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

336
V. I. LENIN
definite circle of customers. This fear of competition so strikingly
reveals the true social nature of the small commodityproducer
that we think it necessary to examine the relative
facts in greater detail. In the first place, let us quote an example
relative to handicraft. The Kaluga sheepskin dressers go
off to other gubernias to treat sheepskins; this industry has
declined since the abolition of serfdom; the landlords, when
they released serfs for “sheepskinning,” in return for a sizable
tribute, took great care that the sheepskinners knew their
“definite places” and did not permit other dressers to invade
their districts. Organised on these lines the industry was
so profitable that “places” were transferred for as much
as 500 and 1,000 rubles, and if an artisan came to a
district other than his own, it sometimes led to sanguinary
clashes. The abolition of serfdom undermined this medieval
prosperity: “the convenience of railway travel in this case
also aids competition.”* One of the phenomena of the same
type observed in a number of industries and bearing fully
the character of a general rule, is the desire of the small
industrialists to keep technical inventions and improvements
secret, to conceal profitable occupations from others, in
order to stave off “fatal competition.” Those who establish
a new industry or introduce some improvement in an old
one, do their utmost to conceal these profitable occupations
from their fellow-villagers and resort to all sorts of devices
for this purpose (e.g., as a make-believe they keep the old
arrangements in the establishment), let no one enter their
workshops, work in garrets and say nothing about their work
even to their own children.** The slow development of the
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, I, 35-36.
** See Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, I, 81. V, 460;
IX, 25-26.—Industries of Moscow Gubernia, Vol. VI, Pt. 1, 6-7; 253;
Vol. VI, Pt. 2, 142; Vol. VII, Pt. 1, Sec. 2 about the founder of the
“printing industry.”—Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, I, 145, 149.—
Reports and Investigations, I, 89.—Grigoryev: Handicraft Lockand
Cutlery-Making in Pavlovo District (Supplement to Volga publication,
Moscow, 1881), p. 39.—Mr. V. V. cited some of these facts
in his Essay on Handicraft Industry (St. Petersburg, 1886), p. 192
and foll.; the only conclusion he draws from them is that the handicraftsmen
are not afraid of innovations; it never enters his head that
these facts characterise the class position and the class interests of
the small commodity-producers in contemporary society.