New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture
V.I. Lenin

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/newdev/index.htm

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

A leading country of modern capitalism is of especial interest to the study of the socio-economic structure and evolution of
present-day agriculture. The U.S.A. is unrivalled either in the rate of
development of capitalism at the turn of the century, or in the record
level of capitalist development already attained; nor has it any rival in
the vastness of the territory developed with the use of the most up-to-date
machinery, which is adapted to the remarkable variety of natural and
historical conditions or in the extent of the political liberty and the
cultural level of the mass of the population. That country, indeed, is in
many respects the model for our bourgeois civilization and is its
ideal.

The study of the forms and laws of agricultural evolution is made
easier in the U.S.A. by its decennial censuses of population, which are
coupled with remarkably detailed descriptions of all industrial and
agricultural enterprises. This yields a wealth of exact information that is
unavailable in any other country; it helps to verify many popular notions,
most of which are very loosely formulated and repeated without criticism,
and usually serve to funnel bourgeois views and prejudices.

Mr. Himmer in the June (1913) issue of Zavety [3] gives some data
from the latest, Thirteenth (1910) Census, and on this basis reiterates the
most popular and thoroughly bourgeois contention—bourgeois both as
regards its theoretical basis and political significance—that
“the vast majority of farms in the United States employ only family
labour”; that “in the more highly developed areas agricultural
capitalism is disintegrating”; that “in the great majority of areas
. . . small-scale farming by owner-operators is becoming ever more
dominant”; that it is precisely “in the older cultivated areas with a
higher level of economic development” that “capitalist agriculture is disintegrating and production is breaking up into smaller
units”; that “there are no areas where colonization is no longer
continuing, or where large scale capitalist agriculture is not decaying and
is not being replaced by family-labour farms”, and so on and so
forth.

All these assertions are monstrously untrue. They are in direct
contradiction to reality. They are a sheer mockery of the truth. Their
incorrectness ought to be explained in detail for a very good reason:
Mr. Himmer is not the man in the street, he is not a casual contributor of
a casual magazine article, but one of the most prominent economists
representing the most democratic, extreme Left-wing bourgeois trend in Russian and European social thinking. That is precisely why
Mr. Himmer’s views may have, and indeed already have among some
non-proletarian sections of the population, particularly wide circulation
and influence. They are not merely his personal views, nor his individual
mistakes, but are rather an expression—couched in the most democratic
terms and heavily embellished with pseudo-socialist phraseology—of general bourgeois views which in the atmosphere of a capitalist
society are most readily accepted both by the smug professor, treading the
beaten path, and the small farmer who is more intelligent than millions of
his fellows.

The theory of the non-capitalist evolution of agriculture in capitalist
society, which Mr. Himmer advocates, is really the theory of the great
majority of bourgeois professors and bourgeois democrats and also of
opportunists in the labour movement of the whole world who are the latest
variety of those selfsame bourgeois democrats. It is no exaggeration to say
that this theory is an illusion, a dream, a delusion under which the whole
of bourgeois society is labouring. In devoting my further exposition to the
refutation of this theory, I shall try to give a complete picture of
capitalism in American agriculture, because one of the main mistakes made
by bourgeois economists is to isolate facts and figures, major and minor,
from the general context of politico-economic relations. All my data are
taken from official statistical publications of the United States of North
America, including above all the volumes Five, devoted to agriculture, of
the Twelfth and Thirteenth censuses taken in

1900 and 1910 respectively, [1] and also the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1911 . Having
mentioned these sources, I shall not give references to pages or tables for
each separate figure, as this would only burden the reader and needlessly
encumber the text; anyone interested enough will easily find the data in
question from the tables of contents in these publications.

### 1. General Characteristic of the Three Main Sections. The Homestead West

The vast area of the United States, which is only slightly smaller than
the whole of Europe, and the great diversity of farming conditions in the
various parts of the country make absolutely imperative a separate study of
the major divisions, each with its peculiar economic status. American
statisticians adopted five geographical divisions in 1900, and nine in
1910:

(1) New England—six states on the Atlantic coast in the north-east (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut); (2) Middle Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania)—in 1900 these two divisions formed the North Atlantic division; (3) East North Central (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin); (4) West North Central (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas)—in 1900, the last two made up the North Central division; (5) South Atlantic (Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida)—unchanged from 1900; (6) East South Central (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi); (7) West South Central (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas)—in 1900, the last two made up the South Central division; (8) Mountain (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada); and (9) Pacific (Washington, Oregon, and California)—in 1900, the last two made up the Western division.

