The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VI. Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry

V. The Economic Structure of Manufacture

In all the industries organised on the lines of manufacture that we have
examined, the vast mass of the workers are not independent, are
subordinated to capital, and receive only wages, owning neither raw
material nor finished product. At bottom, the overwhelming majority of the
workers in these “industries” are wage-workers, although this
relationship never achieves in manufacture the completeness and purity
characteristic of the factory. In manufacture, merchant’s capital is
combined with industrial capital, is interwoven with it in the most
diverse ways, and the dependence of the operative on the capitalist
assumes a host of forms and shades, from work for hire in another
person’s workshop, to work at home for a “master,” and finally to dependence in the purchase of raw material or in the sale of
the product. Under manufacture, side by side with the mass of dependent
workers, there always remains a more or less considerable number of
quasi-independent producers. But all this diversity of forms of dependence
merely covers up the main feature of manufacture, the fact that the split
between the representatives of labour and of capital is already manifested
in full force. By the time the emancipation of the peasants took place
this split in the larger centres of Russian manufacture had already been
sealed by a continuity of several generations. In all the
“industries” above examined we see a mass of people whose only
means of livelihood is to work in a condition of dependence upon members
of the propertied class; on the other hand, we see a small minority of well-to-do industrialists
who control (in one form or another) nearly the whole industry of the
given district. It is this fundamental fact that imparts to our
manufacture a pronounced capitalist character, as distinct from the
preceding stage. Dependence on capital and work for hire existed then too,
but it had not yet taken definite shape, had not yet embraced the mass of
industrialists, the mass of the population, had not given rise to a split
among the various groups of individuals participating in
production. Moreover, production itself in the preceding stage still
preserves its small dimensions – the difference between the master and
the worker is relatively small – there are scarcely any big capitalists
(who always head manufacture) – nor are there any workers tied to a
single operation and thereby tied to capital, which combines these
detailed operations into a single mechanism of production.

Here is an old writer’s evidence which strikingly confirms this
characterisation of the data cited by us above: “In the village of
Kimry, as in other so-called rich Russian villages, Pavlovo, for example,
half the population are beggars who live entirely on alms. . . . If an
operative falls sick, and moreover lives alone, he risks going the next
week without a crust of bread.” [1]

Thus, the main feature of the economy of Russian manufacture was already
fully revealed by the 60s – the contrast between the “wealth”
of a whole number of “celebrated” “villages” and the complete proletarisation of the overwhelming majority of
“handicraftsmen.” Connected with this feature is the circumstance that the most typical workers in manufacture (namely,
artisans who have entirely or virtually broken with the land) are already
gravitating towards the next, and not the preceding, stage of capitalism,
that they stand closer to the worker in large-scale machine industry than
to the peasant. The above-quoted data on the cultural level of the handicraftsmen are striking proof of this. But
that description cannot be extended to the whole mass of the working
personnel in manufacture. The retention of a vast number of small
establishments and small masters, the retention of connection with the
land and the exceedingly extensive development of work in the home – all
this leads to large numbers of “handicraftsmen” in manufacture
gravitating still towards the peasantry, towards becoming small masters,
towards the past and not the future, [2] and clinging to all sorts of illusions about the
possibility (by supreme exertion, by thrift and resource fullness) of
becoming independent masters. [3]

Here is a remarkably fair appraisal of these petty-bourgeois illusions given by an investigator of the
“handicraft industries” of Vladimir Gubernia:

“The final victory of large-scale industry over small industry, the
bringing together of the workers, scattered in numerous work rooms, within
the walls of a single silk mill, is only a matter of time, and the sooner
this victory is achieved the better it will be for the weavers.

“Characteristic of the present organisation of the silk industry are
the instability and indefiniteness of economic categories, the struggle
between large-scale production, and small production and agriculture. This
struggle drags the small master and the weaver into fevers of excitement,
yielding them nothing but divorcing them from the land, dragging them into
debt and overwhelming them in periods of depression. Concentration of
production will not reduce the weaver’s wages, but will make it
unnecessary to entice workers and intoxicate them, to attract them with
advances that do not correspond to their annual earnings. With the
diminution of mutual competition factory owners lose interest in expending
considerable sums on involving the weaver in debt. Moreover, large-scale
production so clearly counterposes the interests of the factory owner and
the workers, the wealth of the one and the poverty of the others, that the
weaver cannot develop the desire to become a factory owner himself. Small
production gives the weaver no more than large-scale production does, but
it lacks the stability of the latter and for that reason corrupts the
worker much more deeply. False hopes arise in the mind of the handicraft
weaver, he looks forward to the opportunity of setting up his own loom. To
achieve this ideal he strains himself to the utmost, falls into debt,
steals, lies, regards his fellow-weavers not as friends in misfortune, but as enemies, as competitors for the very
wretched loom that he sees in his mind’s eye in the remote
future. The small master does not understand his economic insignificance;
he cringes to the buyers-up and the factory owners, hides from his
fellow-weavers where and on what terms he buys his raw materials and sells
his product. Imagining that he is an independent master, he becomes a
voluntary and wretched tool, a plaything in the hands of the big
traders. No sooner does he succeed in dragging himself out of the mire, in
acquiring three or four looms, than he begins to talk about the troubles
of the employer, the laziness and drunkenness of the weavers, about the
necessity of insuring the factory owner against non-payment of debts. The
small master is the incarnation of industrial servility, just as in the
good old days the butler and the housekeeper were the incarnation of serf
servility. So long as the instruments of production are not entirely
divorced from the producer and the latter still has opportunities of
becoming an independent master, so long as the economic gulf between the
buyer-up and the weaver is bridged by proprietors, small masters and
middle-men, who direct and exploit the lower economic categories and are
subject to the exploitation of the upper ones, the social consciousness of
those who work is obscured and their imagination is distorted by
fictions. Competition arises where there should be solidarity, and the
interests of what are really antagonistic economic groups are united. Not
confining itself to economic exploitation, the present organisation of
silk production finds its agents among the exploited and lays upon them
the task of obscuring the minds and corrupting the hearts of those who
work” ( Industries of Vladimir Gubernia , Vol. III, pp. 124-126).

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Notes:
[1]
N. Ovsyannikov, “Relation of the Upper Volga Area to the
Nizhni-Novgorod Fair.” Article in Nizhni-Novgorod Handbook ,
Vol. II (Nizhni-Novgorod, 1869). The author bases himself on data for
Kimry village for 1865. This author supplements his review of the fair
with a description of the social and economic relations in the industries
represented there.— Lenin

[2]
Exactly like their Narodnik ideologists.— Lenin

[3]
For isolated heroes of individual endeavour (such as Duzhkin in
V. Korolenko’s Pavlovo Sketches ) this is still possible in
the period of manufacture, but, of course, not for the mass of
propertyless workers who perform a single operation.— Lenin