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

370
V. I. LENIN
prosperous peasants who become master and petty-master
industrialists. The poor peasants, on the other hand, do not,
in the main, provide master industrialists but worker
industrialists (wage-workers employed by “handicraftsmen,”
migratory workers, etc.). Unfortunately, for the overwhelming
majority of Moscow industries no data are available
on the farms of the wage-workers engaged in small industries.
An exception is the hat industry (see general data on
it in our table, Appendix I). Here are exceedingly instructive
data on the farms of master hat-makers and worker
hat-makers.
No. of animals
per household
Of this
number
there are
No. of
households
cultivat-
Status
of hatmakersingallotments
No. of households
horses
cows
sheep
No. of per capita
allotments
cultivated
Masters 18 1.5 1.8 2.5 52 4 6 17 — 1 — 54
Workers165 0.6 0.9 0.8 389 249 140 84 18 63 17 2,402
Thus, the master industrialists belong to the category
of very “sound” farmers, i.e., are members of the peasant
bourgeoisie, whereas the wage-workers are recruited from
the mass of ruined peasants.* Still more important for
characterising the relations described are the data on the
methods by which the master industrialists cultivate their
land. The Moscow investigators distinguished three methods
of cultivating the soil: 1) by means of the personal labour
* It is characteristic that the author of the description of the
hat industry “did not observe” even here the differentiation of the peasantry
both in agriculture and in industry. Like all Narodniks, he
limited himself in his conclusions to the absolutely vapid banality
that “industry does not prevent one from engaging in agriculture”
(Industries of Moscow Gubernia, VI, I, p. 231) The social and economic
contradictions both in the system of industry and in the system
of agriculture were thus safely passed over.
uncultivated
themselves
by hiring
neighbors
not engaging in
farming
No. of horseless ones
Arrears (rubles)