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

198
V. I. LENIN
Having established the fundamental fact that the
whole variety of forms of contemporary landlord farming
amounts to two systems—the labour-service and the capitalist
systems, in various combinations, we shall now
proceed to give an economic description of the two systems
and determine which of them is eliminating the other under
the influence of the whole course of economic evolution.
III. DESCRIPTION OF THE LABOUR-SERVICE SYSTEM
Labour-service, as has already been observed above,
is of exceedingly varied types. Sometimes peasants undertake
for a money payment to cultivate with their own
implements the fields of the landowner—so-called “job-hire,”
“dessiatine employments,”* cultivation of “cycles”** 85
(i.e., one dessiatine of spring crop and one of winter crop),
etc. Sometimes the peasant borrows grain or money, undertaking
to work off either the entire loan or the interest
on it.*** Under this form a feature peculiar to the labourservice
system in general stands out with great clarity—
the bondage, the usurious character of this sort of hire of
labour. In some cases the peasants work “for trespass”
(i.e., undertake to work off the legally established fine
for cattle trespass), or work simply “out of respect” (cf.
Engelhardt, loc. cit., 56), i.e., gratis, or just for a drink,
so as not to lose other “employments” by the landowner. Lastly,
labour-service in return for land is very widespread in
the shape either of half-cropping or directly of work for
land rented, for grounds used, etc.
Very often the payment for rented land assumes the
most diverse forms, which sometimes are even combined,
so that side by side with money rent we find rent in kind
and “labour-service.” Here are a couple of examples: for
every dessiatine, 12 dess. to be cultivated# 10 eggs#
* Statistical Returns for Ryazan Gubernia.
** Engelhardt, loc. cit.
*** Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Vol. V, Pt. I,
Moscow, 1879, pp, 186-189. We give these references only as an illustration.
A mass of similar information is to be found in all the
literature on peasant and private-landowner farming.