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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
439
number of small establishments. Is there any connection
between the one and the other? The data examined above
leave no doubt that the connection between them is of the
closest, that it is out of the small establishments that the
large ones grow, that the small establishments are sometimes
merely outside departments of the manufactories, that
in the overwhelming majority of cases the connection
between them is maintained by merchant’s capital, which
belongs to the big masters and holds sway over the small ones.
The owner of the big workshop has to buy raw materials
and sell his wares on a large scale; the bigger his turnover,
the smaller (per unit of product) are his expenses on the purchase
and sale of goods, on sorting, warehousing, etc., etc.;
and so there arises the retail reselling of raw materials to
small masters, and the purchase of their wares, which the
manufactory owner resells as his own.* If (as is often the
case) bondage and usury are linked with these transactions
in the sale of raw materials and the purchase of wares,
if the small master gets materials on credit and delivers
wares in payment of debt, the big manufactory owner
obtains a high level of profit on his capital such as he could
never obtain from wage-workers. Division of labour gives
a fresh impetus to the development of such relations of
dependence of the small masters upon the big ones: the latter
either distribute materials in the homes for making
up (or for the performance of certain detailed operations),
or buy up from the “handicraftsmen” parts of products,
* Let us supplement the above by one other example. In the
furnishing industry of Moscow Gubernia (information dated 1876,
from Mr. Isayev’s book), the biggest industrialists are the Zenins,
who introduced the making of costly furniture and “trained generations
of skilled artisans.” In 1845 they established a sawmill of their
own (in 1894-95—12,000 rubles output, 14 workers, steam-engine).
Let us note that altogether in this industry there were 708 establishments,
1,979 workers, of whom 846, or 42.7%, were hired, and an
output totalling 459,000 rubles. In the beginning of the 60s the
Zenins began to buy raw materials wholesale in Nizhni-Novgorod. They
bought timber in waggon-loads at 13 rubles per hundred planks and
sold it to small handicraftsmen at 18-20 rubles. In 7 villages (where
116 are at work) the majority sell furniture to Zenin, who has a furniture
and plywood warehouse in Moscow (established in 1874) with
a turnover reaching 40,000 rubles. About 20 one-man jobbers are
working for the Zenins.