Written after September 11 (24), 1910

First published in 1932 in Lenin Miscellany XIX

Signature: V. Ilyich

Printed from the manuscript

First page of V. I. Lenin's manuscript "The Capitalist Structure of Modern Agriculture." – 1910 (Reduced)

## Article One

Social statistics in general, and economic statistics in particular, have made enormous progress over the past two or three decades. A whole series of questions—and these are precisely the most fundamental questions—concerning the economic structure of modern states and its development, which were previously resolved on the basis of general considerations and approximate data, cannot now be seriously worked out without taking into account the mass data collected across the entire territory of a given country according to a single definite program and compiled by statistical specialists. Especially the questions of agricultural economics, which provoke particularly intense disputes, require answers based on precise and mass data, all the more so since in European states and America there is an increasingly widespread practice of conducting periodic censuses that cover all agricultural enterprises in the country.

In Germany, for example, such censuses were conducted in 1882, 1895, and most recently in 1907. The significance of these censuses has been pointed out many times in our literature, and it would be difficult to find a book or article devoted to the economics of modern agriculture that does not contain references to German agricultural statistical data. Regarding the latest census, considerable noise has already been raised both in German and in our literature. Mr. Valentinov, if I recall correctly, in "Kievan Thought"{120} last year made a great to-do about the fact that this census supposedly refuted Marxist doctrine and Kautsky's views, proving the viability of small-scale production and its victory over large-scale production. Recently in "Economist of Russia"{121} Professor Voblyi in an article: "Tendencies in Agrarian Evolution in Germany" (No. 36 of September 11, 1910) refuted on the basis of 1907 census data the applicability to agriculture of "the schema worked out by Marx regarding the development of industry" and argued that "small enterprises not only do not perish in the struggle against large ones in the sphere of agriculture; on the contrary, each new census establishes their success."

We therefore believe it would be timely to analyze in detail the data from the 1907 census. True, the publication of materials from this census is not yet complete: three volumes have appeared, containing all the census data,[54] and a fourth volume, devoted to "presenting the results of the census as a whole," has not yet been published and it is unknown when it will be. But there is no reason to postpone the study of the census results until this concluding volume appears, since all the material is already at hand, its compilation is complete, and the literature is widely using it.

Let us note only that to pose the question in the way it is usually posed—limiting oneself almost exclusively to comparing the number of enterprises of various (by area) sizes and the amount of land they possess in different years—means to approach the matter in a completely incorrect way. The real disagreements between Marxists and opponents of Marxism on the agrarian question are rooted much deeper. If one seeks to fully clarify the sources of disagreements, one must first of all and above all direct attention to the question of what are the fundamental features of the capitalist structure of modern agriculture. It is precisely on this question that the data from the German census of June 12, 1907, are particularly valuable. It is less detailed on some questions than the previous censuses of 1882 and 1895, but in return it provides for the first time data of unprecedented richness concerning wage labor in agriculture. And the use of wage labor is the main distinguishing characteristic of all capitalist agriculture.

Therefore we shall first of all attempt to present a general picture of the capitalist structure of modern agriculture, relying primarily on data from the German 1907 census and supplementing them with data from the best agricultural censuses of other countries, namely: Danish, Swiss, American, and the latest Hungarian. As for the fact that stands out most strikingly upon first acquaintance with the census results and about which people speak most—namely, the decrease in Germany of the number of large (in terms of agricultural area) enterprises and the amount of land they possess—we shall turn to its examination only at the end of our work. For this is one of the complex facts that is a function of a whole series of others, and it is impossible to understand its significance without first clarifying several other questions, which are far more important and fundamental.

