The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VIII. The Formation of the Home Market

IV. The Formation of a Home Market for Labour-Power

To sum up the data given earlier on this problem we shall confine
ourselves to the picture of the movement of workers over the territory of
European Russia. Such a picture is supplied by the Department of
Agriculture’s publication [1] based on statements by employers. The picture of the movement of workers will
give a general idea of how the home market for labour-power is being
formed; using the material of the publication mentioned, we have only
tried to draw a distinction between the movement of agricultural and
non-agricultural workers, although the map appended to the publication and
illustrating the movement of the workers does not show this distinction.

The main movements of agricultural workers are the following: 1) From the
central agricultural gubernias to the southern and eastern outer regions. 2) From the northern black-earth
gubernias to the southern black-earth gubernias, from which, in turn, the
workers go to the border regions (cf. Chapter III, § IX, pp. 237-238 and
§ X, pp. 242-243). 3) From the central agricultural gubernias to the
industrial gubernias (cf. Chapter IV, § IV, pp. 270-271). 4) From the
central and the south-western agricultural gubernias to the area of
sugar-beet plantations (workers come in part to these places even from
Galicia).

The main movements of non-agricultural workers are: 1) To the
metropolitan cities and the large towns, chiefly from the non-agricultural
gubernias, but to a considerable degree also from the agricultural
gubernias. 2) To the industrial area, to the factories of Vladimir,
Yaroslavl and other gubernias from the same localities. 3) To new centres
of industry or to new branches of industry, to centres of non-factory
industry, etc. These include the movement: a) to the beet-sugar refineries
of the south-western gubernias; b) to the southern mining area; c) to jobs
at the docks (Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, Riga, etc.); d) to the peat beds in
Vladimir and other gubernias; e) to the mining and metallurgical area of
the Urals; f) to the fisheries (Astrakhan, the Black Sea, Azov Sea, etc.);
g) to shipbuilding, sailoring, lumbering and rafting jobs, etc.; h) to
jobs on the railways, etc.

These are the main movements of the workers which, according to the
evidence of employers, more or less materially affect the conditions of
labour hire in the various localities. To appreciate more clearly the
significance of these movements, let us compare them with the data on
wages in the various districts from and to which the workers
migrate. Confining ourselves to 28 gubernias in European Russia, we divide
these into 6 groups according to the character of the movement of workers,
and get the following data: [2]

This table clearly shows us the basis of the process that creates the home
market for labour-power and, consequently, the home market for
capitalism. Two main areas, those most developed capitalistically, attract
vast numbers of workers: the area of agricultural capitalism (the southern
and the eastern outer regions), and the area of industrial capitalism (the
metropolitan and the industrial gubernias). Wages are lowest in the area
of departure, the central agricultural gubernias, where capitalism, both
in agriculture and in industry, is least developed [3] ; in the
influx areas, on the other hand, wages rise for all types of work, as does
also the percentage of money wage to total wage, i.e., money economy gains
ground at the expense of natural economy. The intermediary areas, those
between the areas of the greatest influx (and of the highest wages) and
the area of departure (and of the lowest wages) reveal the mutual
replacement of workers to which reference was made above: workers leave in
such numbers that in the places of departure a shortage of labour is
created which attracts workers from the more “poorly paid”
gubernias.

In essence, the two-sided process shown in our table—that of the
diversion of population from agriculture to industry (industrialisation of
the population) and of the development of commercial-industrial,
capitalist agriculture (industrialisation of agriculture)—epitomises
all that has been said above on the formation of a home market for capitalist
society. The home market for capitalism is created by the parallel
development of capitalism in agriculture and in industry, [4] by the
formation of a class of rural and industrial employers, on the one hand,
and of a class of rural and industrial wage-workers, on the other. The
main streams of the movement of workers show the main forms of this
process, but by far not all the forms; in what has gone before we have
shown that the forms of this process differ in peasant and in landlord
farming, in the different areas of commercial agriculture, in the
different stages of the capitalist development of industry, etc.

