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

270
V. I. LENIN
but generic (res fungibilis, 97 as the lawyers say), i.e.,
for the first time they adapt it fully to exchange (cf. M. Sering’s
article on the grain trade in the United States of
America in the symposium Landownership and Agriculture,
p. 281 and foll.). Thus, the elevators give a powerful impetus
to commodity-grain production and spur on its technical
development by also introducing grading for quality. Such
a system strikes a double blow at the small producer. Firstly,
it sets up as a standard, legalises, the higher-quality grain
of the big crop sowers and thereby greatly depreciates the
inferior grain of the peasant poor. Secondly, by organising
the grading and storing of grain on the lines of large-scale
capitalist industry, it reduces the big sowers’ expenses on
this item and facilitates and simplifies the sale of grain for
them, thereby placing the small producer, with his patriarchal
and primitive methods of selling from the cart in the
market, totally at the mercy of the kulaks and the usurers.
Hence, the rapid development of elevator construction in
recent years means as big a victory for capital and degradation
of the small commodity-producer in the grain business
as does the appearance and development of capitalist “amalgamated
dairies.”
From the foregoing material it is clear that the development
of commercial stock farming creates a home
market,* firstly, for means of production—milk-processing
equipment, premises, cattle sheds, improved agricultural
implements required for the change-over from the routine
three-field system to multi-field crop rotations, etc.; and
secondly, for labour-power. Stock farming placed on an
industrial footing requires a far larger number of workers
* The market for commercial stock farming is created chiefly
by the growth of the industrial population, with which we shall
deal in detail later on (Chapter VIII, §II). As regards foreign trade,
let us confine ourselves to the following remarks: cheese exports in
the early part of the post-Reform period were much below imports;
but in the 90s they almost equalled them (for the 4 years 1891-1894,
the annual average imports amounted to 41,800 poods, and exports
to 40,600 poods; in the five years 1886-1890, exports even exceeded
imports). The exports of cow and ewe butter have always greatly
exceeded imports; these exports are rapidly increasing: in 1866-1870
the average annual exports amounted to 190,000 poods and in 1891-
1894 to 370,000 poods (Productive Forces, III, 37).