The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture

IV. Continuation. The Economy of Landlord Farming in the Area Described

We have cited the evidence of agronomists and farmers to the effect that
dairy farming on the landlord estates leads to the rationalisation of
agriculture. Let us add here that the analysis of the Zemstvo statistics on this question made
by

Mr. Raspopin [1] fully confirms this conclusion. We refer the reader to
Mr. Raspopin’s article for detailed data and give here only his main
conclusion. “The interdependence of the condition of stock raising
and dairy farming, on the one hand, and the number of dilapidated estates
and the intensity of farming, on the other, is beyond question. The uyezds
(of Moscow Gubernia) where dairy cattle raising, dairy farming, is most
developed show the smallest percentage of dilapidated farms and the
highest percentage of estates with highly developed field
cultivation. Throughout Moscow Gubernia ploughland is being reduced and
turned into meadow and pastureland, while grain rotations are yielding
place to multi-field herbage rotations. Fodder grasses and dairy cattle,
and not grain, are now predominant . . . not only on the farming estates
in Moscow Gubernia but throughout the Moscow industrial district”
( loc . cit .).

The scale of butter production and cheese making is particularly important
precisely because it testifies to a complete revolution in agriculture,
which becomes entrepreneur farming and breaks with routine. Capitalism
subordinates to itself one of the products of agriculture, and all other
aspects of farming are fitted in with this principal product. The keeping
of dairy cattle calls forth the cultivation of grasses, the change-over
from the three-field system to multi-field systems, etc. The waste
products of cheese making go to fatten cattle for the market. Not only
milk processing, but the whole of agriculture becomes a commercial enterprise. [2]

The influence of cheese production and butter making is not confined to the farms on which they are carried on,
since milk is often bought up from the surrounding peasants and
landlords. By buying up the milk, capital subordinates to itself the small
agriculturists too, particularly with the organisation of the so-called
“amalgamated dairies,” the spread of which was noted in the
70s (see Sketch by Messrs. Kovalevsky and Levitsky). These are
establishments organised in big towns, or in their vicinity, which process
very large quantities of milk brought in by rail. As soon as the milk
arrives the cream is skimmed and sold fresh, while the skimmed milk is
sold at a low price to poorer purchasers. To ensure that they get produce
of a certain quality, these establishments sometimes conclude contracts
with the suppliers, obliging them to adhere to certain rules in feeding
their cows. One can easily see how great is the significance of large
establishments of this kind: on the one hand they capture the public
market (the sale of skimmed milk to the poorer town-dwellers), and on the
other hand they enormously expand the market for the rural
entrepreneurs. The latter are given a tremendous impetus to expand and
improve commercial farming. Large-scale industry brings them into line, as
it were, by demanding produce of a definite quality and forcing out of the
market (or placing at the mercy of the usurers) the small producer who
falls below the “normal” standard. There should also operate
in the same direction the grading of milk as to quality (fat content, for
example), on which technicians are so busily engaged, inventing all sorts
of lacto-densimeters, etc., and of which the experts are so heartily in
favour (cf. Productive Forces , III, 9 and 38). In this respect
the role of the amalgamated dairies in the development of capitalism is
quite analogous to that of elevators in commercial grain farming. By
sorting grain as to quality the elevators turn it into a product that is
not individual but generic ( res fungibilis , [7] as the lawyers say), i.e., for the first time they
adapt it fully to exchange (cf. M. Sering’s article on the grain
trade in the United States of America in the symposium Landownership and Agriculture , p. 281 and foll.). Thus, the elevators give a
powerful impetus to commodity-grain production and spur on its technical
development by also introducing grading for quality. Such a system strikes
a double blow at the small producer. Firstly, it sets up as a standard,
legalises, the higher-quality grain of the big crop sowers and thereby
greatly depreciates the inferior grain of the peasant poor. Secondly, by
organising the grading and storing of grain on the lines of large-scale
capitalist industry, it reduces the big sowers’ expenses on this
item and facilitates and simplifies the sale of grain for them, thereby
placing the small producer, with his patriarchal and primitive methods of
selling from the cart in the market, totally at the mercy of the kulaks
and the usurers. Hence, the rapid development of elevator construction in
recent years means as big a victory for capital and degradation of the
small commodity-producer in the grain business as does the appearance and
development of capitalist “amalgamated dairies.”

