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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
369
brings him completely under his sway. It is only one step
from this form to that higher form of merchant’s capital
under which the buyer-up directly hands out materials to
the “handicraftsmen” to be worked up for a definite payment.
The handicraftsman becomes de facto a wage-worker,
working at home for the capitalist; the merchant’s capital
of the buyer-up is here transformed into industrial capital.*
Capitalist domestic industry arises. In the small
industries it is met with more or less sporadically; its
introduction on a mass scale, however, relates to the next and
higher stage of capitalist development.
VII. “INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE”
Such is the usual heading of special sections in descriptions
of peasant industries. In view of the fact that at the
initial stage of capitalism which we are examining the
industrialist has hardly yet become differentiated from the
peasant, his connection with the land is something indeed
highly characteristic and requires special examination.
Let us begin with the data given in our table (see Appendix
I). To characterise the farms of the “handicraftsmen”
there are given here, firstly, data on the average number of
horses owned by the industrialists of each grade. By combining
the 19 industries for which such data are available we
get an all-round average per industrialist (master or pettymaster)
of 1.4 horses, and for the grades: I) 1.1; II) 1.5 and
III) 2.0. Thus the higher the proprietor’s position in respect
to the size of his industrial establishment, the higher his
position as an agriculturist. The biggest industrialists have
almost twice as many draught animals as the small ones.
But with regard to their farms even the smallest industrialists
(grade I) are above the middle peasantry, for the general
average for Moscow Gubernia in 1877 was 0.87 horses
per peasant household.** Thus it is only the relatively
* The pure form of merchant’s capital is the purchase of a commodity
in order to sell this same commodity at a profit. The pure
form of industrial capital is the purchase of a commodity in order to
sell it in worked-up form, hence the purchase of raw materials, etc.,
and the purchase of labour-power, which processes the material.
** See Combined Statistical Material on the Economic Position
of the Rural Population, published by the Committee of Ministers,
Appendix I: Data of Zemstvo house-to-house investigations, pp. 372-373.