V. I. Lenin

The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture

Social statistics in general and economic statistics in
particular have made tremendous advances during the last two or three
decades. A series of problems, moreover those most fundamental concerning
the economic system of modern states and its development, which were
previously decided on the basis of general considerations and approximate
data, cannot nowadays be analysed at all seriously without taking into
account the mass of data about the whole territory of a given country
collected according to a single definite programme and summed up by expert
statisticians. In particular, the problems of the economics of agriculture,
which arouse particularly many disputes, require answering on the basis of
exact, mass data, the more so since in the European states and in America
it is a growing practice to make periodic censuses covering all the
agricultural enterprises of the country.

In Germany, for example, such censuses were made in 1882, 1895 and the
last in 1907. The importance of these censuses has often been mentioned in
our press, and it is difficult to find a book or article on the economics
of modern agriculture which does not refer to the statistical data on
German agriculture. The last census has already occasioned a fair amount of
noise in both the German and our own press. Writing in Kievskaya Mysl {2} last year, Mr. Valentinov, it will be recalled, loudly
clamoured that this census allegedly refuted the Marxist doctrine and
Kautsky’s views by proving the viability of small-scale production and its
triumph over large-scale production. Recently, in an article entitled “Tendencies in
Agrarian Evolution in Germany” published in Ekonomist Rossii {3} No. 36 of September 11, 1910, Professor Vobly,
on the basis of the data of the 1907 census, tried to refute the applicability
to agriculture of “the scheme elaborated by Marx in relation to the
development of industry” {4} and to prove 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 registers their success

We think, therefore, it would be opportune to analyse in detail the data of the
1907 census. True, the publication of the materials of this census is not yet
complete; three volumes containing all the data of the census {1}
have appeared, but a fourth volume devoted to an “exposition of the results of
the census as a whole” has not yet appeared and it is not known whether it
will appear soon. But there are no grounds for postponing a study of the
results of the census until this concluding volume has appeared, for
all the material is already available, as well as the summary of it,
and it is being widely used in the press.

We shall merely note that to put the question in the form In which it is usually
put, confining oneself almost exclusively to a comparison of the number of
farms of various sizes (in area) and the amount of land they possessed in various years, is an absolutely incorrect approach to the subject. The real
differences between the Marxists and the opponents of Marxism on the agrarian
question are much more deeply rooted. If the aim is to give a complete explanation of the sources of the differences, then attention must be devoted primarily
and most of all to the question of the basic features of the capitalist system
of modern agriculture. It is just on this question that the data of the German
census of June 12, 1907, are particularly valuable. This census
is less detailed on some questions than the earlier censuses of 1882 and 1895
but, on the other hand, it gives for the first time an unprecedented wealth of
data on wage-labour in agriculture. And the use of wage-labour is the chief
distinguishing mark of every kind of capitalist agriculture.

We shall therefore endeavour first of all to give a general picture of the
capitalist system of modern agriculture, relying chiefly on the data of the 1907
German census and supplementing them with the data of the best agricultural
censuses of other countries, namely: the Danish, Swiss, American and the last
Hungarian censuses. As regards the fact which most of all strikes the eye on a
first acquaintance with the results of the census and which is being most talked
about, namely, the reduction in Germany of the number of large farms (large in
agricultural area) and the amount of land they possess, we shall turn to an
examination of this only at the end of our work. For this is one of the
complicated facts which are a function of a series of others, and it is
impossible to understand its significance without first elucidating several
much more important and basic questions.

Endnotes

{1}
Statistik des Deutschen Reichs , Band 212, Teil 1  a , 1  b and 2  a .
Berufs- und Betriebszählung vom 12. Juni 1907. Landwirtschaftliche
Betriebsstatistik, Berlin 1909 und 1910. ( Statistics of the German State , Vol. 212, Part 1  a , 1  b and
2  a . Census of occupations and enterprises of June 12,
1907. Statistics of agricultural production, Berlin, 1909 and
1910.— Ed .)

{2}
Kievskaya Mysl ( Kiev Thought )—a daily bourgeois-democratic newspaper published in Kiev from 1908 to 1918,
Mensheviks were among its most active contributors.

Lenin is referring to the article by the liquidator N. Valentinov,
“Concerning the Recent German Census”, published in Kievskaya Mysl No. 308.

{3}
Ekonomist Rossii ( Russian Economist )—a weekly bourgeois journal devoted to economic and financial questions in Russia and
abroad; it was published in St. Petersburg from 1909 to 1912.

{4}
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp. 600–863.