V. I.

Lenin

New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture

PART ONE—Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America

11. A More Exact Comparison of Small and Large Enterprises

As I have already said, American statisticians in this case take
the value of the products raised on the farm, less those used as
feed. Taken alone, these data, which appear to be available only
in American statistics, are, of course, less exact than the
figures for acreage or livestock, and the like. But considered
as a whole, in relation to several million farms, and especially
for the purpose of determining the relative standing of
the various groups of farms in the country, these data undoubtedly cannot be regarded as less suitable than the
rest. At any rate, these data are a much more direct indication
than any others of the scale of production , especially
commercial operations, i.e., the value of the produce raised for
the market. It should be borne in mind that any discussion of
agricultural evolution and its laws centers on a consideration
of small-scale and large-scale production .

What is more, in such cases the point is always the evolution of
agriculture under capitalism, in connection with capitalism,
under its impact, or the like. To evaluate this impact the
greatest efforts must above all be made to draw a line of
distinction between “natural” and commercial economy in
agriculture. It is well known that “natural” economy, i.e.,
production for consumption on the home farm and not for the
market, has a relatively important part to play in agriculture,
and is giving way to commercial farming at an extremely slow
pace. If the accepted principles of political economy are not to
be applied mechanically but intelligently, the law of the
displacement of small-scale by large-scale production, for
instance, can be applied only to commercial agriculture. It is hardly likely that anyone will object to this
proposition from the theoretical standpoint. However, it is the
rare economist or statistician who will make a special effort to
bring out, trace and as far as possible take into account, the
characteristics indicative of the transformation of natural into
commercial agriculture A great step towards meeting this most
important theoretical requirement is made by the classification
of farms according to the money value of produce not used for
feed.

Let us note that, when considering the undeniable fact that
small-scale production is being displaced by large-scale
production in industry, enterprises are always grouped according
to the value of their product or the number of wage-workers
employed. In industry, due to its technical peculiarities, the
matter is much simpler. In. agriculture, because relationships
are so much more complicated and intertwined, it is a great deal
harder to determine the scale of operations, the value of the
product and the extent to which hired labour is employed. For
the last-named item, it is necessary to take account of the
total annual employment of hired labour and not merely the
amount on hand when a census is taken, for agricultural
operations are of an especially “seasonal” nature; in addition,
it is necessary to list not only the permanent hired labourers
but also the day-labourers who play a most important part in
farming. To say that this is difficult is not to say that it is
impossible. Rational methods of investigation adapted to the
technical peculiarities of agriculture, including classification
by output, the money value of the product, and the frequency and
amount of hired labour employed, will have to be used on a much
wider scale, in spite of the thick maze of bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois prejudices and the efforts to embellish
bourgeois realities. And it may be safely said that any step
forward in the use of rational methods of investigation serve to
confirm the truth that in capitalist society small scale
production is being displaced by large-scale production both in
industry and agriculture.

Let us take the 1900 returns for the groups of farms in America
classified according to the value of their product:

| | Average per farm |
| --- | --- |
| Farms classified by value of product ($) | Number Acreage of farms (percentage of total) | Improved acreage | Hired labour ($) | Implements and machinery ($) |
| 0 1 and under 50 50 and under 100 100 and under 250 250 and under 500 500 and under 1,000 1000 and under 2,500 Over 2,500 | 0.9 2.9 5.3 21.8 27.9 24.0 14.5 2.7 | 1.8 1.2 2.1 10.1 18.1 23.6 23.2 19.9 | 33.4 18.2 20.0 29.2 48.2 84.0 150.5 322.3 | 24 4 4 7 18 52 158 786 | 54 24 28 42 78 154 283 781 |
| |
| Average for all farms | — | — | 72.3 | — | 133 |

The farms reporting no income, i.e., with a $0 value of product,
probably consist primarily of newly occupied homesteads on which
their owners had not yet had time to erect buildings, acquire
livestock or sow and raise a crop. In a country like America,
where colonization is still in progress on such a vast scale,
special importance attaches to the question of how long a farmer
has been in possession of his farm.

Leaving aside the zero-income farms, we get a picture quite
similar to the one obtained above by grouping the same data
according to total farm acreage. As the value of the product
raised on a farm increases, there is also an increase in the
average improved acreage, the average expenditure on hired
labour, and the average value of implements and machinery. By
and large, the more profitable farms—in terms of gross income, i.e., the value of their total product—turn out to
have the larger acreage. It would appear that the new method of
grouping has not yielded anything new-at all.

