(d) The Socialization of Small Holdings

Once a number of large estates is successfully socialized, it will be possible to make rapid progress with the socialization of the others. Nevertheless peasant holdings form such an important factor in the production of foodstuffs in most countries that an endeavour would have to be made to attract the peasant to socialization schemes.

Socialization is impossible for the small holding as it is. For the small holding, as well as for the large estate, a number of conditions will have to be created before it can be brought within the sphere of socialization.

That the improvement of village schools and the general raising of the level of civilization in the country are essential for the progress of the peasant to higher forms of production, needs no further demonstration.

On the other hand, the organization of the peasants into economic associations will hardly promote the cause of socialization. Hitherto such associations have mostly been organs to aid the struggle of the country producers against the urban consumers. The socialized undertaking, however, must be an organization which serves the interests of both sides.

An important preliminary condition for the socialization of the peasant holdings is the separation of the business from the household. With the small undertaking, this problem assumes a different shape from that of the large undertaking. In the latter case the form of the household requires to be changed.

In the case of the peasant, the independent household exists already. What requires to be changed is the method of conducting his business.

It would hardly be advantageous, even if it were practicable, to separate the entire peasant undertaking from the peasant household. What can be most easily detached from the household in peasant economy is field labour, and this is precisely that part of agricultural production in which large-scale operations are most advantageous and which employs most machines.

From the technical standpoint, it would not only be possible, but also extremely advantageous for the peasants of a village jointly to plough their fields and form a cooperative association for their common cultivation.

This would be no new thing. Until quite recent times we find the institution of common fields. The house and farmyard of the peasant were his private property, but the woods and meadows were undivided common property. The fields, however, formed the joint possession of the village commune. Under a developed system of peasant economy, it was not cultivated in common, but was apportioned from time to time among individual families for separate cultivation. This cultivation, however, was conducted upon a common plan. More than this was not necessary at that time, as with the simple implements then available, common cultivation would have offered no advantage.

The case is quite different in this age of steam and motor ploughing, of sowing and mowing machines. The cultivation of large adjacent areas offers considerable advantages in comparison with the cultivation of small parcels of land.

The smaller peasant often gets his land ploughed by a neighbour who has a better team or a motor.

Threshing has been carried on for a long time with foreign threshing machines, and the co-operative ownership of such machines, as well as of motor ploughs, mowing machines, etc. is no longer a rare occurrence. But the last and most important step towards the nationalization of peasant agriculture has not yet been taken. This step is the amalgamation of the separate holdings, the chief obstacle to which is the existence of private property in the land.

A beginning could only be made where private property has been abolished. It is noteworthy that the country people in Italy who have formed co-operative associations for the carrying on of agriculture are wage-workers or tenants, and not peasant proprietors.

Given a Labour regime, we might reasonably expect, in view of the mobility of landed property and the many sales of estates, that the exercise of the State’s right of purchase would bring large tracts of land under State ownership within a short time. If all, or a considerable proportion, of the peasants in a village became State tenants, the State could impose conditions of tenure which would provide for all the nationalized land to form one comprehensive undertaking, and for the State tenants to be organized in a co-operative association for the common cultivation of the State lands.

The establishment of new settlements should also proceed on the same lines. To create settlements by breaking up properly-cultivated large estates would be a retrograde step, and would jeopardize the feeding of the people. This would not, however, be the case with settlements established on waste land.

If the settlement were organized on the basis of the co-operative cultivation of common fields, it would combine the multiplication of small households with all the technical advantages of large-scale undertakings. If the settlement remained State property, each settler receiving his own dwelling-house and the cultivation of the common lands being assigned to the village commune by the State as the landlord, the latter would be assured of sufficient influence to safeguard the interests of consumers as well as of producers.

The same considerations apply to those estates which are already large-scale undertakings and which would become State property. It would not be difficult to fit them into the national economic scheme and the system of production for use, either through attachment to an urban municipality, or to the jointly-controlled organizations of mills, sugar factories, etc.

The jointly-controlled village co-operative associations would not be confined to agriculture, which would form their starting-point, once they had proved their vitality. They would be extended to cattle-rearing.

In any case, we may expect that the socialization of agriculture, based on the separation of households from the large estates and the amalgamation of the small holdings, will progress at an ever accelerated pace the larger the store of experience that is accumulated and the greater the measure of economic success that is attained, the better the condition of the workers in the socialized undertakings and the cheaper the products sold to the consumers.

The nationalization of the land, either by confiscation, where this method may be practicable, or by the gradual purchase of private land, which will be the usual method, is the preliminary condition for the inclusion of agriculture within a socialized undertaking. But only a preliminary condition. The nationalization of land, without any change in the nature of rural economy, as many land reformers advocate, would not effect much alteration.