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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
From what has been said above, it follows automatically
that the problem of the home market as a separate, selfsufficient
problem not depending on that of the degree of
capitalist development does not exist at all. That is why
Marx’s theory does not anywhere or ever raise this problem
separately. The home market appears when commodity
economy appears; it is created by the development of this
commodity economy, and the degree to which the social
division of labour is ramified determines the level of its
development; it spreads with the extension of commodity
production from products to labour-power, and only in proportion
as the latter is transformed into a commodity does
capitalism embrace the entire production of the country,
developing mainly on account of means of production, which
occupy an increasingly important place in capitalist society.
The “home market” for capitalism is created by developing
capitalism itself, which deepens the social division of labour
and resolves the direct producers into capitalists and workers.
The degree of the development of the home market is
the degree of development of capitalism in the country. To
raise the question of the limits of the home market separately
from that of the degree of the development of capitalism
(as the Narodnik economists do) is wrong.
That is why the question of how a home market is being
formed for Russian capitalism reduces itself to the following:
How and in what direction are the diverse aspects
of the Russian national economy developing? What constitutes
the connection between and interdependence of these
diverse aspects?
The next chapters will be devoted to an examination of
data containing the answers to these questions.
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