American census statistics, for all their shortcomings, compare
favorably with those of other countries because of the completeness and uniformity of the methods used.

This makes it possible to compare the returns for industry and agriculture for
1900 and 1910, and to contrast the over all picture of the
structure of both sectors of the economy and the evolution of
this structure. One of the most popular ideas in bourgeois
economics—an idea, incidentally, which Mr. Himmer repeats—is to contrast industry and
agriculture. Let us see, in the light of a mass of precise data,
what truth there is in such a contrast.

Let us begin with the number of enterprises in industry and in agriculture.

| | Number of enterprises (000) | Increase (%) | Growth of urban and rural population (%) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | 1900 | 1910 |
| Industry Agriculture | 207.5 5,737 | 268.5 6,361 | +29.4 +10.9 | +34.8 +11.2 |

The enterprises in agriculture are much more numerous and much
smaller. That is an expression of its backwardness, parcellization, and dispersion.

The number of enterprises increases much more slowly in
agriculture than in industry. There are two factors in the
United States which do not exist in other leading countries, and
which greatly intensify and accelerate the growth in the number
of enterprises in agriculture. They are, first, the continued
parceling out of the slave-holding latifundia in the South and
“buying-up” by Negro and also by white farmers of small parcels
from the “planters”; secondly, the availability of an immense
quantity of unoccupied, free land, which is distributed by the
government to all applicants. Nevertheless the number of
enterprises in agriculture is increasing at a slower rate than
in industry.

The reason is twofold. On the one hand, agriculture to a rather
large extent retains the character of a “natural” economy, and
various operations once performed by members of a peasant
household are gradually branching off from agriculture—for
example, the making and repair of various implements, utensils,
etc.—and now constitute separate industries. On the other
hand, there is a monopoly which is peculiar to agriculture and
unknown to industry, and which cannot be eliminated under
capitalism—the monopoly of land ownership. Even when there
is no private property in land—in the United States none
actually exists on very large areas to this very day—monopoly is created by the ownership of land and its
occupation by individual private operators. In the country’s
most important regions all the land is occupied, and an increase
in the number of agricultural enterprises is possible only when
existing enterprises are broken up; the free formation of new
enterprises alongside the old is impossible. The monopoly of
land ownership is a drag on the development of agriculture, and
this monopoly retards the development of capitalism in agriculture, which, therefore, is unlike industry in this
respect.

We are unable to make an accurate comparison of the amounts of
capital invested in industrial and in agricultural enterprises
because ground-rent forms a part of the value of the land. Accordingly, we have to compare the capital invested in
industry and the value of industrial products with the total
value of all farm property and the value of the major farm
product. Only the percentages showing increases in the total
values on both sides are strictly comparable.

| | | $000,000 | Increase (%) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | | 1900 | 1910 |
| Industry | Capital of all enterprises Value of products | 8,975 11,406 | 18,428 20,671 | 105.3 81.2 |
| Agriculture | Value of all farm property Value of all cereal crops
Production of cereals in bushels (000,000) | 20,440 1,483 4,439 | 40,991 2,665 4,513 | 100.5 79.8 1.7 |

We find that during the 10 years from 1900 to 1910 the value of
capital invested in industry and the value of all farm property
have doubled. The great and fundamental difference between the
two is that in agriculture the major product, cereals, increased
by an insignificant 1.7%—while the total population increased 21%.

Agriculture lags behind industry in development; this is a
feature of all capitalist countries constituting one of the most
profound causes of disproportion between the various branches of
the economy, of crises and soaring prices.

Capital liberated agriculture from feudalism and drew it into
commodity circulation and thereby into world economic development, lifting it from medieval backwardness and
patriarchal stagnation. But capital, instead of eliminating the
oppression, exploitation and poverty of the masses, produces
these calamities in a new guise and restores their old forms on
a “modern” basis. The contradiction between industry and
agriculture, far from being eliminated by capitalism, is, on the
contrary, further extended and sharpened by it. The oppression
of capital, seen primarily in the sphere of trade and industry,
weighs more and more heavily on agriculture.

The insignificant increase in the quantity of agricultural
produce (+1.7%) and the enormous increase in its value (+79.8%)
shows clearly, on the one hand, the role of ground-rent, the
tribute extorted from society by the landowners. Because of
their monopolist position, they are able to take advantage of
the backwardness of agriculture, which does not keep pace with
industry, and to fill their pockets with millions and millions
of dollars. In the 10 years, the value of all farm property
increased by $20,500 million, of which only $5,000 million
constituted the increase in the value of buildings, livestock
and equipment. The value of land—capitalized ground-rent—increased in the 10 years by
$ 15 , 000 million (+118.1%).

