Progress Publisher Introduction 
 
    Engels' _The Peasant Question in France and Germany_ is a major 
    Marxist work on the agrarian question.  The immediate cause for 
    writing this work was the attempt by Vollmar and other opportunists 
    to make use of the discussion of the draft agrarian programme at the 
    Frankfurt Congress of German Social-Democrats in 1894 in order to 
    smuggle in an anti-Marxist theory on the socialist transformation of 
    rich peasants, etc.  Engels was also prompted to write this work by 
    his striving to correct the mistakes committed by the French 
    Socialists, who deviated from Marxism and made concessions to 
    opportunism in their agrarian programme adopted in Marseilles in 
    1892 and supplemented in Nantes in 1894.  
 
    In addition, Engels elucidates the revolutionary principles of the 
    proletarian policy vis-a-vis the various groups of peasants and 
    elaborates the idea of an alliance between the working class and the 
    working peasantry.