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

170
V. I. LENIN
standard of living, this group should be assigned to the
allotment-holding farm labourers and day labourers.*
In thus concluding our exposition of the Zemstvo statistics
on peasant budgets, we cannot but stop to examine
the methods of treating the budget data employed by
Mr. Shcherbina, the compiler of Evaluation Returns and
author of the article on peasant budgets in the well-known
book The Influence of Harvests and Grain Prices, etc. (Vol.
II). 64 Mr. Shcherbina states on some point in the Returns
that he is using the theory “of the well-known political
economist K. Marx” (p. 111); as a matter of fact, he positively
distorts this theory, confusing the difference between
constant and variable capital with the difference between
fixed and circulating capital (ibid.), and quite senselessly
applying these terms and categories of developed capitalism
to peasant farming (passim), etc. The whole of
Mr. Shcherbina’s treatment of the budget figures is nothing
but a gross and incredible abuse of “average magnitudes.”
All the evaluation returns concern the “average” peasant.
The income from the land computed for the 4 uyezds is
divided by the number of farms (recall that for the horseless
peasant this income is about 60 rubles per family, and for
the rich peasant about 700 rubles). The “magnitude of constant
capital” (sic!!?) “per farm” (p. 114), i.e., the value
of the whole property, is determined; the “average” value
of implements, the average value of commercial and
industrial establishments (sic!) is determined as 15 rubles
per farm. Mr. Shcherbina ignores the detail that these
establishments are the private property of the well-to-do
minority, and divides them among all “equally”! The “average”
expenditure on the renting of land (p. 118) is determined;
* The Narodniks will probably draw from our comparison between
the standard of living of farm labourers and that of the bottom group
of the peasantry, the conclusion that we “stand for” dispossessing the
peasantry of the land, etc. Such a conclusion will be a wrong one.
All that follows from what has been said is that we “stand for” abolishing
all restrictions on the peasants’ right freely to dispose of their
land, to give up their allotments, and to leave the village community.
Only the peasant himself can be the judge of whether it is more advantageous
to be a farm labourer with an allotment or without one.
Hence such restrictions can on no account and in no way be justified.
The defence of these restrictions by the Narodniks, on the other hand,
turns the latter into servants of the interests of our agrarians.