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

244
V. I. LENIN
North Caucasus, of the towns of Ekaterinodar and Novorossiisk,
Tikhoretskaya Station, and other places. In
Samara Gubernia, of the village of Pokrovskaya (opposite
Saratov), the village of Balakovo and other places. In Saratov
Gubernia, of the towns of Khvalynsk and Volsk. In Simbirsk
Gubernia, of the town of Syzran. Thus, capitalism has
created in the outer regions a new form of the “combination of
agriculture with industries,” namely, the combination of
agricultural and non-agricultural hired labour. Such a
combination is possible on a wide scale only in the period of
the final and highest stage of capitalism, that of large-scale
machine industry, which attenuates the importance of skill,
of “hand labour,” facilitates the transition from one occupation
to another, and levels the forms of hire.*
Indeed, the forms of hire in this locality are very peculiar
and very characteristic of capitalist agriculture. All the
semi-patriarchal, semi-bonded forms of hired labour which
one so frequently meets in the central black-earth belt
disappear here. The only relationships left are those
between hirers and hired, a commercial transaction for the
purchase and sale of labour-power. As always under developed
capitalist relations, the workers prefer hire by the day, or
by the week, which enables them to make the pay correspond
more exactly to the demand for labour. “Prices are fixed
for the area of each market (within a radius of about 40
versts) with mathematical precision, and it is very hard
for the employers to beat down the price, because the
muzhik who has come to the market prefers to lie around
or go on to another place rather than work for lower pay”
(Shakhovskoi, 104). It goes without saying that violent
fluctuations in prices paid for labour cause innumerable
breaches of contract—only not on one side, as the employers
usually claim, but on both sides: “concerted action is
taken by both sides”: the labourers agree among themselves
* Mr. Shakhovskoi refers to another form of the combination of
agricultural and non-agricultural labour. Thousands of rafts are floated
down the Dnieper to the towns in the lower reaches of the river. On
every raft there are from 15 to 20 workers (raftsmen), mostly Byelorussians
and Great-Russians from Orel Gubernia. “For the whole
voyage they get practically nothing”; they count chiefly on getting
employment at reaping and threshing. These hopes are rewarded
only in “good” years.