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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
377
and develops capitalist relations, spreading them from industry
to agriculture and vice versa.* That characteristic
feature of capitalist society, the separation of industry from
agriculture, manifests itself at this stage in the most rudimentary
form, but it does manifest itself and—what is
particularly important—in a way totally different from what
the Narodniks imagine. When the Narodnik says that industry
does no “damage” to agriculture, he discerns damage in
the abandonment of agriculture for profitable industry. But
such a notion is an invention (and not a deduction
from the facts), and a bad invention at that, for it ignores
the contradictions which permeate the entire economic
system of the peasantry. The separation of industry from
agriculture takes place in connection with the differentiation
of the peasantry, and does so by different paths at the
two poles of the countryside: the well-to-do minority open
industrial establishments, enlarge them, improve their
farming methods, hire farm labourers to till the land,
devote an increasing part of the year to industry, and—at a
certain stage of the development of the industry—find it
more convenient to separate their industrial from their
agricultural undertakings, i.e., to hand over the farm to
other members of the family, or to sell farm buildings, animals,
etc., and adopt the status of burghers, of merchants.**
The separation of industry from agriculture is preceded in
this case by the formation of entrepreneur relations in agriculture.
At the other pole of the countryside the separation
of industry from agriculture consists in the fact that the poor
peasants are being ruined and turned into wage-workers
(industrial and agricultural). At this pole of the countryside
* For instance, in the woollen trade of Vladimir Gubernia the
big “factory owners” and subcontractors are distinguished by the fact
of their farming being on the highest level. “During periods of stagnation
in production the subcontractors try to buy estates, to engage
in farming, and to give up industry altogether” (Industries of Vladimir
Gubernia, II, 131). This instance is worth noting, since facts
of this kind sometimes lead the Narodniks to conclude that “the
peasants are going back to agriculture,” that the “exiles from the soil
must be restored to the land” (Mr. V. V. in Vestnik Yevropy, No. 7,
1884).
** “The peasants explained that latterly some of the prosperous
master industrialists had moved to Moscow to carry on their business.”
The Brush Industry According to the Investigation of 1895, p. 5.