The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VIII. The Formation of the Home Market

III. The Growth of the Employment of Wage-Labour

In considering the development of capitalism, perhaps the greatest
importance attaches to the extent to which wage-labour is
employed. Capitalism is that stage in the development of
commodity-production in which labour power, too, becomes a commodity. The
main tendency of capitalism is to apply the sum-total of labour-power in
the national economy to production only after it has been sold and has
been purchased by the employers. Above, we made an attempt to show in
detail how this tendency has manifested itself in post-Reform Russia; now,
we must draw the necessary conclusions. Firstly, let us compute the data
on the number of sellers of labour-power given in the preceding chapters
and then (in the next section) describe the purchasers of labour-power.

The sellers of labour-power are provided by the country’s working
population engaged in the production of material values. It is estimated
that this population numbers about 15.5 million adult male workers. [1]

In
Chapter II we showed that the bottom group of the peasantry is nothing else than a rural
proletariat; and we stated (p. 177, footnote) that the forms in which this
proletariat sells its labour-power would be examined later. Let us now
combine the categories of wage-workers previously enumerated: 1)
agricultural wage-workers. These number about 3 1/2 million (in European
Russia). 2) Factory, mining and railway workers—about 1

1/2 million. Total, five million professional wage-workers. Further: 3)
building workers—about 1 million. 4) Lumber workers (tree-fellers,
log trimmers, rafters, etc.), navvies, railway builders, goods loaders and
unloaders, and in general all kinds of “unskilled” labourers
in industrial centres. These number about

2 million. [2]

5)
Workers occupied at home for capitalists, and also those working for wages
in the manufacturing industries not included in “factory
industry.” These number about 2 million.

Total— about ten million wage-workers . If we deduct the
women and children, say one-fourth, [3] we get
7 1/2 million adult male wage-workers , i.e., about half
the total adult male population that is engaged in the production of
material values [4] in the country. Part of this vast mass of wage-workers have completely broken
with the land, and live entirely by the sale of their labour-power. They
include the great majority of factory (undoubtedly also of mining and
railway) workers, then a section of the building and shipbuilding workers,
and unskilled labourers; finally, a fairly large section of the workers
employed in capitalist manufactories and the inhabitants of non-agricultural centres engaged in
home work for capitalists. The other, and larger, section has not yet
broken with the land, covers its expenditures in part with the produce
that comes from farming tiny plots of land, and, consequently, forms the
type of allotment-holding wage-worker which we attempted to describe in
detail in Chapter II. In earlier remarks it was shown that this vast mass
of wage-workers has been formed mainly in the post-Reform period and that
it continues to grow rapidly.

It is important to note the significance of our conclusion regarding the
relative surplus-population (or reserve army of unemployed) created by
capitalism. The data regarding the total number of wage-workers in all
branches of the national economy bring out very clearly the basic error
committed by the Narodnik economists on this point. As we have had
occasion to observe elsewhere ( Studies , pp. 38–42), [5] this error
lies in the fact that the Narodnik economists (Messrs. V. V., N.–on and
others), who have talked a great deal about capitalism “freeing” the workers, have not thought of investigating the
concrete forms of capitalist over-population in Russia; as well as in the
fact that they failed completely to understand that the very existence and
development of capitalism in this country require an enormous mass of
reserve workers. By means of paltry phrases and curious calculations as to
the number of “factory” workers, [6] they have transformed one of the basic conditions for the development of capitalism
into proof that capitalism is impossible, is an error, is devoid of foundation,
etc. Actually, however, Russian capitalism could never have developed to
its present level, could not have survived a single year, had the
expropriation of the small producers not created an army of many millions
of wage-workers ready at the first call to satisfy the maximum demand of
the employers in agriculture, lumbering, building, commerce and in the
manufacturing, mining, and transport industries, etc. We say the maximum
demand, because capitalism can only develop spasmodically, and
consequently, the number of producers who need to sell their labour-power
must always exceed capitalism’s average demand for workers. We have
now estimated the total number of the various categories of wage-workers,
but in doing so do not wish to say that capitalism is in a position to
give regular employment to them all. There is not, nor can there be, such
regularity of employment in capitalist society, whichever category of
wage-worker we take. Of the millions of migratory and resident workers a
certain section is constantly in the reserve army of unemployed, and this
reserve army now swells to enormous dimensions—in years of crisis,
or if there is a slump in some industry in a particular district, or if
there is a particularly rapid extension of machine production, which
displaces workers— and now shrinks to a minimum, even causing that
“shortage” of labour which is often the subject of complaint
by employers in some industries, in some years, in some parts of the
country. It is impossible to determine even approximately the number of
unemployed in an average year, owing to the complete absence of anything
like reliable statistics; but there is no doubt that the number must be a
very large one, as is evidenced by both the tremendous fluctuations in
capitalist industry, trade and agriculture, to which repeated reference
was made above, and by the usual deficits in the budgets of the
bottom-group peasants recorded by Zemstvo statistics. The increase in the
number of peasants thrown into the ranks of the industrial and rural
proletariat, and the increase in the demand for wage-labour, are two sides
of one medal. As for the forms of wage-labour, they are extremely diverse
in n capitalist society still everywhere enmeshed in survivals and
institutions of the pre-capitalist regime. It is a profound error to ignore this diversity of forms, and that
is the error of those who, like Mr. V. V., argue that capitalism has
“fenced off a corner for itself with some one to one-and-a-half
million workers and never emerges from it.” [7]

