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

318
V. I. LENIN
we do not in the least forget either the historically transient
character of this economic regime or the profound
social contradictions inherent in it. On the contrary, we
have shown above that it is precisely the Narodniks who,
capable only of bewailing the “destructive work” of capitalism,
give an extremely superficial appraisal of these
contradictions, glossing over the differentiation of the peasantry,
ignoring the capitalist character of the employment
of machinery in our agriculture, and covering up with such
expressions as “agricultural industries” and “employments”
the emergence of a class of agricultural wage-workers.
X. NARODNIK THEORIES ON CAPITALISM IN AGRICULTURE.
“THE FREEING OF WINTER TIME”
The foregoing positive conclusions regarding the significance
of capitalism must be supplemented by an examination
of certain special “theories” on this question current
in our literature. Our Narodniks in most cases have been
totally unable to digest Marx’s fundamental views on agricultural
capitalism. The more candid among them have
bluntly declared that Marx’s theory does not cover agriculture
(Mr. V. V. in Our Trends), while others (like Mr. N. —on)
have preferred diplomatically to evade the question of
the relation between their “postulates” and Marx’s theory.
One of the postulates most widespread among the Narodnik
economists is the theory of “the freeing of winter time.”
The essence of it is as follows.*
Under the capitalist system agriculture becomes a
separate industry, unconnected with the others. However,
it is not carried on the whole year but only for five or six
months. Therefore, the capitalisation of agriculture leads to
“the freeing of winter time,” to the “limitation of the working
time of the agricultural class to part of the working
year,” which is the “fundamental cause of the deterioration
of the economic conditions of the agricultural classes”
* V. V., Essays on Theoretical Economics, p. 108 and foll. N. —on,
Sketches, p. 214 and foll. The same ideas are to be found in
Mr. Kablukov’s Lectures on Agricultural Economics, Moscow, 1897,
p. 55 and foll.