New Enclosure Movement?

The talk about a second agrarian revolution by means of essentially giving the land to the old collective farm managers as described by Presidential Administration economist Pavlo Haidutsky raises some concern. According to him, the former collective farm managers in charge of stealing the peasants blind under socialism should be made to feel like they are “real owners” by buying out the penniless and powerless victims from whom many of them sucked out the last possible drop of blood to build their own houses or buy diamonds for their sweet young things. They even called a conference of such folk to say that this was the most efficient way out, which economically it might well be. But what about all those collective farmers whose parents and grandparents were starved to death in 1933 in order to place this feudal aristocracy in power? What about those millions with no urban skills, no job openings to take them, and no sense of ownership? Will they simply be cast off in the name of economic efficiency? And will those new kolhosp “owners” be any better than their “entrepreneur” brethren at something other than racking up losses to be forgiven or ignored by their cronies in the relevant ministry or district administration?

I have never considered myself as a man of the Left, but there is a certain thing as elementary social justice. Privatization of the land, if it is to mean anything, means doing something for those whose families have worked it for generations. Whether their descendants turn into yeomen or farmers of the Western type is best left up to them. Some will not make it either way, but in a time of transition, it is the state’s moral duty to do everything it can to give them every possible chance. There simply have to be programs to help those who want to farm the land on their own do so. Once they get on their feet then there can be a concentration of the land. After all, small-scale agriculture has worked in a number of countries, and where not, let the people sell out for a decent sum, not what some former kolhosp chairman dictates. Otherwise we return to an inverted form of Lenin’s “Rob the robbers” — “Let the robbers rob.” Reforms cannot ignore social justice, and a postcommunist repetition of the English enclosure movement, when the sheep ate the people (that is, land was taken from the peasantry to raise sheep for wool in the burgeoning textiles industry) simply is not acceptable under the standards of the twenty-first century. People have been given back what was theirs. Now there simply has to be a complex of programs to help them determine for themselves what to do with it. They need to have the wherewithal available to do what they want, and there have to be jobs for those who might not be able to make it on their own. Under any other circumstances, we have only to expect a sociological catastrophe waiting to happen.