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

C H A P T E R I
THE THEORETICAL MISTAKES OF THE NARODNIK
ECONOMISTS 14
The market is a category of commodity economy, which
in the course of its development is transformed into capitalist
economy and only under the latter gains complete
sway and universal prevalence. Therefore, in order to examine
basic theoretical propositions concerning the home
market we must proceed from simple commodity economy
and trace its gradual transformation into capitalist economy.
I. THE SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOUR
The basis of commodity economy is the social division
of labour. Manufacturing industry separates from the raw
materials industry, and each of these subdivides into small
varieties and subvarieties which produce specific products
as commodities, and exchange them for the products of
all the others. Thus, the development of commodity
economy leads to an increase in the number of separate
and independent branches of industry; the tendency of this
development is to transform into a special branch of industry
the making not only of each separate product, but even of
each separate part of a product—and not only the making
of a product, but even the separate operations of preparing
the product for consumption. Under natural economy
society consisted of a mass of homogeneous economic units
(patriarchal peasant families, primitive village communities,
feudal manors), and each such unit engaged in all
forms of economic activity, from the acquisition of various
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