The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter III. The Landowners’ Transition from Corvée to Capitalist Economy

II. The Combination of the Corvée and the
Capitalist Systems of Economy

The Corvée system of economy was undermined by the abolition of
serfdom. All the main foundations of this system were undermined: natural
economy, the self-contained and the self-sufficient character of the
landed estate, the close connection between its various constituents, and
the landlord’s power over the peasants. The peasant’s farm was
separated from that of the landlord; the peasant was to buy back his land
and become the full owner of it; the landlord, to adopt the capitalist
system of farming, which, as has just been observed, has a diametrically
opposite basis. But such a transition to a totally different system could
not, of course, take place at once, and for two different reasons. First,
the conditions required for capitalist production did not yet exist. A
class of people was required who were accustomed to work for hire; the
peasants’ implements had to be replaced by those of the landlord;
agriculture had to be organised on the same lines as any other commercial
and industrial enterprise and not as the business of the lord. All these
conditions could only take shape gradually, and the attempts of some
landlords, immediately after the Reform, to import machinery and even workers from
abroad could not but end in a fiasco. The other reason why the transition
to the capitalist conduct of affairs was not possible at once was that the
old Corvée system of economy had been undermined, but not yet completely
destroyed. The peasants’ farms were not entirely separated from
those of the landlords, for the latter retained possession of very
essential parts of the peasants’ allotments: the “cut-off lands,” [5] the
woods, meadows, watering places, pastures, etc. Without these lands (or
easement rights) the peasants were absolutely unable to carry on
independent farming, so that the landlords were able to continue the old
system of economy in the form of labour-service. The possibility of
exercising “other than economic pressure” also remained in the shape of the peasants’
temporarily-bound status, [6] collective responsibility, corporal punishment,
forced labour on public works, etc.

Thus, capitalist economy could not emerge at once, and Corvée economy
could not disappear at once. The only possible system of economy was,
accordingly, a transitional one, a system combining the features of both
the Corvée and the capitalist systems. And indeed, the post-Reform system
of farming practised by the landlords bears precisely these features.
With all the endless variety of forms characteristic of a transitional
epoch, the economic organisation of contemporary landlord farming amounts
to two main systems, in the most varied combinations – the labour-service [1] system and the capitalist system. The
first consists in the landlord’s land being cultivated with the
implements of the neighbouring peasants, the form of payment not altering
the essential nature of this system (whether payment is in money, as in
the case of job-hire, or in produce, as in the case of half-cropping, or
in land or grounds, as in the case of labour-service in the narrow sense
of the term). This is a direct survival of Corvée economy, [2] and the economic
characterisation of the latter, given above, is applicable almost entirely to the labour-service system
(the only exception being that in one of the forms of the labour-service
system one of the conditions of Corvée economy disappears, namely, under
job-hire, where labour instead of being paid in kind is paid in
money). The capitalist farming system consists of the hire of workers
(annual, seasonal, day, etc.) who till the land with the owner’s
implements. The systems mentioned are actually interwoven in the most
varied and fantastic fashion: on a mass of landlord estates there is a
combination of the two systems, which are applied to different
farming

operations. [3]

It is quite natural that the combination of such dissimilar and even opposite
systems of economy leads in practice to a whole number of most profound
and complicated conflicts and contradictions, and that the pressure of
these contradictions results in a number of the farmers going bankrupt,
etc. All these are phenomena characteristic of every transitional period.

If we raise the question as to the relative incidence of the two systems,
we shall have to say, first of all, that no precise statistics are
available on the matter, and it is not likely that they could be
collected: that would require a registration not only of all estates, but of all economic operations performed on all
the estates. Only approximate data are available, in the shape of general
descriptions of individual localities as to the predominance of one or
another system. Data of this kind are given in a summarised form for the
whole of Russia in the above-mentioned publication of the Department of
Agriculture, Hired Labour , etc . On the basis of these
data, Mr. Annensky has drawn up a very striking chart showing the
incidence of these systems ( The Influence of Harvests , etc ., [7] I,
170). Let us summarise these data in a table, and supplement them with
figures on the cultivated area on private owners’ lands in 1883-1887
(according to Statistics of the Russian Empire , IV. The average
harvest in European Russia in the five years 1883 1887. St. Petersburg, 1888). [4]

Thus, although the labour-service system predominates in the purely
Russian gubernias, the capitalist system of landlord farming must be
considered the predominant one at present in European Russia as a whole.
Moreover, our table gives a far from complete picture of this
predominance, for Group I of the gubernias includes some in which the
labour-service system is not applied at all (the Baltic gubernias, for
example), whereas Group III includes not a single gubernia, and in all
probability not a single farmed estate in which the capitalist system is
not applied at least in part. Here is an illustration of this based on
Zemstvo statistics (Raspopin; “Private-Landowner Farming in Russia
According to Zemstvo Statistics,” in Yuridichesky Vestnik
[ Legal Messenger ], 1887, Nos. 11-12. No. 12, p. 634):

Lastly, it must be observed that sometimes the labour-service system
passes into the capitalist system and merges with it to such an extent
that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. For
example, a peasant rents a plot of land, undertaking in return to perform
a definite number of days’ work (a practice which, as we know, is
most widespread; see examples in the next section). How are we to draw a
line of demarcation between such a “peasant” and the
West-European or Ostsee “farm labourer” who receives a plot of
land on undertaking to work a definite number of days? Life creates forms
that unite in themselves with remarkable gradualness systems of economy
whose basic features constitute opposites. It becomes impossible to say
where “labour-service” ends and where “capitalism” begins.

