If the social democracy is to maintain its historic mission, if it is to be a party of advance, it must avoid compromise with the notoriously declining classes, as the hand-workers and other economically low organisations. Even a temporary compact with them is dangerous. It will not be admissible, also, to change the programme and goal of the social movement to suit the middle-class elements that have crept in, if that great aim of production upon the largest scale shall be held fast--because we know positively that their hand-work represents in general a low form of economy. But now the other side of the question. If there are spheres in economic life which are not to be subjected to this process of communisation, because the smaller method of business is under the conditions more profitable than the larger,--how about the farmer? That is the whole problem which to-day stands before the social democracy as the "agrarian question." Must the communistic ideal of production on a large scale, and the developed programme connected with it, undergo any essential change as applied to the peasantry? And if a man reaches the conclusion that in agrarian development no tendency to production on a large scale exists, but that here operation on a large scale is not at all the highest form of management, then we see before us the decisive question--Shall we now be democratic in the sense of allowing production on a small scale in this sphere and thus change our programme and desert the communistic ideal; or shall we remain proletarian, hold fast to the communistic ideal and exclude this class from our movement? In this case the former decision would not be reactionary, because, in spite of the acceptance of that lower middle-class element into the movement, it is not necessary to come down from the level of production that has been reached in the spheres of industry that have been communised. I have here been obliged to speak doubtfully because thus far, so far as I know, there is no certainty either as to the tendency of development among the agriculturalists or as to the form of management, nor are we certain as to whether any specific form of agrarian production is the superior. But, so far as I see, the Marxian system breaks down on this point; the deductions of Marx are not applicable to the sphere of agriculture without change. He has said much of importance concerning agrarian matters; but his theory of development, which rests upon an assumption of business upon a large scale and upon the proletarianising of the masses, and which necessarily leads to socialism in its development, is only for the sphere of manufactures. It does not apply to agricultural development; and to me it seems that only a scientific investigation will be able to fill the gap which now exists.