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

298
V. I. LENIN
autumn (“from end to end”). The pulp is used as cattle feed,
and the owner intends to use the waste water for his fields.
Mr. Y. Prugavin assures us that this works enjoys “quite
exceptional conditions.” Of course, in any capitalist society
the rural bourgeoisie will always constitute a very small
minority of the rural population, and in this sense will,
if you like, be an “exception.” But this term will not eliminate
the fact that in the starch-making area, as in all the
other commercial farming areas in Russia, a class of rural
entrepreneurs is being formed, who are organising capitalist
agriculture.*
4) V e g e t a b l e - O i l P r o d u c t i o n
The extraction of oil from linseed, hemp, sunflower and
other seeds is also frequently an agricultural industry. One
can gauge the development of vegetable-oil production
in the post-Reform period from the fact that in 1864 the
vegetable-oil output had an estimated value of 1,619,000
rubles, in 1879 of 6,486,000 rubles, and in 1890 of 12,232,000
rubles.** In this branch of production, too, a double process
of development is to be observed: on the one hand, small
peasant (and sometimes also landlord) oil presses producing
oil for sale are established in the villages. On the
other hand, large steam-driven works develop, which concentrate
production and oust the small establishments.*** Here
* As a matter of interest, let us mention that both Mr. Prugavin
(loc. cit., 107), the author of the description of the Moscow
industry (loc. cit., 45), and Mr. V. V. (Essays on Handicraft Industry,
127), have discerned the “artel principle” in the fact that some grating
establishments belong to several owners. Our sharp-eyed Narodniks
have contrived to observe a special “principle” in the association of
rural entrepreneurs, and have failed to see any new social-economic
“principles” in the very existence and development of a class of rural
entrepreneurs.
** Returns and Material of the Ministry of Finance, 1866, no. 4,
Orlov’s Directory, 1st and 3rd editions. We do not give figures for the
number of establishments because our factory statistics confuse small
agricultural oil-pressing establishments with big industrial ones, at
times including the former, and at others not including them for
different gubernias at different times. In the 1860s, for example, a
host of small oil presses were included in the category of “works.”
*** For example, in 1890, 11 works out of 383 had an output
valued at 7,170,000 rubles out of 12,232,000 rubles. This victory of
the industrial over the rural entrepreneurs is causing profound