The excessive patchwork of these divisions prompted American
statisticians in 1910 to compress them into three main sections—the North
(1-4), the South (5-7) and the West (8-9). We shall presently see that this
division into three main sections is really most important and vital,
although here, too, as in everything else, there are transitional types, so
that on some basic points New England and the Middle Atlantic states will
have to be considered separately.

In order to define the fundamental distinction between the three main
sections, let us designate them as the industrial North, the former slave-owning South and the homestead West.

Here are the figures on their area, percentage of improved [2] land, and population:

Sections | Total Land Area(000,000 acres) | Percentage ofimproved land | Population(1910)(000,000)
The North | 588 | 49 | 56
The South | 562 | 27 | 29
The West | 753 | 5 | 7

The U. S. A. | 1,903 | 25 | 92

The North and the South have approximately the same area, while the
West is nearly half as large again as either. The population of the North,
however, is eight times that of the West, which, one might say, is hardly
populated. How rapidly it is being settled is evident from the fact that in
the 10 years between 1900 and 1910, the population in the North increased
by 18%; the South, by 20%; and the West, by 67%! There is hardly any
increase in the number of farms in the North: 2,874,000 in 1900, and
2,891,000 in 1910 (+0.6%); in the South the number increased by 18%, from
2,600,000 to 3,100,000; and in the West, by 54%, i.e., more than half as
much again, from 243,000 to 373,000.

How land is being settled in the West is seen from the data on
homesteads, which are parcels of land, mostly of 160 acres, i.e., about 65
dessiatines, allocated by the government free of charge or at a nominal
price. In the 10 years between 1901 and 1910, the area occupied by
homesteads in the North was 55.3 million acres (including 54.3 million,
i.e., more than 98%, in one division alone, namely the West North Central);
the area in the South was 20 million acres (including 17.3 million in one
division, the West South Central), and in the West, it was 55.3 million
acres spread over both divisions. This means that the West is a solid
homestead area, i.e., one where unoccupied land is given away practically
free—somewhat similar to the squatter land tenure in the outlying
districts of Russia, except that it is not regulated by a feudal state, but
in a democratic manner (I very nearly said: in a Narodnik manner; the
American Republic has implemented in a capitalist way the “Narodnik”
idea of distributing unoccupied land to all applicants). The North and the
South, however, each have only one homestead division, which may be
regarded as a transitional type from the unsettled West to the settled
North and South. Let us note, by the way, that only in two divisions of the
North—the New England and the Middle Atlantic—were there absolutely no
homestead grants made in the last decade. We shall later have to return to
these two most highly industrialized divisions, where there is no longer
any homesteading at all.

The above figures on homesteads refer only to claims that have been
staked and not to those actually settled; we have no figures on the latter
for the various divisions. But even if these returns are somewhat
exaggerated as absolute magnitudes, they are, at any rate, a faithful
reflection of the relative importance of homesteads in the various
divisions. In the North in 1910 the farms totaled 414 million acres, so
that homestead claims in the last 10 years came to about one-eighth of the
total; in the South, about one seventeenth (20 out of 354); and in the
West, one-half (55 out of 111)! To lump together data on areas
with hardly any land ownership at all, and data on areas where all the land
is occupied, would be to make nonsense of scientific investigation.

America provides the most graphic confirmation of the truth emphasized by
Marx in Capital , [4] Volume
III , that capitalism in agriculture does not depend on the form of land
ownership or land tenure. Capital finds the most diverse types of medieval
and patriarchal landed property—feudal, “peasant allotments”
(i.e., the holdings of bonded peasants); clan, communal, state, and other
forms of land ownership. Capital takes hold of all these, employing a
variety of ways and methods. For agricultural statistics to be properly and
rationally compiled, the methods of investigation, tabulation, etc., would
have to be modified to correspond to the forms of capitalist
penetration into agriculture; for instance, the homesteads would have to be
put into a special group and their economic fate traced. Unfortunately,
however, the statistics are all too often dominated by routine and
meaningless, mechanical repetition of the same old methods.

How extensive agriculture is in the West, as compared with the other
sections, is evident, by the way, from the data on expenditures for
artificial fertilizers. In 1909, the expenditure per acre of improved land
was 13 cents ($0.13) in the North; 50 cents, in the South, and only 6 cents
in the West. The South has the highest figure because cotton demands great
quantities of fertilizers, and the South is primarily a cotton-growing
area: cotton and tobacco account for 46.8% of the total value of all its
farm crops; grain, only 29.3%; hay and forage, 5.1%. By contrast, grain
leads in the North with 62.6%, followed by 18.8% of hay and forage, most of
which is cultivated. In the West, grain accounts for 33.1% of the total
value of all farm crops; hay and forage, with wild grasses predominating,
31.7%, while fruits, a special branch of commercial farming rapidly
developing on the Pacific coast, account for 15.5% of the total value.

