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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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cases, the old system merely implies stagnation in the forms
of production (and, consequently, in all social relations),
and the domination of the Asiatic way of life. In both
cases, the new, capitalist forms of economy constitute
enormous progress, despite all the contradictions inherent
in them.
IV. THE DECLINE OF THE LABOUR-SERVICE SYSTEM
The question now arises: in what relation does the labourservice
system stand to the post-Reform economy of
Russia?
First of all, the growth of commodity economy conflicts
with the labour-service system, since the latter is based on
natural economy, on unchanging technique, on inseparable
ties between the landlord and the peasant. That is why this
system is totally impracticable in its complete form, and
every advance in the development of commodity economy
and commercial agriculture undermines the conditions of
its practicability.
Next we must take account of the following circumstance.
From the foregoing it follows that labour-service, as practised
in present-day landlord farming, should be divided
into two types: 1) labour-service that can only be performed
by a peasant farmer who owns draught animals and
implements (e.g., cultivation of “cycle dessiatine,” ploughing,
etc.), and 2) labour-service that can be performed
by a rural proletarian who has no implements (for example,
reaping, mowing, threshing, etc.). It is obvious that for
both peasant and landlord farming, the first and the second
type of labour-service are of opposite significance, and that
the latter type constitutes a direct transition to capitalism,
merging with it by a number of quite imperceptible transitions.
In our literature labour-service is usually referred
to in general, without this distinction being made. Yet in
the process of the elimination of labour-service by capitalism
the shifting of the centre of gravity from the first type of
labour-service to the second is of enormous importance.
Here is an example from Statistical Returns for Moscow
Gubernia: “On the majority of the estates . . . the cultivation
of the fields and the crops, i.e., the jobs on the careful