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

230
V. I. LENIN
service by capitalism. It is possible, of course, that a condition
laid down, for example, for the leasing of land is the
performance of labour-service in the shape of day-work at
a reaping machine, thresher, etc., but this will be labourservice
of the second type, labour-service which converts
the peasant into a day labourer. Such “exceptions,” consequently,
merely go to prove the general rule that the introduction
of improved implements on the farms of private
landowners means converting the bonded (“independent”
according to Narodnik terminology) peasant into a wage-worker—in
exactly the same way as the acquisition of his own
instruments of production by the buyer-up, who gives out
work to be done in the home, means converting the bonded
“handicraftsman” into a wage-worker. The acquisition by the
landlord farm of its own implements leads inevitably to the
undermining of the middle peasantry, who get means of subsistence
by engaging in labour-service: We have already seen
that labour-service is the specific “industry” of the middle
peasant, whose implements, consequently, are a component
part not only of peasant, but also of landlord, farming.*
Hence, the spread of agricultural machinery and improved
implements and the expropriation of the peasantry are
inseparably connected. That the spread of improved implements
among the peasantry is of the same significance hardly
requires explanation after what has been said in the
preceding chapter. The systematic employment of machinery
in agriculture ousts the patriarchal “middle” peasant
as inexorably as the steam-power loom ousts the handicraft
weaver.
The results of the employment of machinery in agriculture
confirm what has been said, and reveal all the typical
features of capitalist progress with all its inherent contra-
* Mr. V. V. expresses this truth (that the existence of the middle
peasant is largely conditioned by the existence of the labour-service
system of farming among the landlords) in the following original way:
“the owner shares, so to speak, the cost of maintaining his (the peasant’s)
implements.” “It appears,” says Mr. Sanin, in a just comment
on this, “that it is not the labourer who works for the landowner,
but the landowner who works for the labourer.” A. Sanin, Some
Remarks on the Theory of People’s Production, in the appendix to the
Russian translation of Hourwich’s Economics of the Russian Village,
Moscow, 1896, p. 47.