Date: 1913
Source: ru:PSS/v23

At the Kyiv Agricultural Congress, before 1,000 landowners from all over Russia, Professor Kosinsky delivered the inaugural address, demonstrating the triumph of “labor-based farming” in agriculture.

The question of “labor-based” farming is one of the most crucial issues for elucidating capitalist relations in agriculture. Moreover, in Russia there exists a bourgeois party of Populists—among them the “Left”—which seeks to convince workers of its socialist credentials, lavishing particular praise on “labor-based” farming. Consequently, for every conscious worker, it is imperative to grasp what “labor-based” farming truly entails.

Mr. Kosinsky, a bourgeois professor, offered no concrete data whatsoever as he asserted that peasant farms were expanding, while large-scale enterprises relying on wage labor were decaying and ultimately perishing. In doing so, the professor

“distinguished three types of peasant farming: first, parcelled (dwarf) farms, where the peasant works at a factory somewhere, while at home, in the village, he owns only a small estate and a vegetable garden whose meager yields merely supplement his income; second, subsistence farms, where the peasant possesses a more substantial plot of land, yet its cultivation falls short of meeting the entire family’s needs; in such cases, some members of the household must seek work elsewhere; and third, labor-based farms, which represent fully self-sufficient peasant households where the entire family engages in agricultural labor. Agrarian evolution—development—leads inexorably to the extinction of subsistence farms and their replacement by labor-based and parcelled farms. The future, in essence, belongs to labor-based farms. On the Russian scale, the average size of such holdings hovers around 50 desyatins. The ascendancy of labor-based farming, far from heralding the proletarianization of the countryside,” he declared, “is by no means accompanied by the proletarianization of the peasantry” (“Kyivskaya Mysl,” No. 242).

Herein lie the foundations of the bourgeois theory of “labor-based” agriculture, adopted by the Populists. Any worker with even a rudimentary understanding of political economy will immediately recognize that the “parcelled” or “dwarf” farms Mr. Bourgeois refers to are, in fact, proletarian, serf-like households—“farms” sustained by wage laborers.

He clearly designates as “subsistence farms” those small peasant holdings that are predominantly non‑market-oriented, non‑trading, and based on subsistence production—farms that procure their own food. By acknowledging the displacement of these farms, our unwitting bourgeois professor thereby concedes the victory of capitalism, the rise of exchange, and the gradual erosion of small-scale farming. But displaced by what kind of farms? First and foremost, by proletarian farms—this, indeed, is what we might call proletarianization, dear unconscious professor! Second, by “labor-based” farms—holdings averaging roughly 50 desyatins in size.

It remains for me to demonstrate to this unwitting professor and to his Socialist-Revolutionary (Populist) disciples that “labor-based” farms are, in fact, petty-bourgeois, capitalist enterprises.

What, then, is the hallmark of capitalism? The utilization of wage labor. It is high time our professors and Socialist-Revolutionaries learned this fundamental truth.

What, in turn, does European, scientific statistics tell us about wage labor in peasant farming? It reveals that not only 50‑desyatin farms—but even holdings exceeding 10 hectares (one hectare equals roughly ten desyatins)—in the vast majority of cases cannot do without wage labor!

Germany: The latest census, conducted in 1907. The number of farms ranging from 10 to 20 hectares stood at 412,741. These farms employed 711,867 wage laborers. Even farms spanning 5 to 10 hectares housed 487,704 wage laborers across 652,798 households. In other words: here too, the number of wage laborers exceeded half the total number of farms. Yet everyone knows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, small peasants maintain no more than a single wage laborer.

Austria: The last census, conducted in 1902. The number of farms between 10 and 20 hectares reached 242,293. Among them, the majority—142,272—employed wage laborers, accounting for nearly three-fifths of the total. We should add that Austria was a country far less advanced in the development of capitalism than Germany. Across Austrian agriculture as a whole, the proportion of wage laborers was half that of Germany—only 14%, compared to 30% in Germany.

