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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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seen, is merely labour-service and bonded hire), is everywhere,
as a general rule, more costly than money rent, very
much more costly (ibid., p. 350), sometimes twice as much
(ibid., 356, Rzhev Uyezd, Tver Gubernia). Secondly, rent
in kind is developed to the greatest degree among the poorest
groups of peasants (ibid., 261 and foll.). This is renting
from dire need, “renting” by the peasant who is no longer
able to resist his conversion, in this way, into an agricultural
wage-worker. The well-to-do peasants do what they
can to rent land for money. “The tenant takes advantage
of every opportunity to pay his rent in money, and thus
to reduce the cost of using other people’s land” (ibid.,
265)—and we would add, not only to reduce the cost of
renting the land, but also to escape bonded hire. In Rostovon-Don
Uyezd the remarkable fact was even observed
of money rent being abandoned in favour of skopshchina, 86
as rents went up, despite a drop in the peasants’ share of the
harvest (ibid., p. 266). The significance of rent in kind,
which utterly ruins the peasant and turns him into a farm
labourer, is quite clearly illustrated by this fact.* Thirdly,
* The summary of the latest data on land renting (Mr. Karyshev
in the book: The Influence of Harvests, etc., Vol 1) has fully confirmed
the fact that it is only want that compels peasants to rent land on a
half-crop or a labour-service basis, and that the well-to-do peasants
prefer to rent land for money (pp. 317-320), as rent in kind is everywhere
incomparably more costly for the peasant than in cash (pp.
342-346). All these facts, however, have not prevented Mr. Karyshev
from presenting the situation as though “the poor peasant ... is better
able to satisfy his need for food by slightly extending his crop area
to other people’s land on a half-crop basis” (321). Such are the fantastic
ideas to which a bias in favour of “natural economy” can lead one!
It has been proved that the payment of rent in kind is more costly
than payment in cash, that it constitutes a sort of truck-system in
agriculture, that the peasant is completely ruined and turned into a
farm labourer—and yet our economist talks of improving “food”!
Half-crop payment for rent, if you please, “helps ... the needy section
of the rural population to obtain” land by renting it (320). Our
economist here calls it “help” to obtain land on the worst conditions,
on the condition that the peasant is turned into a farm labourer. The
question arises: what is the difference between the Russian Narodniks
and the Russian agrarians, who always have been and always are
ready to render the “needy section of the rural population” this kind
of “help”? By the way, here is an interesting example. In Khotin
Uyezd, Bessarabia Gubernia, the average daily earnings of a halfcropper
are estimated at 60 kopeks, and a day labourer in the summer