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

C H A P T E R V
THE FIRST STAGES OF CAPITALISM IN INDUSTRY
331
Let us now pass from agriculture to industry. Here, too,
our task is formulated as in the case of agriculture: we have
to analyse the forms of industry in post-Reform Russia,
that is, to study the present system of social and economic
relations in manufacturing industry and the character of
the evolution of that system. Let us start with the most
simple and primitive forms of industry and trace their
development.
I. DOMESTIC INDUSTRY AND HANDICRAFTS
By domestic industry we mean the processing of raw
materials in the household (peasant family) that produces
them. Domestic industries are a necessary adjunct of natural
economy, remnants of which are nearly always retained
where there is a small peasantry. It is natural, therefore,
that in Russian economic literature one should meet repeated
references to this type of industry (the domestic production
of articles from flax, hemp, wood, etc., for consumption
in the home). However, the existence of domestic industry
on any extensive scale is rarely found nowadays and
only in the most remote localities; until very recently,
Siberia, for example, was one of them. Industry as a profession
does not yet exist in this form: industry here is linked
inseparably with agriculture, together they constitute
a single whole.
The first form of industry to be separated from patriarchal
agriculture is artisan production, i.e., the production