But now let us take the averages (the value of livestock and
implements, expenditure on hired labour and fertilizers) per
acre instead of per farm:

| | Per acre of all land ($) |
| --- | --- |
| Farms classified by
value of product ($) | Outlays on hired labour | Outlays on fertilizers | Value of livestock | Value of implements and machinery |
| 0 1 and under 50 50 and under 100 100 and under 250 250 and under 500 500 and under 1,000 1000 and under 2,500 Over 2,500 | 0.08 0.06 0.08 0.11 0.19 0.36 0.67 0.72 | 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.07 0.07 0.08 0.06 | 2.97 1.79 2.01 2.46 3.00 3.75 4.63 3.98 | 0.19 .038 0.48 0.62 0.82 1.07 1.21 0.72 |

The exceptions in some respects are the zero-income farms, which
in general are in a very special position, and the farms with
the highest incomes, which turn out to be less intensive than
the next group, judging by three out of the four characteristics
we have chosen. But on the whole we find a uniform increase in the intensity of agriculture with the increase in the value of the farm product.

This result is the very opposite of the one obtained when farms
were grouped by acreage.

The same figures yield diametrically different conclusions,
depending on the method of grouping.

As the enterprise grows in size the intensity of agriculture
declines —if the criterion is acreage, and increases —if the criterion is the value of the
product.

Which of these two conclusions is the correct one?

It is clear that if the land is not being improved, acreage
gives no idea at all of the scale of agricultural operations (we must not forget that in America farms are grouped
not only according to the improved acreage, but also by the
total acreage and that in that country the proportion of the
improved acreage ranges from 19 to 91% in the farm groups, and
from 27 to 75%, in the geographical divisions); it gives no correct idea at all if besides this there are so many
substantial differences between farms in the methods of
cultivation, the intensity of agriculture, the methods of field
cropping, quantities of fertilizers, the use of machinery, the
character of livestock farming, etc.

This is known to apply to all capitalist countries and even to all those whose agriculture is affected by capitalism.

We see here one of the most profound and general reasons why
mistaken notions about the “superiority” of small-scale
agriculture are so tenacious, and why bourgeois and petty-bourgeois prejudices of this type prove to be compatible
with the great progress made in the last few decades by social
statistics in general, and agricultural statistics in particular. To be sure, the tenacity of these mistakes and
prejudices is also a matter of the interests of the bourgeoisie, who seek to cover up the depth of class
contradictions in contemporary bourgeois society; and everyone
knows that when it comes to interests, the most incontrovertible
truths are liable to be questioned.

But we are here concerned only with an examination of the
theoretical sources of the erroneous notion of the “superiority”
of small-scale agriculture. There is no doubt at all that of all
these sources the most important one is the uncritical, routine
attitude to the hackneyed methods of comparing enterprises only
by their total acreage or the improved acreage.

The U.S.A. is an exception among capitalist countries in that it
alone has a great deal of unoccupied, unsettled land, which is
given away free. Agriculture still can and indeed does develop
here through the occupation of vacant land, through the
cultivation of virgin lands never before put to the plough—here it does develop in the form of the most
primitive and extensive livestock and crop raising. There is
nothing of the kind in the old, civilized countries of capitalist Europe. In these countries, agriculture develops
mainly through intensive methods, not by increases in the quantity of land under cultivation, but by
improvement in the quality of cultivation, by increases
in the amount of capital invested in the original acreage. Those
who compare farms by acreage alone lose sight of this principal
trend in capitalist agriculture, a trend which is gradually
becoming the principal one in the United States as well.

The principal trend in capitalist agriculture is the conversion
of small-scale enterprise, which remains small in terms of acreage, into large-scale enterprise in
terms of output, in the development of livestock raising, the
quantity of fertilizers, the scale on which machinery is used,
and the like.

That is why the conclusion drawn from the comparison of the
various groups of enterprises by acreage—that the intensity
of agriculture declines with the greater size of enterprise—is entirely incorrect. The only correct
conclusion, on the contrary, is to be drawn from the comparison
of the various farms by the value of their product—the bigger the enterprise, the greater is the intensity of
agriculture.