## Notes

[1] Census Reports. Twelfth Census
1900. Vol. V. Agriculture, Wash. 1902.—Thirteenth Census
of the United States , Taken in the Year
1910 . Vol. V. Agriculture, Wash. 1913.
— Lenin

[2] The 1910 Census defined farmland as consisting of (1) improved
land, (2) woodlands and (3) all other unimproved land. Improved
land includes all land regularly tilled or mowed, land pastured
and cropped in rotation, land lying fallow, land in gardens,
orchards vineyards, and nurseries, and land occupied by farm
buildings.
— Lenin

[3] 

[4] 

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

### 2. The Industrial North

By 1910, the urban population in the North reached 58.6% of the total,
as compared with 22.5% in the South and 48.8% in the West. The role of
industry is evident from these figures:

| Value of products ($000,000,000) | Workers inindustry(000,000)
Crops | Live-stock | Total | Manufactures lesscost of raw materials
The North | 3.1 | 2.1 | 5.2 | 6.9 | 5.2
The South | 1.9 | 0.7 | 2.6 | 1.1 | 1.1
The West | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 0.3

The U. S. A. | 5.5 | 3.1 | 8.6 | 8.5 | 6.6

The total crop value is here overstated because a part of the crops,
such as feed, recurs in the value of the livestock products. But in any
case these figures show conclusively that almost five-sixths of American
manufacture is concentrated in the North, and that manufacture prevails
over agriculture in that section. The South and the West, on the contrary,
are predominantly agricultural.

The above table shows that the North differs from the South and the
West by a comparatively greater development of industry, which creates a
market and makes for the intensification of agriculture. The
North—“industrial”  in that sense—nevertheless still remains the largest producer of agricultural products. More than one-half,
actually about three-fifths, of agricultural production, is concentrated in
the North. How much more intensive farming is in the North, as compared
with the other sections, will be seen from the following figures on the
per-acre value of all farm property—land, buildings, implements and
machinery, and livestock. In 1910, it was $66 in the North, as compared
with $25 in the South, and $41 in the West. The per-acre value of
implements and machinery alone was $2.07 in the North, $0.83 in the South,
and $1.04 in the West.

The New England and Middle Atlantic divisions stand out in this
picture. As I have already pointed out there is no new homesteading in
these parts. From 1900 to 1910, there was an absolute decrease in the
number of farms, and in the total and in the improved acreage of the
farms. Employment returns show that only 10% of the population there is
engaged in farming, as compared with a 33% average for the U.S.A., 25 to
41% for the other divisions of the North, and 51 to 63% for the South. Only
6 to 25% of the improved acreage in these two divisions is under cereal
crops (the average for the U.S.A. is 40%, and for the North, 46%); 52 to
29% is under grasses, mostly cultivated (as against 15% and 18%); and 4.6
to 3.8% is under vegetables (as against 1.5 and 1.5%). This is the area of
the most intensive agriculture. The average expenditure for fertilizers per
acre of improved land in 1909 was $1.30 and $0.62 respectively; the former
being the U.S. maximum, and the latter, second only to that of one division
in the South. The average value of implements and machinery per acre of
improved land was $2.58, and $3.88—the maximum figures for the U.S.A. We
shall later see that in these most industrialized divisions of the
industrial North, agriculture is the most intensive and has the most
pronounced capitalist character.

## Notes

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

### 3. The Former Slave-Owning South

The United States of America, writes Mr. Himmer, is a “country
which has never known feudalism and is free from its economic
survivals”  (p. 41 of his article). This is the very opposite of the
truth, for the economic survivals of slavery are not in any way
distinguishable from those of feudalism, and in the former slave-owning
South of the U.S.A. these survivals are still very powerful . It
would not be worth while to dwell on Mr. Himmer’s mistake if it were
merely one in a hastily written article. But all liberal and all Narodnik
writings in Russia show that the very same “mistake”  is being
made regularly and with unusual stubbornness with regard to the Russian labour-service system, our own survival of feudalism.

