.

This single example proves that, even without machinic forces and without collectivist organizations, only through individual, but intensive cultivation of the soil can a considerably larger amount be extracted from agriculture than with our grass-based small- and middle-scale farming and livestock breeding. The combination of small-scale farming with modern gardening culture, as practised in many regions of Italy, France, England, and especially in the Netherlands, would produce results that could ensure the feeding of the Swiss population. If we assume that the garden culture would be adopted by our small farmers and thus ensure the people's nutrition, only one side of the task we have been set would be solved. Nevertheless, it would not make the hard and long work of the farmers and their families any easier.

This cannot be the aim of a communist national economy. On the contrary, a form of enterprise must be created which, while ensuring the people's nutrition, makes available to the agricultural workers all the cultural facilities and pleasures which the industrial workers will possess. Above all, an equal reduction of working hours. This is only possible through collective enterprise, through the cooperative method of work.

The cooperative idea must take deeper root in agriculture. Up to now, the cooperative system has served the Swiss farmers only for the purchase of seeds and concentrated feed, for the processing and sale of milk and soil products; in isolated cases, cattle are kept cooperatively in common places; cooperative mills and bakeries already exist here and there. Some are also beginning to breed livestock and keep machinery cooperatively. In the most important activity, the cultivation of the soil, private and small-scale enterprises have remained intact. While the Industrial Revolution increasingly displaced small-scale handicraft enterprise and gave way to a higher form of production, which is now ripe for adoption and further collective operation by the proletariat, the farmers may have shaken off serfdom, but they have retained the handicraft form of production. The farmers make far too little use of the achievements of science and technology. In 1905, only 27,2% of all farms had machines. According to Dr. Laur, in 1917, only 6% of all farms used motorized power. But one day of machine work replaces at least 4 to 20 days of manual labour. How much useless work could be saved if the many fragmented farms were consolidated and cultivated with machines? Productivity was held down and the heavy burden was left to labour. Through large-scale industry, it was possible to reduce working hours from 15 to 8 hours and still raise productivity to a respectable level — but the farmers of today work the same land as their ancestors did 150 years ago and their soil has not become much more fertile than it was then, indeed in many Alpine areas their productivity has even decreased.

Only the collective farm can free the farmers from their hard working conditions and at the same time ensure the people's nutrition.

Within the capitalist social order, the necessary transformation will not be possible. For the time being, every small farmer and farmhand must, with the help of the industrial workers, break the chains that make it impossible for them to advance. All exploitation and land indebtedness must be radically shaken off. Only then will the way be clear for a general pooling of goods and for common work with the help of technology and the industrial workers on the land which belongs to all. Only in this way will the farmers, with their present apparent possession of the soil, become real owners of the soil, free members of human society, who no longer have to live by exerting all their physical strength merely to work, but who work in order to live, and who can also enjoy life and all the cultural progress of humanity. In order to make the farmhands and the small farmers understand that it is not communism but capitalism which is their enemy, it is necessary for industrial labour to exert all its forces to enlighten the farmers. The advantages of the communist form of economy are too conspicuous not to be grasped by the farmers as well.

#5. THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SWITZERLAND AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION

The standpoint of the Communist Party of Switzerland on the food and farmers' question differs in the most essential points from the agrarian programm and tactics of Social-Democracy. The Social-Democratic tactics in question are focused on the day-to-day interest of the workers and the urban small bourgeoisie. Their consumer-focused policies are also the reason for the witchhunts of the Social-Democratic press against the peasantry itself.

The Communist Party, however, doesn't base its tactics on reformist victories in the day-to-day struggle or the elections, but on the final goal. Using Marxism, it studies the present state and the development of socio-economic conditions. And this Marxist method allows it to develop a much deeper analysis and produce much more thorough and secure results.

These Marxist investigations prove that the capitalist economic and social order finds itself within the last stage of its process of collapse, and that no patch-jobs can profoundly better the worker's situation. The communist revolution, which in the East has already victoriously conquered the largest empire on Earth, is also just a matter of time in Switzerland. Even the proletarians of the soil live in conditions that make them ripe for communism.

This is shown clearly in the chapter on the system of ownership in Swiss agriculture, that we would like to summarize here once more.

In Switzerland, small-scale farms are the predominant form of agriculture. On average, there are two gainfully employed persons per farm and only one external wage-worker per two farms. Most farms are worked by the owners with the help of their spouses and children, without external labour. The small and miniature peasantry owns 72,8% of all farms from 10 hectares of land area downward, but only 35,3% of the agriculturally used land. Of the remaining 64,7% of the land area, a considerable part belongs to cooperatives, associations, municipalities, and the State. Of the 464'403 people working in agriculture, only 139'294 are farmhands, maids, and technical staff. This minimal percentage of external wage-workers in Swiss agriculture and the strong private-capitalist psychological pull of the small farmers make the solution of the agrarian question according to communist principles very difficult.

It must also be taken into account that the majority of the farmers are organized in a farmers' association sailing under the flag of the big capitalists, that is, they are politically in the bourgeois camp. Without the help of the basic producers, however, the communist economic order cannot be built and the food supply to the industrial centres cannot be guaranteed. The industrial proletariat is dependent on the support of the majority of the farmers in carrying out the social revolution. Therefore, it has the greatest interest in bringing the small farmers, the farmhands, and the maids on its side. In order to achieve this, intensive educational work must begin in the countryside, with the aim of separating the small farmers from the Farmers' Association and gathering them into communist farmers' organizations. Propaganda must be carried out along lines which do not aim at the immediate expropriation of all farm property for the benefit of working society. For the time being, the industrial workers must try to have an educational effect on the small farmers, so that they will find their way to the socialist form of production through cooperative unification.

After the conquest of political power by the working class, the following measures can be considered, which are to be carried out with the help of the farm proletarians and small farmers:

• All mortgage debts and land charges are to be cancelled.
• The bourgeois-parliamentary system is to be replaced by the council system. All agricultural workers, as well as the small farmers who do not external foreign labour, elect farmers' councils in their communities, which settle and regulate all political and economic affairs of the countryside together with the workers' councils.
• The cooperative system in agriculture shall be promoted in every way through the advantageous supply of machines, tools, materials, and electricity to the cooperatives. All agricultural products shall, if at all possible, be exchanged by the cooperatives for industrial products. Agricultural production must be promoted through the development of roads and the railway network.
• The Alps, forests, and farms above 70 hectares are to be managed by the Helvetic Workers' and Farmers' Council.
• The State and municipal farms are to be transformed into model and experimental farms under the direct management of the Helvetic Council Government. Agricultural colleges and universities should be attached to them.
• Introduction of practical and theoretical agricultural training for the entire popular youth.
• In order to increase and secure food production immediately, a wide belt of land around all industrial cities is to be cultivated intensively under the direction of professional gardeners and practical farmers with the help of technology according to uniform plans. From these gardens, a large part of the food requirements of the cities must be directly covered.

The slogan of the day is agitation, agitation, and even more agitation in the countryside. We have to tell the farmers that we Communists don't want to take away their land. The opposite is the case, we want to help the farmers to free themselves from the bloodsuckers of the cities, support them in the expansion of the cooperative system, and, as a result of the cooperatives, the farmers will be able to manage their economic affairs themselves und exchange their agricultural products for industrial products with the workers. If our agitation follows these principles, then the rift between the poor farmers and the industrial workers will soon be closed and with it, the fear that the peasantry becomes the best protector and shield squire of the robbing banks and capitalist bloodsuckers will disappear.