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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
269
butter making is not confined to the farms on which they are
carried on, since milk is often bought up from the surrounding
peasants and landlords. By buying up the milk, capital
subordinates to itself the small agriculturists too, particularly
with the organisation of the so-called “amalgamated
dairies,” the spread of which was noted in the 70s (see
Sketch by Messrs. Kovalevsky and Levitsky). These are
establishments organised in big towns, or in their vicinity,
which process very large quantities of milk brought in by
rail. As soon as the milk arrives the cream is skimmed and
sold fresh, while the skimmed milk is sold at a low price to
poorer purchasers. To ensure that they get produce of a
certain quality, these establishments sometimes conclude
contracts with the suppliers, obliging them to adhere to
certain rules in feeding their cows. One can easily see how
great is the significance of large establishments of this kind:
on the one hand they capture the public market (the sale
of skimmed milk to the poorer town-dwellers), and on the
other hand they enormously expand the market for the
rural entrepreneurs. The latter are given a tremendous
impetus to expand and improve commercial farming. Largescale
industry brings them into line, as it were, by
demanding produce of a definite quality and forcing out of the
market (or placing at the mercy of the usurers) the small
producer who falls below the “normal” standard. There
should also operate in the same direction the grading of
milk as to quality (fat content, for example), on which technicians
are so busily engaged, inventing all sorts of lactodensimeters,
etc., and of which the experts are so heartily
in favour (cf. Productive Forces, III, 9 and 38). In this
respect the role of the amalgamated dairies in the development
of capitalism is quite analogous to that of elevators in
commercial grain farming. By sorting grain as to quality
the elevators turn it into a product that is not individual
etc.; in all the [cheese] factories these workers outnumber the cheese
makers proper, two, three and even four times over.” Let us note in
passing that according to Dr. Zhbankov’s description, the conditions
of labour here are very insanitary, and the working day is excessively
long (16 to 17 hours), etc. Thus, in the case of this area of commercial
agriculture, too, the traditional notion of the idyllic occupation of
the agriculturist is a false one.