Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

432V. I. LENINtares of land per farm. These groups include 1,283,631 farmerswho regard agriculture as their chief concern and haveno auxiliary occupation. These farmers have a total of1,400,162 wage-workers (if it is assumed that only thosefarmers who regard agriculture as their chief concern andhave no auxiliary occupations maintain wage-workers). Onlyin the groups of farms with two to five hectares is the numberof independent farmers without an auxiliary occupationgreater than the number of wage-workers, namely: 495,439farms and 411,311 wage-workers.Of course, cultivators who have auxiliary occupationssometimes have wage-workers and, of course, there are some“small” farmers who hire not one but several wage-workers.But nevertheless there can be no doubt that farmers who donot hire workers and who do not hire themselves out to workare an insignificant minority.From the data on the number of wage-workers three basicgroups of farms in German agriculture are immediatelydistinguishable.I. Proletarian farms. These include groups in which theminority of farmers regard the conduct of independent agricultureas their chief occupation, groups in which the majorityare wage-workers, and so on. For example, there are2,084,060 farms of less than half a hectare. Of these only97,153 are independent cultivators, and 1,287,312 are wageworkers(in all branches of the national economy) by theirchief occupation. The farms with one-half to two hectares ofland numbered 1,294,449. Of these only 377,762 are independentcultivators, 535,480 are wage-workers, 277, 735 carry onsmall-scale industry, handicrafts or trade, 103,472 are employeesor represent “various and unspecified” occupations.Clearly, both these groups of farms are in the main proletarian.II. Peasant farms. The bulk of the farms included hereare those of independent cultivators; moreover, the numberof family workers in them is greater than that of wage-workers.These will be groups with two to 20 hectares ofland.III. Capitalist farms. Here we include farms with morewage-workers than family workers.The following are the total figures for these groups: