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

368
V. I. LENIN
chant’s capital in the small industries. The first and simplest
form is the purchase of wares by the merchant (or owner of
a big workshop) from the small commodity producers.
Where buying-up is poorly developed, or where there are
numerous competing buyers-up, the sale of goods to the merchant
may not differ from any other sale; but in the vast
majority of cases the local buyer-up is the only person to
whom the peasant can regularly dispose of his wares, and
then the buyer-up takes advantage of his monopoly position
to force the price he pays to the producer down to rock bottom.
The second form of merchant’s capital consists in its
combination with usury: the peasant, who is constantly in
need of money, borrows it from the buyer-up and repays the
debt with his goods. The sale of his goods in this case (which
is very widespread) always takes place at artificially reduced
prices, which often do not leave the handicraftsman as
much as a wage-worker could get. Moreover, the relations
of the creditor to the debtor inevitably lead to the personal
dependence of the latter, to bondage, to the creditor taking
advantage of specific occasions of the debtor’s need, etc.
The third form of merchant’s capital is payment for wares
with goods, a common practice among village buyers-up. The
specific feature of this form is that it is typical not only
of the small industries but of absolutely all undeveloped
stages of commodity production and capitalism. Only largescale
machine industry, which has socialised labour and
broken radically with all patriarchal usages, has eliminated
this form of bondage by causing it to be legally prohibited
in large industrial establishments. The fourth form of merchant’s
capital is payment by the merchant with the particular
kinds of goods that are needed by the “handicraftsman”
for production (raw or auxiliary materials, etc.). The sale
of materials of production to the small industrialist may
also be an independent operation of merchant’s capital, quite
analogous to the operation of buying-up finished goods.
When, however, the buyer-up of finished goods begins to
pay for them with the raw materials needed by the “handicraftsman,”
this marks a very big step in the development
of capitalist relations. Having cut off the small industrialist
from the finished-goods market, the buyer-up now
cuts him off from the raw-materials market, and thereby