The South of the U.S.A. was slave-owning until slavery was swept away
by the Civil War of 1861-65. To this day, the Negroes, who make up no more
than from 0.7 to 2.2% of the population in the North and the West,
constitute from 22.6 to 33.7% of the population in the South. For the
U.S.A. as a whole, the Negroes constitute 10.7% of the population. There is
no need to elaborate on the degraded social status of the Negroes: the
American bourgeoisie is in no way better in this respect than the
bourgeoisie of any other country. Having “freed”  the Negroes, it took good care, under “free”, republican-democratic
capitalism, to restore everything possible, and do everything possible and
impossible for the most shameless and despicable oppression of the
Negroes. A minor statistical fact will illustrate their cultural
level. While the proportion of illiterates in 1900 among the white
population of the U.S.A. of 10 years of age and over was 6.2%, among the
Negroes it was as high as 44.5%! More than seven times as high! In the
North and the West illiteracy amounted from 4 to 6% (1900), while in the
South it was from 22.9 to 23.9%! One can easily imagine the complex of
legal and social relationships that corresponds to this disgraceful fact
from the sphere of popular literacy.

What then is the economic basis that has produced and continues to
support this fine “superstructure” ?

It is the typically Russian, “purely Russian” labour service system , which is known as share-cropping .

In 1910, Negroes owned 920,883 farms, i.e., 14.5% of the total. Of the
total number of farmers, 37% were tenants; 62.1%, owners; the remaining
0.9% of the farms were run by managers. But among the whites 39.2% were
tenant farmers, and among the Negroes—75.3%! The typical white farmer in
America is an owner, the typical Negro farmer is a tenant. The proportion
of tenants in the West was only 14%: this section is being settled, with
new lands unoccupied, and is an El Dorado (a short-lived and unreliable El
Dorado, to be sure) for the small “independent farmer” . In the
North, the proportion of tenant farmers was 26.5%, and in the South, 49.6%!
Half of the Southern farmers were tenants.

But that is not all. These are not even tenants in the European,
civilized, modern-capitalist sense of the word. They are chiefly
semi-feudal or—which is the same thing in economic terms—semi-slave share-croppers . In the “free” West, share-croppers
were in the minority (25,000 out of a total of 53,000 tenants). In the old
North, which was settled long ago, 483,000 out of 766,000 tenant farmers,
i.e., 63%, were share-croppers. In the South, 1,021,000 out of 1,537,000
tenant farmers, i.e. , 66% , were share-croppers .

In 1910, free, republican-democratic America had 1,500,000
share-croppers, of whom more than 1 , 000 , 000 were
Negroes . And the proportion of share-croppers to the total number of
farmers is not decreasing, but is on the contrary steadily and rather
rapidly increasing. In 1880, 17.5% of the farmers in the U.S.A. were
sharecroppers, in 1890, 18.4%; in 1900, 22.2%; and in 1910, 24%.

American statisticians draw the following conclusions from the 1910 returns:

“ In the South the conditions have at all times been somewhat different from those in the North, and many of the tenant farms
are parts of plantations of considerable size which date from before the
Civil War.”  In the South, “the system of operation by tenants—chiefly colored tenants—has succeeded the system of operation
by slave labour. . . . The development of the tenant system is most
conspicuous in the South, where the large plantations formerly operated by
slave labour have in many cases been broken up into small parcels or tracts
and leased to tenants. . . . These plantations are in many cases still
operated substantially as agricultural units, the tenants being subjected
to a degree of supervision more or less similar to that which hired farm
labourers are subjected to in the North” ( op. cit. , Vol. V,
pp. 102, 104).

To show what the South is like, it is essential to add that its
population is fleeing to other capitalist areas and to the towns, just as
the peasantry in Russia is fleeing from the most backward central
agricultural gubernias, where the survivals of serfdom have been most
greatly preserved, in order to escape the rule of the notorious Markovs, to
those areas of Russia which have a higher level of capitalist development,
to the metropolitan cities, the industrial gubernias and the South (see The Development of Capitalism in
Russia [1] ).

