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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
361
Another condition relates to the character of the functions
performed by merchant’s capital, i.e., to the marketing of
wares and to the purchase of raw materials. Where the development
of commodity production is slight, the small producer
limits himself to disposing of his wares in the small local
market, sometimes even to disposing of them directly to the
consumer. This is the lowest stage of the development of
commodity production, hardly to be distinguished from
artisan production. As the market expands, this petty, scattered
marketing (which fully conforms to petty, scattered
production) becomes impossible. In the big market, selling
must he on a big, on a mass scale. And so the petty character
of production proves to be in irreconcilable contradiction
with the need for big, wholesale marketing. Under the
existing social and economic conditions, with the isolation
of the small producers and their differentiation, this contradiction
could only be resolved by the well-to-do minority
taking charge of marketing, concentrating it in their hands.
By buying-up goods (or raw materials) on a large scale, the
buyers-up thus cheapened marketing costs and transformed
marketing from a petty, casual and irregular operation into
a large and regular one; and this purely economic advantage
of large-scale marketing inevitably led to the small producer
finding himself cut off from the market and defenceless
in face of the power of merchant’s capital. Thus, under commodity
economy, the small producer inevitably falls into
dependence upon merchant’s capital by virtue of the purely
economic superiority of large, mass-scale marketing over
scattered, petty marketing.* It goes without saying that
actually the profits of the buyers-up are often far from
limited to the difference between the returns of mass sales
* Regarding the significance of trading, merchant’s capital in
the development of capitalism in general we would refer the reader to
Capital, Vol. III. See especially III, I, S. 253-254 (Russ. trans., 212),
on the essence of commodity-trading capital; S. 259 (Russ. trans.,
217), on the cheapening of marketing by merchant’s capital, S. 278-
279 (Russ. trans., 233-234), on the economic necessity of the phenomenon
that “concentration appears earlier historically in the merchant’s
business than in the industrial workshop”; S. 308 (Russ. trans., 259)
and S. 310-311 (Russ. trans., 260-261), on the historical role of
merchant’s capital as necessary “premises for the development of
capitalist production.” 126