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

AGRARIAN QUESTION AND “CRITICS OF MARX”203products can only be sold by cutting down household consumption(let us recall well-known facts: butter is soldand cheaper margarine is purchased for home use, etc.).Those in the second group have on an average 171 head ofcattle each. They are the biggest capitalist farmers, “manufacturers”of milk and meat; “leaders” of technical progressand of all sorts of agricultural associations, about whichpetty-bourgeois admirers of “social peace” wax so enthusiastic.If we add together the small and medium farmers we shallget a total of 121,875 farmers, or two-thirds of the total(67.5 per cent), who own up to nine head of cattle each.They own 450,984 head of cattle, or one-fourth of the total(25.8 per cent). An almost equal number, i.e., 435,616 (25per cent) is owned by farmers having 30 and more head ofcattle each. Those farmers number 7,931, or 4.3 per centof the total. “Decentralisation” indeed!By combining the small divisions of Danish statisticsgiven above into three large groups we get the following:Farms havingNumber Per cent Number Per cent Averageof farms of cattle per farm1 to 3 head of cattle 68,292 37.9 140,730 8.0 2.14 to 9 ” ” ” 53,583 29.6 310,254 17.8 5.810 head and over 58,766 32.5 1,293,813 74.2 22.0Total 180,641 100.0 1,744,797 100.0 9.7Thus, three-fourths of the total livestock farming inDenmark is concentrated in the hands of 58,766 farmers,that is, less than one-third of the total number of farmers.This one-third enjoys the lion’s share of all the “prosperity”of capitalism in Danish agriculture. It should be borne inmind that this high percentage of well-to-do peasants andrich capitalists (32.5 per cent, or nearly one-third) is obtainedby an artificial method of calculation which eliminatesall farmers who own no livestock. Actually, the per-