The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter III. The Landowners’ Transition from Corvée to Capitalist Economy

X. The Significance of Hired Labour in
Agriculture

Let us now attempt to depict the principal features of the new social
relations that take shape in agriculture with the employment of hired
labour, and to define their significance.

The agricultural workers who come to the South in such masses belong to
the poorest strata of the peasantry. Of the workers who come to Kherson
Gubernia, 7/10 make the journey on foot, since they lack the money for
railway fare; “they tramp for hundreds and thousands of versts along
the railway track and the banks of navigable rivers, admiring the splendid
pictures of rapidly-moving trains and smoothly-gliding ships”
(Tezyakov, 35). On the average, the worker takes with him about

2 rubles [1] ; often enough he even lacks the money to pay for a passport, and gets a monthly
identity card for ten kopeks. The journey takes from 10 to 12 days, and
after such a long tramp (sometimes undertaken barefoot in the cold spring
mud), the traveler’s feet swell and become calloused and
bruised. About 1/10 of the workers travel on dubi (large boats
made out of rough boards, holding from 50 to 80 persons and usually packed
to the limit). The reports of an official commission (the Zvegintsev

Commission) [10] note the grave danger of this form of travel: “not a year passes but that
one, two or even more of these overcrowded dubi go to the bottom
with their passengers” ( ibid ., 34). The overwhelming majority of the workers have allotments, but of absolutely insignificant
dimensions. “As a matter of fact,” Mr. Tezyakov quite justly
observes, “all these thousands of agricultural workers are landless
village proletarians, for whom outside employments are now the sole means of livelihood. . . . Landlessness is growing
rapidly, and at the same time is swelling the ranks of the rural
proletariat” (77). Striking confirmation of the rapidity of this
growth is the number of worker novices, i.e., of those seeking employment
for the first time. These novices constitute as many as 30%. Incidentally,
this figure enables us to judge how rapid is the process that creates
bodies of permanent agricultural workers.

The mass migration of workers has given rise to special forms of hire
peculiar to highly-developed capitalism. In the South and South-East,
numerous labour markets have arisen where thousands of workers gather and
employers assemble. These markets are usually held in towns, industrial
centres, trading villages and at fairs. The industrial character of the
centres is of particular attraction to the workers, who readily accept
employment on non-agricultural jobs, too. Thus, in Kiev Gubernia, labour
markets are held in Shpola and Smela (large centres of the beet-sugar
industry), and in the town of Belaya Tserkov. In Kherson Gubernia, they
are held in the commercial villages (Novoukrainka, Birzula and Mostovoye,
where on Sundays over 9,000 workers gather, and many other villages), at
railway stations (Znamenka, Dolinskaya, etc.), and in towns (Elisavetgrad,
Bobrinets, Voznesensk, Odessa, and others). In the summer, townspeople,
labourers and “cadets” (the local name for tramps) from Odessa
also come to hire themselves out for agricultural work. In Odessa rural
workers hire themselves out in what is called Seredinskaya Square (or the
“Mowers’ Market”). “The workers make for Odessa, avoiding other markets, in the hope of getting better earnings here”
(Tezyakov, 58). The township of Krivoi Rog is an important centre where
workers are hired for agriculture and mining. In Taurida Gubernia, the
township of Kakhovka is particularly noted for its labour market, where
formerly as many as 40,000 workers gathered; in the nineties from 20,000
to 30,000 gathered there, and now, judging from certain data, the number
is still smaller. In Bessarabia Gubernia, mention should be made of the
town of Akkerman; in Ekaterinoslav Gubernia, of the town of Ekaterinoslav,
and Lozovaya Station; in Don Gubernia, of Rostov-on-Don, frequented every
year by as many as 150,000 workers. In

North Caucasus, of the towns of Ekaterinodar and Novorossiisk,
Tikhoretskaya Station, and other places. In Samara Gubernia, of the
village of Pokrovskaya (opposite Saratov), the village of Balakovo and
other places. In Saratov Gubernia, of the towns of Khvalynsk and Volsk. In
Simbirsk Gubernia, of the town of Syzran. Thus, capitalism has created in
the outer regions a new form of the “combination of agriculture with
industries,” namely, the combination of agricultural and
non-agricultural hired labour. Such a combination is possible on a wide
scale only in the period of the final and highest stage of capitalism,
that of large-scale machine industry, which attenuates the importance of
skill of “hand labour,” facilitates the transition from one
occupation to another, and levels the forms of hire. [2]

