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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
379
This form of combination is still very close to the preceding
one, differing from it only in that here commodity
circulation manifests itself—when the artisan is paid
in money and appears on the market to purchase tools, raw
materials, etc.
3) Patriarchal agriculture is combined with the smallscale
production of industrial products for the market, i.e.,
with commodity production in industry. The patriarchal
peasant is transformed into a small commodity-producer,
who, as we have shown, tends to the employment of wagelabour,
i.e., to capitalist production. A condition for this
transformation is now a certain degree of differentiation
among the peasantry: we have seen that the small masters
and petty masters in industry belong, in the majority of
cases, to the prosperous or to the well-off group of peasants.
In its turn, the development of small commodity production
in industry gives a further impetus to the differentiation of
the peasant agriculturists.
4) Patriarchal agriculture is combined with work for
hire in industry (and also in agriculture).*
This form is a necessary addition to the preceding one:
there it is the product that becomes a commodity, here it
is labour-power. Small-scale commodity production in
industry is necessarily accompanied, as we have seen, by the
appearance of wage-workers and of handicraftsmen who work
for buyers-up. This form of the “combination of agriculture
with industry” is characteristic of all capitalist countries,
* As has been shown above, such confusion of terminology
prevails in our economic literature and economic statistics that the
category peasants’ “industries” is used to cover domestic industry,
labour-service, handicrafts, small commodity production, trading,
work for hire in industry, work for hire in agriculture, etc. Here is
an example of how the Narodniks take advantage of this confusion.
Mr. V. V., singing the praises of the “combination of industry with
agriculture,” points, in illustration, to the “timber industry” and
“unskilled labour”: “He (the peasant) is strong and accustomed to hard
work; that is why he can do all kinds of unskilled labour” (Essays
on Handicraft Industry, 26). And this sort of fact figures among a
heap of others to back the conclusion that: “We observe a protest
against the splitting-up of occupations,” “the durability of the
organisation of production that arose when natural economy still
predominated” (41). Thus, even the conversion of the peasant into a
lumberworker and unskilled labourer was passed off, among other
things, as evidence of the durability of natural economy!