## I. General Picture of the Economic Structure of Modern Agriculture

German agricultural censuses, like all European (in contrast to Russian) censuses of this kind, are based on information collected for each agricultural enterprise separately. Moreover, the amount of information collected usually increases with each census. For example, in Germany in 1907 very important information about the quantity of livestock used for field work was omitted (this information was collected in 1882 and 1895), but in return information was collected for the first time about the quantity of arable land under different crops, about the number of family and wage workers. The information obtained in this way for each enterprise is quite sufficient for a political-economic characterization of that enterprise. The whole question, the whole difficulty of the task, lies in how to compile this data in such a way as to obtain an accurate political-economic characterization of different groups or types of enterprises as a whole. With unsatisfactory compilation, with incorrect or insufficient grouping, there may result—and constantly does result in the processing of modern censuses—such an outcome that extraordinarily detailed, excellent data available about each separate enterprise disappear, are lost, vanish entirely when it comes to millions of enterprises across the whole country. The capitalist structure of agriculture is characterized by the relations that exist between proprietors and workers, between enterprises of different types, and if the characteristics of these types are taken incorrectly or selected incompletely, even the finest census may fail to provide a political-economic picture of reality.

From this follows the enormous, exceptional importance of the question concerning the methods of compiling or grouping data from modern censuses. We shall examine in the following exposition all the quite diverse methods employed in the best censuses listed above. For now, let us note that the German census, like the vast majority of others, provides a complete compilation, grouping enterprises exclusively according to a single characteristic, namely, the size of the agricultural area of each enterprise. According to this characteristic, the census divides all enterprises into 18 groups, beginning with enterprises having less than one-tenth of a hectare[55] and ending with those having over 1000 hectares of agricultural area. That such detailed subdivision represents a statistical luxury unjustified by political-economic considerations is felt even by the authors of German statistics themselves, who present a compilation of all data in six—or with the singling out of one subgroup—seven major groups according to agricultural area. These groups are as follows: enterprises having up to 1/2 hectare, from 1/2 to 2, from 2 to 5, from 5 to 20, from 20 to 100, and over 100, with the last category further subdivided to single out enterprises having over 200 hectares of agricultural area.

The question arises: what is the political-economic significance of such a grouping? Land is undoubtedly the main means of production in agriculture; by the amount of land one can therefore most reliably judge the size of an enterprise, and consequently its type—that is, for example, whether it is a small, medium, large, capitalist enterprise or one not employing wage labor. Customarily, enterprises up to 2 hectares are classified as small (sometimes called parcellated or dwarf) enterprises, from 2 to 20 (sometimes from 2 to 100) as peasant enterprises, and over 100 as large, that is, capitalist ones.

Now, the data on wage labor first collected by the 1907 census give us above all the possibility for the first time to verify this "customary" assumption against mass data. For the first time a modicum of rationality—far from sufficient, as we shall see below—is introduced into statistical routine, that is, an element of taking into account data that have the most direct and immediate political-economic significance.

Indeed, everyone speaks of small-scale production. But what is small-scale production? The most common answer to this question is that small-scale production is that which does not employ wage labor. Not only Marxists hold this view. For example, Ed. David, whose book "Socialism and Agriculture" might be called one of the most recent summaries of bourgeois theories on the agrarian question, writes on page 29 of the Russian translation: "In all those cases where we speak of small-scale production, we mean an economic category functioning without permanent outside help and without subsidiary occupations."

The 1907 census clearly establishes, first of all, that the number of such enterprises is very small, that in modern agriculture proprietors who do not hire workers or do not hire themselves out to others constitute an insignificant minority. Of the total number of 5,736,082 agricultural enterprises registered by the German 1907 census, only 1,872,616—that is, less than one-third—belong to proprietors for whom independent conduct of agriculture is the main occupation and who have no subsidiary occupations. How many of them hire workers? There is no information on this—that is, it was available in the most detailed form on the original cards and was lost in compilation! The compilers were unwilling to calculate (while performing masses of most detailed and useless calculations) how many enterprises in each group hire permanent or temporary wage workers.

To approximately determine the number of enterprises without wage workers, let us select those groups in which the number of enterprises is less than the number of wage workers. These will be groups with up to 10 hectares of land per enterprise. In these groups there are 1,283,631 proprietors for whom agriculture is the main occupation and who have no subsidiary occupation. These proprietors together have 1,400,162 wage workers (assuming that wage workers are kept only by proprietors for whom agriculture is the main occupation and who have no subsidiary occupations). Only in the group of enterprises having from 2 to 5 hectares is the number of independent farmers without subsidiary occupations greater than the number of wage workers—namely: 495,439 enterprises and 411,311 wage workers.

