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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
367
their utter differentiation; they ignore the fact that it is
from their very midst that “buyers-up” have emerged and
continue to emerge; that in capitalist society marketing can
only be organised by big capital. It is natural that if one
leaves out of account all these features of the unpleasant but
undoubted reality, it is not difficult to conjure up phantasies*
ins Blaue hinein.**
We are unable here to go into descriptive details showing
exactly how merchant’s capital manifests itself in our “handicraft”
industries, and how helpless and wretched is the
position in which it places the small industrialist. Moreover,
in the next chapter we shall have to describe the dominance
of merchant’s capital at a higher stage of development,
where (as an adjunct of manufacture) it organises capitalist
domestic industry on a mass scale. Here let us confine
ourselves to indicating the main forms assumed by mer-
* Among the quasi-economic arguments advanced in support
of the Narodnik theories is the one about the small amount of “fixed”
and “circulating” capital needed by the “independent handicraftsman.”
The line of this extremely widespread argument is as follows: handicraft
industries greatly benefit the peasant and therefore should
be implanted. (We do not dwell on the amusing notion that the mass
of the peasantry which is being steadily ruined can be helped by
turning some of their number into small commodity-producers.) And
in order to implant these industries one must know how much “capital”
the handicraftsman needs to carry on his business. Here is one
of numerous calculations of this sort. The Pavlovo handicraftsman,
says Mr. Grigoryev for our edification, needs a fixed “capital” of 3 to 5
rubles, 10-13-15 rubles, etc., counting cost of implements, and a circulating
“capital” of 6 to 8 rubles, counting weekly expenditure on
food and raw materials. “Thus, the amount of the fixed and circulating
capital (sic!) in Pavlovo District is so small that it is very easy to
acquire the tools and materials needed for independent (sic!!) production”
(loc. cit., 75). And indeed, what could be “easier” than such
an argument? With a stroke of the pen the Pavlovo proletarian is
turned into a “capitalist”; all that was needed was to call his weekly
keep and miserably cheap tools “capital.” But the real capital of the
big buyers-up who have monopolised sales, who alone are able to be
“independent” de facto, and who handle capital running into the
thousands this real capital the author simply passes over! Queer
people, indeed, these well-to-do Pavlovians: for generations they
have used, and continue to use, every foul means to pile up thousands of
rubles of capital, whereas according to the latest discoveries it seems
that a “capital” of a few dozen rubles is sufficient to make one “independent”!
** at random.—Ed.