On the other hand, the difference in the class status of the small farmers and the hired labourers is here thrown into
especially sharp relief. To be sure, both labour; to be sure,
both are subject to exploitation by capital, though in entirely
different forms. But only vulgar bourgeois democrats will for
this reason put the two different classes together and speak of
small-scale operations by family farms. To do so is to cover up
and disguise the social system of the economy—its bourgeois nature—and push into the foreground a feature
common to all earlier formations, namely, the necessity
for the petty farmer to work, to engage in personal, physical
labour, if he is to survive.

Under capitalism, the small farmer—whether he wants to or
not, whether he is aware of it or not—becomes a commodity
producer. And it is this change that is fundamental, for it
alone, even when he does not as yet exploit hired labour, makes
him a petty bourgeois and converts him into an antagonist of the
proletariat. He sells his product, while the proletarian sells
his labour-power. The small farmers, as a class, cannot but seek
a rise in the prices of agricultural products, and this is
tantamount to their joining the big landowners in sharing the
ground-rent, and siding with the landowners against the rest of
society. As commodity production develops, the small farmer, in
accordance with his class status, inevitably becomes a petty landed proprietor .

There are cases even among wage-workers when a small part of
them side with their masters against the whole class of
wage-earners. But this is merely a small fraction of a class uniting with its antagonists, against the entire
class. It is impossible to imagine any improvement of the
condition of wage-earners as a class, without an improvement in
the living standard of the masses, or without a sharpening of
the antagonism between them and capital, which rules contemporary society, the antagonism between them and the entire
class of capitalists. But it is quite possible, on the contrary,
to imagine a state of affairs—indeed, such a situation is
even typical of capitalism—where an improvement in the condition of the small farmers, as a class, results from their
alliance with the big landlords, their participation in exacting
a higher ground-rent from society as a whole, the contradictions
arising between them and the mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians, who depend, entirely or at least mostly, on
the sale of their labour-power.

Here is a comparison of American statistics on the number and
position of wage-earners and of small farmers:

| | | 1900 | 1910 | Increase (%) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Industry | Number of wage-earners (000) Their wages ($000,000) | 4,713 2,008 | 6,615 3,427 | 40.4 70.6 |
| Agriculture | Number of wage-earners (000) Their wages ($000,000) | ? 357 | ? 652 | c. 47.1 82.3 |
| |
| Number of farmers (000) Value of their major product, cereal crops ($000,000) | 5,737 1,483 | 6,361 2,665 | 10.9 79.8 |

The workers in industry lost, for their wages went up by only
70.6% (“only”, because almost the same quantity of cereals,
101.7% of the old quantity, is now 179.8% of the old price!),
while the number of workers in creased all of 40%.

The small farmers gained , in their capacity of petty landowners, at the expense of the proletariat. The number of
small farmers increased by only 10.9% (even if the small
commercial farms are singled out, the increase is still only
11.9%), and while the quantity of their product hardly increased
at all (+1.7%), its value went up 79.8%.

Naturally, commercial and finance capital took the lion’s share
of this ground-rent, but the class status of the small farmer
and the wage-earner, vis-à-vis each other, is entirely akin to the status of petty bourgeois and proletarian.

The numerical growth of wage-earners outstrips the growth of population (+40% for the former as against +21% for
the latter). There is growing expropriation of the petty
producers and small farmers. There is growing proletarization of
the population. [1]

The increase in the number of farmers—and to an even greater extent, as we already know, in the number of proprietors
among them— lags behind the growth of the population (10.9%, as against 21%). The small farmers are
increasingly converted into monopolists, into petty landed
proprietors.

Let us now take a look at the relationship between small-scale
and large-scale production in industry and in agriculture. In
respect of industry the figures are not for 1900 and 1910, but
for 1904 and 1910.