Of course, wage workers are sometimes employed by those farmers who do have subsidiary occupations; of course, there are "small" proprietors who employ not one but several wage workers. But still, it cannot be doubted that proprietors who hire no workers and hire themselves out to none constitute an infinitesimal minority.

Based on data concerning the number of wage workers, three fundamental groups of enterprises in German agriculture are immediately distinguished:

**I. Proletarian enterprises.** To these should be assigned groups in which a minority of proprietors consider independent conduct of agriculture their main occupation—in which the majority are wage workers, etc. For example, enterprises with land amounting to less than 1/2 hectare—2,084,060. Of these, only 97,153 are independent farmers, while 1,287,312 are wage workers (in all branches of the national economy) by their main occupation. Enterprises with land from 1/2 to 2 hectares—1,294,449. Of these, only 377,762 are independent farmers, 535,480 are wage workers, 277,735 are small industrialists, artisans, merchants, 103,472 are employees and representatives of "various and undefined" occupations. Clearly, both these groups constitute enterprises that are predominantly proletarian.

**II. Peasant enterprises.** To these we assign such enterprises as have as their main mass independent farmers, and in which the number of family workers exceeds the number of hired workers. These will be groups having from 2 to 20 hectares of land.

**III. Capitalist enterprises.** To these we assign enterprises in which the number of hired workers exceeds the number of family workers.

Here are the general data on these three groups: [See table on p. 330. Ed.]

This table presents us with a picture of the economic structure of modern German agriculture. At the bottom of the pyramid is an enormous mass, almost 3/5 of the total number, of "proletarian" enterprises; at the top is an insignificant minority (1/20) of capitalist enterprises. Anticipating what follows, we note that this insignificant minority possesses more than half of all the land and all the arable land. In its hands is one-fifth of the total number of workers engaged in agriculture and more than half of all hired workers.

## II. What the Majority of Modern Agricultural "Enterprises" Really Are (Proletarian "Enterprises")

Of the "proprietors" having up to 2 hectares of land, the majority are wage workers by their main occupation. For them, agriculture is a subsidiary occupation. Of the 3,378,509 enterprises of this group, 2,920,119 represent subsidiary occupations (Nebenbetriebe). Independent farmers, including even those who also have subsidiary occupations in the form of non-agricultural pursuits, are only a small minority, altogether 14%: 475 thousand out of 3.4 million.

*…it should be noted that the number of wage workers[56]… in that group exceeds the number of independent farmers.

This circumstance indicates that the statistics here conflate with the mass of proletarians a few capitalist agricultural proprietors conducting large enterprises on a small plot of land. We shall encounter this type repeatedly in what follows.

The question arises: what significance do these masses of proletarian "proprietors" have in the general structure of agriculture? First, in them is embodied the connection between the serfdom system and the capitalist system of social economy, their historical proximity and kinship, the direct survival of serfdom in capitalism. If we observe, for example, in Germany and especially in Prussia, that among agricultural enterprises there are tiny plots of land (the so-called Deputatland) that the landowner gives to the laborer as part of his wages, is this not a direct survival of serfdom? As an economic system, serfdom differs from capitalism precisely in that the former provides the laborer with land, while the latter separates the laborer from land; the former furnishes the laborer with means of livelihood in kind (or forces him to produce them himself on his "allotment"), while the latter pays the worker money wages with which he purchases means of livelihood. To be sure, this survival of serfdom in Germany is completely insignificant compared with what we see in Russia with its famous "labor-service" system of landlord economy, but it nonetheless exists as a survival of serfdom. The 1907 census counted in Germany 579,500 "agricultural enterprises" belonging to rural workers and day laborers, of which 540,751 falls on the group of "proprietors" having up to 2 hectares of land.

