The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter V. The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry

VIII. “The Combination Of Industry With
Agriculture”

Such is the favourite Narodnik formula with the aid of which
Messrs. V. V., N.-on and Co. hope to solve the problem of capitalism in
Russia. “Capitalism” separates industry from agriculture;
“people’s production” combines them in the typical and normal peasant farm—in this ingenuous contra-position lies a good
part of their theory. We are now in a position to sum up as regards the
question of how in reality our peasantry “combine industry with
agriculture,” since a detailed examination has been made above of
the typical relations existing among the agricultural and among the
industrial peasantry. Let us enumerate the diverse forms of the
“combination of industry with agriculture” to be observed in
the economics of Russian peasant farming.

1) Patriarchal (natural) agriculture is combined with domestic industries
(i.e., with the working up of raw materials for home consumption) and with
corvée service for the landowner.

This form of combining peasant “industries” with agriculture
is most typical of the medieval economic regime, of which it is an
essential component. [1]

In post-Reform Russia all that is left of such patriarchal economy—in which there is as yet absolutely no
capitalism, commodity production, or commodity circulation—is
vestiges in the shape of the domestic industries of the peasants and
labour-service.

2) Patriarchal agriculture is combined with industry in the form of
artisan production.

This form of combination is still very close to the preceding one,
differing from it only in that here commodity circulation manifests
itself—when the artisan is paid in money and appears on the market
to purchase tools, raw materials, etc.

3) Patriarchal agriculture is combined with the small-scale production of
industrial products for the market, i.e., with commodity production in
industry. The patriarchal peasant is transformed into a small
commodity-producer, who, as we have shown, tends to the employment of
wage-labour, i.e., to capitalist production. A condition for this
transformation is now a certain degree of differentiation among the
peasantry: we have seen that the small masters and petty masters in
industry belong, in the majority of cases, to the prosperous or to the
well-off group of peasants. In its turn, the development of small
commodity production in industry gives a further impetus to the
differentiation of the peasant agriculturists.

4) Patriarchal agriculture is combined with work for hire in industry (and
also in

agriculture). [2]

This form is a necessary addition to the preceding one: there it is the
product that becomes a commodity, here it is labour-power. Small-scale
commodity production in industry is necessarily accompanied, as we have
seen, by the appearance of wage-workers and of handicraftsmen who work for
buyers-up. This form of the “combination of agriculture with
industry” is characteristic of all capitalist countries, and one of the most striking features of the post-Reform history of Russia
is the extremely rapid and extremely wide incidence of this form.

5) Petty-bourgeois (commercial) agriculture is combined with
petty-bourgeois industries (small commodity production in industry, petty
trade, etc.).

The difference between this form and the third is that here
petty-bourgeois relations embrace not only industry but also
agriculture. Being the most typical form of the combination of industry
with agriculture in the economy of the small rural bourgeoisie, this form
is therefore characteristic of all capitalist countries. The honour of
discovering a capitalism without a petty bourgeoisie fell to the
Russian Narodnik economists alone.

6) Wage-labour in agriculture is combined with wage-labour in industry. We
have already discussed how such a combination of industry and
agriculture manifests itself and what it signifies.

Thus, the forms of the “combination of agriculture with
industry” among our peasantry are extremely varied: there are those
which express the most primitive economic system with the dominance of
natural economy; there are those which express a high development of
capitalism; there are a whole number of transitional stages between the
former and the latter. By confining oneself to general formulas such as:
the “combination of industry with agriculture,” or the “separation of industry from agriculture”), one can not
advance a single step in explaining the actual process of development of
capitalism.

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Notes:
[1]
Korsak, in Chapter IV of the book mentioned above, cites historical
evidence of the following nature, for example: “the abbot gave out
(in the village) flax for spinning”; the peasants were bound to
yield to the landowner “work or wares,”— Lenin

[2]
As has been shown above, such confusion of terminology prevails in our
economic literature and economic statistics that the category
peasants’ “industries” is used to cover domestic industry, labour-service, handicrafts, small commodity production,
trading, work for hire in industry, work for hire in agriculture,
etc. Here is an example of how the Narodniks take advantage of this
confusion. Mr. V. V., singing the praises of the “combination of
industry with agriculture,” points, in illustration, to the
“timber industry” and “unskilled labour”:
“He (the peasant) is strong and accustomed to hard work; that is why
he can do all kinds of unskilled labour” ( Essays on Handicraft Industry , 26). And this sort of fact figures among a heap of others
to back the conclusion that: “We observe a protest against the
splitting-up of occupations,” “the durability of the organisation of production that arose when natural economy still
predominated” (41). Thus, even the conversion of the peasant into a
lumberworker and unskilled labourer was passed off, among other things, as
evidence of the durability of natural economy!— Lenin