Industrial enterprises are divided into three main groups
depending on the value of their products, the small being those
with an output of less than $20,000; the medium, from $20,000 to
$100,000, and the large $100,000 and over. We have no way of
grouping agricultural enterprises except by acreage. Accordingly, small farms are those up to 100 acres;
medium, from 100 to 175; and large, 175 and over.

| | Groups | Number of enterprises (000) | Increase (%) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | 1900 | % | 1910 | % |
| Industry | Small Medium Large | 144 48 24 | 66.6 22.2 11.2 | 180 57 31 | 67.2 21.3 11.5 | 25.0 18.7 29.1 |
| |
| Total | 216 | 100.0 | 268 | 100.0 | 24.2 |
| Agriculture | Small Medium Large | 3,297 1,422 1,018 | 57.5 24.8 17.7 | 3,691 1,516 1,154 | 58.0 23.8 18.2 | 11.9 6.6 13.3 |
| |
| Total | 5,737 | 100.0 | 6,361 | 100.0 | 10.9 |

The uniformity of evolution proves to be remarkable.

Both in industry and agriculture the proportion of medium
establishments is reduced, for their number grows more slowly
than that of the small and large enterprises.

Both in industry and agriculture the small enterprises increase
in number at a slower rate than the large.

What are the changes in the economic strength or economic role
of the various types of enterprises? For the industrial
enterprises we have the returns on the value of their products,
and for the agricultural, on the total value of all farm
property.

| | Groups | $000,000 | $000,000 | Increase (%) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | 1900 | % | 1910 | % |
| Industry | Small Medium Large | 927 2,129 11,737 | 6.3 14.4 79.3 | 1,127 2,544 17,000 | 5.5 12.3 82.2 | 21.5 19.5 44.8 |
| |
| Total | 14,793 | 100.0 | 20,671 | 100.0 | 37.9 |
| Agriculture | Small Medium Large | 5,790 5,721 8,929 | 28.4 28.0 43.6 | 10,499 11,089 19,403 | 25.6 27.1 47.3 | 81.3 93.8 117.3 |
| |
| Total | 20,440 | 100.0 | 40,991 | 100.0 | 100.5 |

Once again the uniformity of evolution is remarkable.

Both in industry and agriculture the relative number of, small
and medium enterprises is decreasing, and only the relative
number of the large enterprises is increasing.

In other words, the displacement of small-scale by large-scale
production is under way both in industry and in agriculture.

The difference between industry and agriculture in this case is
that the proportion of small enterprises in industry increased
somewhat more than the proportion of medium enterprises (+21.5%,
as against +19.5%), while the reverse was true for agriculture. Of course, this difference is not great, and no
general conclusions can be drawn from it. But the fact remains
that in the world’s leading capitalist country small-scale
production in industry gained more ground in the last decade
than medium-scale production, whereas the reverse was true for
agriculture. This fact shows how little importance is to be
attached to the current assertions of bourgeois economists that
the law of the displacement of small-scale by large-scale
production is confirmed, unconditionally and without any
exception, by industry, and refuted by agriculture.

In the agriculture of the U.S.A. the displacement of small-scale
by large-scale production is not merely under way, but is
proceeding with greater uniformity than in industry.

In considering this, the fact demonstrated above should not be
forgotten, namely, that the grouping of farms by acreage
understates the process of displacement of small-scale by large-scale production.

As for the degree of concentration already achieved, agriculture is very far behind. In industry, more than
eight-tenths of all production is in the hands of the large
enterprises that constitute only 11% of the total number. The
role of the small enterprises is insignificant: two-thirds of
the total number of enterprises account for only 5.5% of the
total production! By comparison, agriculture is still in a state
of dispersion: small enterprises, comprising 58% of the total
number, account for one-quarter of the total value of all farm
property; while 18% large enterprises account for less than
one-half (47%). The total number of agricultural enterprises is
over 20 times greater than the number in industry.

This confirms the old conclusion—if the evolution of agriculture is compared with that of industry, capitalism in
agriculture is at a stage more akin to the manufactory stage
than to the stage of large-scale machine industry. Manual labour
still prevails in agriculture, and the use of machinery is
relatively very limited. But the data given above do not in any
way prove the impossibility of socializing agricultural
production, even at the present stage of its development. Those
who control the banks directly control one-third of
America’s farms, and indirectly dominate the lot. In view of the
modern development of associations of every kind and of
communications and transport, it is undoubtedly possible to
organize production under a single general plan on a million
farms raising more than one-half the total value of the
product.

---
Notes:
[1]

The number of wage-earners in agriculture, or rather the growth in
their number, is obtained from the following ratio: 82.3:70.6
=x : 40.4, hence x=47.1.
— Lenin