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

364
V. I. LENIN
I suggested that they should take turns in going to Moscow,
they replied that this would be worse, because they did
not know where to sell the lace, whereas the tradeswoman
already knew all the places. She sells the finished lace
for them and brings back orders, materials, patterns, etc.;
she always gives them money in advance, or on loan, and
one can even sell her a piece of lace outright, should the need
arise. Thus, on the one hand, the tradeswoman becomes a
most needed, indispensable person; on the other, she gradually
develops into a person who cruelly exploits the labour
of others—a woman kulak” (32). To this it should be added
that such types develop from among the small producers
themselves: “However many enquiries we made, we found
that all the tradeswomen had formerly been lace-makers themselves,
and consequently, were familiar with the trade; they
came from the ranks of these same lace-makers; they had had
no capital to start with, and had only gradually begun to
trade in calico and other goods, as they made money out of
their commissions” (31).* There can, therefore, be no doubt that
under commodity economy, not only prosperous industrialists
in general, but also, and particularly, representatives
of merchant’s capital emerge from among the small producers.**
And once they have emerged, the elimination of
small, scattered marketing by large-scale, wholesale marketing
becomes inevitable.*** Here are a few examples of how
marketing is organised by the bigger “handicraft” proprietors
who are at the same time buyers-up. The marketing of
abacuses by craftsmen of Moscow Gubernia (see the statistics
* The emergence of buyers-up from among the small producers
themselves is a common thing noted by investigators almost everywhere
as soon as they touch upon this question. See, for example,
the same remark about “distributors” in the kid-glove industry (Industries
of Moscow Gubernia, Vol. VII, Pt. II, pp. 175-176), about
the buyers-up in the Pavlovo industry (Grigoryev, loc. cit., 92),
and many others.
** Korsak (Forms of Industry) in his day quite rightly noted the
connection between the unprofitableness of small-scale marketing (and
of small-scale buying of raw materials) and the “general character of
small, scattered production” (pp. 23 and 239).
*** Very often the big handicraft proprietors whom we discussed
in detail above are also in some measure buyers-up. For instance,
the purchase of the wares of small industrialists by big ones is a very
widespread practice.