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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
numerical growth, and the attraction of the population
by them cannot but exert a most profound influence on the
whole rural system, and cannot but give rise to a growth
of commercial and capitalist agriculture. All the more
noteworthy is the fact that the exponents of Narodnik
economics completely ignore this law both in their purely
theoretical arguments and in their arguments about capitalism
in Russia (we shall deal at length with the specific
manifestations of this law in Russia later on, in Chapter
VIII). The theories of Messrs. V. V. and N.—on regarding
the home market for capitalism overlook a mere trifle—
the diversion of the population from agriculture to industry,
and the influence exerted by this fact on agriculture.*
III. THE RUIN OF THE SMALL PRODUCERS
So far we have dealt with simple commodity production.
Now we pass to capitalist production, that is, we presume
that instead of simple commodity producers we have, on
the one hand, the owner of means of production and, on the
other, the wage-worker, the seller of labour-power. The
conversion of the small producer into a wage-worker presumes
that he has lost the means of production—land, tools,
workshop, etc.—i.e., that he is “impoverished,” “ruined.”
The view is advanced that this ruin “diminishes the purchasing
power of the population,” “diminishes the home
market” for capitalism (Mr. N.—on, loc. cit., p. 185. Also
pp. 203, 275, 287, 339-340, etc. The same view is held
by Mr. V. V. in the majority of his writings). We do not deal
here with the factual data relating to this process in
Russia—they will be examined in detail in later chapters. At
the moment the question is posed purely theoretically, i.e.,
it relates to commodity production in general where it is
transformed into capitalist production. The writers mentioned
also pose this question theoretically, i.e., from the mere
* We have pointed to the identical attitude of the West-European
romanticists and Russian Narodniks to the problem of the growth of
industrial population in our article “A Characterisation of Economic
Romanticism. Sismondi and Our Native Sismondists,” (See present
edition, Vol. 2.—Ed.)
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