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

72
V. I. LENIN
Mr. Postnikov employs the following method. From the total
crop area of the farm, he separates the following: the food
area (which provides sustenance for the family and the farm
labourers), the fodder area (which provides fodder for the
cattle) and the farm-service area (seed-plot, land occupied
by buildings, etc.), and thus arrives at the size of the market
or commercial area, the produce of which goes for sale. It
is shown that in the group with 5 to 10 dess. under crops,
only 11.8% of the cultivated area yields produce for the
market, whereas this percentage grows with the increase in
the area under crops (by groups) as follows: 36.5%—52%—
61%. Consequently, the well-to-do peasants (the top two
groups) engage in what is commercial cultivation, and
secure a gross money income ranging from 574 to 1,500 rubles
per annum. This commercial cultivation then becomes capitalist
farming, for the areas cultivated by the well-to-do
peasants exceed the family labour norm (i.e., the amount of
land that a family can cultivate by its own labour), and
compel them to resort to the hiring of workers: in the three
northern uyezds of Taurida Gubernia, the author estimates,
the well-to-do peasants hire over 14,000 rural workers. The
poor peasants, on the contrary, “provide workers” (over
5,000), that is, resort to the sale of their labour-power, since
the income from cultivating the land amounts, in the 5
to 10 dess. group, for example, to only about 30 rubles in
cash per household.* We observe here, consequently, the
very process of the creation of a home market that is dealt
with by the theory of capitalist production—the “home
market” grows as a result of the conversion into a commodity
of the product of commercial, entrepreneur farming, on the
one hand, and of the conversion into a commodity of
the labour-power sold by the badly-off peasants, on the other.
In order to acquaint ourselves more closely with this
phenomenon, let us examine the position of each separate
group of the peasantry. Let us start with the top group.
Here are the data for the amount of land it owns and uses:
* Mr. Postnikov rightly observes that in reality the differences
between the groups as to size of money income from the land are
much more considerable, for the computations assume 1) equal yield,
and 2) equal price for grain sold, actually, however, the well-to-do
peasants secure better yields and sell their grain to greater advantage.