The share-cropping area, both in America and in Russia, is the most stagnant area, where the
masses are subjected to the greatest degradation and oppression. Immigrants
to America, who have such an outstanding role to play in the
country’s economy and all its social life, shun the South. In 1910,
the foreign-born formed 14.5% of the total population of America. But in
the South the figure was only l to 4% for the several divisions, whereas in
the other divisions the proportion of incomers ranged from not less than
13.9% to 27.7% (New England). For the “emancipated” Negroes,
the American South is a kind of prison where they are hemmed in, isolated
and deprived of fresh air. The South is distinguished by the immobility of
its population and by the greatest “attachment to the land” :
with the exception of that division of the South, which still has
considerable homesteading (West South Central), 91 to 92% of the population
in the two other divisions of the South resided in the same division where
they were born, whereas for the United States as a whole the figure was
72.6%, i.e., the mobility of the population is much greater. In the West,
which is a solid homestead area, only 35 to 41% of the population lived in
the division of their birth. Negroes are in full flight from the two Southern divisions
where there is no homesteading: in the 10 years between the last
two censuses, these two divisions provided other parts of the
country with almost 600,000 “black”  people. The
Negroes flee mainly to the towns: in the South, 77 to 80% of all
the Negroes live in rural communities; in other areas, only 8 to
32%. Thus it turns out that there is a startling similarity in
the economic status of the Negroes in America and the peasants in
the heart of agricultural Russia who “ were formerly landowners’ serfs ”.

## Notes

[1] See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 585–90.— Ed .

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

### 4. Average Size of Farms, “Disintegration of Capitalism” in the South

Having examined the chief distinctive features of the three main
sections of the U.S.A., as well as the general nature of their economic
conditions, we can now proceed to an analysis of the data most commonly
referred to. These are primarily data on the average acreage of farms. It
is on the basis of these data that a great many economists, including
Mr. Himmer, draw the most categorical conclusions.

Average acreage per farm in the U.S.A.
Years | All farmland | Improved land
18501860 | 202.6199.2 | 78.079.8

18701880189019001910 | 153.3133.7136.5146.2138.1 | 71.071.078.372.275.2

On the whole, there seems at first glance to be a reduction in the
average acreage of all farmland and an uncertain fluctuation—upward and
downward—in the average improved acreage. But there is a distinct break
in the 1860-70 period and this I have indicated by a line. During that
period there was an enormous decrease in the average acreage of
all farmland by 46 acres (from 199.2 to 153.3) and the greatest change
(from 79.8 to 71.0), also a reduction, in the average acreage of improved
land.

What was the reason? Obviously, the Civil War of 1861-65 and the
abolition of slavery. A decisive blow was dealt at the latifundia of the
slave-owners. Further on we shall see repeated confirmation of this fact,
but it is so generally known that it is surprising that it needs any proof
at all. Let us separate the returns for the North and those for the South.

| Average acreage per farm
South | North
Years | All farmland | Improved land | All farmland | Improved land
18501860 | 332.1335.4 | 101.1101.3 | 127.1126.4 | 65.468.3

18701880189019001910 | 214.2153.4139.7138.2114.4 | 69.256.258.848.148.6 | 117.0114.9123.7132.2143.0 | 69.276.687.890.9100.3

We find that in the South the average improved acreage per farm between
1860 and 1870 greatly decreased (from 101.3 to 69.2), and that in
the North it slightly increased (from 68.3 to 69.2). This means
that the cause lay in the specific conditions of evolution in the
South. There we find even after the abolition of slavery, a reduction in the average acreage of
farms, although the process is slow and not continuous.

Mr. Himmer’s deduction is that in the South “the small-scale family farms are extending their domination, while capital is
leaving agriculture for other spheres of investment. . . . Agricultural
capitalism is rapidly disintegrating in the South Atlantic
states. . .”.

This is an amusing assertion likely to be matched only in the arguments
of our Narodniks on the “disintegration of capitalism” in
Russia after 1861 in consequence of the landlords abandoning corvée
for the labour-service (i.e., semi-corvée!) system of economy. The
break-up of the slave-worked latifundia is called the “disintegration
of capitalism”. The transformation of the unimproved land of
yesterday’s slave-owners into the small farms of Negroes, half of
whom are share-croppers (it should be borne in mind that the proportion of
share-croppers has been steadily growing from census to census!),
is called the “disintegration of capitalism”. It is hardly
possible to go any further in distorting the fundamental concepts of
economics!

Chapter Twelve of the 1910 Census supplies information on typical
Southern “plantations”—not of the old slave period, but of
our own day. On the 39,073 plantations there are 39,073 “landlord
farms” and 398,905 tenant farms, or an average of 10 tenants per
landlord or “master”. Plantations average 724 acres, of which
only 405 acres is improved, more than 300 acres being unimproved, not a bad
reserve for the gentlemen who were the slave-owners of yesterday to draw on
in extending their plans of exploitation. . . .

Land on the average plantation is distributed as follows:
“landlord” farm—331 acres, of which 87 is improved. “Tenant” farms, i.e., the parcels of the Negro
share-croppers, who continue to work for the master and under his eye,
average 38 acres, of which 31 is improved land.

