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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
537
how this process is actually taking place and what different
forms it assumes. Mr. V. V. points to the connection
of our industrial worker with the land (in manufacture;
our author does not think it necessary to distinguish
the various stages of capitalism, although he pretends he is
following the theory of the author of Capital!) and declaims
in this regard about the “shameful (sic!) dependence” “of our
(author’s italics) capitalist industry” upon the workerfarmer,
etc. (Destiny of Capitalism, p. 114 and others).
Mr. V. V. has apparently not heard, or has forgotten
if he has beard, that not only in “our country” but
everywhere in the West, capitalism failed to bring about
the complete separation of the workers from the land before
large-scale machine industry was established. Finally, Mr.
Kablukov has quite recently presented his students with the
following amazing distortion of the facts: “Whereas in the
West work in the factory is the sole means of livelihood
for the worker, in our country, with relatively few
exceptions (sic!!!), the worker regards work in the factory
as a subsidiary occupation, he is more attracted to the
land.”*
A factual analysis of this question has been made in Mr.
Dementyev’s essay on the “factory workers’ connection
with agriculture” in the Moscow sanitary statistics.**
Systematically collated statistics embracing about 20,000
workers have shown that only 14.1% of the factory
workers leave for agricultural employment. But far more
important is the fact, proved in the greatest detail in the
work mentioned, that it is precisely machine production that
divorces the workers from the land. Of a whole series of
figures quoted in proof of this fact we select the following
most striking ones.***
* Lectures on Agricultural (sic!) Economics, edition for students,
Moscow, 1897, p, 13. Perhaps our learned statistician thinks that we
may regard as “relatively few exceptions” 85% of all cases (see further
in text)?
** Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Section of Sanitation
Statistics, Vol. IV, Sec. II, Moscow, 1893. Reprinted in
Mr. Dementyev’s well-known work: The Factory, etc.
*** Statistical Returns, loc. cit., p. 292. The Factory, 2nd ed.,
p. 36.