The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VII. The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry

XI. The Complete Separation of Industry From Agriculture

The complete separation of industry from agriculture is effected only by
large-scale machine industry. The Russian facts fully confirm this thesis,
which was established by the author of Capital for other countries, [1] but
which is usually ignored by the Narodnik economists. Mr. N.–on in his
Sketches talks in and out of season about “the separation
of industry from agriculture,” without, however, taking the trouble
to examine, on the basis of precise data, how this process is actually taking place and what different forms it
assumes. Mr. V. V. points to the connection of our industrial worker with
the land ( in manufacture ; our author does not think it necessary
to distinguish the various stages of capitalism, although he pretends he
is following the theory of the author of Capital !) and declaims
in this regard about the “shameful ( sic !)
dependence” “of our (author’s italics)
capitalist industry” upon the worker farmer, etc. ( Destiny of Capitalism , p. 114 and others). Mr. V. V. has apparently not heard,
or has forgotten if he has beard, that not only in “our
country” but everywhere in the West, capitalism failed to bring
about the complete separation of the workers from the land before
large-scale machine industry was established. Finally, Mr. Kablukov has
quite recently presented his students with the following amazing
distortion of the facts: “Whereas in the West work in the factory is
the sole means of livelihood for the worker, in our country, with relatively few exceptions ( sic !!!), the worker regards work
in the factory as a subsidiary occupation, he is more attracted to the land .” [2]

A factual analysis of this question has been made in Mr. Dementyev’s
essay on the “factory workers’ connection with agriculture” in the Moscow sanitary statistics. [3]

Systematically collated statistics embracing about 20,000 workers have
shown that only 14.1% of the factory workers leave for agricultural
employment. But far more important is the fact, proved in the greatest
detail in the work mentioned, that it is precisely machine production that divorces the workers from the land . Of a whole series of figures
quoted in proof of this fact we select the following most striking ones. [4]

We have supplemented the author’s table by dividing 8 of the trades
into those carried on by hand and those by machinery. As regards the
ninth, felt cloth production, let us note that it is conducted partly by
hand and partly by machinery. Of the weavers in hand-loom factories about
63% leave for field-work, while of those working on power-looms not one
leaves; of the workers in departments of cloth mills that are mechanised
3.3% leave. “Thus, the most important reason for factory workers
breaking their ties with the land is the transition from hand to machine
production. Despite the still relatively considerable number of factories
with hand production, the number of workers employed in them, as compared
with the number in factories with machine production, is quite negligible,
that is why, of those who leave for field-work, we get proportions as
small as 14.1% of adult workers in general and 15.4% of adult workers
belonging exclusively to the peasant social estate.” [5]

Let us recall that the returns of the sanitary inspection of factories in
Moscow Gubernia gave the following figures: mechanical factories, 22.6% of
the total (including 18.4% using steam-engines); in these, 80.7% of the
total number of workers are concentrated. Hand-labour factories constitute
69.2%, employing only 16.2% of the total number of workers. At the 244
mechanised factories there are 92,302 workers (378 workers per factory),
while at the 747 hand labour factories there are 18,520 workers (25
workers per factory). [6]

We have shown above the considerable concentration of all Russian factory workers
in the largest enterprises, mostly mechanised, which have an average of
488 and more workers per establishment. Mr. Dementyev has studied in
detail the influence of the workers’ place of birth on their
separation from the land, differences between local-born and migrant
workers, differences in social estate (burgher or peasant), etc., and it
turned out that all these differences are eclipsed by the influence of the
main factor: the transition from hand to machine production. [7] “Whatever causes may have helped to turn the former cultivator into
a factory worker, these special workers already exist. They are merely
counted as peasants, but their only connection with the village is by way
of the taxes they pay when renewing their passports, for actually they
have no farm in the village, and very often not even a house, which has
usually been sold. Even their right to land they retain only juridically,
so to speak, and the disorders that took place in 1885-1886 at many
factories showed that these workers themselves feel totally alien to the
village, just as the peasants in their turn regard them, offspring of
their fellow-villagers, as strangers. We are consequently faced with an
already crystallised class of workers, possessing no homes of their own
and virtually no property, a class bound by no ties and living from hand
to mouth. And its origin does not date from yesterday. It has its factory
genealogy, and a fairly large section of it is already in its third generation.” [8]