Indeed, the forms of hire in this locality are very peculiar and very
characteristic of capitalist agriculture. All the semi-patriarchal,
semi-bonded forms of hired labour which one so frequently meets in the
central black-earth belt disappear here. The only relationships left are
those between hirers and hired, a commercial transaction for the purchase
and sale of labour-power. As always under developed capitalist relations,
the workers prefer hire by the day, or by the week, which enables them to
make the pay correspond more exactly to the demand for labour. “Prices are fixed for the area of each market (within a
radius of about 40 versts) with mathematical precision, and it is very
hard for the employers to beat down the price, because the muzhik who has
come to the market prefers to lie around or go on to another place rather
than work for lower pay” (Shakhovskoi, 104). It goes without saying
that violent fluctuations in prices paid for labour cause innumerable
breaches of contract – only not on one side, as the employers usually
claim, but on both sides: “concerted action is taken by both
sides”: the labourers agree among themselves to demand more, and the employers – to offer less ( ibid ., 107). [3]

How openly “callous cash payment” reigns here in the relations between
the classes may be seen, for example, from the following fact:
“experienced employers know very well” that the workers will
“give in” only when they have eaten up their food stock. “A farmer related that when he came to the market to hire
workers . . . he walked among them, poking with his stick at their
knapsacks ( sic !): if they had bread left, he would not talk to
them; he would leave the market” and wait “until the knapsacks
in the market were empty” (from the Selsky Vestnik
[ Rural Herald ], 1890, No. 15, ibid ., 107-108).

As under developed capitalism anywhere, so here, we see that the worker is
particularly oppressed by small capital. The big employer is forced by
sheer commercial considerations [4] to abstain from petty oppression, which is of
little advantage and is fraught with considerable loss should disputes
arise. That is why the big employers, for example (those employing from
300 to 800 workers), try to keep their workers from leaving at the end of
the week, and themselves fix prices according to the demand for labour;
some even adopt a system of wage increases if the price of labour in the
area goes up – and all evidence goes to show that these increases are
more than compensated by better work and the absence of disputes
( ibid ., 130-132; 104). A small employer, on the contrary, sticks
at nothing. “The farmsteaders and German colonists carefully
‘choose’ their workers and pay them 15 or 20% more; but the
amount of work they ‘squeeze’ out of them is 50 per cent
more” ( ibid ., 116). The “wenches” who work for such an employer “don’t know day from night,” as they themselves say. The
colonists who hire mowers get their sons to follow on their heels (i.e.,
to speed up the workers!) in shifts , so that the speeders-up,
replacing one another three times a day, come with renewed energy to drive
the workers on: “that is why it is so easy to recognise those who
have worked for the German colonists by their haggard appearance. Generally speaking, the farmsteaders and the Germans avoid
hiring those who have formerly worked on landowners’ estates.
‘You’ll not stand the pace with us ,’ they say quite frankly” ( ibid .). [5]

Large-scale machine industry, by concentrating large masses of workers,
transforming the methods of production, and destroying all the
traditional, patriarchal cloaks and screens that have obscured the
relations between classes, always leads to the directing of public
attention towards these relations, to attempts at public control and
regulation. This phenomenon, which has found particularly striking
expression in factory inspection, is also beginning to be observed in
Russian capitalist agriculture, precisely in the region where it is most
developed. The question of the workers’ sanitary conditions was
raised in Kherson Gubernia as early as 1875 at the Second Gubernia
Congress of Doctors of the Kherson Zemstvo, and was dealt with again in
1888; in 1889 there was drawn up a programme for the study of the
workers’ conditions. The investigation of sanitary conditions that
was carried out (on a far from adequate scale) in 1889-1890 slightly
lifted the veil concealing the conditions of labour in the remote
villages. It was seen, for instance, that in the majority of cases the
workers have no living quarters; where barracks are provided, they are
usually very badly built from a hygienic point of view, and “not infrequently” dug-outs are met with – they are inhabited,
for example, by shepherds, who suffer severely from dampness,
overcrowding, cold, darkness and the stifling atmosphere. The food
provided is very often unsatisfactory. The working day, as a rule, is from
12 1/2 to 15 hours, which is much longer than the usual working day in
large-scale industry (11 to 12 hours). An interval during the hottest part
of the day is met with only “as an exception” – and cases of
brain diseases are no rarity. Work at machines gives rise to occupational
division of labour and occupational diseases. For example, working at
threshing machines are “drummers” (they put the sheaves into
the drum; the work is very dangerous and most laborious: thick corn-dust
beats into their faces), and “pitchers” (they pitch up the
sheaves; the work is so heavy that the shifts have to be changed every
hour or two). Women sweep up the straw, which boys carry aside, while from
3 to 5 labourers stack it in ricks. The number employed on threshing in
the whole gubernia must exceed 200,000 (Tezyakov, 94). [6]

Mr. Tezyakov’s conclusions regarding the sanitary conditions of agricultural work, are as
follows: “Generally speaking, the opinion of the ancients that the
labour of the husbandman is ‘the pleasantest and healthiest of
occupations’ is hardly sound at the present time, when the
capitalist spirit reigns in agriculture. With the introduction of
machinery into agriculture, the sanitary conditions of agricultural labour
have not improved, but have changed for the worse. Machinery has brought
into the field of agriculture a specialisation of labour so little known
here before that it has had the effect of developing among the rural
population occupational diseases and a host of serious injuries”
(94).

