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

186
V. I. LENIN
and deeper must the differentiation of the peasantry
proceed. The capital of the well-to-do peasants, forced
out of petty trade and usury, will flow more abundantly
into production, whither it is already beginning to
flow.
10) Another important phenomenon in the economy of
our countryside that retards the differentiation of the peasantry
is the survivals of corvée economy, i.e., labourservice.
Labour-service is based on the payment of labour
in kind, hence, on a poor development of commodity economy.
Labour-service presupposes and requires the middle
peasant, one who is not very affluent (otherwise he would
not agree to the bondage of labour-service) but is also not
a proletarian (to undertake labour-service one must have
one’s own implements, one must be at least in some
measure a “sound” peasant).
When we said above that the peasant bourgeoisie are the
masters of the contemporary countryside, we disregarded
the factors retarding differentiation: bondage, usury,
labour-service, etc. Actually, the real masters of the
contemporary countryside are often enough not the representatives
of the peasant bourgeoisie, but the village usurers
and the neighbouring landowners. It is, however, quite
legitimate to disregard them, for otherwise it is impossible
to study the internal system of economic relationships among
the peasantry. It is interesting to note that the Narodnik
also employs this procedure, only he stops half-way and
does not carry his reasoning to its logical conclusion.
Speaking of the burden of taxes, etc., in The Destiny of
Capitalism, Mr. V. V. observes that due to these reasons
“the conditions for a natural (sic!) life no longer exist” (287)
for the village community, for the “mir”. Excellent! But
the whole question is precisely: what are these “natural
conditions” that do not yet exist in our countryside? To
obtain a reply to this question one must study the system
of economic relationships within the village community,
lifting away, if one may so express it, the survivals of pre-
Reform times which obscure these “natural conditions”
of life in our countryside. Had Mr. V. V. done this, he
would have seen that this system of village relationships
reveals the absolute differentiation of the peasantry, that