David’s short article, “Bäuerliche Barbaren’ (Sozialistische
Monatshefte, 1899, No. 2, III. Jahrgang, S. 62-71) is a typical
example of the outrageous approach to the small peasant
concept. David gives a description according to Hecht (Moritz Hecht, Three Villages in the Hard of Baden, Leipzig,
1895) of three villages near Karlsruhe, lying within 4 to
14 kilometres. In one village (Hagsfeld) the majority are
workers who go to work in Karlsruhe, in the second (Blankenloch), they are a small minority, and in the third (Friedrichsthal), all are farmers.
They have holdings of 1 to 3 hectares*) (only one has 9
hectares, and 18—4 to 6 hectares), and lease from 2 to
1 hectare. Twenty-nine are landless.
Price of hectare .
4.2-4.4 thousand marks.
Grow tobacco, 45 % of farmland (area under crop) in Friedrichsthal (1,140 souls)
4.8-5.0
”
”
Raise corn (wheat), 47% of farmland (area under crop) in Blankenloch (1,684 souls)
9.-10.
”
”
Grow potatoes. 42 % of farmland (p. 67)
(area under crop) in Hagsfeld.
*) “Holdings everywhere are small and dwarf peasant farms”:
Hagsfeld “average” 2.0 hectares
Blankenloch
”
2.5
”
Friedrichsthal
”
1.8
”
(!!)

V. I. LENIN


⋆


Income (from tobacco)—up to 1,800 marks (gross, 690 net)
per hectare.*) Crop yields are everywhere much higher than the average for Germany (p. 67)
Potatoes: 150-160 double centners per hectare (87.8 for German Reich)
Rye and wheat:
20-23
”
”
”
”
(10-13 ”
”
”
)
Hay:
50-60
”
”
”
”
(28.6
”
”
”
)
Living standard is high (clothes, food, dwellings, etc.),
for instance, consumption of sugar in the three villages
is 17 kg per head (only 8.2 kg for German Reich!), etc.
David is jubilant: There’s your “backward small peasants!” he says about these “still really and truly small
holders” (p. 66). This only shows him up as a real and true
petty bourgeois, because his is a most eloquent example of
the bourgeois village, a visual example of the worthlessness
of area statistics. These are nothing but rich tobacco-planters and suburban peasants—and suburban workers with
plots of land!
From the outset, E. David attacks the theory of underconsumption and overwork (62) (“superhuman work and
inhuman way of life”).
And, ridiculing orthodox Marxism, etc. (63), E. David says:
“I should subsequently like to contrast the backward small peasant described by Kautsky with a portrait of the
modern small peasant. In fact, such a type does exist; but
he is so different, as man and farmer, from the semi-barbarian beggar we find in Kautsky’s book, that anyone wishing
to engage in practical land agitation will find it very useful
to have a closer look at him as well” (63).
Before that E. David “retells” Kautsky as follows: Agriculture has become “one of the most revolutionary, if not
the most revolutionary of modern industries”, but small
peasant farming is “the most irrational economy one can
imagine”. (No reference to Agrarfrage).
*) 1,825.60 marks per hectare. And this holder has 2.5 hectares plus milch cows and pigs (dairy farm near Karlsruhe)
(p. 67). “Let the reader calculate the total income of this (!!)
‘backward small peasant’” (67).


“Comrade Kautsky starts from the premise that small peasant farming cannot be rational at all; that the successes
of agricultural science and engineering virtually do not
exist for it at all. Modern machinery, chemical fertilisers,
soil improvement, rational crop rotation, improvement of seed and livestock, organisation of marketing and credit—
all of this he imagines to be the privilege of capitalist largescale agriculture from whose table, it is true, some small
crumbs do fall to the small peasants, but these are quite
insufficient to raise small farming to the economic and
technical productivity which is characteristic of largescale farming” (63).
(A specimen of “vulgarising” Marxism!)
Statistics of income from crops: in the south-western states (small farming) it is higher than in East Prussia
(large-scale farming).
That the soil is better in the south-west is only a part
of the explanation.
Even if the rye ana hay crops in Saxony are lower than in Hessen (the wheat crop is higher), this goes best to show
how backward the concept of the general backwardness of peasant farming is (64).
Of course, machines are not as (not equally) accessible
to small farming, but
1) machines do not play such a role in agriculture
2) the most important machines are also “accessible”
(zugänglich) to small farming.
“Concerning steam and other threshing machines this is admitted even by Kautsky; their application is becoming
ever more widespread on the small farms as well. But
Kautsky is wrong when he says that ‘apart from the thresher,
the use of machinery in small farming is hardly in evidence’.
“Of the machines included in the count during the 1895 farm census, there is above all the seed drill, which is
accessible to all, at any rate, to farms of 5 to 20 hectares,
and smaller farms as well, insofar as they have an even
area under crop. It is true that the percentage of small farms
already using it is still insignificant, but if we look at the
high, absolute figures and the progress between 1882 and
!!