Second, the mass of rural "proprietors" having such negligible plots of land on which one cannot exist, which represent only a "subsidiary occupation," constitutes in the general structure of capitalism a part of the reserve army of the unemployed. This is, in Marx's expression, the hidden form of such an army.{122} It would be incorrect to imagine the reserve army of the unemployed as consisting solely of workers without employment. It also includes "peasants" or "small proprietors" who cannot exist on what their negligible enterprise provides them, who must earn their means of livelihood chiefly through hired labor. A vegetable garden or a plot of land for potatoes is for this army of paupers a means of supplementing their wages or a means of existence at times when there is no work. Capitalism needs these "dwarf," "parcellated" so-called proprietors in order to have at its disposal, without any expense, a mass of cheap labor power. According to the 1907 census, of the 2 million "proprietors" having up to 1/2 hectare of land, 624 thousand have exclusively garden land, 361 thousand have exclusively potato fields. The total arable land of these 2 million equals 247 thousand hectares, of which more than half—namely, 166 thousand hectares—is under potatoes. The entire arable land of 1.25 million "proprietors" having from 1/2 to 2 hectares comprises 976 thousand hectares, of which more than a third—334 thousand hectares—is under potatoes. Deterioration of popular nutrition (replacement of bread by potatoes), cheapening of labor power for entrepreneurs, this is what the "economy" of 3 million rural "proprietors" of Germany out of 5 million means.

To complete the picture of these proletarian enterprises, let us add that almost a third of them (1 million out of 3.4) have no livestock whatsoever, two-thirds (2.5 million out of 3.4) have no large livestock, more than 9/10 (3.3 million out of 3.4) have no horses. The share of these proletarian enterprises in the total sum of agricultural production is negligible: 3/5 of all enterprises have less than 1/10 of all livestock (2.7 million out of 29.4 million head, when all livestock is converted to large animals), about 1/20 of all arable land (1.2 million out of 24.4 million hectares).

One can imagine how much confusion and falsity is introduced into the question by statistics that conflate in this group of enterprises having up to 2 hectares of land millions of proletarians without a horse, without large livestock, with only a vegetable garden or a plot of potato field, with thousands of large proprietors, capitalists, conducting large livestock or garden enterprises on 1–2 desyatinas. That such proprietors do exist in this group is evident at least from the fact that of the 3.4 million (up to 2 ha of land), 15,428 proprietors each have 6 or more workers (family and hired together), and all these 15 thousand have 123,941 workers, that is, an average of 8 workers per enterprise. Such a number of workers indicates, without doubt, if one considers the technical peculiarities of agriculture, large-scale capitalist production. That among the proletarian mass of "proprietors" having up to 2 hectares of land there are large-scale livestock enterprises, I have had occasion to point out on the basis of data from the previous 1895 census (see my book: "The Agrarian Question," SPB., 1908, p. 239[57]). The singling out of these large enterprises would have been entirely possible on the basis of data both about the quantity of livestock and about the number of workers, but German statisticians prefer to fill hundreds of pages with data breaking down the group of owners having up to 1/2 hectare into even smaller groups by quantity of land!

Socio-economic statistics—one of the most powerful instruments of social knowledge—is transformed in this way into a monstrosity, into statistics for its own sake, into a game.

The fact that the majority or mass of agricultural enterprises belong to the category of dwarf, parcellated, proletarian holdings is a phenomenon common to many, if not the majority of European capitalist countries, but not all capitalist countries. In America, for example, according to the 1900 census, the average size of a farm is 146.6 acres (60 hectares), that is, 7½ times greater than in Germany. The number of the tiniest enterprises, if we count as such enterprises up to 20 acres (up to 8 hectares), is only slightly more than 1/10 (11.8%). Even the number of all enterprises of size up to 50 acres (that is, up to 20 hectares) constitutes only a third of the total number. For comparison of these data with German ones, one must take into account that enterprises of size up to 3 acres (= 1.2 hectares) are counted in America only when their gross income is $500, that is, an enormous mass of enterprises up to 3 acres are not registered at all. Therefore one must also exclude the tiniest enterprises from German data. If we discard all enterprises even up to 2 hectares, out of the remaining 2,357,572 enterprises, 1,006,277 will have 2–5 hectares, that is, over 40% of the total number of enterprises are tiny holdings. In America matters stand quite differently.

Clearly, in the absence of serfdom traditions (or with the more decisive elimination of all traces of it), in the absence of (or weakening of) the burden of ground rent over agricultural production, capitalism in agriculture can exist and even develop with particular rapidity without the creation of a million-strong cadre of laborers and day workers with an allotment.

