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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
179
small-holding peasant), or whether he is only allowed
the use of it by the landlord or the Rittergutsbesitzer,*
or, finally, whether he possesses it as a member of a Great-
Russian peasant community—makes no difference at all.**
In assigning the indigent peasants to the rural proletariat
we are saying nothing new. This term has already been
used repeatedly by many writers, and only the Narodnik
economists persist in speaking of the peasantry in general,
as of something anti-capitalist, and close their eyes
to the fact that the mass of the “peasantry” have already
taken a quite definite place in the general system of capitalist
production, namely, as agricultural and industrial
wage-workers. In our country, people are very fond of
singing the praises of our agrarian system, which retains
the village community and the peasantry, etc., and of
contrasting this to the Ostsee system, with its capitalist
organisation of agriculture. It will not be without interest,
therefore, to see what types of the agricultural population
in the Ostsee region 72 are sometimes assigned to the class
of farm labourers and day labourers. The peasants in the
Ostsee gubernias are divided into those with large plots
(25 to 50 dess. in separate lots), cottagers (with plots of
3 to 10 dess.) and landless peasants. As Mr. S. Korolenko
* Lord of the manor.—Ed.
** Let us quote examples of the various European forms of wagelabour
in agriculture from the Handwört der Staatswiss. (Landownership
and Agriculture, Moscow, 1896). “The peasants’ holding,”
says J. Conrad, “must be distinguished from the parcel, from the patch
of the ‘landless peasant’ or the ‘market gardener,’ the owner of which
is obliged to seek additionally outside occupation and employment”
(pp. 83-84). “In France, according to the 1881 census, 18 million persons,
i.e., somewhat less than half the population, obtained their
livelihood in agriculture about 9 million owners of land, 5 million
tenant farmers and half-croppers, 4 million day labourers and owners
of small plots, or tenants obtaining their livelihood mainly by wage-
labour. . . . It is assumed that at least 75% of the agricultural labourers
in France have their own land” (p. 233, Goltz). In Germany, the rural
workers include the following categories who possess land: 1) cottars,
cottagers, gardeners [something like our gift-land peasants];
2) contract day labourers; they possess land, and hire themselves out
for a definite part of the year [cf. our “three-dayers”]. 71 “Contract
day labourers constitute the bulk of the agricultural labourers in
those parts of Germany where big landed property predominates”
(p. 236); 3) agricultural labourers who do their farming on rented
land (p. 237).