The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter VII. The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry

I. The Scientific Conception of the Factory and the Significance
of “Factory”
Statistics [5]

Before dealing with large-scale machine (factory) industry, we must first
establish the fact that the scientific conception of the term does not
correspond at all to its common, everyday meaning. In our official
statistics, and in literature generally, a factory is taken to mean any
more or less big industrial establishment with a more or less considerable
number of wage-workers. According to Marx’s theory, however, the
term large-scale machine (factory) industry applies only to a definite
stage of capitalism in industry, namely, the highest stage. The principal
and most important feature of this stage is the employment of a system of
machines for production. [1]

The transition from the manufactory to the factory signifies a complete technical revolution, which does away with the
craftsman’s manual skill that has taken centuries to acquire, and
this technical revolution is inevitably followed by the most thoroughgoing
destruction of social production relations, by a final split among the
various groups of participants in production, by a complete break with
tradition, by an intensification and extension of all the dark aspects of
capitalism, and at the same time by a mass socialisation of labour by
capitalism. Large-scale machine industry is thus the last word of
capitalism, the last word of its “elements of social progress” [2] and regress.

From this it is clear that the transition from the manufactory to the
factory is particularly important when we deal with the development of capitalism. Whoever confuses these two stages
deprives himself of the possibility of understanding the transforming,
progressive role of capitalism. That is the mistake made by our Narodnik
economists, who, as we have seen, na\"ively identify capitalism generally
with “factory” industry and propose to solve the problem of
the “mission of capitalism” and even of its “unifying significance” [3] by simply referring to factory statistics. Apart
from the fact that on matters of factory statistics these writers (as we
shall show in detail below) have betrayed astonishing ignorance, they
commit a still graver error in their amazingly stereotyped and narrow
understanding of Marx’s theory. In the first place, it is ridiculous
to reduce the problem of the development of large-scale machine industry
to mere factory statistics. It is a question not only of statistics, but
of the forms assumed and the stages traversed by the development of
capitalism in the industry of the country under consideration. Only after
the substance of these forms and their distinguishing features have been
made clear is there any sense in illustrating the development of this or
that form by means of properly compiled statistics. If, however, they
restrict themselves to Russian statistics, this inevitably leads to
lumping together the most diverse forms of capitalism, to not seeing the
wood for the trees. Secondly, to reduce the whole mission of capitalism to
that of increasing the number of “factory” workers means to
betray as profound an understanding of theory as did Mr. Mikhailovsky when
he expressed surprise as to why people talk about the socialisation of
labour by capitalism, when all that this socialisation amounts to, he
averred, is that several hundred or thousand workers saw, chop, cut,
plane, etc., under one roof. [4]

The task of our further exposition is twofold: on the one hand, we shall
examine in detail the condition of our factory statistics and the question
of their suitability.

This, largely negative, work is necessary because the data involved are
positively abused in our literature. On the other hand, we shall examine
the data attesting to the growth of large-scale machine industry in the
post-Reform period.

---
Notes:
[1]
Das Kapital , I, Chapter 13 [Chap. 15, Eng. ed. – Ed .].— Lenin

[2]
Ibid ., I 2 ,

S. 499. [6] — Lenin

[3]
Mr. N.–on in Russkoye Bogatstvo , 1894, No. 6, pp. 103 and
119.—See also his Sketches , and Mr. V. V.’s
Destiny of Capitalism , passim .— Lenin

[4]
Otechestvenniye Zapiski , 1883, No. 7, Letter to the editor from
Mr. Postoronny [Outsider].— Lenin

[5]
To characterise the development of large-scale industry in tsarist Russia
in the post-Reform period Lenin examined the material contained in
numerous factory statistical sources of that period (statistical returns,
monographs and works of research, official reference books, magazine and
newspaper reports, papers, etc.). Lenin’s work of checking,
processing, combining and scientifically grouping statistical data is
shown in the notes he made in various books and from other material
published in section 2 of Lenin Miscellany XXXIII . For
Lenin’s estimation of the main sources of factory statistics see
also his article “On the Question of Our Factory Statistics.”
(See present edition, Vol. 4.) [p. 454]

[6]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, p. 474. [p. 454]