## III. Peasant Enterprises under Capitalism

We have assigned to peasant enterprises those groups in which, on the one hand, the majority of farmers belong to independent proprietors, and on the other hand, the number of family workers exceeds the number of hired workers. The absolute number of hired workers for such proprietors turned out to be very large—1.6 million, more than a third of the total number of hired workers. Clearly from the entire mass (2.1 million) of "peasant" enterprises there are quite a few capitalist undertakings. We shall see below what is approximately their number and significance; for now let us dwell in more detail on the relation between family and hired labor. Let us see how large on average is the number of workers per enterprise:

From this we see how small are generally the dimensions of enterprises in agriculture by number of workers, compared with industry. More than 50 hired workers per enterprise are had only by proprietors of over 100 hectares: their number is 23,566, that is, less than 1/2% of the total number of enterprises. The number of hired workers for them—1,463,974—is only slightly less than for 2 million peasant enterprises.

From peasant enterprises, a group immediately stands out with 10–20 hectares: here on average there is 1.7 hired workers per enterprise. If we single out only permanent hired workers, we shall see that their number comprises 412,702 for 412,741 enterprises of this group (411,940 distributed by number of workers). This means that no enterprise manages without permanent use of hired labor. This is why we single out this group as "Großbauern," as large-peasant enterprises or peasant bourgeoisie. Usually proprietors of 20 or more hectares were assigned to this category, but the 1907 census proved that the use of hired labor in agriculture is more widespread than commonly believed, that the boundary from which permanent use of hired labor begins should be moved considerably downward.

Further, examining the relation between family and hired labor, we see that in proletarian and peasant enterprises the average number of family workers constantly grows parallel with the growth in the number of hired workers, while in capitalist enterprises the number of family workers begins to fall when the number of hired workers increases. This phenomenon is entirely natural, confirming the correctness of our conclusion that enterprises having more than 20 hectares belong to capitalist ones, in which not only is the number of hired workers greater than the number of family workers, but the average number of family workers per enterprise is also less than among peasants.

In Russian literature, long ago, even at the beginning of disputes between Marxists and Populists, it was established on the basis of zemstvo statistics that in peasant economy family cooperation serves as the basis for the creation of capitalist cooperation—that is, strong peasant enterprises, distinguished by a particularly high number of family workers, are transformed into capitalist enterprises by employing hired labor in ever-increasing amounts. Now we see that German statistics for all German agriculture confirms this conclusion.

Let us take German peasant enterprises. Taken together, they differ from proletarian enterprises as undertakings based on family cooperation (2.5–3.4 family workers per enterprise) differ from the enterprises of individuals. Proletarian enterprises should be called enterprises of individuals, since on average there are not even two workers per enterprise. Among peasant enterprises, competition is waged over who will attract more hired workers: the larger the size of the peasant enterprise, the higher the number of family workers and the faster grows the number of hired workers. Large-peasant enterprises surpass small-peasant ones (2–5 hectares) by only less than one and a half times in the number of family workers, but more than fourfold in the number of hired workers.

We see here a precise, statistical confirmation of that fundamental distinction between the class of small proprietors in general, small peasants in particular, and the class of hired workers, which is always pointed out by Marxists and which bourgeois economists and revisionists simply cannot grasp. The entire atmosphere of commodity economy leads to the fact that small peasants cannot exist without struggling to strengthen and expand their enterprise, and this struggle means a struggle to increase the use of others' labor power and to cheapen such use. This is why the whole mass of small peasants in each capitalist country, of which an insignificant minority "rises in the world," that is, becomes actual capitalists, is permeated with capitalist psychology and goes in politics with the agrarians. Bourgeois economists (and revisionists after them) support this psychology; Marxists explain to small peasants that they have no salvation except in joining hired workers.

Also extremely instructive are the data from the 1907 census concerning the relation between permanent and temporary workers. On the whole, the number of the latter comprises exactly one-third of the total: 5,053,726 out of 15,169,549. Of hired workers, 45% are temporary; of family workers, 29%. But in enterprises of different types, these relations change substantially. Here are the data according to the groups we have adopted: [See table on p. 338. Ed.]

