Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGRARIAN QUESTION AND “CRITICS OF MARX”175labour. Not a word about the fact that Hecht embellishesthe “settled state” of the factory worker who has a plot ofland, lumping together workers and well-to-do peasants.Not a word about the fact that while a small number of wellto-dopeasants are “flourishing”, the conditions of the bulkof the peasants are such that they even have to sell theirmilk and use cheaper margarine as a substitute.David not only says nothing about this; he even declaresthat “Hecht quotes extremely interesting data on the highliving standards of these peasants” (p. 395). A grosser exampleof bourgeois apologetics is difficult to imagine.Incidentally, about Hecht’s statement that the peasantssell their milk in order to buy cheaper margarine. Onewould think that this is a generally known fact amongeconomists. As far back as 1847, Marx in The Poverty ofPhilosophy referred to the deterioration of the people’sdiet under capitalism. 90 In Russia, ever since the time ofEngelhardt 91 (the 1870s), this fact has been noted verymany times by all who have made a more or less conscientiousstudy of the progress of capitalism in dairy farming.The “scholarly” David failed to notice this. He even sneerswhen socialists point to it.On pages 427-28 of David’s book we read scoffing remarksabout Kautsky, who says that the amalgamated dairies,which promote the sale of milk by the peasants, cause adeterioration in the latter’s diet. To enable the reader tojudge the German Narodnik David at his true worth weshall quote his own words:“... All other people are in the habit, when receiving a larger income,of using some part of it for the benefit of their stomachs. Itis only human nature that a man should want to eat something better,if only he has a little money to enable him to do so. It is, therefore,very strange that the peasant who, as is generally admitted, is gettingmore money than before for his milk and pigs, thanks to theco-operative, should behave differently from other mortals,” and soon and so forth.This buffoonery of a reactionary petty bourgeois is notworth answering, of course. It is sufficient to exhibit himto the reading public; it is sufficient to drag him into thelight of day from under the heap of disconnected agronomicquotations scattered through five hundred and fifty pages.