The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture

IX. Conclusions on the Significance of Capitalism in Russian Agriculture

In chapters II-IV the problem of capitalism in Russian agriculture has
been examined from two angles. First we examined the existing system of
social and economic relations in peasant and landlord economy, the system
which has taken shape in the post-Reform period. It was seen that the
peasantry have been splitting up at enormous speed into a numerically
small but economically strong rural bourgeoisie and a rural
proletariat. Inseparably connected with this “depeasantising”
process is the landowners’ transition from the labour-service to the
capitalist system of farming. Then we examined this same process from
another angle: we took as our starting-point the manner in which
agriculture is transformed into commodity production, and examined the
social and economic relations characteristic of each of the principal
forms of commercial agriculture. It was shown that the very same processes
were conspicuous in both peasant and private-landowner farming under a great variety of
agricultural conditions.

Let us now examine the conclusions that follow from all the data given
above.

1) The main feature of the post-Reform evolution of agriculture is its
growing commercial, entrepreneur character. As regards private-landowner
farming, this fact is so obvious as to require no special explanation. As
regards peasant farming, however, it is not so easily established,
firstly, because the employment of hired labour is not an absolutely
essential feature of the small rural bourgeoisie. As we have observed
above, this category includes every small commodity-producer who covers
his expenditure by independent farming, provided the general system of
economy is based on the capitalist contradictions examined in Chapter
II. Secondly, the small rural bourgeois (in Russia, as in other capitalist
countries) is connected by a number of transitional stages with the
small-holding “peasant,” and with the rural proletarian who
has been allotted a patch of land. This circumstance is one of the reasons
for the viability of the theories which do not distinguish the existence
of a rural bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat among “the peasantry.” [1]

2) From the very nature of agriculture its transformation into commodity
production proceeds in a special way, unlike the corresponding process in
industry. Manufacturing industry splits up into separate, quite
independent branches, each devoted exclusively to the manufacture of one
product or one part of a product. The agricultural industry, however, does
not split up into quite separate branches, but merely specialises in one
market product in one case, and in another market product in another, all
the other aspects of agriculture being adapted to this principal (i.e.,
market) product. That is why the forms of commercial agriculture show
immense diversity, varying not only in different areas, but also on different farms. That is why, when examining
the question of the growth of commercial agriculture, we must on no
account confine ourselves to gross data for agricultural production as a whole. [2]

3) The growth of commercial agriculture creates a home market for
capitalism. Firstly, the specialisation of agriculture gives rise to
exchange between the various agricultural areas, between the various
agricultural undertakings, and between the various agricultural products.
Secondly, the further agriculture is drawn into the sphere of commodity
circulation the more rapid is the growth of the demand made by the rural
population for those products of manufacturing industry that serve for
personal consumption; and thirdly, the more rapid is the growth of the
demand for means of production, since neither the small nor the big rural
entrepreneur is able, with the old-fashioned “peasant” implements, buildings, etc., etc., to engage in the new, commercial
agriculture. Fourthly and lastly, a demand is created for labour-power,
since the formation of a small rural bourgeoisie and the change-over by
the landowners to capitalist farming presuppose the formation of a body of
regular agricultural labourers and day labourers. Only the fact of the
growth of commercial agriculture can explain the circumstance that the
post-Reform period is characterised by an expansion of the home market for
capitalism (development of capitalist agriculture, development of factory
industry in general, development of the agricultural engineering industry in particular, development of the so-called peasant
“agricultural industries,” i.e., work for hire, etc.).

4) Capitalism enormously extends and intensifies among the agricultural
population the contradictions without which this mode of production cannot
exist. Notwithstanding this, however, agricultural capitalism in Russia,
in its historical significance, is a big progressive force. Firstly,
capitalism has transformed the cultivator from a “lord of the
manor,” on the one hand, and a patriarchal, dependent peasant, on
the other, into the same sort of industrialist that every other
proprietor is in present-day society. Before capitalism appeared,
agriculture in Russia was the business of the gentry, a lord’s hobby
for some, and a duty, an obligation for others; consequently, it could not
be conducted except according to age-old routine, necessarily involving
the complete isolation of the cultivator from all that went on in the
world beyond the confines of his village. The labour-service
system—that living survival of old times in present-day
economy—strikingly confirms this characterisation. Capitalism for
the first time broke with the system of social estates in land tenure by
converting the land into a commodity. The farmer’s product was put
on sale and began to be subject to social reckoning—first in the
local, then in the national, and finally in the international market, and
in this way the former isolation of the uncouth farmer from the rest of
the world was completely broken down. The farmer was compelled willy
nilly, on pain of ruin, to take account of the sum-total of social
relations both in his own country and in other countries, now linked
together by the world market. Even the labour-service system, which
formerly guaranteed Oblomov an assured income without any risk on his
part, without any expenditure of capital, without any changes in the
age-old routine of production, now proved incapable of saving him from the
competition of the American farmer. That is why one can fully apply to
post-Reform Russia what was said half a century ago about Western
Europe—that agricultural capitalism hag been “the motive force
which has drawn the idyll into the movement of history.” [3]

