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

AGRARIAN QUESTION AND “CRITICS OF MARX”2092.7 per farm. Even if the household consumption of milkand meat products is reduced—and such a reduction is itselfa direct sign of bitter need—this number of cows couldprovide only a very small quantity of products for sale.The share such farms with an average of 2.7 cows and 3pigs per household enjoy in the “prosperity” of the “national”sale of milk and meat to Britain can only be very insignificant.With farms of this size, commercial agricultureand livestock farming mean, partly, selling whatis necessary for the family, poorer diet, increased poverty,and partly, selling in very small quantities, i.e., underthe most disadvantageous conditions, and the impossibilityof having money put by to meet inevitable extra expenses.And the natural economy of the small peasant under theconditions prevailing in modern capitalist countries isdoomed to stagnation, to a slow painful death; it certainlycannot prosper. The whole “trick” of bourgeois and revisionistpolitical economy lies in not making a separatestudy of the conditions of this particular type of small farm,which is below the “average” (the “average” Danish farmerhas 1.6 horses and 3.8 cows), and which represents the overwhelmingmajority of the total number of farms. Not onlyis this type of farm not specially studied; it is glossed overby references exclusively to “average” figures, to the generalincrease in “production” and “sales”, and by saying nothingabout the fact that only the well-to-do farms, which representthe small minority, can sell profitably.It is only among the farmers having from 10 to 40 hectaresthat we see a sufficient number of livestock to createthe possibility of “prosperity”. But these farms representonly 16 per cent of the total. And it is questionable whetherthey manage entirely without hired labour, since theyhave on an average 21.6 hectares of land per farm. In viewof the high degree of intensive farming in Denmark, farmsof such dimensions probably cannot be carried on withoutthe assistance of farm-hands or day-labourers. Unfortunately,both Danish statisticians and the majority of thosewho write about Danish agriculture adhere entirely to thebourgeois point of view and do not explore the questionof hired labour, the size of farms requiring its employment,and so forth. From the Danish census of occupations of 1901