From the foregoing material it is clear that the development of commercial
stock farming creates a home market, [3] firstly, for means of
production—milk-processing equipment, premises, cattle sheds,
improved agricultural implements required for the change-over from the
routine three-field system to multi-field crop rotations, etc.; and
secondly, for labour-power. Stock farming placed on an industrial footing
requires a far larger number of workers than the old stock farming “for manure.” The dairy farming
area—the industrial and north-western gubernias—does really
attract masses of agricultural labourers. Very many people go to seek
agricultural work in the Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl and Vladimir
gubernias; fewer, but nevertheless a considerable number, go to the
Novgorod, Nizhni Novgorod and other non-black-earth gubernias. According
to correspondents of the Department of Agriculture in the Moscow and other
gubernias private-landowner farming is actually conducted in the main by
labourers from other areas. This paradox— the migration of
agricultural workers from the agricultural gubernias (they come mostly
from the central black-earth gubernias and partly from the northern) to
the industrial gubernias to do agricultural jobs in place of industrial
workers who abandon the area en masse—is an extremely characteristic
phenomenon (see S. A. Korolenko on this point, loc. cit). It proves more
convincingly than do any calculations or arguments that the standard of
living and the conditions of the working people in the central black-earth
gubernias, the least capitalist ones, are incomparably lower and worse
than in the industrial gubernias, the most capitalist ones; it proves that
in Russia, too, the following has become a universal fact, namely, the
phenomenon characteristic of all capitalist countries, that the conditions
of the workers in industry are better than those of the workers in
agriculture (because in agriculture oppression by capitalism is
supplemented by the oppression of pre-capitalist forms of
exploitation). That explains the flight from agriculture to industry,
whereas not only is there no flow from the industrial gubernias towards
agriculture (for example, there is no migration from these gubernias at
all), but there is even a tendency to look down upon the “raw”
rural workers, who are called “cowherds” (Yaroslavl Gubernia),
“cossacks” (Vladimir Gubernia) and “land labourers” (Moscow Gubernia).

It is important also to note that cattle herding requires a larger number
of workers in winter than in summer. For that reason, and also because of
the development of agricultural processing trades, the demand for labour
in the area described not only grows, but is more evenly distributed over the whole year and over a period of years. The most reliable material for judging this interesting fact is the data on wages, if taken
for a number of years. We give these data, confining ourselves to the
groups of Great-Russian and Little-Russian gubernias. [8] We omit the western
gubernias, owing to their specific social conditions and artificial
congestion of population (the Jewish pale of settlement), and quote the
Baltic gubernias only to illustrate the relations that arise where
capitalism is most highly developed. [4]

Let us examine this table, in which the three principal columns are
printed in italics. The first column shows the proportion of summer to
yearly pay. The lower this proportion is, and the nearer the
summer pay approximates to half the yearly pay, the more evenly is the
demand for labour spread over the entire year and the less the winter unemployment . The least favourably placed in this respect are the
central black-earth gubernias—the area where labour-service prevails
and where capitalism is poorly developed. [5]

In the industrial gubernias, in the dairy-farming area the demand for labour is higher and winter unemployment is less. Over
a period of years, too, the pay is most stable here, as may be seen from
the second column, which shows the difference between the lowest and the
highest pay in the harvest season. Lastly, the difference between the pay
in the sowing season and the pay in the harvest season is also least in
the non black-earth belt, i.e., the demand for workers is more evenly
distributed over the spring and summer. In all respects mentioned the
Baltic gubernias stand even higher than the non-black-earth gubernias,
while the steppe gubernias, with their immigrant workers and with harvest
fluctuations of the greatest intensity, are marked by the greatest
instability of wages. Thus, the data on wages testify that agricultural
capitalism in the area described not only creates a demand for
wage-labour, but also distributes this demand more evenly over the whole
year.

Lastly, reference must be made to one more type of dependence of the small
agriculturist in the area described upon the big farmer. This is the
replenishment of landlords’ herds by the purchase of cattle from
peasants. The landlords find it more profitable to buy cattle from
peasants driven by need to sell “at a loss” than to breed
cattle themselves—just as our buyers-up in so-called handicraft
industry often prefer to buy finished articles from the handicraftsmen at a ruinously cheap price rather than manufacture them in their own
workshops. This fact, which testifies to the extreme degradation of the
small producer, and to his being able to keep going in modern society only
by endlessly reducing his requirements, is turned by Mr. V. V. into an
argument in favour of small “people’s” production!
. . . “We are entitled to draw the conclusion that our big farmers
. . . do not display a sufficient degree of independence. . . . The
peasant, however . . . reveals greater ability to effect real farming
improvements” ( Progressive Trends , 77). This lack of independence is expressed in the fact that “our dairy farmers
. . . buy up the peasants’ (cows) at a price rarely amounting to
half the cost of raising them—usually at not more than a third, and
often even a quarter of this cost” ( ibid ., 71). The merchant’s capital of the stock farmers has made the small peasants
completely dependent, it has turned them into its cowherds, who breed
cattle for a mere song, and has turned their wives into its milkmaids. [6]

One would think that the conclusion to be drawn from this is that there is no sense in
retarding the transformation of merchant’s capital into industrial
capital, no sense in supporting small production, which leads to forcing
down the producer’s standard of living below that of the farm
labourer. But

Mr. V. V. thinks otherwise. He is delighted with the “zeal”
(p. 73, loc . cit .) of the peasant in tending his cattle;
he is delighted with the “good results from livestock farming”
obtained by the peasant woman who “spends all her life with her cow
and sheep” (80). What a blessing, to be sure! To “spend all
her life with her cow” (the milk of which goes to the improved cream
separator), and as a reward for this life, to receive “one-fourth of
the cost” of tending this cow! Now really, how after that can one
fail to declare in favour of “small people’s production”!

