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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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and of railway tariffs as to transform it from an item of
luxury into an item of consumption for the people (and
at points of production, into cattle feed). “Industrial melon
growing,” the entrepreneurs assure us, “is on the road to
further development; apart from high railway tariffs there
is no obstacle to its further growth. On the contrary, the
Tsaritsyn-Tikhoretskaya Railway now under construction
. . . opens a new and extensive area for industrial melon
growing.” Whatever the further destiny of this “industry”
may be, at any rate the history of the “melon crisis” is
very instructive, constituting a miniature picture, it is true,
but a very vivid one, of the capitalist evolution of agriculture.
We still have to say a few words about suburban farming.
The difference between it and the above-described types of
commercial agriculture is that in their case the entire farm
is adapted to some one chief market product. In the case of
suburban farming, however, the small cultivator trades in
bits of everything: he trades in his house by letting it to
summer tenants and permanent lodgers, in his yard, in his
horse and in all sorts of produce from his fields and farmyard:
grain, cattle feed, milk, meat, vegetables, berries, fish,
timber, etc.; he trades in his wife’s milk (baby-farming
near the capitals), he makes money by rendering the most
diverse (not always even mentionable) services to visiting
townsfolk,* etc., etc.** The complete transformation by
capitalism of the ancient type of patriarchal farmer, the
complete subjugation of the latter to the “power of money”
is expressed here so vividly that the suburban peasant is
usually put in a separate category by the Narodnik who
says that he is “no longer a peasant.” But the difference
between this type and all preceding types is only one of form.
The political and economic essence of the all-round transfor-
* Cf. Uspensky, A Village Diary.
** Let us refer, in illustration, to the above-quoted Material
on peasant farming in Petersburg Uyezd. The most varied types
of petty traffic have here assumed the form of “industries”; summerletting,
boarding, milk-selling, vegetable-selling, berry-selling, “horse
employments,” baby-farming, crayfish-catching, fishing, etc. Exactly
similar are the industries of the suburban peasants of Tula Uyezd:
see article by Mr. Borisov in Vol. IX of Transactions of the Commission
of Inquiry into Handicraft Industry.