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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
599
etc.* Compared with the labour of the dependent or bonded
peasant, the labour of the hired worker is progressive in all
branches of the national economy. Fourthly, capitalism
necessarily creates mobility of the population, something not
required by previous systems of social economy and impossible
under them on anything like a large scale. Fifthly,
capitalism constantly reduces the proportion of the population
engaged in agriculture (where the most backward forms
of social and economic relationships always prevail), and
increases the number of large industrial centres. Sixthly,
capitalist society increases the population’s need for
association, for organisation, and lends these organisations
a character distinct from those of former times. While breaking
down the narrow, local, social-estate associations of
medieval society and creating fierce competition, capitalism
at the same time splits the whole of society into large
groups of persons occupying different positions in production,
and gives a tremendous impetus to organisation within
each such group.** Seventhly, all the above-mentioned
changes effected in the old economic system by capitalism
inevitably lead also to a change in the mentality of the
population. The spasmodic character of economic development,
the rapid transformation of the methods of production
and the enormous concentration of production, the disappearance
of all forms of personal dependence and patriarchalism
in relationships, the mobility of the population, the influence
of the big industrial centres, etc.—all this cannot but lead
to a profound change in the very character of the producers,
* For example, in one of the principal centres of the Russian
fishing industry, the Murmansk coast, the “age-old” and truly “timehallowed”
form of economic relationships was the “pokrut,” 167
which
was already fully established in the 17th century and continued
almost without change until recent times. “The relations between the
pokrutmen and their masters are not limited to the time spent at the
fisheries: on the contrary, they embrace the whole life of the pokrutmen,
who are permanently dependent economically on their masters”
(Material on Artels in Russia, Vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1874, p. 33).
Fortunately, in this branch of industry also, capitalism is apparently
marked by a “contemptuous attitude to its own historical past.”
“Monopoly ... is giving way to ... the capitalist organisation of the
industry with hired labourers” (Productive Forces, V, pp. 2-4).
** Cf. Studies, p. 91, footnote 85, p. 198. (See present edition,
Vol. 2, “A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism.”—Ed.)