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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
353
complete set of tools; 2) limited assortment of articles made,
because there is no room in the craftsman’s hut for bulky
articles; 3) much higher cost of materials when bought retail
(30 to 35% higher); 4) necessity of selling wares cheaper,
partly due to lack of confidence in the small “handicraftsman”
and partly to his need of money.* It is well known
that exactly the same sort of thing is to be observed not only
in the furniture industry, but also in the vast majority
of small peasant industries. Lastly, it must be added that
the value of the goods produced per worker not only
increases from the bottom to the top grade in the majority of
industries, but also from the small to the big industries. In
the first category of industries the average output per worker
is 202 rubles, in the second and third about 400 rubles,
and in the fourth over 500 rubles (the figure 381 should,
for the reason stated above, be increased by about fifty
per cent). This circumstance points to the connection
between the rise in the price of raw materials and the ousting
of the small establishments by the big ones. Every step in
the development of capitalist society is inevitably accompanied
by a rise in the price of such materials as timber,
etc., and thus hastens the doom of the small establishments.
From the foregoing it follows that the relatively big
capitalist establishments also play a tremendous part in
the small peasant industries. While constituting a small
minority of the total number of establishments, they concentrate,
however, quite a big share of the total number
of workers, and a still bigger share of the total output.
Thus, in 33 industries of Moscow Gubernia, the top-grade
establishments, constituting 15% of the total, account for
45% of the aggregate output; while the bottom-grade establishments,
constituting 53% of the total, account for only
21% of the aggregate output. It goes without saying that
the distribution of the net income from the industries must
be far more uneven. The data of the Perm handicraft census
of 1894-95 clearly illustrate this. Selecting the largest
* The small producer tries to make up for these unfavourable
conditions by working longer hours and with greater intensity (loc.
cit., p 38). Under commodity production, the small producer both
in agriculture and in industry carries on only by cutting down his
requirements.