Switzerland: The latest census, conducted in 1905. The number of farms between 10 and 15 hectares totaled 19,641. Of these, 11,148—more than half—employed wage laborers. Among farms ranging from 5 to 10 hectares, roughly 36% in Switzerland and 33% in Austria had wage laborers.

From this alone we can gauge the boundless ignorance—or outright bad faith—of the bourgeois professor whom the Populists follow, who denies the proletarianization of the countryside while simultaneously acknowledging the displacement of “subsistence” farms—first by proletarian farms, and second by “labor-based” farms, cloaking these latter with the sweet-sounding term for households employing wage labor!

All those who celebrate the supposed successes of “labor-based” agriculture under capitalism—including our Left-wing Populists—are, in essence, bourgeois deceivers of the working class. Their deception lies, first, in the cosmetic embellishment of the bourgeoisie: the exploiter of wage labor is dubbed a “labor-based” farmer! Their deception also lies, second, in the deliberate obscuring of the chasm that separates the vast mass of proletarian households from the tiny minority of capitalist farms.

The interests of the bourgeoisie demand the whitewashing of capitalism and the concealment of the class divide. The interests of the proletariat, however, require the exposure of capitalism and the exploitation of wage labor—and the awakening of the masses to the profound depth of the class chasm.

Consider the following brief data on the class divide in German agriculture, according to the 1907 census. The total number of farms amounted to 5.7 million. Of these, 3.4 million were proletarian farms—holding no more than 2 hectares of land. The vast majority of these “farmers” were wage laborers possessing but a scrap of land.

Following closely behind were the smallholder farms (2–5 hectares; 1.0 million farms). These were the poorest peasants. Fewer than half—495,000—were independent farmers without any supplementary occupations. The majority depended on supplementary work, that is, on the sale of their labor power. For these peasants, it was all too easy to drift into the ranks of the proletariat.

Let us group them together into the first category: proletarian and smallholder farms.

The second category comprises medium-sized peasant farms (5–10 hectares). As we have seen, quite a few of these farms exploit wage laborers. The average peasant is, in effect, a petty bourgeois—treading a precarious line between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The third category encompasses the remaining farms—namely, the capitalists (20 hectares and above) and the large-scale peasants (10–20 hectares). We have already observed that large-scale peasants, for the most part, rely on wage labor.

Thus, we have the first group: proletarian and smallholder farms; the second: medium-sized peasant farms; and the third: large-scale peasant farms and purely capitalist holdings. Now let us examine how much land and livestock each of these groups controls:

Here is a picture of contemporary agriculture—not a professorial one, not a Populist vision, but a starkly realistic portrayal. The vast majority of land, livestock, and machinery is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority—less than one-eighth, or 0.7 out of 5.7—of capitalists and bourgeois peasants. The immense mass of “farmers” (4.4 million out of 5.7) possess less than two workers per farm, less than two desyatins of land, and fewer than two head of livestock. These are the destitute. Their share in overall agricultural output is negligible. And yet they are led astray, promised salvation under capitalism.

Compare the labor productivity across the various groups—that is, the number of workers per desyatin of land, or per head of livestock—and you will see the barbaric dispersion and squandering of labor in small-scale farming. By contrast, capitalists employ nearly all available machinery and achieve remarkably high labor productivity.

Compare the quantity of livestock to the amount of land—pastureland, fodder acreage, and the like—in each group. You will observe emaciated herds in small-scale farms, while the upper echelon enjoys capitalist “prosperity.”

Marxists champion the interests of the masses, explaining to the peasantry: there is no salvation outside of joining the proletarian struggle. Bourgeois professors and Populists deceive the masses with fairy tales about “labor-based” small-scale farming under capitalism.

“Our Path,” No. 15, September 11, 1913; “Truth of Labor,” No. 4, September 14, 1913. Signed: V. Ilyin

Printed from the text of the newspaper “Truth of Labor.”