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

188V. I. LENINThe first conclusion to be drawn from these figures isthat the bigger the farm the better the quality of the cattle.The difference in this respect between the capitalist farmsand the small-peasant, or semi-proletarian, farms is enormous.For example, in 1884, this difference between the biggestand smallest farms was over one hundred per cent: theaverage weight of the average animal on the big capitalistfarms was 619 kilogrammes; on the semi-proletarianfarms it was 301 kilogrammes, i.e., less than half! One canjudge from this how superficial are the arguments of Davidand those who think like him when they assume that thequality of the cattle is the same on large and small farms.We have already mentioned above that cattle are generallykept worse in small farms. Now we have factual confirmationof this. The figures for live weight give us a veryaccurate idea of all the conditions under which the cattleare kept: feeding, housing, work, care—all this is summarised,so to speak, in the results which found statisticalexpression in Drechsler’s monograph. It turns out that forall the “diligence” displayed by the small farmer in carefor his cattle—a diligence extolled by our Mr. V. V. 94and by the German David—he is unable even approximatelyto match the advantages of large-scale production,which yields products of a quality twice as good. Capitalismcondemns the small peasant to eternal drudgery, to awasteful expenditure of labour, for with insufficient means,insufficient fodder, poor quality cattle, poor housing, andso forth, the most careful tending is a sheer waste of labour.In its appraisal bourgeois political economy puts in theforefront not this ruin and oppression of the peasant bycapitalism, but the “diligence” of the toiler (toiling for thebenefit of capital under the worst conditions of exploitation).The second conclusion to be drawn from the figures quotedabove is that the quality of cattle improved duringthe ten years both on the average and in all the categoriesof farms. But as a result of this general improvement, thedifference in the conditions of livestock rearing in the largeand small farms became not less, but more glaring. Thegeneral improvement widened rather than narrowed thegulf between the large and small farms, for in this process