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

316
V. I. LENIN
community by the difference in the categories to which
they belonged (former landowners’ peasants, former state
peasants, etc.), by differences in the size of their
holdings—by differences in the terms on which their
emancipation took place (which terms were sometimes
determined simply by the individual attributes of the landlords
and by their whims). Capitalism for the first time
broke down these purely medieval barriers—and it was a
very good thing that it did. Now the differences between
the various grades of peasants, between the various categories
based on the size of allotment holdings, are far less
important than the economic differences within each grade,
each category and each village community. Capitalism
destroys local seclusion and insularity, and replaces the
minute medieval divisions among cultivators by a major
division, embracing the whole nation, that divides them into
classes occupying different positions in the general system
of capitalist economy.* The mass of cultivators were formerly
tied to their place of residence by the very conditions
of production, whereas the creation of diverse forms and
diverse areas of commercial and capitalist agriculture
could not but cause the movement of enormous masses of
the population throughout the country; and unless the
population is mobile (as we have said above) there can be
no question of developing its understanding and initiative.
Fourthly, and lastly, agricultural capitalism in Russia
for the first time cut at the root of labour-service and the
personal dependency of the farmer. This system of
labour-service has held undivided sway in our agriculture
from the days of Russkaya Pravda** down to the presentday
cultivation of the fields of private landowners with the
* “The need for association, for organisation in capitalist society,
has not diminished but, on the contrary, has grown immeasurably.
But it is utterly absurd to measure this need of the new society with
the old yardstick. This new society is already demanding firstly,
that the association shall not be according to locality, social-estate
or category; secondly, that its starting-point shall be the difference
in status and interests that has been created by capitalism and by
the differentiation of the peasantry.” [V. Ilyin, loc. cit., pp. 91-92,
footnote. (See present edition, Vol. 2, “A Characterisation of
Economic Romanticism.”—Ed.)]
** Russian Law.—Ed.