As the population and the demand for cotton increase, the former
slave-owners of the South begin to parcel out their vast latifundia,
nine-tenths of the land on which is still unimproved, into small tracts
which are either sold to the Negroes or, more frequently, leased to them on
a half-crop basis. (From 1900 to 1910, the number of farmers in the South
who were full owners of all their farmland increased from 1,237,000 to
1,329,000, i.e., 7.5%, while the number of share-croppers went up from
772,000 to 1,021,000, i.e., 32.2%.) And yet an economist has appeared who
says this is “disintegration of capitalism”. . . .

I designate as latifundia farms with an area of 1,000 acres and
over. In 1910, the proportion of such farms in the U.S.A. was 0.8% (50,135
farms), and they added up to 167.1 million acres, or 19.0% of the total
amount of land. This is an average of 3,332 acres per latifundium. Only
18.7% of their acreage was improved while for all farms the figure was
54.4%. The capitalist North has the smallest number of latifundia:
0.5% of the total number of farms accounting for 6.9% of the land, 41.1% of
which is improved. The West has the greatest number of latifundia: 3.9% of
the total number of farms accounting for 48.3% of the land; 32.3% of the
land in the latifundia is improved. But it is in the former slave-owning
South that the latifundia have the highest proportion of
unimproved land: 0.7% of the farms are latifundia; they account for 23.9%
of the land; only 8.5% of the land in the latifundia is improved!
Incidentally, these detailed statistics clearly show that there is really
no foundation for the common practice of classifying the latifundia as capitalist enterprises, without a detailed analysis of the
specific data for each country and each area.

During the 10 years from 1900 to 1910, the total acreage of the
latifundia, but only of the latifundia, showed a decrease . The
reduction was quite substantial: from 197.8 million to 167.1 million acres,
i.e., 30.7 million acres. In the South, there was a reduction of 31.8
million acres (in the North, an increase of 2.3 million, and in the West, a
reduction of 1.2 million). Consequently, it is in the South, and in the
slave-owning South alone, that the latifundia, with their negligible
proportion (8.5%) of improved land, are being broken up on a really vast
scale.

The inescapable conclusion is that the only exact definition of the
economic process under way is—a transition from the slave-holding
latifundia, nine-tenths of which remained unimproved, to small commercial agriculture. It is a transition to commercial farms and
not to farms worked by family labour, as Mr. Himmer and the Narodniks,
together with all the bourgeois economists who sing cheap hymns to
“labour”, love to say. The term “family labour” has no politico-economic meaning and is indirectly misleading. It is devoid of
meaning because the small farmer “labours” under any social
system of economy, be it slavery, serfdom or capitalism. The term
“family labour” is just an empty phrase, pure oratory which
serves to cover up the confusion of entirely different social
forms of economic organization—a confusion from which the bourgeoisie
alone stands to gain. The term “family labour” is misleading
and deceives the public, for it creates the impression that hired labour is not employed.

Mr. Himmer, like all bourgeois economists, evades just these statistics
on hired labour, although they are the most important data on the question
of capitalism in agriculture and although they are to be found in the 1900
Census report, as well as in the 1910 Abstract—Farm Crops , by States , which Mr. Himmer himself quotes (note on p. 49 of his
article).

The nature of the staple crop of the South shows that the growth of
small-scale agriculture in the South is nothing but the growth of
commercial farming. That crop is cotton. Cereals yield 29.3% of the total
crop value in the South; hay and forage, 5.1%; and cotton, 42.7%. From 1870
to 1910, the production of wool in the U.S.A. went up from 162 million
lbs. to 321 million lbs., i.e., it doubled; wheat, increased from 236
million to 635 million bushels, i.e., less than threefold; corn, from 1,094
million to 2,886 million bushels, also less than threefold; and cotton,
from 4,000,000 bales (of 500 lbs. each) to 12,000,000, i.e., threefold. The
growth of the crop that is primarily commercial was faster than that of
other, less commercialized, crops. In addition, there was in the main
division of the South, the South Atlantic, a rather substantial development
of tobacco production (12.1% of the crop value in the State of Virginia);
vegetables (20.1% of the total crop value in the State of Delaware, 23.2%
in the State of Florida); fruits (21.3% of the total crop value in the
State of Florida); etc. The nature of all these crops implies an
intensification of farming, a larger scale of operations on smaller
acreages, and greater employment of hired labour.

I shall now proceed to a detailed analysis of the returns on hired
labour; let us note only that the employment of hired labour is also
growing in the South, although in this respect it lags behind the other
sections— less hired labour is employed because of the wider practice of semi-slave share-cropping.

## Notes

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

### 5. The Capitalist Nature of Agriculture

Capitalism in agriculture is usually gauged by the data on the size of
farms or the number and importance of big farms (in terms of acreage). I
have examined some of these data and shall return to the problem later on,
but it must be said that all these are, after all, indirect indications,
for acreage is not always an indication, and not by any means a direct
indication, that a farm is really big as an economic enterprise ,
or that it is capitalist in character.

In this respect the data on hired labour are far more indicative and
offer better proof. Agricultural censuses taken in recent years, such as
the Austrian of 1902 and the German of 1907, which I shall examine
elsewhere, show that the employment of hired labour in present-day
agriculture—and especially in small-scale farming—is much greater than
is generally believed. Nothing so obviously and categorically refutes the
petty-bourgeois myth about small “family” farms as do these
figures.

American statisticians have collected very extensive material on this,
for each farmer’s individual census form asks whether he spends
anything on hired labour, and, if he does, exactly how much. In contrast to
European statistics—such as those of the two countries just named—no
record is made in American statistics of the number of hired labourers
employed at the time by each farmer, although that could be easily
discovered, and the scientific value of such in formation, in addition to
the returns on the total expenditure on hired labour, would indeed be very
great. But the worst thing is the very poor tabulation of these returns in
the 1910 Census, which is in general presented much more poorly than the
1900 Census. The 1910 Census groups all farms by acreage (as does the 1900
Census) but, by contrast, it does not give any figures on the employment of
hired labour by these groups. This makes it impossible for us to compare
the employment of hired labour by farms with small and with large
acreages. The Census merely gives the average figures for the states and
the sections, i.e., data lumping together capitalist and non-capitalist
farms.

I shall make a special point of going into the more elaborate data for
1900 later on; meanwhile, here are the figures for 1910; in fact they
relate to 1899 and 1909.

Sections | Percentage of farm hiring labour (1909) | Increase of expenditureon hired labour1899-1909 (%) | Expenditure on hire labour per acre of improved land ($)
1909 | 1899
The North | 55.1 | + 70.8 | 1.26 | 0.82
The South | 36.6 | + 87.1 | 1.07 | 0.69
The West | 52.5 | +119.0 | 3.25 | 2.07

The U. S. A. | 45.9 | + 82.3 | 1.36 | 0.86

The first thing that is made obvious by these figures is that
agriculture is most capitalistic in the North (55.1% of farms
employ hired labour); then, follows the West (52.5%) and, lastly,
the South (36.6%). That is just as it should be when any densely
populated and industrial area is being compared with an area still
under going colonization and with an area of share-cropping. It
goes without saying that figures on the proportion of farms
employing hired labour are more suitable for a precise comparison
of the sections than data on the expenditure on hired labour per
acre of improved land. For the latter type of data to be
comparable, the level of wages in the sections would have to be
the same. No information on farm wages in the U.S.A. is available
but in the light of the basic distinctions between the sections it
is inconceivable that their wage levels are the same.

Thus, in the North and in the West—the two sections which together have two-thirds of the improved land and two-thirds
of the livestock— more than one-half the farmers cannot manage without hired labour. The proportion is smaller in
the South only because there the semi-feudal (alias semi-slave)
system of exploitation in the form of share-cropping is still
strong. There is no doubt that in America, as in all the other
capitalist countries, a part of the handicapped farmers have to
sell their labour-power. Unfortunately, American statistics do not
contain any information about this, in contrast, for example, to
the 1907 German statistics, in which these data have been
collected and worked out in detail. According to the German
statistics, hiring themselves out as labourers is the main occupation of 1,940,867 persons, i.e., over 30%, of
the 5,736,082 owners of farms (a total which includes the very
small “owners”). To be sure, the mass of these farm-hands and day-labourers with a bit of land of their own
belong to the poorest groups of farmers.

Let us assume that in the U.S.A., where the smallest farms (of
less than three acres) are as a general rule not registered at
all, only 10% of the farmers sell their labour-power. Even then we
find that more than one-third of the farmers are directly exploited by the landlords and capitalists (24%
share-croppers who are exploited by former slave-owners in feudal
or semi-feudal fashion, plus 10% who are exploited by the
capitalists, or altogether 34%). This means that of the total
number of farmers a minority , hardly more than one-fifth or one-quarter , neither hire labourers nor hire
themselves out or sell themselves into bondage.

