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

446V. I. LENINCapitalism raises the level of agricultural technique andadvances it, but it cannot do so except by ruining, depressingand crushing the mass of small producers.In order to give a graphic illustration of the social significanceand tempo of this process, we shall conclude bycomparing the data of the three German censuses of 1882,1895 and 1907. For the purpose of this comparison we musttake the data on the number of instances of the use of thefive agricultural machines which were registered duringthe whole of this period (these machines are: steam ploughs,seed-drills, mowing machines and harvesters, steam andother threshing-machines). We obtain the following picture:Groups of farmsNumber of instances of the use of the chiefagricultural machines per hundred farms18821895 1907I Less than 2 ha . . . . 0.5 1.6 3.82-5 ” . . . . 3.9 11.9 31.2II 5-10 ” . . . . 13.5 32.9 71.1III{{10-20 ” . . . . 31.2 60.8 122.120-100 ” . . . . 59.292.0 179.1100 ha or more . . . 187.1 208.9 271.9Average . . . . . . . 16.6 33.9 8.7The progress seems considerable: during a quarter of acentury the number of instances of the use of the chief machineshas grown in general nearly fourfold. But, on makinga careful examination, it has to be said that it has requireda whole quarter of a century to make the use of at leastone of the five chief machines a regular phenomenon in asmall minority of the farms that cannot do without the constantemployment of wage-labour. For such use can only becalled regular when the number of instances of it exceedsthe number of farms, and we find that this occurs only inrelation to the capitalist and big peasant farms. Togetherthey comprise 12 per cent of the total number of farms.The bulk of the small and middle peasants, after a quarterof a century of capitalist progress, have remained in a positionin which only a third of the former and two-thirds ofthe latter can use any of these five machines during the year.(End of first article)