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

AGRARIAN QUESTION AND “CRITICS OF MARX”177in the various groups; that is distasteful to him, But eventhe fragmentary figures he does quote show that he completelydistorts the reality. By comparing the total numberof cows with the distribution of cow-sheds according to thenumber of cattle in them we get the following picture,which, though an approximate one,* undoubtedly, on thewhole, corresponds to the reality:Number of Number of Number ofDenmark farms cows in them cows per(thousands) (thousands) farmFarms with 1 to 3 cows 70 100 1.43” ” 4to9 ” 52 250 4.81” ” 10 to 29 ” 49 550 11.22” ” 30 or more ” 8 200 25.00Total 179 1,100 6.14From these figures it is seen, first, that the concentrationof dairy farming in Denmark is very high. 750,000 cowsout of 1,100,000, i.e., over two-thirds of the total, belongto the big farms—57,000 out of 179,000, i.e., less than athird of the total number of farmers. Since each of thesefarms has ten or more cows, they certainly do not dispensewith hired labour. Thus, David “failed to notice” that thesize of the farms which keep livestock is by no meanssmall here; Danish farms must not be judged by area ofland. David “failed to notice” that here, as everywhereand always in capitalist agriculture, a vast number of* These figures are approximate, first, because the number ofcows is given for 1900, while the number of farms is given for 1898;secondly, because we had to determine the number of cows in eachgroup approximately, since David does not give exact figures. Wehave put the big farms share lower than it actually is: 7,544 farmshave 30 or more cows each. Thus, even if we take the minimum, i.e.,30 cows per farm, we get 7,544 x 30=226,320 cows. We have taken asmaller figure, otherwise the size of the small farms would approachtoo closely to the minimum and not to the maximum limits of thegroups.