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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
175
III, 2, 323. Russ. trans., 651). The next form of rent is rent
in kind (Produktenrente), when the direct producer produces
the entire product on land which he himself exploits, and
gives up to the landowner the whole of the surplus product
in kind. The producer here becomes more independent and
is enabled to acquire by his labour a certain surplus over
and above the amount of produce that satisfies his indispensable
needs. “Similarly, this form” of rent “will give
rise to greater differences in the economic position of the
individual direct producers. At least the possibility for
such a differentiation exists, and the possibility for the
direct producer to have in turn acquired the means to exploit
other labourers directly” (S. 329. Russ. trans., 657.) 68
And so, while natural economy still prevails, at the very
first expansion of the independence of the dependent peasants,
there already appear the germs of their differentiation.
But these germs can develop only under the next
form of rent, money rent, which represents a mere change
in the form of rent in kind. The direct producer gives up
to the landowner not produce, but the price of this produce.*
The basis of this type of rent remains the same: the direct
producer is as hitherto the traditional possessor of the
land, but “the basis of this type of rent . . . is approaching
its dissolution” (330). Money rent “presupposes a considerable
development of commerce, of urban industry, of
commodity production in general, and thereby of money
circulation” (331). 69 any compensation from the feudal lord. . .” (Das Kapital,
The traditional, common-law relationship
between the dependent peasant and the landowner is
transformed here into a purely cash, contract-based
* A strict distinction must be drawn between money rent and
capitalist ground-rent the latter presupposes the existence in agriculture
of capitalists and wage-workers; the former the existence
of dependent peasants. Capitalist rent is that part of surplus-value
which remains after the deduction of the employer’s profit, whereas
money rent is the price of the entire surplus product paid by the peasant
to the landowner. An example of money rent in Russia is the
quitrent paid by the peasant to the landlord. Undoubtedly, the taxes
which our peasants now have to pay represent, in part, money rent.
Sometimes peasant renting of land also approximates to the paying
of money rent; that is when the high rent the peasant has to pay for
the land leaves him no more than a meagre wage.