From this we see that among proletarian enterprises having less than 1/2 hectare (altogether 2.1 million such enterprises!), temporary workers comprise more than half both among family workers and among hired workers. These are mainly subsidiary enterprises which their proprietors occupy only temporarily. And among proletarian enterprises with 0.5–2 hectares, the percentage of temporary workers is very high. As the size of the enterprise increases, this percentage falls—with only one exception. Namely, among hired workers of the largest capitalist enterprises, this percentage rises somewhat, and since the number of family workers in this group is completely negligible, the percentage of temporary workers among all workers rises considerably, from 25 to 32%.

The difference between peasant and capitalist enterprises in the total number of temporary workers is not very great. The difference between family and hired workers in all enterprises is very significant, and if one takes into account that among temporary family workers, as we shall shortly see, the percentage of women and children is especially high, this difference will prove even greater. Consequently, hired workers are the most mobile element…

## IV. Women's and Child Labor in Agriculture

conduct agriculture. In peasant economy, generally speaking, women's labor also predominates, and only in large-peasant and capitalist enterprises do men constitute the majority.

Among hired workers, women constitute generally a smaller proportion than among family workers. Clearly, capitalist farmers in all groups belong to those proprietors who ensure themselves the best labor power. If we accept that the predominance of women over men is one of the measures of a proprietor's constrained situation and the unsatisfactory state of an enterprise, bereft of the ability to use the best labor power (and such an assumption necessarily follows from all data concerning women…

## V. Squandering of Labor in Small-Scale Production

…

## VI. The Capitalist Character of Machine Use in Modern Agriculture

…

## VII. Low Productivity of Labor in Small-Scale Production and Excessive Work

The significance of data on machine use in agriculture is usually not sufficiently appreciated in economic literature. First, people consistently ignore (always, when speaking of a bourgeois economist) the capitalist character of machine use, do not investigate the corresponding question, are unable or unwilling even to pose it. Second, machine use is examined in isolation, and not as an indicator of different types of enterprises, different methods of cultivation, different economic conditions of enterprise.

If we observe, as a general rule, incomparably greater machine use in large-scale production compared to small-scale and tremendous concentration of machines in capitalist enterprises, and sometimes even an almost complete monopolization of improved implements by capitalist enterprises, then this indicates a difference in land care in enterprises of different types. Among the machines registered by the German census are such as steam plows, seed drills, potato-planting machines. Their predominantly capitalist agricultural use means that here the care of land is better, the technique of cultivation is higher, the productivity of labor is greater. The author of the well-known monograph on agricultural machines, Benzing,{123} calculated, relying on specialist data concerning experience with various machines, that even without changes in systems of field cultivation, machine use alone, taken separately, increases the net income of an enterprise tenfold. These calculations have not been and cannot be refuted in their fundamentals.

The small producer, unable to apply improved implements, is forced to fall behind in land care, and to "catch up" with the large proprietor through investing greater labor in the land while preserving old implements, through increasing "diligence" and lengthening the working day can only units and tens out of hundreds and thousands. Statistics on machine use thus point precisely to the fact of excessive labor in small-scale production, a fact always emphasized by Marxists. No statistics can directly account for this fact, but if one looks at statistical data in their economic significance, it will become clear what types of enterprises must necessarily form in modern society given machine use and the impossibility of using them.

The Hungarian statistics provide illustration of what has been said. Like the German 1907 census (as well as 1882 and 1895), like Danish machine-use statistics of 1907, like French survey of 1909, the Hungarian 1895 census, which first collected precise data for the entire country, shows the superiority of capitalist agriculture and the increase in the percentage of enterprises with machines as enterprise size increases. From this side there is nothing new here, only confirmation of German data. But the particular feature of Hungarian statistics is that information was collected not only on a few improved implements and machines, but on all, or almost all, dead inventory, on the number of the simplest and most necessary implements, plows, harrows, carts, etc.

