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

440V. I. LENINout by Marxists and which the bourgeois economists and revisionistsare quite unable to grasp. All the circumstancesof commodity farming lead to the result that the small peasantsare unable to exist without striving to consolidateand extend their enterprises, and this struggle implies astruggle to increase the use of outside labour-power and tomake its use cheaper. That is why in every capitalist countrythe mass of small peasants as a whole, of whom only an insignificantminority “rise to prominence”, i.e., become realcapitalists, are permeated by capitalist psychology and followthe agrarians in politics. The bourgeois economists (andthe revisionists, too, in their wake) support this psychology;the Marxists explain to the small peasants that their onlysalvation lies in joining hands with the wage-workers.The data of the 1907 census are also extremely instructivein regard to the proportion between the number of permanentand temporary workers. Altogether the latter are exactlyone-third of the total number: 5,053,726 out of 15,169,549.Of the wage-workers 45 per cent are temporary, of the familyworkers 29 per cent are temporary. But these proportionsundergo substantial change in the different types of farm.The following are the data for the groups we have distinguished.Temporary Workers as a Percentage of the TotalNumber of WorkersGroups of farms Family Wageworkersworkers TotalLess than 0.5 ha 55 79 58I { 0.5 - 2 ” 39 78 452-5 ” 22 68 29II{5-10 ” 11 54 2410-20 ” 14 4223III{220-100 ” 14 32 25100 ha or more 11 33 32Average . . . . 9 45 33We see from this table that among the proletarian farmswith less than half a hectare (there are altogether 2.1 millionsuch farms!) temporary workers form more than half ofboth the family workers and wage-workers. These are chieflyauxiliary farms which occupy only part of the time of theirowners. Among the proletarian farms of 0.5-2 hectares, too,