In the audio below, Bertrand Russell distinguished between peasant proprietorship and agrarian socialism. In his book on Bolshevism, Russell uses the word “communism” instead. I am puzzled by what point Russell was trying to make. Let me explain. Since the necessary condition for capitalism is depriving people of a free access to subsistence land, then [free] peasant proprietorship — i.e., without taxation, would be antithetical to capitalism, and compatible with anarchism. So, Russell’s use of the term “socialism” is not used as a simple antithesis to capitalism, but seems to require for him a co-operative form of organization.
Now, Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism, was writing about the class struggle between proletarians and industrialists — and the resolution of this struggle was to be worker-controlled factories. But a peasant proprietor is not a proletarian. A proletarian is someone who does not have access to free modes of production. But free access to land is a type of free access to a mode of production. \n
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Peasant proprietors should have been left alone with the freedom to form co-operatives — agrarian socialism. Instead, under Stalin, Ukrainian peasants were wiped out or forced into collectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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