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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
231
dictions. Machines enormously increase the productivity
of labour in agriculture, which, before the present epoch,
was almost entirely untouched by social development. That
is why the mere fact of the growing employment of
machines in Russian agriculture is sufficient to enable one to
see how utterly unsound is Mr. N. —on’s assertion that
there is “absolute stagnation” (Sketches, p. 32) in grain
production in Russia, and that there is even a “decline in
the productivity” of agricultural labour. We shall return
to this assertion, which contradicts generally established
facts and which Mr. N. —on needed for his idealisation
of the pre-capitalist order.
Further, machines lead to the concentration of production
and to the practice of capitalist co-operation in agriculture.
The introduction of machinery, on the one hand,
calls for capital on a big scale, and consequently is only
within the capacity of the big farmers; on the other hand,
machines pay only when there is a huge amount of products
to be dealt with; the expansion of production becomes a
necessity with the introduction of machines. The wide use
of reaping machines, steam-threshers, etc., is therefore
indicative of the concentration of agricultural production—
and we shall indeed see later that the Russian agricultural
region where the employment of machines is particularly
widespread (Novorossia) is also distinguished by the quite
considerable size of its farms. Let us merely observe that
it would be a mistake to conceive the concentration of
agriculture in just the one form of extensive enlargement
of the crop area (as Mr. N. —on does); as a matter of fact,
the concentration of agricultural production manifests itself
in the most diverse forms, depending on the forms of commercial
agriculture (see next chapter on this point). The
concentration of production is inseparably connected with
the extensive co-operation of workers on the farm. Above
we saw an example of a large estate on which the grain
was harvested by setting hundreds of reaping machines
into operation simultaneously. “Threshers drawn by 4 to
8 horses require from 14 to 23 and even more workers, half
of whom are women and boys, i.e., semi-workers. . . . The
8 to 10 h. p. steam-threshers to be found on all large farms”
(of Kherson Gubernia), “require simultaneously from 50