How far this process is distorted and confused by the representatives of
Narodnik economics is seen most clearly in § VI of Part 2 of
Mr. N.–on’s Sketches , which bears the significant heading:
“The Influence of the Redistribution of the Social Productive Forces
upon the Economic Position of the Agricultural Population.” Here is
how Mr. N.–on pictures this “redistribution”: “. . . In
capitalist . . . society, every increase in the productive power of labour
entails the ‘freeing’ of a corresponding number of workers,
who are compelled to seek some other employment; and since this occurs in
all branches of production, and this ‘freeing’ takes place
over the whole of capitalist society, the only thing left open to them is
to turn to the means of production of which they have not yet been
deprived, namely, the land” (p. 126). . . . “Our peasants have
not been deprived of the land, and that is why they turn their efforts
towards it. When they lose their employment in the factory, or are obliged
to abandon their subsidiary domestic occupations, they see no other course
but to set about the increased exploitation of the soil. All Zemstvo
statistical returns note the fact that the area under cultivation is growing. . .”
(128).

As you see, Mr. N.–on knows of quite a special sort of capitalism that
has never existed anywhere and that no economist could conceive
of. Mr. N.–on’s capitalism does not divert the population from
agriculture to industry, does not divide the agriculturists into opposite
classes. Quite the contrary. Capitalism “frees” the workers
from industry and there is nothing left for “them” to do but
to turn to the land, for “our peasants have not been deprived of the
land”!! At the bottom of this “theory,” which originally
“redistributes” in poetic disorder all the processes of
capitalist development, lie the ingenious tricks of all Narodniks which we
have examined in detail previously: they lump together the peasant
bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat; they ignore the growth of
commercial farming; they concoct stories about “people’s” “handicraft industries” being
isolated from “capitalist” “factory industry,” instead of analysing the consecutive forms and diverse manifestations of
capitalism in industry.

---
Notes:
[1]
“Agricultural and statistical information based on material obtained
from farmers. Vol. V. Hired Labour on private-landowner farms and
the movement of workers, according to a statistical and economic survey of
agriculture and industry in European Russia.” Compiled by
S. A. Korolenko. Published by Department of Agriculture and Rural
Industries, St. Petersburg, 1892.— Lenin

[2]
The other gubernias are omitted in order not to complicate our exposition
with data that contribute nothing new to the subject under examination;
furthermore, the other gubernias are either untouched by the main, mass,
movements of workers (Urals, the North) or have their specific
ethnographical, administrative and juridical features (the Baltic
gubernias, the gubernias in the Jewish Pale of

Settlement, the
Byelorussian gubernias, etc.). Data from the publication cited above. Wage
figures are the average for the gubernias in the respective groups; the
day labourer’s summer wage is the average for three seasons: sowing,
haymaking and harvesting. The areas (1 to 6) include the following
gubernias: 1) Taurida, Bessarabia and Don; 2) Kherson, Ekaterinoslav,
Samara, Saratov, Orenburg; 3) Simbirsk, Voronezh, Kharkov; 4) Kazan,
Penza, Tambov, Ryazan, Tula, Orel, Kursk; 5) Pskov, Novgorod, Kaluga,
Kostroma, Tver, Nizhni-Novgorod; 6) St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl,
Vladimir.— Lenin

[3]
Thus, the peasants flee in mass from the localities where patriarchal
economic relationships are most prevalent, where labour-service and
primitive forms of industry are preserved to the greatest extent, to
localities where the “pillars” are completely decayed. They
flee from “people’s production” and pay no heed to the chorus of voices from “society” following in their wake. In
this chorus two voices can be clearly distinguished: “They have
little attachment!” comes the menacing bellow of the Black-Hundred

Sobakevich. [5] “They have insufficient allotment land!” is the polite
correction of the Cadet Manilov.— Lenin

[4]
Theoretical economics established this simple truth long ago. To say
nothing of Marx, who pointed directly to the development of capitalism in
agriculture as a process that creates a “home market for industrial
capital” ( Das Kapital , I 2, S. 776, Chapter 24, Sec. 5),  [6] let us refer
to Adam Smith. In chapter XI of Book I and Chapter IV of Book III of
The Wealth of Nations , he pointed to the most characteristic
features of the development of capitalist agriculture and noted the
parallelism of this process with the process of the growth of the towns
and the development of industry.— Lenin

[5]
Sobakevich – a character in Gogol’s Dead Souls , the personification of the bullying, tight-fisted landlord. [p. 589]

[6]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, Chapter 30 (p. 745).
[p. 590]