And why should one confiscate the land of the communities and the land of small private owners? According to the Socialist-Revolutionary program, the only use to be made of the land by the state is to turn it over to all the peasants and agricultural laborers on the basis of equal distribution. This would mean that the confiscated land of the communities and small owners would anyway return to individuals for private cultivation. Consequently, there would be _no economic gain_ in such a confiscation and redistribution. _Politically_, it would be a great blunder on the part of the labor government as it would make the masses of peasants hostile to the proletarian leadership of the revolution.
Closely connected with this program is the question of hired agricultural labor. Equal distribution presupposes the prohibition of using hired labor on farms. This, however, can be only a _consequence_ of economic reforms, it cannot be decreed by a law. It is not enough to forbid an agricultural capitalist to hire laborers; one must first secure agricultural laborers a fair existence; furthermore, this existence must be profitable from the viewpoint of social economy. To declare equal distribution of land and to forbid hired labor, would mean to compel agricultural proletarians to settle on small lots, and to put the state under obligation to provide them with implements for their socially unprofitable production.
It is clear that the intervention of the proletariat in the organization of agriculture ought to express itself not in settling individual laborers on individual lots, but in organizing _state or communal management of large estates_. Later, when socialized production will have established itself firmly, a further step will be made towards socialization by forbidding hired labor. This will eliminate small capitalistic enterprises in agriculture; it will, however, leave unmolested those private owners who work their land wholly or to a great extent by the labor of their families. To expropriate such owners can by no means be a desire of the Socialistic proletariat.
The proletariat can never indorse a program of "equal distribution" which on one hand demands a useless, purely formal expropriation of small owners, and on the other hand it demands a very real parceling of large estates into small lots. This would be a wasteful undertaking, a pursuance of a reactionary and Utopian plan, and a political harm for the revolutionary party.