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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
193
condition for such a system of economy was the personal
dependence of the peasant on the landlord. If the landlord
had not possessed direct power over the person of the peasant,
he could not have compelled a man who had a plot of land
and ran his own farm to work for him. Hence, “other than
economic pressure,” as Marx says in describing this economic
regime, was necessary (and, as has already been indicated
above, Marx assigned it to the category of labour-rent;
Das Kapital, III, 2, 324). 81 The form and degree of this
coercion may be the most varied, ranging from the peasant’s
serf status to his lack of rights in the social estates. Fourthly,
and finally, a condition and a consequence of the system
of economy described was the extremely low and stagnant
condition of technique, for farming was in the hands of
small peasants, crushed by poverty and degraded by personal
dependence and by ignorance.
II. THE COMBINATION OF THE CORVÉE AND
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEMS OF ECONOMY
The corvée system of economy was undermined by the
abolition of serfdom. All the main foundations of this
system were undermined: natural economy, the selfcontained
and the self-sufficient character of the landed estate,
the close connection between its various constituents, and
the landlord’s power over the peasants. The peasant’s farm
was separated from that of the landlord; the peasant was
to buy back his land and become the full owner of it; the
landlord, to adopt the capitalist system of farming, which,
as has just been observed, has a diametrically opposite
basis. But such a transition to a totally different system
could not, of course, take place at once, and for two different
reasons. First, the conditions required for capitalist
production did not yet exist. A class of people was required
who were accustomed to work for hire; the peasants’ implements
had to be replaced by those of the landlord; agriculture
had to be organised on the same lines as any
other commercial and industrial enterprise and not as the
business of the lord. All these conditions could only
take shape gradually, and the attempts of some landlords,