Thanks to such exceptionally detailed data, it becomes possible to establish with precision the significance, so to speak, characterizing the whole structure of the enterprise, that statistical information on machine use has for a few agricultural machines and "rare" technical items (like steam plows). Let us take data from Hungarian statistics[58] on the use of plows other than steam (of which there were in 1895 altogether 179 in all Hungary, of which 120 were in the 3,977 largest enterprises).

Here are the data on the total number of plows and on the number of the simplest, most primitive, least durable among all implements of this kind (the simplest are classified as single-blade plows with wooden pole; others: the same with iron pole, then 2- and 3-blade plows, cultivators, ridging plows, deep-plowing plows).

Even excluding dwarf enterprises, we see that small-peasant (5–10 yokes, that is, 2.8–5.7 hectares) 233 thousand out of 569 thousand have no plows at all; from medium-peasant, 69 thousand out of 467 thousand. Only the highest groups, that is, large-peasant and capitalist enterprises, are provided with plows, and only enterprises over 100 yokes (such enterprises are only 25 thousand = 0.9% of the total number!) have more improved implements predominating. In peasant enterprises, the simplest implements predominate (and the smaller the enterprise, the more significant is this predominance)—the least durable, giving the worst work.

Setting aside dwarf enterprises, which constitute the majority (52%) of all enterprises but occupy a negligible share of area (7%), we obtain the following conclusion:

More than a million small- and medium-peasant enterprises (5–20 yokes) are insufficiently equipped even with the simplest implements for soil cultivation.

A quarter million large-peasant enterprises (20–100 yokes) are decently equipped with implements of the simplest kind. And only 25 thousand capitalist enterprises (having, to be sure, 55% of all land area) are fully equipped with improved implements.

On the other hand, Hungarian statistics make a calculation of how many yokes of arable land fall per one agricultural implement and obtain such figures (we provide data only on plows, harrows, and carts, noting that the pattern of their distribution among enterprises is completely identical to what we saw regarding plows).

This means that, completely unsatisfactorily equipped with all agricultural implements, proletarian and peasant enterprises have them excessively, compared to the total quantity of arable land in their enterprises. Miserable equipment with implements and unbearable expense of maintaining them—such is the lot of small-scale production under capitalism. In exactly the same way, statistics of housing in every large city will show us that the lowest classes of the population—workers, small merchants, small employees, etc.—live worst of all, have the most cramped and poorest apartments, and pay most per cubic foot. Calculated per unit of space, apartments in factory barracks or any slum are more expensive than luxurious apartments, say, on Nevsky Prospect.

From this there follows both for Germany and for all capitalist countries the following conclusion. If data on the use of a few improved implements and agricultural machines show us that their use grows with enterprise size, this means that small-scale production in agriculture is poorly equipped with all necessary implements. This means that in small-scale production there is combined the squandering of labor on maintaining an immense mass of poor and obsolete implements suitable only for a tiny enterprise, and severe want forcing the peasant to strain himself to somehow get by with these obsolete, barbaric implements on his plot of land.

This is what such simple and familiar to everyone data on the use of agricultural machines speak of, if one reflects on the socio-economic significance of this data.

Capitalism raises the technique of agriculture and moves it forward, but it can do this only by ruining, degrading, and crushing the mass of small producers.

To illustrate clearly the social significance and pace of this process, let us compare in conclusion the data from three German censuses—1882, 1895, and 1907. For such a comparison we must take data on the number of instances of use of those five agricultural machines that were registered throughout this entire period (these machines are: steam plows, seed drills, reapers and binders, steam and other threshers). We obtain such a picture:

Progress seems significant: over a quarter century the number of instances of use of the principal machines increased overall nearly fourfold. But examining more closely, we must say: it took a full quarter century to make the use of even a single one of the five principal machines a usual phenomenon among a small minority of enterprises not managing without permanent use of hired labor. For usual can be called only such use when the number of instances exceeds the number of enterprises, and we see this only with respect to capitalist and large-peasant enterprises. Taken together, they comprise 12% of the total number of enterprises.

The mass of small and medium peasants, after a quarter century of capitalist progress, remained in such a position that only a third of the former and two-thirds of the latter can make use during the year of any one of these five machines.

(End of 1st Article.)