A result of the investigations into sanitary conditions (after the famine
year and the cholera) was the attempt to organise medical and food depots,
at which the labourers were to be registered, placed under sanitary
supervision and provided with cheap dinners. However modest the scale and
the results of this organisation may be, and however precarious its existence, [7] it
remains an important historical fact, revealing the trends of capitalism
in agriculture. At the Congress of Doctors of Kherson Gubernia it was
proposed, on the basis of data gathered by practitioners: to recognise the
importance of medical and food depots and the need for improving their
sanitary condition and extending their activities to give them the
character of labour exchanges providing information on the prices of
labour and their fluctuations; to extend sanitary inspection to all more
or less big farms employing considerable numbers of labourers, “as
is done in industrial establishments” (p. 155); to issue strict
regulations governing the employment of agricultural machines and the
registration of accidents; to raise the question of the workers’
right to compensation and of providing better and cheaper steam
transport. The Fifth Congress of Russian Doctors passed a resolution
calling the attention of the Zemstvos concerned to the activities of the
Kherson Zemstvo in the organisation of medical and sanitary inspection.

In conclusion, let us return to the Narodnik economists. Above we have
seen that they idealise labour-service and close their eyes to the
progressive nature of capitalism as compared with that system. Now we must
add that they are unfavourably disposed to the “migration” of
workers, and favour local “employments.” Here, for example, is
how this usual Narodnik view is expressed by Mr. N.–on: “The
peasants . . . set off in quest of work. . . . How far, one may ask, is
it advantageous from the economic point of view? Not personally for each
individual peasant, but how far is it advantageous for the peasantry as a
whole, from the national economic point of view?. . . What we want is to
point to the purely economic disadvantage of the annual peregrination, God
knows where to, for the entire summer, when it would seem that one could
find plenty of occupations at hand. . .” (23-24).

We assert, the Narodnik theory notwithstanding, that the
“peregrination” of the workers not only yields “purely economic” advantages to the workers themselves, but in general
should be regarded as progressive; that public attention should not be
directed towards replacing outside employments by local “occupations
close at hand,” but, on the contrary, towards removing all the
obstacles in the way of migration, towards facilitating it in every way,
towards improving and reducing the costs of all conditions of the
workers’ travel, etc. The grounds for our assertion are as follows:

1) “Purely economic” advantage accrues to the workers from
“peregrination” in that they go to places where wages are
higher, where their position as seekers of employment is a more
advantageous one. Simple as this argument is, it is too often forgotten by
those who love to rise to a higher, allegedly “national-economic” point of view.

2) “Peregrination” destroys bonded forms of hire and
labour-service.

Let us recall, for example, that formerly, when migration was little
developed, the southern landowners (and other employers) readily resorted
to the following system of hiring labourers: they sent their agents to the
northern gubernias and (through the medium of rural officials) hired
tax-defaulters on terms extremely disadvantageous to the latter. [8]

Those offering employment consequently enjoyed the advantage of free competition, but
those seeking it did not. We have quoted instances of the peasant’s
readiness to flee from labour-service and bondage even to the mines.

It is not surprising, therefore, that on the question of
“peregrination” our agrarians go hand in hand with the
Narodniks. Take Mr. S. Korolenko, for example. In his book he quotes
numerous opinions of landlords in opposition to the “migration” of workers, and adduces a host of
“arguments” against “outside employments”:

“dissipation,” “rowdy habits,” “drunkenness,” “dishonesty,” “the striving to leave the family in order
to get rid of it and escape parental supervision,” “the
craving for amusement and a brighter life,” etc. But here is a
particularly interesting argument: “Finally, as the proverb says,
‘if it stay at one spot, a stone will gather moss,’ and a man
who stays at one spot will certainly amass property and cherish it”
( loc . cit ., p. 84). The proverb does indeed very strikingly indicate what happens to a man who is tied to one
spot. Mr. S. Korolenko is particularly displeased with the phenomenon we
referred to above, namely, that “too” many workers leave
certain gubernias and that the shortage thus created is made good by the
arrival of workers from other gubernias. In noting this fact as regards,
for example, Voronezh Gubernia, Mr. S. Korolenko points to one of the
reasons for this, namely, the large number of peasants possessing
gift-land allotments. “Evidently such peasants, who are relatively
worse off materially and are not worried about their all too meagre
property, more frequently fail to carry out the obligations they undertake
and in general more readily leave for other gubernias, even when they
could find plenty of employment at home.” “Such peasants,
having little attachment ( sic !) to their own inadequate
allotments, and sometimes not even possessing implements, more readily
abandon their homes and go to seek their fortunes far from their native
villages, without troubling about employment locally, and sometimes even
about obligations undertaken, since they have nothing on which distraint
can be made” ( ibid .).

