Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
135
holding, increase in the number of animals, etc.), while to
the left runs a curve showing the negative indices of economic
strength (leasing out of land, sale of labour-power; these columns
are shaded). The distance from the top horizontal
line of the chart to each continuous curve shows the share of
the well-to-do groups in the sum-total of peasant farming,
while the distance from the bottom horizontal line to each
broken curve shows the share of the poor groups in that sumtotal.
Lastly, to give a clear picture of the general character
of the combined data, we have plotted an “average”
curve (arrived at by calculating arithmetical averages from
the percentages indicated in the chart. To distinguish it
from the others, this “average” curve is in red). This “average”
curve indicates, so to speak, the typical differentiation of the
Russian peasantry today.
Now, in order to sum up the data on differentiation given
above (§§I-VII), let us examine this chart column by column.
The first column to the right of the one indicating the
percentages of households shows the proportion of the population
belonging to the top and the bottom groups. We see
that everywhere the size of the families of the well-to-do peasantry
is above the average and that of the poor below the
average. We have already spoken of the significance of this
fact. Let us add that it would be wrong to take as the unit
for all comparisons the individual (as the Narodniks are fond
of doing) and not the household, the family. While the expenditure
of the well-to-do family grows because of the larger
size of the family, the mass of expenditure, on the other hand,
in the large-family household diminishes (on buildings,
domestic effects, household needs, etc., etc. The economic advantages
of large families are particularly stressed by Engelhardt
in his Letters From the Countryside, 51 and by Trirogov
in his book, The Village Community and the Poll Tax,
St. Petersburg, 1882). Therefore, to take the individual as the
unit for comparisons, and to take no account of this diminution,
means artificially and falsely to identify the condition
of the “individual” in the large and in the small families. Incidentally,
the chart clearly shows that the well-to-do group of
peasants concentrate in their hands a far larger share of agricultural
production than would follow from a calculation
per head of population.