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

598
V. I. LENIN
laws of the realisation of the product in capitalist society,
and fully conforms to the antagonistic nature of this society.*
The socialisation of labour by capitalism is manifested
in the following processes. Firstly, the very growth of
commodity-production destroys the scattered condition of
small economic units that is characteristic of natural economy
and draws together the small local markets into an enormous
national (and then world) market. Production for oneself
is transformed into production for the whole of society;
and the greater the development of capitalism, the stronger
becomes the contradiction between this collective character
of production and the individual character of appropriation.
Secondly, capitalism replaces the former scattered
production by an unprecedented concentration both in
agriculture and in industry. That is the most striking and
outstanding, but not the only, manifestation of the feature of
capitalism under review. Thirdly, capitalism eliminates the
forms of personal dependence that constituted an inalienable
component of preceding systems of economy. In Russia, the
progressive character of capitalism in this respect is
particularly marked, since the personal dependence of the
producer existed in our country (and partly continues to exist
to this day), not only in agriculture, but in manufacturing
industry (“factories” employing serf labour), in the
mining and metallurgical industries, in the fishing industry,
* His ignoring of the significance of the means of production
and his careless attitude to “statistics” have led to the following
utterly untenable statement by Mr. N. —on: “... all (!) capitalist
production in the sphere of manufacturing industry at most produces
new values to the amount of not more than 400 to 500 million rubles”
(Sketches, 328). Mr. N. —on bases this calculation on the returns of
the three-per-cent tax and the extra profits tax, without stopping to
think whether such returns can cover “all capitalist production in
the sphere of manufacturing industry.” Moreover, he takes returns
which (on his own admission) do not cover the mining and metallurgical
industries, and yet he includes in “new values” only surplus-value
and variable capital. Our theoretician has forgotten that, in those
branches of industry which produce goods for personal consumption,
constant capital also represents new value for society and is exchanged
for the variable capital and surplus-value of those branches of
industry which produce means of production (mining and metallurgical
industries, building, lumbering, railway construction, etc.). Had Mr.
N. —on not confused the number of “factory” workers with the total
number of workers capitalistically employed in manufacturing industry,
he would easily have perceived the errors in his calculations.