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

212
V. I. LENIN
between landlord and peasant farming) “and assist in achieving
a flourishing (sic!) condition of both peasant and private
farming” (Vol. V, Pt. I, pp. 175-176). It seems, then, that
the flourishing condition of the peasants consists in . . .
labour-service and bondage. They have no pastures or cattleruns
(Vol. II, pp. 60-61),—which does not prevent
Messrs. the Narodniks from regarding them as “sound” peasants—and
rent these grounds, for which they pay the
proprietress in work, performing “all the jobs on her
estate . . . thoroughly, punctually and promptly.”*
That is the limit in idealising an economic system which
is a direct survival of corvée service!
The methods employed in all such Narodnik reasoning are
very simple; we have only to forget that the allotment of
land to the peasant is one of the conditions of corvée or
labour-service economy, we have only to omit the circumstance
that this allegedly “independent” cultivator must render
labour-rent, rent in kind or money rent,—and we get the
“pure” idea of “the tie between the producer and the means of
production.” But the actual relation between capitalism and
pre-capitalist forms of exploitation does not change in the
least from the fact of simply omitting these forms.**
* Cf. Volgin, op. cit., pp. 280-281.
** “It is said that the spread of labour-service renting in place
of money renting ... is a retrogressive fact. But do we say that it is
desirable or beneficial? We ... have never asserted that it is progressive,”
stated Mr. Chuprov on behalf of all the authors of The Influence
of Harvests, etc. (see Verbatim Report of the Debates in the
F. E. S. of March 1 and 2, 1897, 88 p. 38) This statement is untrue
even formally, for Mr. Karyshev (see above) described labour-service
as “help” to the rural population. And in substance this statement
absolutely contradicts the actual content of all the Narodnik theories
with their idealisation of labour-service. It is to the great credit of
Messrs. T.-Baranovsky and Struve that they have correctly presented
the question (1897) of the significance of low grain prices: the criterion
for appraising them must be whether such prices promote the elimination
of labour-service by capitalism or not. Such a question is
obviously one of fact, and in answering it we differ somewhat from the
writers mentioned. On the basis of the data given in the text (see
particularly §VII of this chapter and also Chapter IV), we consider
it possible and even probable that the period of low grain prices will
be marked by a no less, if not more, rapid elimination of labourservice
by capitalism than was the preceding historical period of high
grain prices.