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

550
V. I. LENIN
creation of mobility of the population, and improvement
of the worker’s standard of requirements and his development—all
these are elements of the capitalist process which
is increasingly socialising production in the country, and
with it those who participate in production.*
On the problem of the relation of large-scale machine
industry in Russia to the home market for capitalism, the
data given above lead to the following conclusion. The rapid
development of factory industry in Russia is creating an
enormous and ever-growing market for means of production
(building materials, fuel, metals, etc.) and is increasing with
particular rapidity the part of the population engaged in
* The data quoted in the last three chapters show, in our opinion,
that the classification of the capitalist forms and stages of industry
given by Marx is more correct and sound than the now current classification
which confuses the manufactory with the factory and regards
working for a buyer-up as a special form of industry (Held, Bücher).
To confuse the manufactory with the factory is to make purely superficial
features the basis for classification and to ignore the essential
features of technique, economy and social life which distinguish
manufacture from the machine period of capitalism. As to capitalist
domestic industry, it undoubtedly plays a very important part in
the mechanism of capitalist industry. Just as undoubtedly, work for
the buyer-up is particularly characteristic of pre-machine capitalism;
but it is also to be met with (and on no small scale) in the most
diverse periods of capitalist development. The significance of work for
the buyer-up is not to be understood unless studied in connection
with the whole structure of industry in the given period, or at the
given stage of capitalist development. The peasant who weaves
baskets to the order of the village shopkeeper, the Pavlovo artisan who
makes knife-handles in his home to the order of Zavyalov, the woman
worker who makes clothes, footwear, gloves or boxes to the order of
big mill owners or merchants—all work for buyers-up, but in all these
instances capitalist domestic industry bears a different character and
has a different significance. We do not, of course, in the least deny
the merits of Bücher, for example, in studying pre-capitalist forms
of industry, but we think his classification of capitalist forms of
industry is wrong.—We cannot agree with the views of Mr. Struve
(see Mir Bozhy, 1898, No. 4) inasmuch as he adopts Bücher’s theory
(in the part mentioned) and applies it to Russian “handicraftism.”
(Since these lines were written, in 1899, Mr. Struve has managed to
complete the cycle of his scientific and political development. From
a person oscillating between Bücher and Marx, between liberal and
socialist economics, he has become a liberal bourgeois of the purest
water. The writer of these lines is proud of having helped, as far as
has been in his power, to purge Social-Democracy of such elements.
(Note to 2nd edition.)