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

356
V. I. LENIN
V. CAPITALIST SIMPLE CO-OPERATION
The establishment by small commodity-producers of relatively
large workshops marks the transition to a higher
form of industry. Out of scattered small production rises
capitalist simple co-operation. “Capitalist production only
then really begins . . . when each individual capital employs
simultaneously a comparatively large number of labourers;
when consequently the labour-process is carried on on an
extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of
products. A greater number of labourers working together,
at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same
field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity
under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes,
both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist
production. With regard to the mode of production
itself, manufacture, in its strict meaning, is hardly to be
distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the artisan
trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number
of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same
individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master
handicraftsman is simply enlarged” (Das Kapital, I 2 , S.
329). 122
It is this starting-point of capitalism that is to be seen,
consequently, in our small peasant (“handicraft”) industries.
The different historical situation (absence or slight
development of guild handicrafts) merely changes the way
in which identical capitalist relations are made manifest.
The difference between the capitalist workshop and the workshop
of the small industrialist lies at first only in the
number of workers simultaneously employed. That is why the
first capitalist establishments, being numerically in the
minority, are submerged, as it were, in the general mass of
small establishments. However, the employment of a
larger number of workers inevitably leads to consecutive
changes in production itself, to the gradual transformation
of production. Under primitive hand technique differences
between the individual workers (in strength, dexterity,
skill, etc.) are always very considerable; if only for this
reason the position of the small industrialist is extremely
precarious; his dependence upon market fluctuations