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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
267
separating cream in centrifugal machines (separators);* The
machine has enabled the work to be carried on irrespective
of atmospheric temperature, increased the butter yield from
milk by 10%, improved the quality of the product, reduced
the cost of butter production (the machine requires less
labour, space, and ice, as well as fewer utensils), and has led
to the concentration of production. Large peasant butteries
have grown up, handling “as much as 500 poods of milk a
day, which was physically impossible . . . when the milk
was left to settle” (ibid.). Improvements are being made in
the instruments of production (permanent boilers, screw
presses, improved cellars), and production is being assisted
by bacteriology, which is providing pure cultures of the type
of lactic-acid bacilli needed for fermenting cream.
Thus, in the two areas of commercial farming we have
described, the technical improvements called into being by
the requirements of the market were effected primarily in
those operations that were easiest to change and are particularly
important for the market: reaping, threshing and
winnowing in commercial grain farming, and the technical
processing of animal produce in the area of commercial
stock farming. As to the keeping of cattle, capital finds it
more profitable for the time being to leave that to the small
producer: let him “diligently” and “industriously” tend “his”
cattle (and charm Mr. V. V. with his diligence—see Progressive
Trends, p. 73), let him bear the brunt of the hardest
and roughest work of tending the milk-yielding machine.
Capital possesses the latest improvements and methods not
only of separating the cream from the milk, but also of
separating the “cream” from this “diligence”, of separating
the milk from the children of the peasant poor.
IV. CONTINUATION. THE ECONOMY OF LANDLORD FARMING
IN THE AREA DESCRIBED
We have cited the evidence of agronomists and
farmers to the effect that dairy farming on the landlord
estates leads to the rationalisation of agriculture. Let us
* Until 1882 there were hardly any separators in Russia. From
1886 onward they spread so rapidly as to displace the old method
utterly. In the 1890s even butter-extractor separators appeared.