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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY309are “intensification”. The reaping-machine and in general“most agricultural machines” represent “technical progress”.Maslov “happened” to invent this nonsense because he hadto find some way of wriggling out of the “law of diminishingreturns”, which technical progress has refuted. Bulgakovwriggled out of it by saying: technical progress is temporary,stagnation is constant. Maslov wriggles out of it by inventinga most amusing division of technical progress in agricultureinto “intensification” and “technical implements”.What is intensification? It is the further expenditureof labour and capital. A reaping-machine, according to thediscovery of our great Maslov, is not expenditureof capital. A seed-drill is not expenditure of capital!“The substitution of multiple-crop rotation for the threefieldsystem” is equally applicable in large-scale and insmall farming. That is not true. The introduction of multiple-croprotation also calls for additional outlays ofcapital and it is much more applicable in large-scale farming.Incidentally, in this connection see the data on Germanagriculture quoted above (“The Agrarian Question andthe ‘Critics of Marx’”*). Russian statistics, too, testify tothe same thing. The slightest reflection would reveal to youthat it could not be otherwise; that multiple-crop rotationcannot be applied equally in small and large-scale farming.Nor can increased quantities of fertilisers be “equally applicable”,because big farms (1) have more cattle, which isof the greatest importance in this respect; (2) feed theircattle better and are not so “sparing” of straw, etc.; (3)have better facilities for storing fertilisers; (4) use largerquantities of artificial fertilisers. Maslov, in a really “impudent”way, distorts well-known data on modern agriculture.Finally, deep ploughing cannot be equally applicablein small and large-scale farming either. It is sufficientto point to two facts: first, the use of steam ploughs is increasingon the large farms (see above-quoted data on Germany;now, probably, electric ploughs too).** Perhapseven Maslov will realise that these cannot be “equally”applicable in large-scale and small farming. In the latter* See present edition, Vol. 5, p. 181.—Ed.** Ibid., p. 131.—Ed.