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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
229
Let us dwell on the first of these conclusions. We have seen
that the labour-service system of economy and the patriarchal
peasant economy inseparably connected with it are
by their very nature based on routine technique, on the
preservation of antiquated methods of production. There is
nothing in the internal structure of that economic regime to
stimulate the transformation of technique; on the contrary,
the secluded and isolated character of that system of economy,
and the poverty and downtrodden condition of the dependent
peasant preclude the possibility of improvements. In
particular, we would point to the fact that the payment of
labour under the labour-service system is much lower (as we
have seen) than where hired labour is employed; and it
is well known that low wages are one of the most important
obstacles to the introduction of machines. And the
facts do indeed show us that an extensive movement for the
transformation of agricultural technique only commenced in
the post-Reform period of the development of commodity
economy and capitalism. The competition that is the product
of capitalism, and the dependence of the cultivator on the
world market made the transformation of technique a necessity,
while the drop in grain prices made this necessity particularly
urgent.*
To explain the second conclusion, we must examine landlord
and peasant farming separately. When a landlord
introduces a machine or an improved implement, he
replaces the implements of the peasant (who has worked for
him) with his own; he goes over, consequently, from
labour-service to the capitalist system of farming. The spread
of agricultural machines means the elimination of labour-
* “In the past two years, under the influence of low grain prices
and of the need to cheapen agricultural jobs at all costs, reaping
machines have also ... begun to be so widely employed that depots are
unable to meet all requirements on time” (Tezyakov, loc cit., p. 71).
The present agricultural crisis is a capitalist crisis. Like all capitalist
crises, it ruins capitalist farmers and peasants in one locality,
in one country, in one branch of agriculture, and at the same time
gives a tremendous impulse to the development of capitalism in
another locality, in another country, in other branches of agriculture.
It is the failure to understand this fundamental feature of the
present crisis and of its economic nature that constitutes the main
error in the reasoning on this theme of Messrs. N. —on, Kablukov,
etc., etc.