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of the poorest peasantry, of the proletariat, and of all those who eked out a poor living independently by selling their labour-power, lie in quite another direction. For the poorest peasants it is far more profitable to deal with "the large estates in just the same way as the workers are dealing with the factories," that is, to take them under their control and management, to cultivate the former landowner's estates in common, and not plundering and carrying off the machines and plant, but using jointly such machines and plant that formerly belonged to the landowners and have now become the property of the labourers. They could call to their aid agricultural experts, competent men, to help them cultivate the land not in a casual way, but properly, so that it should yield not less than when it belonged to the landlord, but much more. It is not difficult to seize the land; neither did it prove difficult to seize private estates. It had to be done. In spite of all that the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks did to dissuade the peasants (pointing out the lawlessness of such an action, and saying that the whole thing would be useless and result only in bloodshed, and so on), the peasants, in spite of every thing, took the land, and the Soviet Government helped them to do it. It is a far harder task for the workers to retain the land, defending it from the exploiting village sharks whose eyes are already lighting up with greed at the prospect of seizing it. At this point the poorest peasants should remember that they must carefully guard the safety of communal property. For now the wealth that was formerly the landowner's has become the property of the whole community. It should be improved for the benefit of all the workers. Things should be organised in such a manner that the delegates of the poorest peasantry and of the labourers and those of the regional Soviets and their land departments, should have charge of everything, so as not to allow any waste, and should lend their assistance in the joint cultivation of the land. The more ordered the joint production in such estates will be, the better it will be for the workers. All this means that the land will yield better crops, the village exploiters will be foiled, and the peasant will be trained in co-operative production, the latter a most important principle of Communism.
But it is not enough to preserve the estates of the former landowners and cultivate them on new principles. We must strive to organise large joint agricultural labour communes by uniting separate allotments. For now the Government is in