For acreage is only circumstantial evidence of the scale of
agricultural operations, and the broader and more rapid the
intensification of agriculture, the less authentic is this
“evidence”. The value of the product of an enterprise is not
circumstantial but direct evidence of the scale of its operations. Moreover, it is true in every case. By small-scale
agriculture is always meant the kind that is not based on hired labour. But the transition to the exploitation of hired
labour does not depend only on the extension of the acreage of
an enterprise on its old technical basis—this occurs only
in primitive, extensive enterprises—but also on an improvement of equipment and techniques and their modernization,
investment in the same acreage of additional capital in the form
of, say, new machinery or artificial fertilizers, or of
increased and improved livestock, etc.

The classification of farms by the value of their product brings
together enterprises which really have the same scale of production , regardless of acreage. Accordingly, a highly intensive enterprise on a small tract of land falls into the
same group as a relatively extensive enterprise on a large
tract; both are actually large-scale in terms of production and
the employment of hired labour.

On the contrary, the classification by acreage throws together
large and small enterprises, because they happen to have a
similar acreage; it puts into the same group enterprises with an
entirely different scale of operations, those in which family
labour predominates, and those in which hired labour predominates. The result is a picture of blunted class contradictions within capitalism, a picture which is
basically incorrect and entirely misleading as to the actual
state of affairs, but one the bourgeoisie is very fond of. This
leads to an equally fallacious embellishment of the condition of the small farmers , which the bourgeoisie is
just as fond of. The net result is a vindication of capitalism.

In effect, the fundamental and principal trend of capitalism is
the displacement of small-scale by large-scale production, both
in industry and in agriculture. But this displacement should not
be interpreted merely as immediate expropriation. Displacement also implies the ruin of the small
farmers and a worsening of conditions on their farms, a process
that may go on for years and decades. This deterioration assumes
a variety of forms, such as the small farmer’s overwork or
malnutrition, his heavy debts, worse feed and poorer care of
livestock in general, poorer husbandry—cultivation, fertilization and the like—as well as technical stagnation
on the farm, etc. If the researcher is to be absolved from the
charge of wittingly or otherwise playing up to the bourgeoisie
by giving a false impression of the condition of the small
farmer, who is being ruined and oppressed, his task is, first
and foremost, to give a precise definition of the symptoms of
this ruination, which are not at all simple or uniform; his next
task is to determine these symptoms, to analyze and, as far as
possible, to define the extent to which they have spread and how
they change with time. But present-day economists and statisticians hardly pay any attention to this vital aspect of
the matter.

Just imagine that to a group of 90 small farmers who have no
capital to improve their farms, who lag behind the times and are
gradually being ruined the statistician adds 10 farmers who have
all the capital they need and on equally small tracts of land
start large-scale operations based on hired labour. The net
result would be an embellished picture of the condition of all
the hundred small farmers.

The U.S. Census of 1910 produced just that kind of embellished
picture—and one that, objectively, favored the bourgeoisie—primarily because it discarded the method used
in 1900 of comparing the acreage grouping and the value-of-product grouping. We learn, for instance, only that
expenditure on fertilizers increased immensely, namely, by 115%,
i.e., more than double the previous figure, while the expenditure on hired labour went up by only 82%, and the total
crop value by 83%. This is tremendous progress. It is the
progress of national agriculture as a whole. And, I dare say,
some economist is likely to draw—if indeed has not yet drawn—the conclusion that this is the progress of
small-scale family farming, for, generally speaking, the returns
for the size groups by acreage indicate that “small-scale”
agriculture has a much higher per-acre expenditure on fertilizers.

But we now know that such a conclusion would be fallacious,
because the one thing the grouping of farms by acreage does is
to lump together farmers on the way to ruin, or at any rate the
indigent small farmers who cannot afford to buy fertilizers, and
capitalists (even if they are small-time capitalists)
who, on small tracts of land, start large-scale farming
operations with the use of up-to-date, intensive methods and the
employment of hired labour.

If small-scale agriculture is being generally displaced by
large-scale agriculture, as the figures for the total value of
farm property in 1900 and 1910 show; if, as we shall presently
see, the raising of highly capitalist crops on small tracts
developed at an especially fast rate in this period; if,
according to the general statistics on small and large enterprises grouped by the value of their product, expenditures
for fertilizers increased proportionately with the scale of the
enterprise—then the conclusion inevitably follows that the
“progress” in the use of fertilizers from 1900 to 1910 went to
increase the preponderance of capitalist agriculture over small
agriculture, which was displaced and suppressed to an even
greater extent.

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