Secondly, agricultural capitalism has for the first time undermined the
age-old stagnation of our agriculture; it has given a tremendous impetus
to the transformation of its technique, and to the development of the
productive forces of social labour. A few decades of “destructive
work” by capitalism have done more in this respect than entire
centuries of preceding history. The monotony of routine natural economy
has been replaced by a diversity of forms of commercial agriculture;
primitive agricultural implements have begun to yield place to improved
implements and machines; the immobility of the old-fashioned farming
systems has been undermined by new methods of agriculture. The course of
all these changes is linked inseparably with the above-mentioned
phenomenon of the specialisation of agriculture. By its very nature,
capitalism in agriculture (as in industry) cannot develop evenly: in one
place (in one country, in one area, on one farm) it pushes forward one
aspect of agriculture, in another place another aspect, etc. In one case
it transforms the technique of some, and in other cases of other
agricultural operations, divorcing them from patriarchal peasant economy
or from the patriarchal labour-service. Since the whole of this process is
guided by market requirements that are capricious and not always known to
the producer, capitalist agriculture, in each separate instance (often in
each separate area, sometimes even in each separate country), becomes more
one sided and lopsided than that which preceded it, but, taken as a whole,
becomes immeasurably more many-sided and rational than patriarchal
agriculture. The emergence of separate types of commercial agriculture renders possible and inevitable
capitalist crises in agriculture and cases of capitalist overproduction,
but these crises (like all capitalist crises) give a still more powerful
impetus to the development of world production and of the socialisation
of

labour. [4]

Thirdly, capitalism has for the first time created in Russia large-scale
agricultural production based on the employment of machines and the
extensive co-operation of workers. Before capitalism appeared, the
production of agricultural produce was always carried on in an unchanging,
wretchedly small way—both when the peasant worked for himself and
when he worked for the landlord—and no “community character” of land tenure was capable of destroying this
tremendously scattered production. Inseparably linked with this scattered
production was the scattered nature of the farmers themselves. [5]

Tied to their allotment, to their tiny “village community,” they were
completely fenced off even from the peasants of the neighbouring village community by the difference in the categories to which they belonged
(former landowners’ peasants, former state peasants, etc.), by
differences in the size of their holdings—by differences in the
terms on which their emancipation took place (which terms were sometimes
determined simply by the individual attributes of the landlords and by
their whims). Capitalism for the first time broke down these purely
medieval barriers—and it was a very good thing that it did. Now the
differences between the various grades of peasants, between the various
categories based on the size of allotment holdings, are far less important
than the economic differences within each grade, each category and each
village community. Capitalism destroys local seclusion and insularity, and
replaces the minute medieval divisions among cultivators by a major
division, embracing the whole nation, that divides them into classes
occupying different positions in the general system of capitalist economy. [6]

The mass of cultivators were formerly tied to their place of residence by the very
conditions of production, whereas the creation of diverse forms and
diverse areas of commercial and capitalist agriculture could not but cause
the movement of enormous masses of the population throughout the country;
and unless the population is mobile (as we have said above) there can be
no question of developing its understanding and initiative.

Fourthly, and lastly, agricultural capitalism in Russia for the first time
cut at the root of labour-service and the personal dependency of the
farmer. This system of labour-service has held undivided sway in our
agriculture from the days of Russkaya Pravda [7] down to the present
day cultivation of the fields of private landowners with the peasants’ implements; the wretchedness and uncouthness of the
farmer, degraded by his labour being “semi-free” if not
feudal, in character, are inevitable concomitants of this system; if the
civil rights of the cultivator had not been impaired (by, for example, his
belonging to the lowest social estate; corporal punishment; assignment to
public works; attachment to allotment, etc.) the labour-service system
would have been impossible. That is why agricultural capitalism in Russia
has performed a great historical service in replacing labour-service by
hired

labour. [8]

Summing up what has been said above on the progressive historical role of
Russian agricultural capitalism, it may be said that it is socialising
agricultural production. Indeed, the fact that agriculture has been
transformed from the privileged occupation of the top estate or the duty
of the bottom estate into an ordinary commercial and industrial
occupation; that the product of the cultivator’s labour has become
subject to social reckoning on the market; that routine, uniform
agriculture is being converted into technically transformed and diverse
forms of commercial farming; that the local seclusion and scattered nature
of the small farmers is breaking down; that the diverse forms of bondage
and personal dependence are being replaced by impersonal transactions in
the purchase and sale of labour-power, these are all links in a single
process, which is socialising agricultural labour and is increasingly
intensifying the contradiction between the anarchy of market fluctuations,
between the individual character of the separate agricultural enterprises
and the collective character of large-scale capitalist agriculture.

