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

UNCRITICAL CRITICISM
629
which not merely Zemstvo statisticians, but all economists,
have a right and even a duty to discuss. One cannot conceive
of an economist who is studying the actual economic
situation in Russia being able to dispense with Zemstvo
statistics; and if the elaboration of Zemstvo statistics and
the work of economists proceed independently, each in its
own way, neither the one nor the other can achieve satisfactory
results. That classification according to allotment is
not a satisfactory factual classification has been admitted
in part by the Zemstvo statisticians themselves, who have
given a number of classifications according to draught
animals and to area under crops of which I made use in
my book. Just now, when the importance of the problem
is particularly emphasised by practically all Marxists
and is not denied even by economists of other trends, a
re-examination of the problem should be particularly necessary.
But Mr. Skvortsov, instead of offering criticism,
presents us with pompous but quite vapid phrases like the
following: “we need a summary of Zemstvo returns which
gives a detailed account of the production and reproduction
of peasant farming, so that anyone who desires may take
up such an abstract and verify the ‘conclusions’ of Messrs.
Ilyin, Postnikov and Hourwich” (2292). Yes, of course, “we
need a summary”; but if these words are not to remain an
empty sound, and if the summary is really to succeed
in answering the main problems advanced by Russia’s
present economic system and by that system’s evolution,
what is needed is to raise and to discuss from all angles the
fundamental problem of the methods to be employed in drawing
up the summary, to discuss it without fail in general
publications, and not merely among Zemstvo statisticians,
and still less within the four walls of this or that Zemstvo
statistical bureau. I raised this problem in my book and
attempted to indicate its solution. It is not, of course, for
me to judge whether the solution is a correct one. But I am
justified in drawing the conclusion that Mr. Skvortsov,
for all his sternness, has said nothing whatever about the
problem, but has instead, without grounds for so doing,
advocated routine methods, advocated a point of view that
was already old in 1885 (see footnote on page 103 of The
Development of Capitalism, where I quote from Mr. V. V.’s