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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
FROM MARX
TO MAO
451
the wage-workers employed by “handicraftsmen”—and, as
may be seen from the above-quoted figures, their number is
by no means as small as is sometimes thought here in
Russia—we shall have to concede that the figure of 2 million
industrial workers capitalistically employed outside the
so-called “factories and works” is, if anything, a minimum
figure.*
To the question—“What is handicraft industry?”—the
data quoted in the last two chapters compel us to give the
answer that the term used is absolutely unsuitable for
purposes of scientific investigation, and is one usually
employed to cover all and sundry forms of industry, from
domestic industries and handicrafts to wage-labour in very
large manufactories.** This lumping together of the most
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diverse types of economic organisation, which prevails in
a host of descriptions of “handicraft industries,”*** was
output reaches the sum of 100 million rubles (Successes of Russian
Industry According to Surveys of Expert Commissions, St. Petersburg,
1897, pp. 136-137). In St. Petersburg, the 1890 census gave the number
employed in ready-made clothing (Group XI, Classes 116-118) as
39,912, counting members of industrialists families, including 19,000
workers, and 13,000 one-man producers with their families (St.
Petersburg According to the Census of December 15, 1890). The 1897
census shows that the total number of persons employed in the clothing
industry in Russia was 1,158,865, the members of their families numbering
1,621,511; total 2,780,376. (Note to 2nd edition.)
* Let us recall that the number of “handicraftsmen” in Russia
is estimated at no less than 4 million (Mr. Kharizomenov’s figure
Mr. Andreyev gave the figure of 72 million, but his methods are too
sweeping) 147 ; consequently, the total figures given in the text cover
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about one-tenth of the total number of “handicraftsmen.”
** Cf. Studies, p. 179 and foll. (See present edition, Vol, 2,
The Handicraft Census of 1894-95 in Perm Gubernia.—Ed.)
*** The desire to retain the term “handicraftsmanship” for the
purpose of scientifically defining forms of industry has led in our
publications to purely scholastic arguments about, and definitions
of, this “handicraftsmanship.” One economist “understood” handicraftsmen
to mean only commodity-producers, while another included
artisans in this term; one considered connection with the land as
an essential feature, while another allowed for exceptions; one
excluded wage-labour, while another allowed for it where, for example,
there were up to 16 workers, etc., etc. It goes without saying that
arguments of this sort (instead of investigation of the different forms
of industry) could lead nowhere. Let us observe that the tenacity
of the special term “handicraftsmanship” is to be explained most of
all by the social-estate divisions in Russian society; a “handicrafts-