22.12.2012 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

504<br />

V. I. LENIN<br />

the best <strong>of</strong> years just barely manages <strong>to</strong> make ends meet,<br />

but the principal means <strong>of</strong> livelihood <strong>of</strong> this group is<br />

“independent” (supposedly independent, <strong>of</strong> course) smallscale<br />

farming. Finally, the <strong>to</strong>p group consists <strong>of</strong> the well<strong>to</strong>-do<br />

small peasant farmers, who exploit more or less<br />

considerable numbers <strong>of</strong> allotment-holding farm labourers<br />

and day labourers and all sorts <strong>of</strong> wage-labourers in<br />

general.<br />

These groups constitute approximately 50%, 30% and 20%<br />

respectively <strong>of</strong> the <strong>to</strong>tal. Above we invariably <strong>to</strong>ok the<br />

share <strong>of</strong> each group in the <strong>to</strong>tal number <strong>of</strong> households or<br />

farms. Now we shall take them as a proportion <strong>of</strong> the population.<br />

This change effects an increase in the bot<strong>to</strong>m group<br />

and a decrease in the <strong>to</strong>p one. But this, undoubtedly, is<br />

precisely the change that has taken place in Russia in the<br />

past decade, as is proved incontrovertibly by the decline<br />

in horse-ownership and by the ruin <strong>of</strong> the peasantry, the<br />

growth <strong>of</strong> poverty and unemployment in the rural districts,<br />

etc.<br />

That is <strong>to</strong> say, among the agricultural population we<br />

have about 48.5 million proletarians and semi-proletarians;<br />

about 29.1 million poor small peasant farmers and their<br />

families, and about 19.4 million <strong>of</strong> the population on the<br />

well-<strong>to</strong>-do small farms.<br />

Now the question is how <strong>to</strong> distribute the commercial<br />

and industrial and the unproductive population. The latter<br />

group contains sections <strong>of</strong> the population who obviously<br />

belong <strong>to</strong> the big bourgeoisie: all the rentiers (“living on<br />

income from capital and real estate”—first subdivision<br />

<strong>of</strong> group 14 in our statistics: 900,000), then part <strong>of</strong> the<br />

bourgeois intelligentsia, the high military and civil <strong>of</strong>ficials,<br />

etc. Al<strong>to</strong>gether, these will number about 12 million.<br />

At the opposite pole <strong>of</strong> this group <strong>of</strong> unproductive population<br />

are the lower ranks <strong>of</strong> the army, navy, gendarmerie and<br />

police (about 1.3 million), domestics and numerous servants<br />

(about 2 million al<strong>to</strong>gether), nearly 2 million beggars,<br />

tramps, etc., etc. Here we can only roughly distribute<br />

the groups that most closely approximate <strong>to</strong> the main economic<br />

types: about 2 million will go <strong>to</strong> the proletarian and<br />

semi-proletarian population (partly lumpen-proletarians),<br />

about 1.9 million <strong>to</strong> the poor small proprie<strong>to</strong>rs, and about

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!