Lastly, interesting material on the separation of the factory from
agriculture is provided by the latest factory statistics. The List of Factories and Works (data for 1894-95) gives information on the number of days
in the year during which each factory operates. Mr. Kasperov hastened to
use these data in support of the Narodnik theories when he calculated that
“on the average, the Russian factory works 165 days a year,”
that “35% of the factories in this country work less than 200 days a year.” [9]

It
goes without saying that in view of the vagueness of the term
“factory,” such overall figures are practically valueless,
since they do not indicate how many workers are employed for specific
numbers of days in the year. We have computed the appropriate figures of
the List for those large factories (with 100 and more workers)
which, as we have seen above (§ VII), employ about 3/4 of the total number
of factory workers. It turns out that the average number of working days
per year in the different categories was as follows: A) 242; B) 235;

C) 273, [10]

and for all the large factories, 244. If we calculate the average number of
working days per worker we will get 253 working days per year as the
average number per worker of a large factory. Of the 12 sections into
which the various trades are divided in the List , only in one is
the average number of working days, for the bottom categories, below 200,
namely in section XI (food products): A) 189; B) 148; C) 280. Factories in
categories A and B in this section employ 110,588 workers, which is 16.2% of the total number of workers in the large
factories (655,670). We would point out that this section combines quite
diverse trades, e.g., beet-sugar and tobacco, distilling and
flour-milling, etc. For the remaining sections the average number of
working days per factory is as follows: A) 259; B) 271; C) 272. Thus, the
larger the factories the greater the number of days they operate in the
course of the year. The general data for all the biggest factories in
European Russia, therefore, confirm the conclusions of the Moscow sanitary
statistical returns and prove that the factory creates a class of permanent factory workers.

So then, the data on Russian factory workers fully confirm the theory of
Capital that it is large-scale machine industry that brings about
a complete and definite revolution in the conditions of life of the
industrial population, separating it once and for all from agriculture and
from the century-old traditions of patriarchal life connected with
it. But, by destroying patriarchal and petty-bourgeois relationships,
large-scale machine industry creates, on the other hand, conditions which
draw wage-workers in agriculture and industry closer together: firstly, it
introduces into the rural districts generally the commercial and
industrial way of life which has first arisen in the non-agricultural
centres; secondly, it creates mobility of the population and large markets
for the hiring of both agricultural and industrial workers; thirdly, by
introducing machinery into agriculture, large-scale machine industry
brings into the rural districts skilled industrial workers, distinguished
for their higher standard of living.

---
Notes:
[1]
Das Kapital , I 2 ,

S. 779-780. [11] — Lenin

[2]
Lectures on Agricultural ( sic !) Economics , edition for students, Moscow, 1897, p, 13. Perhaps our learned
statistician thinks that we may regard as “relatively few
exceptions” 85% of all cases (see further in text)?— Lenin

[3]
Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia , Section of Sanitation
Statistics, Vol. IV, Sec. II, Moscow, 1893. Reprinted in
Mr. Dementyev’s well-known work: The Factory , etc .— Lenin

[4]
Statistical Returns , loc . cit ., p. 292. The Factory , 2nd ed., p. 36.— Lenin

[5]
Returns , p. 280. The Factory , p. 26.— Lenin

[6]
Returns , Vol. IV, Sec. I, pp. 167, 170, 177.— Lenin

[7]
Mr,

Zhbankov, in his Sanitary Investigation of Factories and Works of Smolensk Gubernia (Smolensk, 1894-1896), estimates the number of
workers who leave for field-work at approximately a mere 10 to 15% at the
Yartsevo Textile Mill only (Vol II, pp. 307, 445, in 1893-1894 the
Yartsevo Mill employed 3,106 out of the 8,810 factory workers in Smolensk
Gubernia). Of the men 28% (average for all factories, 29%) and of the
women 18.6% (average for all factories, 21%) employed in this factory were
casual workers, (See Vol. II, p. 469.) It should be noted that the casual
workers include 1) those employed at the factory for less than a year; 2)
those who leave for summer work in the fields, 3) those “who for
various reasons ceased work at the factory for several years” (II,
445).— Lenin

[8]
Returns , p. 296. The Factory , pp. 44-46.— Lenin

[9]
Statistical Summary of Russia’s Industrial Development . A
paper read by M. 1. Tugan-Baranovsky, member of the Free Economic Society,
and the debate on this paper at the sessions of section
III. St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 41.— Lenin

[10]
Let us recall that category A includes factories with 100 to 499
workers, B , with 500 to 999, and C , with 1,000 and more.— Lenin

[11]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 747-749. [p. 536]