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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
185
the national economy of Russia. As regards peasant cultivation
the data reviewed above contain the reply, and an
affirmative reply, to this question. The ordinary Narodnik
view that the “kulak” and the “enterprising muzhik” are
not two forms of one and the same economic phenomenon,
but totally unconnected and opposite types of phenomena,
is absolutely without foundation. It is one of those Narodnik
prejudices which no one has ever even attempted to
prove by an analysis of precise economic data. The data
indicate the contrary. Whether the peasant hires workers
for the purpose of expanding production, whether he trades
in land (recall the data quoted above on the large scale of
land renting among the rich) or in groceries, or whether
he trades in hemp, hay, cattle, etc., or money (usurer),
he represents a single economic type, and his operations
amount, at bottom, to one and the same economic relation.
Furthermore, that in the Russian community village the
role of capital is not confined to bondage and usury, that
capital is also invested in production, is apparent from
the fact that the well-to-do peasant puts his money into
the improvement of his farm, into the purchase and renting
of land, the acquisition of improved implements, the
hiring of workers, etc., and not only into trading establishments
and undertakings (see above). If capital in our
countryside were incapable of creating anything but bondage
and usury, we could not, from the data on production,
establish the differentiation of the peasantry, the formation
of a rural bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat; the whole
of the peasantry would represent a fairly even type of
poverty-stricken cultivators, among whom only usurers would
stand out, and they only to the extent of money owned and
not to the extent and organisation of agricultural production.
Finally, from the above-examined data follows the
important proposition that the independent development
of merchant’s and usurer’s capital in our countryside retards
the differentiation of the peasantry. The further the development
of commerce proceeds, bringing the country closer to
the town, eliminating the primitive village markets and
undermining the monopoly of the village shopkeeper, and the
more there develop forms of credit that accord with European
standards, displacing the village usurer, the further