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

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM OF MODERN AGRICULTURE437Socio-economic statistics—one of the most powerfulmeans of acquiring social knowledge—are converted in thisway into a monstrosity, into statistics for the sake of statistics,into a game.That the majority or the great bulk of agricultural enterprisesbelong to the category of dwarf, parcellised, proletarianfarms is a phenomenon that is common to many if notmost European capitalist countries, but not all capitalistcountries. In America, for example, according to data ofthe 1900 census, the average size of the farms is 146.6 acres(60 hectares), i.e., 72 times as large as in Germany. The verysmall farms, if one includes here those of less than 20 acres(8 hectares) form a little over one-tenth (11.8 per cent) ofthe total number. Even the farms of less than 50 acres (20hectares) form only one-third of the total number. In orderto compare these data with the German statistics one musttake into account that farms of less than three acres (= 1.2hectares) are included in the American census only if theirgross income amounts to 500 dollars, i.e., the vast majorityof farms of less than three acres are not registered at all.Hence we must exclude also the very small farms from theGerman data. Let us eliminate even all the farms of less thantwo hectares: of the remaining 2,357,572 farms there willbe 1,006,277 of two to five hectares, i.e., over 40 per centof the farms will be very small farms. In America the situationis quite different.It is evident that when the traditions of serfdom are absent(or all traces of it are more thoroughly abolished), andwhen the yoke imposed by land rent on agricultural productionis absent (or weakened), capitalism in agriculturecan exist and even develop with special rapidity withoutcreating a category of a million agricultural labourers andday-labourers with allotments.IIIPEASANT FARMS UNDER CAPITALISMWe have put under the heading peasant farms those groupsin which, on the one hand, the majority of cultivators areindependent farmers and, on the other hand, the number offamily workers is greater than the number of wage-workers.