卡·马克思

论土地国有化[1]

    地产，即一切财富的原始源泉，现在成了一个大问题，工人阶级的未来将取决于这个问题的解决。

    我不想在这里讨论那些主张土地私有的人，那些法学家、哲学家、政治经济学家所提出的全部论据，我只想首先指出，他们曾千方百计地用“天然权利”来掩盖掠夺这—原始事实。如果说掠夺曾为少数人造成了天然权利，那么多数人只须积聚足够的力量，便能把失去的一切重新夺回的天然权利。

    在历史进程中，掠夺者都认为，最好是利用他们硬性规定的法律，使他们凭暴力得到的那些原始权利获得某种社会稳定性。

    于是哲学家出面论证，说这些法律已得到人类的公认。如果土地私有确实以这种公认为依据，那么，一旦社会的大多数人认为这毫无道理，显然就应当被取消。

    然而，姑且不谈所谓的所有“权”，我确信，社会的经济发展、人口的增长和集中，迫使资本主义农场主在农业中采用集体的和有组织的劳动以及利用机器和其他发明的种种情况，正在使土地国有化越来越成为一种“社会必然性”，这是关于所有权的任何言论都阻挡不了的。社会的迫切需要将会而且一定会得到满足，社会必然性所要求的变化一定会照样进行，迟早总会使立法适应这些变化的要求。

    我们所需要的是日益增长的生产，要是一小撮人随心所欲地按照他们的私人利益来调节生产，或者无知地消耗地力，就无法满足生产增长的各种需要。一切现代方法，如灌溉、排水、蒸汽犁、化学处理等等，应当在农业中广泛采用。但是，我们所具有的科学知识，我们所拥有的耕作技术手段，如机器等，如果不实行大规模的耕种，就不能有效地加以利用。

    大规模地耕作（即使在目前这种使耕作者本身沦为役畜的资本主义形势下），从经济观点来看，既然证明比小块的和分散的土地耕作远为优越，那么，要是采用全国规模的耕作，难道不会更有力地推动生产吗？

    一方面，居民的需要不断增长，另一方面农产品的价格不断上涨，这就不容争辩地证明，土地国有化已成为一种社会必然性。

    一旦土地的耕作由国家控制，为国家谋利益，农产品自然就不可能因个别人滥用地力而减少。

    今天在辩论这个问题时，我在这里听到，所有的公民都主强土地国有化，但是观点各不相同。[①]

    人们常常提到法国，但是法国的农民所有制，比起英国的大地主所有制离土地国有化要远得多。的确，在法国凡是买得起土地的人都可以获得土地，但是，正因为如此，土地便分成许多小块，耕种土地的人资金很少，主要依靠本人及其家属的劳动。这种土地所有制形式以及小地块耕作的方式，不仅不能采用现代农业的各种改良措施，反而把耕作者本人变成顽固反对社会进步，尤其是反对土地国有化的敌人。他被束缚在土地上，必须投入全部精力才能获得相当少的回报；他不得不把大部分产品以赋税的形式交给国家，以诉讼费的形式交给讼棍，以利息的形式交给高利贷者；除了那块小天地，它对社会运动—无所知；他一直痴情地迷恋着他那一小块土地，迷恋着他的纯粹有名以上的占有权。于是法国农民就陷入了同产业工人阶级相对立的极其可悲的境地。

    农民所有制既然是土地国有化的最大障碍，所以目前情况下，法国无疑不是我们应当寻求解决这个重大问题的办法的地方。

    在一个资产阶级的政权下，实行土地国有化，并把土地分成小块出租给个人或工人合作社，这只会造成他们之间的残酷竞争，促使“地租”上涨，反而使那些靠生产者为生的土地占有者更有利可图。

    1860年，在国际布鲁塞尔代表大会上，我们的一位朋友曾说：

    “科学以判决小土地私有制必定灭亡，正义则判决大土地所有制必定灭亡。因此，二者必居其一：土地要么必须成为农业联合体的财产，要么成为整个国家助财产。未来将决定这个问题。”

    相反地，我却认为，社会运动将做出决定：土地只能是国家的财产。把土地交给联合起来的农业劳动者，就等于使整个社会只听从一个生产者阶级的摆布。

    土地国有化将彻底改变劳动和资本的关系，并最终完全消灭工业和农业中的资本主义生产。只有到那时，阶级差别和各种特权才会随着它们赖以存在的经济基础[②]一同消失。靠他人的劳动而生活将成为往事。与社会相对立的政府或国家将不复存在！农业、矿业、工业，总之，一切生产部门将用最合理的方式逐渐组织起来。生产资料的全国性的集中将成为由自由平等的生产者的各联合体所构成的社会的全国性的基础，这些生产者将按照共同的合理的计划进行社会劳动。这就是19世纪的伟大经济运动所追求的人道[③]目标。

写于1872年3-4月                              原文是英文

载于1872年6月15日

《国际先驱报》第11号

本站（马克思主义经济学网）根据中共中央马克思恩格斯列宁斯大林著作编译局《马克思恩格斯选集》中文第2版制作上传，2007年5月13日星期日

The International Workingmen's Association, 1872

The Nationalisation of the Land

A Paper read at the Manchester Section of the International Working Men's Association;
Written: by Marx in March-April 1872;
Published: in The International Herald No. 11, June 15, 1872;
On-line version: Taken from the newspaper;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org.

The property in the soil is the original source of all wealth, and has become the great problem upon the solution of which depends the future of the working class.

I do not intend discussing here all the arguments put forward by the advocates of private property in land, by jurists, philosophers and political economists, but shall confine myself firstly to state that they have tried hard to disguise the primitive fact of conquest under the cloak of "Natural Right". If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.

In the progress of history the conquerors found it convenient to give to their original titles, derived from brute force, a sort of social standing through the instrumentality of laws imposed by themselves.

At last comes the philosopher and demonstrates that those laws imply and express the universal consent of mankind. If private property in land be indeed founded upon such an universal consent, it will evidently become extinct from the moment the majority of a society dissent from warranting it.

However, leaving aside the so-called "rights" of property, I assert that the economical development of society, the increase and concentration of people, the very circumstances that compel the capitalist farmer to apply to agriculture collective and organised labour, and to have recourse to machinery and similar contrivances, will more and more render the nationalisation of land a "Social Necessity", against which no amount of talk about the rights of property can be of any avail. The imperative wants of society will and must be satisfied, changes dictated by social necessity will work their own way, and sooner or later adapt legislation to their interests.

What we require is a daily increasing production and its exigencies cannot be met by allowing a few individuals to regulate it according to their whims and private interests, or to ignorantly exhaust the powers of the soil. All modern methods, such as irrigation, drainage, steam ploughing, chemical treatment and so forth, ought to be applied to agriculture at large. But the scientific knowledge we possess, and the technical means of agriculture we command, such as machinery, etc., can never be successfully applied but by cultivating the land on a large scale.

If cultivation on a large scale proves (even under its present capitalist form, that degrades the cultivator himself to a mere beast of burden) so superior, from an economical point of view, to small and piecemeal husbandry, would it not give an increased impulse to production if applied on national dimensions?

The ever-growing wants of the people on the one side, the ever-increasing price of agricultural produce on the other, afford the irrefutable evidence that the nationalisation of land has become a social necessity.

Such a diminution of agricultural produce as springs from individual abuse, will, of course, become impossible whenever cultivation is carried on under the control and for the benefit of the nation.

All the citizens I have heard here today during the progress of the debate, on this question, defended the nationalisation of land, but they took very different views of it.

France was frequently alluded to, but with its peasant proprietorship it is farther off the nationalisation of land than England with its landlordism. In France, it is true, the soil is accessible to all who can buy it, but this very facility has brought about a division into small plots cultivated by men with small means and mainly relying upon the land by exertions of themselves and their families. This form of landed property and the piecemeal cultivation it necessitates, while excluding all appliances of modern agricultural improvements, converts the tiller himself into the most decided enemy to social progress and, above all, the nationalisation of land. Enchained to the soil upon which he has to spend all his vital energies in order to get a relatively small return, having to give away the greater part of his produce to the state, in the form of taxes, to the law tribe in the form of judiciary costs, and to the usurer in the form of interest, utterly ignorant of the social movements outside his petty field of employment; still he clings with fanatic fondness to his bit of land and his merely nominal proprietorship in the same. In this way the French peasant has been thrown into a most fatal antagonism to the industrial working class.

Peasant proprietorship being then the greatest obstacle to the nationalisation of land, France, in its present state, is certainly not the place where we must look to for a solution of this great problem.

To nationalise the land, in order to let it out in small plots to individuals or working men's societies, would, under a middle-class government, only engender a reckless competition among themselves and thus result in a progressive increase of "Rent" which, in its turn, would afford new facilities to the appropriators of feeding upon the producers.

At the International Congress of Brussels, in 1868, one of our friends [César De Paepe, in his report on land property: meeting of the Brussels Congress of the International Working Men's Association of Sept. 11 1868] said:

"Small private property in land is doomed by the verdict of science, large land property by that of justice. There remains then but one alternative. The soil must become the property of rural associations or the property of the whole nation. The future will decide that question."

I say on the contrary; the social movement will lead to this decision that the land can but be owned by the nation itself. To give up the soil to the hands of associated rural labourers, would be to surrender society to one exclusive class of producers.

The nationalisation of land will work a complete change in the relations between labour and capital, and finally, do away with the capitalist form of production, whether industrial or rural. Then class distinctions and privileges will disappear together with the economical basis upon which they rest. To live on other people's labour will become a thing of the past. There will be no longer any government or state power, distinct from society itself! Agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production, will gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan. Such is the humanitarian goal to which the great economic movement of the 19th century is tending.