Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1903
Schullern’s review examines agricultural transformation as a problem for socialist theory. Moving from Georges Sorel’s introduction to Gatti’s central inquiries, it distinguishes confidence in socialism’s eventual success from caution about the pace of economic change.
Sorel supplies a national framework: socialism and workers’ organizations develop differently across countries and historical circumstances. In predominantly agrarian Italy, rural associations and new cultivation methods might support a distinctive socialist development. Their acquisition of a socialist orientation could, in Sorel’s account, reconcile theory and practice and provide a model for Europe. Schullern reports this prospect without adopting it as his own conclusion.
Gatti shifts attention to production itself. Schullern presents his challenge to Marx as grounded in agricultural techniques unavailable to Marx: agricultural capital increasingly exploits human labour rather than the soil and consequently becomes comparable to industrial capital. Three questions organize the resulting inquiry:
Der Verfasser wirft angesichts der neuen Sachlage die Frage auf, ob die Landwirtschaft ebenso eine Industrie sei, wie alle anderen, weiter die Frage, ob auch in ihr die Tendenz zur kapitalistischen Konzentration des Eigentums bestehe, und drittens die: welche sind die neuen Strömungen in der Landwirtschaft?
English translation: In view of the new state of affairs the author raises the question whether agriculture is an industry just like all others, further the question whether the tendency towards capitalist concentration of property exists in it as well, and thirdly this: what are the new currents in agriculture?
The relation between agriculture and industry therefore bears directly on the validity of socialist expectations. Schullern identifies the theoretical purpose of these questions:
Durch die Beantwortung derselben soll der praktische Teil der sozialistischen Doktrin in deren heutiger als transformierter Marxismus sich darstellenden Form überprüft werden.
English translation: By answering these, the practical part of socialist doctrine is to be examined in its present form, which presents itself as transformed Marxism.
Property concentration is especially consequential within this test of transformed Marxism. Schullern also notes that Gatti’s parliamentary prominence gives his answers significance beyond theoretical debate. The review emphasizes these stakes without reproducing the book’s detailed evidence.
Its final assessment separates Gatti’s socialist commitments from his historical judgment. Gatti anticipates socialism’s victory through the parallel development of capitalism and cooperation, yet acknowledges that the process will take considerable time and that capitalist concentration of agricultural property has only begun. Schullern values this restraint as evidence of a composure often absent among doctrinaires. His qualified praise endorses caution in assessing economic tendencies, not the inevitability of the socialist outcome.
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