LENIN ON THE AGRARIAN QUESTION 63 4 Review: PARVUS, THE WORLD MARKET AND THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. Economic Essays. Translated from the German by L T, St Peterburg 1893, published by 0 JV Pop ova (Educational Library, Series S No 2)pp 142, price 40 kopeks. Written 1899, first published 1899, IV, pp 65-66. In this review, Lenin held that conclusions of Parvus8 coincided, by and large, with Engels's opinions. In volume III of Capital, Engels pointed out that the present-day agricultural crisis made the ground rents formerly obtained by European landowners impossible. The book reviewed was an excellent reply to contemporary Narodnik arguments. 5 Review: R GVO^DEV, KULAK USURT, ITS SOCIAL AW ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE, St Petersburg 1899, published by JV Garin, written 1899, first published 1899, IV, pp 67-69. Gvozdev's book was valuable because it gave a summary of data on the process of ^non-proletarian impoverishment' and very justly described this process as the lowest and worst form of the differentiation of the peasantry. The survivals of'mediaeval institutions, such as collective liability, created tremendous barriers against investment of small amounts of capital in agricultural production. The natural result of all this was the tremendous prevalence of the lowest and worst forms of capital, that is, trading and usury capital. 6 Review: KARL KAUTSKY, DIE AGRARFRAGE: EINE UEBERSICHT VBER DIE TEMEN^EN DER MODERNEN LANDWIRTSCHAFT UND DIE AGRARPOLITIK US W^ (Stuttgart, Diet^, 1899), written 1899, first published 1899, IV, pp 94-99. Lenin hailed Kautsky's book as a systematic study of capitalism in agriculture — the most important event in present-day economic literature since the third volume of Capital. Kautsky explained, inter alia, how the stability of petty production in agriculture did not depend in any way on its technical rationality but on the fact that the small peasants work much harder than hired labourers and reduce their vital necessities to a level lower than that of the latter. It is absurd to think that the peasant in a modern society can go over to communal production. 7 Capitalism in Agriculture (Kautsky9 s Book and Mr Bulgakov's Article), written 1899, first published 1900, IV, pp 109-159. The first article is divided into five sections and the second article into two. These articles were provoked by S Bulgakov's A Contribution to Question of the Capitalist Evolution in Agriculture, which was a criticism of Kautsky's work on the agrarian question. Lenin asserted that the carrier of technical progress in modern agriculture was the rural bourgeoisie, both petty and big; and as Kautsky had shown, the big bourgeoisie played a more important role in this respect than the petty bourgeoisie, Lenin's articles presented a very good summary of Kautsky's book — the title of the first., theoretical part of which was ^The Development of Agriculture in Capitalist Society."