Thus (we repeat once more), in emphasising the progressive historical role
of capitalism in Russian agriculture we do not in the least forget either the historically transient character
of this economic regime or the profound social contradictions inherent in
it. On the contrary, we have shown above that it is precisely the
Narodniks who, capable only of bewailing the “destructive
work” of capitalism, give an extremely superficial appraisal of
these contradictions, glossing over the differentiation of the peasantry,
ignoring the capitalist character of the employment of machinery in our
agriculture, and covering up with such expressions as “agricultural
industries” and “employments” the emergence of a class of agricultural wage-workers.

---
Notes:
[1]
The favourite proposition of the Narodnik economists that “Russian
peasant farming is in the majority of cases purely natural economy”
is, incidentally, built up by ignoring this fact. ( The Influence of Harvests and Grain Prices , I, 52.) One has but to take
“average” figures, which lump together both the rural bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat—and this proposition will pass
as proved!— Lenin

[2]
It is to data of this kind that the authors of the book mentioned in the
preceding note confine themselves when they speak of “the
peasantry.” They assume that every peasant sows just those
cereals that he consumes, that he sows all those types of cereals
that he consumes, and that he sows them in just that proportion
in which they are consumed. It does not require much effort to
“deduce” from such “assumptions” (which contradict the facts and ignore the main feature of the post-Reform period) that
natural economy predominates.

In Narodnik literature one may also encounter the following ingenious
method of argument: each separate type of commercial agriculture
is an “exception”—by comparison with agriculture as a whole. Hence , all commercial agriculture in general, it is
averred, must be regarded as an exception, and natural economy must be
considered the general rule! In college textbooks on logic, in the section
on sophisms, numerous parallels of such lines of reasoning are to be
found.— Lenin

[3]
Misère de la philosophie (Paris, 1896), p. 223; the author
contemptuously describes as reactionary jeremiads, the longings of those who thirst for a return to the good old patriarchal life, simple manners,
etc, and who condemn the “subjection of the soil to the laws which
dominate all other industries.” [9]

We are fully aware that to the Narodniks the whole of the argument given
in the text may appear not only unconvincing but positively
unintelligible, But it would be too thankless a task to analyse in detail
such opinions as, for example, that the purchase-and-sale of the land is
an “abnormal” phenomenon (Mr. Chuprov, in the debate on grain
prices, p. 39 of the verbatim report), that the inalienability of the
peasants’ allotments is an institution that can be defended, that
the labour-service system of farming is better, or at all events no worse,
than the capitalist system, etc. All that has been said above goes to
refute the political and economic arguments advanced by the Narodniks in
support of such views.— Lenin

[4]
The West-European romanticists and Russian Narodniks strongly emphasise in
this process the one-sidedness of capitalist agriculture, the instability
created by capitalism, and crises—and on this basis deny the
progressive character of capitalist advance as compared with
pre-capitalist stagnation.— Lenin

[5]
Accordingly, notwithstanding the difference in the forms of land tenure,
one can fully apply to the Russian peasant what Marx said of the small
French peasant: “The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the
members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into
manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates
them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual
intercourse. The isolation is increased by France’s bad means of
communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of
production ( Produktionsfeld ), the small holding, admits of no
division of labour in its cultivation, no application of science and,
therefore, no diversity of development, no variety of talent, no wealth of
social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost
self-sufficient, it itself directly produces the major part of its
consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through exchange with
nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, a peasant and
his family; alongside them another small holding, another peasant and
another family. A few score of these make up a village, and a few score of
villages make up a Department. In this way, the great mass of the French
nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as
potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.” ( Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte , Hmb., 1885,

S. 98–99.) [10] — Lenin

[6]
“The need for association, for organisation in capitalist society,
has not diminished but, on the contrary, has grown immeasurably. But it is
utterly absurd to measure this need of the new society with the old
yardstick. This new society is already demanding firstly, that the
association shall not be according to locality, social-estate or category;
secondly, that its starting-point shall be the difference in status and
interests that has been created by capitalism and by the differentiation
of the peasantry.” [V. Ilyin, loc . cit ., pp. 91-92 footnote. (See present edition, Vol. 2, “A Characterisation of
Economic Romanticism.”— Ed .)— Lenin

[7]
Russian Law.— Lenin

[8]
One of Mr. N.–on’s innumerable plaints and lamentations over the
destructive work of capitalism in Russia deserves special attention:
“. . . Neither the strife among the appanage princes nor the Tartar
invasion affected the forms of our economic life” ( Sketches , p. 284); only capitalism has displayed “contempt
for its own historical past” (p. 283). The sacred truth! Capitalism
in Russian agriculture is progressive precisely because it has displayed
“contempt” for the “age-old”, “time-hallowed” forms of labour-service and bondage, which,
indeed, no political storms, the “strife among the appanage
princes” and the “Tartar invasion” inclusive, were able
to destroy.— Lenin

[9]
See Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy , Moscow, p. 180.

[10]
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works , Vol. I, Moscow,
1958, p. 334 ( The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ).