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

436
V. I. LENIN
on the other hand, we see a small minority of well-to-do
industrialists who control (in one form or another) nearly
the whole industry of the given district. It is this fundamental
fact that imparts to our manufacture a pronounced
capitalist character, as distinct from the preceding stage.
Dependence on capital and work for hire existed then too, but
it had not yet taken definite shape, had not yet embraced the
mass of industrialists, the mass of the population, had not
given rise to a split among the various groups of individuals
participating in production. Moreover, production itself in the
preceding stage still preserves its small dimensions—the
difference between the master and the worker is relatively
small—there are scarcely any big capitalists (who always
head manufacture)—nor are there any workers tied to a
single operation and thereby tied to capital, which combines
these detailed operations into a single mechanism of
production.
Here is an old writer’s evidence which strikingly confirms
this characterisation of the data cited by us above:
“In the village of Kimry, as in other so-called rich Russian
villages, Pavlovo, for example, half the population
are beggars who live entirely on alms. . . . If an operative
falls sick, and moreover lives alone, he risks going the next
week without a crust of bread.”*
Thus, the main feature of the economy of Russian manufacture
was already fully revealed by the 60s—the contrast
between the “wealth” of a whole number of “celebrated”
“villages” and the complete proletarisation of the overwhelming
majority of “handicraftsmen.” Connected with
this feature is the circumstance that the most typical workers
in manufacture (namely, artisans who have entirely
or virtually broken with the land) are already gravitating
towards the next, and not the preceding, stage of capitalism,
that they stand closer to the worker in large-scale machine
industry than to the peasant. The above-quoted data on
* N. Ovsyannikov, “Relation of the Upper Volga Area to the
Nizhni-Novgorod Fair.” Article in Nizhni-Novgorod Handbook, Vol.
II (Nizhni-Novgorod, 1869). The author bases himself on data for
Kimry village for 1865. This author supplements his review of the
fair with a description of the social and economic relations in the
industries represented there.