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

190V. I. LENINThe words “more or less general”, which we have underlined,show precisely that the author ignored the socioeconomicaspect of the question; “more” applies to the bigfarms, “less” to the small ones. Drechsler overlooked this,because he paid attention only to the figures concerningthe groups of villages and not groups of farms of differenttypes.Let us now pass to the figures on draught animals, whichthrow light on farming conditions in the narrow sense ofthe term “agriculture”. In regard to the number of draughtanimals the farms under review are characterised by thefollowing figures:Average number of draught animalsper farm1875 1884(a) Estates 27 44(b) Farms of 25 ha and over 4.7 5.5(c) ” 7.5 to 25 ha 2.1 2.4(d) ” 5.5 to 7.5 ” 1.3 1.5(e) ” up to 2.5 ” 0.07 0.16Average 0.7 1.0Thus, the overwhelming majority of the semi-proletarianfarms (up to 2.5 hectares; in 1884, they numbered 1,109 outof 1,825) had no draught animals at all. They cannot evenbe regarded as agricultural farms in the real sense of theterm. In any case, as regards the use of draught animals,there can be no comparison between the big farms and thosefarms of which 93 or 84 per cent employ no draught animalsat all. If, however, we compare the big capitalist farms withthe small peasant farms in this respect, we shall find thatthe former (group a) have 132 draught animals to 766hectares of land, and the latter (group d) 632 to 1,774 hectares(1884), i.e., the former has one draught animal to approximatelysix hectares, and the latter one to approximatelythree hectares. Obviously, the small farms spend twice as