“Little attachment!” That’s just the term.

It should give food for thought to those who talk about the disadvantages
of “peregrination” and the preferableness of local “occupations close at hand”! [9]

3) “Peregrinations” mean creating mobility of the
population. Peregrinations are one of the most important factors
preventing the peasants from “gathering moss,” of which more
than enough has been fastened on them by history. Unless the population
becomes mobile, it cannot develop, and it would be na\"ive to imagine that a
village school can teach people what they can learn from an independent
acquaintance with the different relations and orders of things in the
South and in the North, in agriculture and in industry, in the capital and
in the backwoods.

---
Notes:
[1]
Money for the journey is obtained by the sale of property, even household
goods, by mortgaging the allotment, by pawning things, clothes, etc., and
even by borrowing money, to be repaid in labour, “from priests,
landlords and local kulaks” (Shakhovskoi, 55).— Lenin

[2]
Mr. Shakhovskoi refers to another form of the combination of agricultural
and non-agricultural labour. Thousands of rafts are floated down the
Dnieper to the towns in the lower reaches of the river. On every raft
there are from 15 to 20 workers (raftsmen), mostly Byelorussians and
Great-Russians from Orel Gubernia. “For the whole voyage they get
practically nothing”; they count chiefly on getting employment at
reaping and threshing. These hopes are rewarded only in “good”
years.— Lenin

[3]
“At harvest time in a good year the worker triumphs, and it is a
hard job to get him to give way. He is offered a price, but he won’t
consider it; he keeps repeating: give me what I ask and it’s a
go. And that is not because labour is scarce, but because, as the workers
say, ‘it’s our turn now.’”- (Reported by a volost clerk; Shakhovskoi, 125.)

“If the crop is a bad one and the price of labour has dropped, the
kulak employer takes advantage of this condition to discharge the worker
before the contract has expired, and the worker loses the season either in
seeking work in the same district or in tramping the country,” a
landlord correspondent confesses ( ibid ., 132).— Lenin

[4]
Cf. Fr. Engels, Zur Wohnungsfrage . Vorwort. (F. Engels, The Housing Question .

Preface. – Ed .) [11] — Lenin

[5]
The same characteristics are displayed by the “Cossacks” of
the Kuban Region: “The Cossack resorts to every possible method to
force down the price of labour, acting either individually or through the
community” ( sic ! What a pity we lack more detailed information about this latest function of the “community”!):
“cutting down the food, increasing the work quota, docking the pay,
retaining the workers’ passports, adopting public resolutions
prohibiting specific farmers from employing workers, on Dain of a fine, at
above a definite rate, etc.” (“Migrant Workers in the Kuban
Region” by A. Beloborodov, in Severny Vestnik , February
1896, p. 5.)— Lenin

[6]
Let us observe, in passing, that this operation, threshing, is most
frequently done by hired labourers. One can judge, therefore how large
must be the number employed on threshing all over Russia!— Lenin

[7]
Of the six uyezd Zemstvo assemblies in Kherson Gubernia whose views on the
question of organising supervision over workers are reported by
Mr. Tezyakov, four declared against this system. The local landowners
accused the gubernia Zemstvo board of “turning the workers into
absolute idlers,” etc.— Lenin

[8]
Shakhovskoi, loc . cit ., 98 and foll. The author cites
even the list of “fees” paid to clerks and village elders for
the hire of peasants on advantageous terms. – Tezyakov loc .
cit ., 65 – Trirogov The Village Community and the Poll Tax ; article entitled “Bondage in the National Economy.”— Lenin

[9]
Here is another example of the pernicious influence of Narodnik
prejudices. Mr. Tezyakov, whose splendid work we have frequently quoted,
notes the fact that from Kherson Gubernia many local workers go to that of
Taurida, although there is a great shortage of labour in the former
gubernia. He calls this “an extremely queer phenomenon”:
“it means a loss to the employers and a loss to the workers, who
abandon jobs at home and risk finding none in Taurida” (33). We, on
the contrary, think that Mr. Tezyakov’s statement is extremely
queer. Do the workers really not understand what is to their advantage, and have they not the right to seek the most advantageous conditions of
employment they can get? (In Taurida Gubernia the wages of agricultural
workers are higher than in Kherson Gubernia.) Are we really to think that
it is obligatory for the muzhik to live and work where he is
registered and “provided with an allotment”?— Lenin

[10]
Zvegintsev Commission – was established in 1894 under the
auspices of the Zemstvo Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs to draw
up measures for “introducing order into employments outside the
village and regulating the movement of agricultural labourers.”

[11]
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works , Vol. I, Moscow,
1958, p. 546.