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

414
V. I. LENIN
that despite the enormous differences between the three
Gzhel industries: pottery, porcelain and decorative, these
differences disappear as we pass from one grade of establishment
to another in each industry, and we get a series of
workshops of successively increasing dimensions. Here
are the average numbers of workers per establishment
according to grade in these three industries: 2.4—4.3—8.4—
4.4.—7.9—13.5—18—69—226.4. In other words, the workshops
range from the very smallest to the very biggest.
There is no doubt that the big establishments belong to the
category of capitalist manufacture (inasmuch as they have
not introduced machines, have not developed into factories);
what is important, however, is not only this, but also that
the small establishments are connected with the big ones;
that we have a single system of industry here and not separate
workshops of one or other type of economic organisation.
“Gzhel constitutes a single economic whole” (Isayev, loc.
cit., 138), and the big workshops in the district have grown
slowly and gradually out of the small ones (ibid., 121).
The work is done by hand,* with considerable division of
labour: among the potters we find wheel hands (specialising
in different sorts of pottery), kilnmen, etc., and sometimes
special workers for preparing colours. In the manufacture
of porcelain-ware division of labour is extremely
detailed: crushers, wheel hands, feeders, kilnmen,
decorators, etc. The wheel hands even specialise in the
various kinds of porcelain ware (cf. Isayev, loc. cit., 140:
in one case division of labour increases productivity of
labour by 25%). The decorators’ shops work for the porcelain
makers and are, therefore, only departments of the
latter’s manufactories, performing a special detailed operation.
It is characteristic of developed capitalist manufacture
that physical strength itself becomes a speciality.
Thus, in Gzhel, some of the villages are engaged
* Let us observe that in this industry, as in the above-described
weaving industries, capitalist manufacture is, strictly speaking, the
economy of yesterday. Characteristic of the post-Reform era is the
transformation of this manufacture into large-scale machine industry.
The number of Gzhel potteries using steam-engines was 1 in 1866, 2 in
1879 and 3 in 1890 (according to data in The Ministry of Finance
Yearbook, Vol. I, and Directory for 1879 and 1890).