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

166
Groups
on personal
consumption
V. I. LENIN
% of cash
Cash expenditure per farm S a m e i n % part in
(rubles) expenditure
on
on the farm
on taxes
and duties
Total
on personal
consumption
a) 39.16 7.66 15.47 62.29 62.9 12.3 24.8 100 49.8 50.6
b) 38.89 24.32 17.77 80.98 48.0 30.0 22.0 100 39.6 41.7
c) 76.79 56.35 32.02 165.16 46.5 34.1 19.4 100 34.0 46.4
d) 110.60 102.07 49.55 262.22 42.2 39.0 18.8 100 30.7 45.8
e) 190.84 181.12 67.90 439.86 43.4 41.2 15.4 100 38.0 52.0
f) 187.83 687.03 84.34 959.20 19.6 71.6 8.8 100 35.4 70.3
81.27 102.23 34.20 217.70 37.3 46.9 15.8 100 35.6 56.6
Consequently, the transformation of the peasantry into
a rural proletariat creates a market mainly for articles of
consumption, whereas its transformation into a rural bourgeoisie
creates a market mainly for means of production.
In other words, among the bottom groups of the “peasantry”
we observe the transformation of labour-power into a commodity,
and in the top ones the transformation of means
of production into capital. Both these transformations
result in precisely that process of the creation of a home market
which theory has established for capitalist countries
in general. That is why F. Engels, writing on the famine
of 1891, said that it signified the creation of a home market
for capitalism 63 —a proposition that is unintelligible to
the Narodniks, who regard the ruin of the peasantry merely
as the decay of “people’s production,” and not as the transformation
of patriarchal into capitalist economy.
Mr. N. —on has written a whole book on the home market,
without noticing the process of the creation of a home
market by the differentiation of the peasantry. In his
article “How Are We to Explain the Increase in Our State
Revenues?” (Novoye Slovo [New Word], 1896, No. 5, February)
he deals with this question in the following argument:
the tables of the income of the American worker
show that the lower the income, the larger is the relative
expenditure on food. Consequently, with a decline in food
on the farm
on taxes
and duties
Total
personal consumption
the farm