V. I. LENIN

1895, we shall have a positive answer to the question of
whether or not they can be used everywhere. This is borne
out by the following survey. Seeders were used by*:
Number of farms:


Under 2 ha
4,807
14,949 (214)
&
10,142
2-5
4,760
13,639 (551)
8,879
5-20
15,980
52,003 (3,252)
36,023
25,547
80,591 (4,017)
55,044
20-100
22,975
61,943 (12,091)
38,968
> 100
15,320
26,931 (12,565)
11,611 (p. 65)
“The assertion that apart from the thresher, the use of
machinery in small farming is hardly in evidence, is refuted
by these figures, for the seed drill, at any rate.”
and in the note there is a reference to The Condition of
the Peasants, I, 106, to the effect that in the Weimar district,
the “seed drill is common among the richer (!!) and is already
making its way into the 30- or 40-acre farms”.
Let’s note that 28.5 ha = 100 Weimar acres about
9.5 ha = 30-40
”
”
“Nor can it be said that the reaper is absolutely beyond
the reach of small farming. In 1895, it was already in use on
6,746 farms of 5 to 20 ha” (p. 65).
Then comes a quotation from a Frankfort-on-the Main factory catalogue: 20-25-30-60 pfennigs for 2 day’s use of
a machine: seeder (60 pfennigs), harrow (25 pfennigs), etc.
“But the other achievements of modern agriculture have penetrated into small peasant farming to a much greater
extent than the machines. To give a visual picture of this
I shall quote in somewhat greater detail one of the most
fundamental (!!!) and interesting (!) monographs on the
condition of the peasantry which have appeared in the recent period” ... Hecht (66)**
in these three villages:
“Holdings everywhere are small and dwarf peasant farms”
(E. David’s italics).
* Under the 1882 census, the count only dealt with seeders; and in 1895
broadcast sowers and seed drills were classified under separate heads. Consequently, the 1882 figures should be compared with the total number of
machines of both types in 1895; the relatively smaller number of farms using
the broadcast sowers, the less important type, is given in brackets after the
total figure (E. David’s note).
** See present edition, Vol. 5, p. 160.—Ed.
]
^


“What has been said must cast doubt on Kautsky’s assertion which is presented to us as a generally recognised
truth: ‘that in contrast to large-scale farming peasant
farming rests not on a higher productivity but on more modest
requirements’” (68).
For all labour-intensive crops, small farming is undoubtedly
more rational (68).
Good dwellings, “clean room” ... carpets, lamps, photographs, mirrors, gold rings, postage stamps, etc. (69)
“Our Hard peasants are already at the pure money economy stage and—oh, miracle!—this has not ruined them.
In defiance of Kautsky’s prophecies! In fact, they are having it very well indeed, and any cash surplus—and
they often have one—is instantly deposited in savings banks to earn interest” (68).
“I have quoted this study, based as it is on serious data,
at such length because it gives an excellent characteristic of
every aspect of the most modern type of West-German small
peasantry’ (70) ... that even the urban reader will understand....
“For it should not be imagined that Hecht’s facts are exceptional cases, without any importance for the general
condition and the future of small-scale farming” (70)
In Mombach (near Mainz), where E. David lives, the peasants are no worse off than the Hard peasants. They
raise lettuce, asparagus, peas, etc.
E. David objects to Kautsky’s taking “a few pictures of
poverty” from the Rhön mountains, Spessart, upper Taunus,
etc., and drawing general conclusions (71). His, David’s,
picture will help to find a general correct average (71) (my
italics).
The condition of the peasants is now on the whole better
than before. E. David quotes The Condition of the Peasants,
I, 270—(last paragraph, first sentence: “That welfare in general” up to “proves”)—and puts it in italics.
(David says notaword about hired labour among the Hard peasants. Not
a
word either about overwork (after other work).)