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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
145
population, approximately �), the well-to-do minority
employ permanent farm labourers and day labourers on the
biggest scale. Of the total number of Russian peasant farms
that resort to the hiring of labourers, a considerable majority
should be those of this well-to-do minority. We are
justified in drawing this conclusion both on the basis of
the preceding analysis and from a comparison between the
proportion of the population represented by this group
and the share it has of the total number of draught animals,
and hence of the cultivated area, of farming in general.
Lastly, only this well-to-do minority can take a steady
part in the “progressive trends in peasant farming.” 54
Such should be the relation between this minority and the
rest of the peasantry; but it goes without saying that this
relation assumes different forms and manifests itself in other
ways depending on differences in agrarian conditions, systems
of farming and forms of commercial agriculture.*
The main trends of peasant differentiation are one thing;
the forms it assumes, depending on the different local conditions,
are another.
The position of the horseless and one-horse peasants
is the very opposite. We have seen above that the Zemstvo
statisticians put even the latter (to say nothing of the former)
in the category of the rural proletariat. Thus, we hardly
exaggerate in our approximate calculation, which places
in the category of the rural proletariat all the horseless
and up to w of the one-horse peasants (about half the total
households). These peasants, who are worst provided with
allotment land, often lease out their allotments because
of lack of implements, seed, etc. Of the total peasantrented
and purchased land theirs are but miserable scraps.
Their farms will never yield enough for subsistence, and
their main source of livelihood is “industries” or “employments,”
i.e., the sale of their labour-power. These are a class
of wage-workers with allotments, permanent farm labourers,
day labourers, unskilled labourers, building workers, etc., etc.
* It is quite possible, for example, that in dairy-farming districts
it would be much more correct to classify according to the number
of cows held and not according to the number of horses. Where market
gardening prevails, neither index can be satisfactory, etc.