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

340
V. I. LENIN
we note the growth of small peasant establishments and
industries, we do not as yet deal with their economic
organisation: from what follows it will be evident that these
industries either lead to the formation of capitalist simple
co-operation and merchant’s capital or constitute a component
part of capitalist manufacture.
The fur industry in Arzamas Uyezd, Nizhni-Novgorod
Gubernia, began in the town of Arzamas and then gradually
spread to the surrounding villages, embracing an ever larger
area. At first there were few furriers in the villages and
they employed numerous workers; labour was cheap, since
people hired themselves out in order to learn the trade.
After learning it they left and opened small establishments
of their own, thus preparing a wider field for the domination
of capital, which now controls a large section of the
industrialists.* Let us note in general that this abundance
of wage-workers in the first establishments of a rising industry
and the subsequent transformation of these wage-workers
into small masters is a very widespread phenomenon,
bearing the character of a general rule.** Obviously, it
would be a profound error to deduce from this that “in spite
of various historical considerations . . . it is not big establishments
that absorb small ones, but small ones that grow out
of big ones.”*** The large size of the first establishments
expresses no concentration of the industry; it is explained
by the solitary character of these establishments and by
the eagerness of local peasants to learn a profitable trade
in them. As to the process of the spread of peasant industries
from their old centres to the surrounding villages, it
is observed in many cases. For example, the post-Reform
period saw the development (as regards the number of villages
involved in industry, the number of industrialists, and
the total output) of the following exceptionally important
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, III.
** For example, the same thing has been noted in the dyeing
industry of Moscow Gubernia (Industries of Moscow Gubernia, VI,
I, 73-99), in the hat (ibid., VI, Pt. I), in the fur (ibid., VII, Pt. I,
Sec. 2), in the Pavlovo lock and cutlery industries (Grigoryev, loc.
cit., 37-38), and others.
*** Mr. V. V. hastened to draw this conclusion from a fact of
this kind in his Destiny of Capitalism, 78-79.