Here we have large-scale machine industry instead of capitalism. But how
arbitrarily and how artificially are these million and a half workers
fenced off into a special “corner” that is supposedly in no
way connected with the remaining spheres of wage-labour! As a matter of
fact, the connection is a very close one, and it will be sufficient, in
order to characterise it, to mention two basic features of the present
economic system. Firstly, this system is based on money economy. The
“power of money” manifests itself in full force in both
industry and agriculture, in both town and country, but it reaches its
full development, completely eliminates the remnants of patriarchal
economy, is concentrated in a few gigantic institutions (banks) and is
directly connected with large-scale social production only in the sphere
of large-scale machine industry. Secondly, the economic system of today is
based on the purchase and sale of labour-power. If we take even the
smallest producers in agriculture or in industry, we will find that the
one who does not hire himself out, or himself hire others, is the
exception. But here again, these relationships reach full development and
become completely separated from previous forms of economy only in large
scale machine industry. Hence, the “corner” which seems so
small to some Narodnik actually embodies the quintessence of modern social
relationships, and the population of this “corner,” i.e., the
proletariat, is, in the literal sense of the word, the vanguard of the
whole mass of toilers and exploited. [8]

Therefore, only by examining the whole of the present economic system from
the angle of the relationships that have grown up in this
“corner” can one become clear about the main relations between
the various groups of persons taking part in production, and,
consequently, trace the system’s main trend of development. On the
other hand, whoever turns his back on this “corner” and
examines economic phenomena from the angle of petty patriarchal
production, is turned by the march of history into either an innocent
dreamer or an ideologist of the petty bourgeoisie and the agrarians.

---
Notes:
[1]
The figure given in the Combined Statistical Material ,
etc . (published by Chancellory of the Committee of Ministers,
1894), is 15,546,618. This figure was reached in the following way. The
urban population was taken as equal to the population not participating in
the production of material values. The adult male peasant population was
reduced by 7% (4.5% on military service and 2.5% in civilian service).— Lenin

[2]
Above we saw that lumber workers alone are estimated at about 2
million. The number of workers employed in the last two groups of
occupations we have indicated should be larger than the total number of
non-agricultural migratory workers, for part of the building workers,
unskilled labourers, particularly lumber workers are local and not
migratory workers. And we have seen that the number of non-agricultural
migratory workers is not less than 3 million.— Lenin

[3]
In factory industry, as we have seen, women and children constitute a
little over 1/4 of the total number of workers. In the mining, building
and lumber industries, etc., few women and children are employed. In
capitalist domestic industry, on the other hand, they are probably more
numerous than men.— Lenin

[4]
To avoid misunderstanding, let us make the reservation that we do not
claim these figures to be statistically exact. We merely wish to show
approximately the diversity of the forms of wage-labour and the numbers of
those engaged in it.— Lenin

[5]
Cf. present edition, Vol. 2, “A Characterisation of Economic
Romanticism.”— Ed .

[6]
Let us recall the argument of Mr. N.–on about the “handful”
of workers, and also the following, truly classic, calculation by
Mr. V. V. ( Essays on Theoretical Economics , p. 131). In the 50
gubernias of European Russia there are 15,547,000 adult male workers
belonging to the peasant estate; of these, 1,020,000 (863,000 in factory
industry + 160,000 railway workers) are “united by capital”;
the rest are the “agricultural population.” With the “complete capitalisation of the manufacturing industries”
“capitalist factory industry” will employ twice as many hands
(13.3% in place of 7.6%, while the remaining 86.7% of the population
“will remain on the land and be idle during half the year”). Obviously, comment could only spoil the impression created
by this wonderful specimen of economic science and economic statistics.— Lenin

[7]
Novoye Slovo , 1896, No. 6, p. 21.— Lenin

[8]
Mutatis mutandis , the same may be said of the relation between
wage-workers in large-scale machine industry and the rest of the
wage-workers as the Webbs say of the relation between trade unionists in
Britain and non-unionists: “The trade unionists number about 4 per
cent of the total population . . . the trade unionists number about 20 per
cent of the adult male manual working class.” But “Die
Gewerkschaftler . . . zahlen . . . in der Regel die Elite des Gewerbes in
ihren Reihen. Der moralische und geistige Einfluss, den sie auf die Masse
ihrer Berufsgenossen ausuben, steht deshalb ausser jedem Verhaltniss zu
ihrer numerischen Starke” (S. & B. Webb: Die Geschichte des britischen

Trade Unionismus , Stuttgart, Dietz, 1895,
S. S. 363, 365, 381) [“the trade unionists . . . include, as a
general rule, the picked men in each trade. The moral and intellectual
influence which they exercise on the rest of their class is, therefore,
out of all proportion to their numbers.” (S. and B. Webb: The History of Trade Unionism , London, 1902, pp. 409, 411,
430). – Ed .]— Lenin