V. I.

Lenin

A survey of factories in Russia was made in
1908. [2] There is no doubt that the survey gave exaggerated figures of
the workers’ earnings and understated the amount of production and the size
of the capitalists’ profits, for in our country all surveys of this kind
are carried out on purely bureaucratic lines, inquiries being addressed
only to the capitalists, while it is considered unnecessary to ask the
workers any questions.

Let us see what these statistics, which are particularly advantageous
for the capitalists, have revealed.

According to preliminary information—which is all that has been
published so far—there were altogether nearly 20,000 factories in Russia
(the exact figure is 19,983; we shall give the exact figures in parentheses
but shall round them off in the text to make it easier for the reader to
visualise and remember the principal data).

The total number of workers of both sexes was 2,250,000 (2,253,787),
including mining workers and workers employed in the industries subject to
excise duty.

The wages of all those workers totalled more than 500 million
(555,700,090) rubles.

To find out the average pay per worker, we must divide the total of
wages by the number of workers. We get the figure 246 rubles.

This means that in 1908 two and a quarter million Russian
factory workers earned a mere twenty rubles fifty kopeks a month
on the average!

Considering that with this sum the worker has to support his family,
and this with the present high rents and high food prices, such pay must be
described as meagre.

Let us now see what the profits of the capitalists are. To ascertain
them, we must subtract all the outlays of the capitalists from the sum
total of production, i.e., the gross receipts of all the factories.

The sum total of production exceeds 4,500 million (4,651 million)
rubles, and all the outlays of the capitalists total 4,000 million (4,082
million) rubles.

It follows that the capitalists’ profits exceed 500,000,000 rubles (568,700,000 rubles).

These profits average 28,500 rubles per establishment. Each worker brings the capitalist a profit of
252 rubles a year .

Let us now compare the workers’ earnings and the capitalists’
profits. Each worker receives, on the average, 246 rubles a year, but he
brings the capitalist an average profit of 252 rubles a year. [1]

It follows that the worker works the lesser part of the day
for himself, and the greater part of it for the capitalist. If,
for example, we take the working day to average 11 hours, we shall see that
the worker is paid only for five and a half hours and even somewhat less
than that. The other five and a half hours he works gratuitously, without
receiving any pay, and the entire sum earned by him during this half day
constitutes the capitalist’s profit.

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Notes:
[1]
Altogether the worker creates an annual 498 rubles’ worth of new
values. — Lenin

[2]
This refers to the investigation of Russia’s factories carried out by
the Industrial Department of the Ministry of Finance in 1908. Preliminary
data on the results of the investigation were published by V. Y. Varzar in
an article “The Manufacturing Industry of the Empire at the Beginning of
1909” in Vestnik Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli No. 50, on
December 11 (24), 1911. Lenin cited data from the summary table in that
article.