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

376
V. I. LENIN
namely, that even the initial stage of capitalism manifests
the tendency of industry to raise the population’s standard
of living (see Studies, p. 138 and foll.).*
Lastly, the following point is connected with the question
of the relation of industry to agriculture. The larger establishments
usually have a longer working period. For example,
in the furniture industry of Moscow Gubernia, the working
period of those working in plain wood equals 8 months
(the average workshop staff here is 1.9 workers); for the bentwood
establishments it is 10 months (2.9 workers per establishment),
and in the heavy-furniture trade it is 11 months
(4.2 workers per establishment). In the shoe industry of
Vladimir Gubernia the working period in 14 small workshops
equals 40 weeks, and that in 8 large ones (9.5 workers per
establishment, as against 2.4 in the small workshops) 48
weeks, etc.** Naturally, this fact is connected with the large
number of workers (family, hired industrial and hired agricultural)
in the big establishments and explains the great
stability of these establishments and their tendency to
specialise in industrial activities.
Let us now sum up the data given above on “industry and
agriculture.” It is usual at the lower stage of capitalism
which we are reviewing for the industrialist still to be
scarcely differentiated from the peasant. The combination
of industry with agriculture plays an extremely important
part in aggravating and accentuating the differentiation
of the peasantry: the prosperous and the well-off peasants
open workshops, hire workers from among the rural proletariat,
and accumulate money for commercial and usurious
transactions. The peasant poor, on the other hand, provide
the wage-workers, the handicraftsmen who work for buyersup,
and the bottom groups of petty-master handicraftsmen,
those most crushed by the power of merchant’s capital. Thus,
the combination of industry with agriculture consolidates
* See present edition, Vol. 2, The Handicraft Census of 1894-95
in Perm Gubernia.—Ed.
** Sources are indicated above. The same thing is revealed by
the household censuses of the basket-makers, guitar-makers and starchmakers
in Moscow Gubernia. The Perm handicraft census also mentions
the longer working period of the large workshops (see Sketch of
Handicraft Industry in Perm Gubernia, p. 78. No precise data, unfortunately,
are given).