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

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

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA<br />

peasant and private-landowner farming under a great<br />

variety <strong>of</strong> agricultural conditions.<br />

Let us now examine the conclusions that follow from all<br />

the data given above.<br />

1) The main feature <strong>of</strong> the post-Reform evolution <strong>of</strong> agriculture<br />

is its growing commercial, entrepreneur character.<br />

As regards private-landowner farming, this fact is so<br />

obvious as <strong>to</strong> require no special explanation. As regards peasant<br />

farming, however, it is not so easily established, firstly,<br />

because the employment <strong>of</strong> hired labour is not an absolutely<br />

essential feature <strong>of</strong> the small rural bourgeoisie. As<br />

we have observed above, this category includes every small<br />

commodity-producer who covers his expenditure by independent<br />

farming, provided the general system <strong>of</strong> economy<br />

is based on the capitalist contradictions examined in Chapter<br />

II. Secondly, the small rural bourgeois (in Russia, as<br />

in other capitalist countries) is connected by a number <strong>of</strong><br />

transitional stages with the small-holding “peasant,” and<br />

with the rural proletarian who has been allotted a patch<br />

<strong>of</strong> land. This circumstance is one <strong>of</strong> the reasons for the<br />

viability <strong>of</strong> the theories which do not distinguish the<br />

existence <strong>of</strong> a rural bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat among<br />

“the peasantry.”*<br />

2) <strong>From</strong> the very nature <strong>of</strong> agriculture its transformation<br />

in<strong>to</strong> commodity production proceeds in a special way, unlike<br />

the corresponding process in industry. Manufacturing<br />

industry splits up in<strong>to</strong> separate, quite independent branches,<br />

each devoted exclusively <strong>to</strong> the manufacture <strong>of</strong> one product<br />

or one part <strong>of</strong> a product. The agricultural industry,<br />

however, does not split up in<strong>to</strong> quite separate branches,<br />

but merely specialises in one market product in one case,<br />

and in another market product in another, all the other<br />

aspects <strong>of</strong> agriculture being adapted <strong>to</strong> this principal (i.e.,<br />

market) product. That is why the forms <strong>of</strong> commercial<br />

agriculture show immense diversity, varying not only in<br />

* The favourite proposition <strong>of</strong> the Narodnik economists that “Russian<br />

peasant farming is in the majority <strong>of</strong> cases purely natural economy”<br />

is, incidentally, built up by ignoring this fact. (The Influence<br />

<strong>of</strong> Harvests and Grain Prices, I, 52.) One has but <strong>to</strong> take “average”<br />

figures, which lump <strong>to</strong>gether both the rural bourgeoisie and the rural<br />

proletariat—and this proposition will pass as proved!<br />

311

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