The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture

III

Peasant Farms Under Capitalism

We have put under the heading peasant farms those groups in
which, on the one hand, the majority of cultivators are independent farmers
and, on the other hand, the number of family workers is greater than the
number of wage-workers.
It was found that the absolute number of wage-workers in such farms is very
great—1.6 million, more than a third of the total number of
wage-workers. Obviously there are not a few capitalist enterprises among
the general mass (2.1 million) of “peasant” farms. We shall see below the
approximate number and significance of these enterprises, for the present
we shall deal in more detail with the relation ship between family and
wage-labour. Let us see how big the average number of workers per farm is:

| | Groups of farms | Average Number of Workers per Farm |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Total | Family workers | Wage- workers |
| Proletarian farms . . | { Less than 0.5 ha | 1.3 | 1.2 | 0.1 |
| { 0.5-2 ha | 1.9 | 1.7 | 0.2 |
| Peasant farms . . | { 2-5 ” | 2.9 | 2.5 | 0.4 |
| { 5-10 ” | 3.8 | 3.1 | 0.7 |
| { 10-20 ” | 5.1 | 3.4 | 1.7 |
| Capitalist farms . . | { 20-100 ” | 7.9 | 3.2 | 4.7 |
| { 100 ha or more | 52.5 | 1.6 | 50.9 |
| Altogether | 3.0 | 2.1 | 0.9 |

We see from this table that, compared with industry, agricultural
enterprises are generally of a small size as regards the number of
workers. Only owners possessing more than 100 hectares have over 50
wage-workers: the number of such owners is 23,566, i.e., less than one-half
per cent of the total number of farms. The total number of wage-workers on
these farms is 1,463,974, i.e., a little less than the total number on the
two million peasant farms.

Among the peasant farms, the group that is seen at once to stand out
from the rest is that with 10-20 hectares: this group has an average of 1.7
wage-workers per farm. If we single out only the permanent workers we shall
find that they number 412,702 for the 412,741 farms of this group (411,940
of the farms distributed according to the number of workers). This means
that not a single enterprise is able to do without permanent use
of wage-labour. That is why we single out this group as that of
“Grossbauer”, big peasant farmers or peasant bourgeoisie. Usually it is
owners of 20 or more hectares that are reckoned to belong to this category,
but the 1907 census has shown that the use of wage-labour in agriculture is
more widely distributed than is usually thought, and that the boundary at which the constant use of wage-labour begins must
be shifted considerably lower.

Further, in examining the relationship between family and wage-labour,
we find that in proletarian and peasant farming the average number of
family workers shows a continual increase parallel to the increase in the
number of wage-workers, whereas in capitalist farms the number of family
workers begins to fall as the number of wage-workers grows
larger. This phenomenon is quite natural and confirms our conclusion that
farms of over 20 hectares are capitalist farms, in which not only is the
number of wage-workers greater than that of family workers, but also the
average number of family workers per farm is less than in the case
of peasant farms.

Long ago, even at the very beginning of the controversy between the
Marxists and the Narodniks, it was established from Zemstvo statistical
data that in peasant farming family co-operation is the basis for the
creation of capitalist co-operation, i.e., substantial peasant farms
notable for their particularly large number of family workers become
converted into capitalist farms employing wage-labour to an ever-increasing
extent. Now we see that the German statistics for the whole of German
agriculture confirm this conclusion.

Let us take the German peasant farms. As a whole they differ from the
proletarian farms by being enterprises based on family co-operation
(2.5–3.4 family workers per farm) and not enterprises of individuals. The
proletarian farms have to be called the farms of individuals because they
do not even average two workers per farm. Among the peasant farms, however,
there is competition over the number of wage-workers taken on: the greater
the size of the peasant farm, the higher is the number of its family
workers and the more rapidly does the number of its wage-workers
increase. The big peasant farms surpass the small peasant farms (of 2–5
hectares) by less than one-and-a-half times as regards the number of family
workers but they exceed them by more than four times as regards the number
of wage-workers.

We see here a precise statistical confirmation of the cardinal
distinction between the class of small farmers in general, and of small
peasants in particular, and the class of wage-workers, a distinction that
is always being pointed out by Marxists and which the bourgeois economists and revisionists are
quite unable to grasp. All the circumstances of commodity farming lead to
the result that the small peas ants are unable to exist without striving to
consolidate and extend their enterprises, and this struggle implies a
struggle to increase the use of outside labour-power and to make its use
cheaper. That is why in every capitalist country the mass of small peasants
as a whole, of whom only an in significant minority “rise to prominence”,
i.e., become real capitalists, are permeated by capitalist psychology and
follow the agrarians in politics. The bourgeois economists (and the
revisionists, too, in their wake) support this psychology; the Marxists
explain to the small peasants that their only salvation lies in joining
hands with the wage-workers.

The data of the 1907 census are also extremely instructive in regard to
the proportion between the number of permanent and temporary
workers. Altogether the latter are exactly one-third of the total number:
5,053,726 out of 15,169,549. Of the wage-workers 45 per cent are temporary,
of the family workers 29 per cent are temporary. But these proportions
undergo substantial change in the different types of farm. The following
are the data for the groups we have distinguished.

| | Groups of farms | Temporary Workers as a Percentage of the Total Number of Workers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Family workers | Wage- workers | Total |
| I | { Less than 0.5 ha | 55 | 79 | 58 |
| { 0.5-2 ” | 39 | 78 | 45 |
| II | { 2.5 ” | 22 | 68 | 29 |
| { 5-10 ” | 11 | 54 | 24 |
| { 10-20 ” | 14 | 42 | 23 |
| III | { 20-100 ” | 14 | 32 | 25 |
| { 100 ha or more | 11 | 33 | 32 |
| Average . . . . | 29 | 45 | 33 |

We see from this table that among the proletarian farms with less than
half a hectare (there are altogether 21 million such farms!) temporary
workers form more than half of both the family workers and
wage-workers. These are chiefly auxiliary farms which occupy only part of
the time of their owners. Among the proletarian farms of 0.5–2 hectares,
too, the percentage of temporary workers is very high. As the size of the farm
increases the percentage falls—with only one exception. This exception is
that among wage-workers of the biggest capitalist farms the percentage of
temporary workers increases slightly, and since the number of family
workers in this group is quite negligible, the percentage of temporary
workers among the workers as a whole increases consider ably, from 25 to 32
per cent.

The difference between peasant and capitalist farms as regards the
total number of temporary workers is not very great. The difference between
the numbers of family and wage-workers is very considerable in all types of
farm, and if we take into account that among temporary family workers there
is, as we shall see, an especially high percentage of women and children
this difference becomes still greater. Hence wage-workers are the most
mobile element....