The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter V. The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry

IX. Some Remarks on the Pre-Capitalist Economy of
Our Countryside

The essence of the problem of “the destiny of capitalism in
Russia” is often presented as though prime importance attaches to
the question: how fast ? (i.e., how fast is capitalism developing?). Actually, however, far greater importance attaches to the
question: how exactly ? and to the question: where from ? (i.e., what was the nature of the pre-capitalist economic system in
Russia?). The principal errors of Narodnik economics are the false replies given to
precisely these two questions, i.e., in a wrong presentation of exactly
how capitalism is developing in Russia, in a false idealisation of the
pre-capitalist order. In Chapter II (and partly in Chapter III) and in the
present one we have examined the most primitive stages of capitalism in
small-scale agriculture and in the small peasant industries; in doing so
we could not avoid many references to the features of the pre-capitalist
order. If we now try to summarise these features we shall arrive at the
conclusion that the pre-capitalist countryside constituted (from the
economic point of view) a network of small local markets which linked up tiny groups of small producers , severed from each other by their separate farms , by the innumerable medieval barriers between them, and by the remnants of medieval dependence .

As to the scattered nature of the small producers, it stands out in
boldest relief in their differentiation both in agriculture and in
industry, which we established above. But their fragmentation is far from
being confined to this. Although united by the village community into tiny
administrative, fiscal and land-holding associations, the peasants are
split up by a mass of diverse divisions into grades, into categories
according to size of allotment, amount of payments, etc. Let us take, for
example, the Zemstvo statistical returns for Saratov Gubernia; there the
peasants are divided into the following grades: gift-land, owner, full
owner and state peasants, state peasants with community holdings, state
peasants with quarter holdings, [1] state peasants that formerly belonged to
landlords, appanage, state-land tenant, and landless peasants, owners who
were formerly landlords’ peasants, peasants whose farmsteads have
been redeemed, owners who are former appanage peasants, colonist
freeholder, settler, gift-land peasants who formerly belonged to
landlords, owners who were former state peasants, manumitted, those who did not pay quitrent, free tiller, [2]
temporarily bound, former factory-bound, etc.; further, there are
registered peasants, migrant, etc. All these grades differ in the history
of their agrarian relations, in size of allotments, amount of payments,
etc., etc. And within the grades there are innumerable differences of a similar kind: sometimes even the peasants of one and the same village
are divided into two quite distinct categories: “Mr. X’s
former peasants” and “Mrs. Y’s former peasants.”
All this diversity was natural and necessary in the Middle Ages, in the
remote past; at the present time, however, the preservation of the
social-estate exclusiveness of the peasant communities is a crying
anachronism and greatly worsens the conditions of the toiling masses,
while at the same time not in the least safeguarding them against the
burdens of the new, capitalist era. The Narodniks usually shut their eyes
to this fragmentation, and when the Marxists express the view that the
splitting up of the peasantry is progressive, the Narodniks confine
themselves to hackneyed outcries against “supporters of land
dispossession,” thereby covering up the utter fallacy of their views
about the pre-capitalist countryside. One has only to picture to oneself
the amazing fragmentation of the small producers, an inevitable
consequence of patriarchal agriculture, to become convinced of the
progressiveness of capitalism, which is shattering to the very foundations
the ancient forms of economy and life, with their age-old immobility and
routine, destroying the settled life of the peasants who vegetated behind
their medieval partitions, and creating new social classes striving of
necessity towards contact, unification, and active participation in the
whole of the economic (and not only economic) life of the country, and of
the whole world.

If we take the peasants who are handicraftsmen or small industrialists we
shall find the same thing. Their interests do not transcend the bounds of
the small area of surrounding villages. Owing to the insignificant area
covered by the local market they do not come into contact with the
industrialists of other districts; they are in mortal terror of
“competition,” which ruthlessly destroys the patriarchal
paradise of the small handicraftsmen and industrialists, who live lives of
stagnant routine undisturbed by anybody or anything. With respect to these
small industrialists, competition and capitalism perform a useful
historical function by dragging them out of their backwoods and
confronting them with all the issues that already face the more developed
strata of the population.

A necessary attribute of the small local markets is, apart from primitive
forms of artisan production, primitive forms of merchant’s and usury
capital. The more remote a village is, the further away it is from the
influence of the new capitalist order, from railways, big factories and
large-scale capitalist agriculture, the greater the monopoly of the local
merchants and usurers, the more they subjugate the surrounding peasantry,
and the cruder the forms of this subjugation. The number of these small
leeches is enormous (when compared with the meagre produce of the
peasants), and there is a rich variety of local names to designate
them. Recall all these “prasols,” “shibais,” “shchetinniks,” “mayaks,” “ivashes,”
“bulinyas,” etc., etc. The predominance of natural economy,
which accounts for the scarcity and dearness of money in the countryside,
results in the assumption of an importance by all these
“kulaks” out of all proportion to the size of their capital. The dependence of the peasants on the money owners inevitably
acquires the form of bondage. Just as one cannot conceive of developed
capitalism without large-scale merchant’s capital in the form of
commodities or money so the pre-capitalist village is inconceivable
without small traders and buyers-up, who are the “masters” of
the small local markets. Capitalism draws these markets together, combines
them into a big national market, and then into a world market, destroys
the primitive forms of bondage and personal dependence, develops in depth
and in breadth the contradictions which in a rudimentary form are also to
be observed among the community peasantry—and thus paves the way for
their resolution.

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Notes:
[1]
State peasants with quarter holdings – the name given in tsarist
Russia to the category of former state peasants, descendants of lower-rank
servicemen who in the 16th to 17th centuries were settled in the border
lands of the state of Muscovy. For their services in guarding the state
frontiers the settlers (Cossacks musketeers, soldiers) were given the use
of small plots of land either temporarily or in perpetuity. The area of
such a plot amounted to a so-called quarter [1.35 acres]. From
the year 1719 such settlers were called odnodvortsi [i.e., those
possessing only their own farmsteads and no community land]. Formerly they
enjoyed various kinds of privileges and had the right to own peasants, but
during the 19th century were gradually deprived of these rights and
reduced to the status of ordinary peasants. By a regulation of 1866 the
quarter lots were recognised as the private property of the former
quarter-lot peasants and their descendants. [p.381]

[2]
Free tillers – the category of peasants freed from serf
dependence by the law of February 20, 1803. This law permitted landlords
themselves to decide the terms on which they freed the peasants from the
land. [p.381]