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

214
V. I. LENIN
“Only then is account taken of labour-power as a necessary factor
in acting upon nature; without this factor all organisation of the
landlord’s estate will be fruitless. Thus, with all appreciation of its
significance, this element, at the same time, is not regarded as an
independent source of income, as was the case under serfdom, or as
is the case now in those instances when what is made the basis of the
estate’s profitability is not the product of labour, the obtaining of
which is the direct purpose of its application, not the striving to
apply this labour to the production of its more valuable products
and thereby to enjoy its results, but the striving to reduce the share
of the product which the worker gets for himself, the desire to reduce
the cost of labour to the master as near as possible to zero” (p. 186).
Reference is made to farming based on labour in return for the use
of cut-off lands. “Under these circumstances, for a farm to be profitable
the owner requires neither knowledge nor special qualities. All that
is obtained from this labour represents clear income for the owner,
or at all events such income as is obtained almost without any
expenditure of circulating capital. But such farming cannot, of course,
be well conducted and cannot be called farming in the strict sense
of the term, any more than the leasing of all pasture and other grounds
can be called such; there is no economic organisation here” (186).
And quoting examples of the leasing of cut-off lands in return for
labour-service, the author concludes: “The main emphasis in the farm
economy, the manner of extracting an income from the soil, is rooted
in the exertion of influence upon the worker rather than upon matter
and its forces” (189).
This argument is an extremely interesting example of
how distorted is the picture of actual facts when viewed from
the angle of a wrong theory. Mr. Kablukov confuses production
with the social system of production. Under every
social system production consists in “the exertion of influence”
upon matter and its forces. Under every social system
only the surplus product can be the landowner’s source of
“income.” In both respects the labour-service system of
economy is fully identical with the capitalist system,
Mr. Kablukov’s opinion notwithstanding. The real difference
between them is that labour-service necessarily presupposes
the lowest productivity of labour; hence, no possibility
exists for increasing income by increasing the surplus product;
that can only be done by one means, namely, by
employing all sorts of bonded forms of hire. Under purely capitalist
economy, on the contrary, bonded forms of hire must
go by the board, for the proletarian, not being tied to the
land, is useless as an object of bondage;—to raise the
productivity of labour becomes not only possible, but also