Having established the fundamental fact that the whole variety of forms of
contemporary landlord farming amounts to two systems – the labour-service and the capitalist systems, in various combinations, we shall now proceed
to give an economic description of the two systems and determine which of
them is eliminating the other under the influence of the whole course of
economic evolution.

---
Notes:
[1]
We are now replacing the term “Corvée” by the term “labour-service” since the latter expression corresponds in
greater measure to post-Reform relations and is by now generally accepted
in our literature.— Lenin

[2]
Here is a particularly striking example: “In the south of Yelets
Uyezd (Orel Gubernia),” writes a correspondent of the Department of
Agriculture, “on the big landlords’ farms, side by side with
cultivation with the aid of annual labourers, a considerable part of the
land is tilled by peasants in return for land leased to them. The ex-serfs
continue to rent land from their former landlords, and in return till
their land Such villages continue to bear the name of
‘Corvée’ of such-and-such a landlord” (S.
A. Korolenko, Hired Labour , etc , p. 118) Here is one
more example: “On my farm,” writes another landlord, “all the work is done by my former peasants (8 villages with
approximately 600 persons); in return for this they get the use of
pastures for their cattle (from 2,000 to 2,500 dess.); except that
seasonal workers do the first ploughing and sow with seed drills”
( ibid ., p. 325. From Kaluga Uyezd)— Lenin

[3]
“Most of the estates are managed in the following way: part,
although a very small part, of the land is cultivated by the owners with
their own implements, with the aid of labourers hired by the year”
and other “workers, but all the rest of the land is leased to
peasants for cultivation either on a half-crop basis” or in return
for land, or for money ( Hired Labour , ibid ., 96). . . . “On the majority of estates simultaneous resort is made
to nearly all, or at any rate many, forms of hire” (i.e., methods of
“providing the farm with man power”). Agriculture and Forestry in Russia published by the Department of Agriculture for the
Chicago Exhibition, St. Petersburg, 1893, p. 79.— Lenin

[4]
Of the 50 gubernias of European Russia the following are excluded:
Archangel, Vologda, Olonets, Vyatka, Perm, Orenburg and Astrakhan. In
these gubernias the area cultivated in 1883-1887 amounted to 562,000
dess. on private owners’ estates out of a total of 16,472,000 dess.
cultivated on such land in the whole of European Russia. – Group I
includes the following: the 3 Baltic gubernias, the 4 Western (Kovno,
Vilna, Grodno and Minsk), the 3 South-Western (Kiev, Volhynia, Podolsk),
the 5 Southern (Kherson, Taurida, Bessarabia, Ekaterinoslav, Don), and 1
South-Eastern (Saratov); then follow the St. Petersburg, Moscow and
Yaroslavl gubernias. Group II includes: Vitebsk, Mogilev, Smolensk,
Kaluga, Voronezh, Poltava and Kharkov. Group III includes the rest of the
gubernias. – To be more exact one should deduct from the total area
cultivated on private owners’ land the gown area belonging to
tenants, but no such statistics are available. We would add that such a
correction would hardly alter our conclusion as to the predominance of the
capitalist system, since a large part of the landowners’ fields in
the black-earth belt is rented, and the labour-service system predominates
in the gubernias of this belt.— Lenin

[5]
“ Cut-off-lands ” ( otrezki ) – the pasture lands woods, etc., which the landlords “cut off,” i.e., of
which they deprived the peasants when serfdom was abolished in Russia.

[6]
Temporarily-bound peasants – serfs who, after the abolition of
serfdom in 1861, were obliged to perform certain services for the
landlords, i.e., do Corvée service or pay quit-rent. The
“temporarily-bound status” continued until the peasants, by
agreement with the landlords, had acquired their allotments by the payment
of redemption money. The landlords were obliged to accept redemption
payments only after the edict of 1881, by which the “obligatory
relation” between the peasants and the landlords had to cease as
from January 1, 1883.

[7]
The two volumes of The Influence of Harvests and Grain Prices on Certain Aspects of the Russian National Economy reached Lenin in the
village of Shushenskoye in 1897. He made a careful study of them while
working on The Development of Capitalism in Russia , as is proved
by his numerous marginal comments in the volumes. While he exposed the
method which the Narodniks were so fond of employing, the distortion of
the actual situation by quoting “average” statistics which in
fact obscured the differentiation of the peasantry, Lenin carefully
checked and made use of the concrete material in the volumes. Thus, on
page 153 of Vol. 1 Lenin drew up a table showing the distribution, in the
different gubernias of Russia, of the various forms of economy
(capitalist, labour-service, and mixed). This material, along with some
additions from other sources, went to make up the table given in the text.