It is easy to understand that the members of these respective groups, owing to the difference in their positions, will take different views of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The rich peasants are as a rule allied with the bourgeoisie, and very often with the great landlords as well. In Germany, for example, those who are termed “great peasants” are united in a single organisation with the priests and the landlords. We find the same thing in Switzerland and in Austria, and to some extent also in France. In Russia, during the year 1918, the rich peasants supported all the counter-revolutionary plots. Those belonging to the semi-proletarian and proletarian strata naturally back the workers in their struggle with the bourgeoisie and the rich peasants. As far as the middle peasants are concerned, the matter is much more complicated.
If the middle peasants would only realise that for the majority among them there is no way out under capitalism, that only a few of them can ever hope to become rich peasants, whereas most of them are fated to live in penury, then they would be ready to give unstinted support to the workers. But their misfortune lies in this, that the same thing happens to them as happens in the towns to the independent artisans and the members of the petty bourgeoisie. Every one of them, at the bottom of his heart, cherishes the hope of getting on, of growing rich. But, on the other hand, the middle peasant is oppressed by the capitalist, the money-lender, the landlord, and the rich peasant. The result is, as a rule, that the middle peasant see-saws between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He is unable wholeheartedly to adopt the working-class platform, but at the same time he is terribly afraid of the landowner.