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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
383
A necessary attribute of the small local markets is,
apart from primitive forms of artisan production, primitive
forms of merchant’s and usury capital. The more remote a
village is, the further away it is from the influence of the
new capitalist order, from railways, big factories and largescale
capitalist agriculture, the greater the monopoly of
the local merchants and usurers, the more they subjugate
the surrounding peasantry, and the cruder the forms
of this subjugation. The number of these small leeches
is enormous (when compared with the meagre produce
of the peasants), and there is a rich variety of local names
to designate them. Recall all these “prasols,” “shibais,”
“shchetinniks,” “mayaks,” “ivashes,” “bulinyas,” etc., etc.
The predominance of natural economy, which accounts for the
scarcity and dearness of money in the countryside, results in
the assumption of an importance by all these “kulaks”
out of all proportion to the size of their capital. The dependence
of the peasants on the money owners inevitably
acquires the form of bondage. Just as one cannot conceive
of developed capitalism without large-scale merchant’s
capital in the form of commodities or money so the precapitalist
village is inconceivable without small traders
and buyers-up, who are the “masters” of the small local
markets. Capitalism draws these markets together, combines
them into a big national market, and then into a world
market, destroys the primitive forms of bondage and personal
dependence, develops in depth and in breadth the contradictions
which in a rudimentary form are also to be observed
among the community peasantry—and thus paves the way
for their resolution.