---
Notes:
[1]
This problem also has been raised by Mr. Raspopin (perhaps for the first
time in our literature) from the correct, theoretically sound point of
view. At the very outset he observes that “the enhancement of the
productivity of stock farming”—in particular, the development
of dairy farming—is proceeding in this country along capitalist
lines and serves as one of the most important indices of the penetration
of capital into agriculture.— Lenin

[2]
Dr. Zhbankov says in his Sanitary Investigation of Factories and Works of Smolensk Gubernia (Smolensk, 1894, Vol. I, p. 7) that “the
number of workers engaged in cheese making proper . . . is very
inconsiderable. . . . There are far more auxiliary workers, needed both
for cheese making and for agriculture; these are herdsmen, milkmaids, etc.; in all the [cheese] factories these workers outnumber the cheese
makers proper, two, three and even four times over.” Let us note
in passing that according to Dr. Zhbankov’s description, the
conditions of labour here are very insanitary, and the working day is
excessively long (16 to 17 hours), etc. Thus, in the case of this area
of commercial agriculture, too, the traditional notion of the idyllic
occupation of the agriculturist is a false one.— Lenin

[3]
The market for commercial stock farming is created chiefly by the
growth of the industrial population, with which we shall deal in detail
later on (Chapter VIII, § II). As regards foreign trade, let us confine
ourselves to the following remarks: cheese exports in the early part of
the post-Reform period were much below imports; but in the 90s they almost
equalled them (for the 4 years 1891-1894, the annual average imports
amounted to 41,800 poods, and exports to 40,600 poods; in the five years
1886-1890, exports even exceeded imports). The exports of cow and ewe
butter have always greatly exceeded imports; these exports are rapidly
increasing: in 1866-1870 the average annual exports amounted to 190,000
poods and in 1891-1894 to 370,000 poods ( Productive Forces , III,
37).— Lenin

[4]
Group I (the area of capitalist grain farming) consists of 8 gubernias:
Bessarabia, Kherson, Taurida, Ekaterinoslav, Don, Samara, Saratov and
Orenburg. Group II (the area where capitalism is least developed) consists
of 12 gubernias: Kazan, Simbirsk, Penza, Tambov Ryazan, Tula, Orel, Kursk,
Voronezh, Kharkov, Poltava and Chernigov. Group III (the area of
capitalist dairy farming and industrial capitalism) consists of 10
gubernias: Moscow, Tver, Kaluga, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma,
Nizhni-Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Pskov. The figures showing
wages are average gubernia figures. Source: Department of Agriculture
publication Hired Labour , etc .— Lenin

[5]
A similar conclusion is drawn by Mr. Rudnev: “In those localities
where the work of labourers hired by the year is given a relatively high
valuation the wages of the summer worker approximate more closely to half
the yearly pay. Hence, on the contrary, in the western gubernias, and in
nearly all the densely-populated central black-earth gubernias, the
worker’s labour in the summer is given a very low valuation”
( loc . cit ., 455).— Lenin

[6]
Here are two descriptions of the living standard and living conditions of
the Russian peasant in general. M. Y. Saltykov, in Petty Things of Life , writes about the “enterprising muzhik” as follows:
“The muzhik needs everything, but what he needs most of all . . . is
the ability to exhaust himself, not to stint his own labour. . . . The
enterprising muzhik simply expires at it” (work). “His wife
and grown up children, too, all toil worse than galley-slaves.”

V. Veresayev, in a story entitled “Lizar” Severny Kurier [ Northern Courier ], 1899, No. 1), tells the story of
a muzhik in the Pskov Gubernia named Lizar, who advocates the use of
drops, etc., “to prevent an increase.”
“Subsequently,” observes the author, “I heard from many
Zemstvo doctors, and particularly from midwives, that they frequently have
similar requests from village husbands and wives.” “Moving in
a certain direction, life has tried all roads and at last has reached a
blind alley. There is no escape from it. And so a new solution of the
problem is naturally arising and increasingly maturing.”

The position of the peasant in capitalist society is indeed hopeless, and
in Russia with its village communities, as in France with its
smallholders, leads “naturally” not to an unnatural
. . . “solution of the problem,” of course, but to an unnatural means of postponing the doom of small economy. ( Note to 2nd edition .)— Lenin

[7]
Res fungibilis —replaceable thing—an old juridical term. “Replaceable things” are those which in contracts are
indicated by simple numerical quantity or measure (“so many bushels
of rye,” “so many bricks”). They are distinguished from
“irreplaceable things”—things that are specifically indicated (“such and such a thing,” “article number so
and so”).

[8]
Little Russia , i.e., Malorossia—as the territory of the
Ukraine was officially called in tsarist Russia.