Such is the actual state of affairs in the country of “model and advanced” capitalism, in the country with
free distribution of millions of dessiatines of land. Here again
the famous non-capitalist, small-scale “family” farming proves to be a myth.

How many hired labourers are engaged in American agriculture?
Is their number increasing or decreasing in proportion to the
total number of farmers and the total rural population?

It is regrettable that American statistics do not provide a
direct answer to these highly important questions. Let us find an
approximate answer.

Firstly, we can obtain an approximate answer from the returns on occupations (Volume IV of the Census
reports). These stalistics are not an American “success”. They are compiled in such a routine,
mechanical, incongruous manner that they contain no information on
the status of the persons employed, i.e., no distinction is made
between farmers, family workers, and hired labourers. Instead of
making a precise economic classification, the compilers were
content to use “popular” terminology, absurdly bracketing members of farmers’ families and hired labourers
under the head of farm workers. As we know it is not only
in American statistics that there is complete chaos on this
question.

The 1910 Census makes an attempt to bring some order into this
chaos, to correct the obvious mistakes and to separate at least a
part of the hired labourers (those working out) from members of
the family working on the home farm. In a series of calculations
the statisticians correct the total number of persons engaged in
farming, reducing it by 468,100 (Vol. IV, p. 27). The number of females working out is set at 220,048 for 1900, and
337,522 for 1910 (an increase of 53%). The number of males working
out in 1910 was 2,299,444. Assuming that in 1900 the proportion of
hired labourers to the total number of farm workers was the same
as in 1910, the number of males working out in 1900 must have been
1,798,165. We then obtain this picture:

Total engaged in agricultureNumber of farmersNumber of hired labourers | 10,381,7565,674,8752,018,213 | 12,099,8255,981,5222,566,966 | +16+ 5+27

That is, the percentage increase in the number of hired
labourers was over five times greater than in that of farmers (27%
and 5%). The proportion of farmers in the rural population decreased ; the proportion of hired labourers increased . The proportion of independent farm operators
to the total farming population dropped; the number of dependent,
exploited persons, increased.

In 1907, hired farm labourers in Germany numbered 4.5 million
out of a total of 15 million persons working on the home farm and
working out. Consequently, 30% were hired labourers. In America,
according to the estimate given above, the figure was 2.5 million
out of 12 million, i.e., 21%. It is possible that the availability
of vacant land distributed free, and the high percentage of share
cropping tenants tended to lower the percentage of hired labourers
in America.

Secondly, an approximate answer may be provided by the figures
on expenditure on hired labour in 1899 and 1909. During the same
period, the number of industrial wage-workers increased from 4.7
million to 6.6 million, i.e., 40%, and their wages from $2,008
million to $3,427 million, i.e., 70%. (It should be borne in mind
that the rise in the cost of living cancelled out this nominal
increase in wages.)

On the strength of this we may assume that the 82% increase in
expenditure on hired farm labour corresponds to an increase of
approximately 48% in the number of hired labourers. Making a
similar assumption for the three main sections we obtain the
following picture:

Sections | Percentage increase from 1900 to 1910
Total rural population | Number of farms | Number of hired labourers |
The North | + 3.9 | + 0.6 | +40 |
The South | +14.8 | +18.2 | +50 |
The West | +49.7 | +53.7 | +66 |
|
The U. S. A. | +11.2 | +10.9 | +48 |

These figures also show that for the country as a whole the
increase in the number of farmers is not keeping pace with the
growth of the rural population, while the increase in the number
of hired labourers is outstripping the growth of the rural
population. In other words: the proportion of independent farm
operators is decreasing, and the proportion of dependent farm
workers is increasing.

It should be noted that the great difference between the
increase in the number of hired labourers obtained in the first
estimate (+27%) and in the second (+48%) is quite possible because
in the former only the professional farm labourers were
enumerated, and in the latter, every instance of employment of hired labour was taken into account. In farming,
seasonal hired labour is highly important, and it should be the
rule, therefore, that it is never enough to determine the number
of hired labourers, permanent and seasonal, but that an effort must also be made to
determine, as far as possible, the total expenditure on hired
labour.

At any rate, both estimates definitely show a growth of capitalism in agriculture in the U.S.A., and an increase in the employment of hired labour, which is
proceeding at a faster pace than the growth of the rural
population and of the number of farmers.

## Notes

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

### 6. Areas of the Most Intensive Agriculture

Having examined the general data on hired labour as the most
direct indicator of capitalism in agriculture, we can now go on to
a more detailed analysis of the specific forms assumed by
capitalism in this particular branch of the economy.

We have taken a look at one area with a shrinking average
acreage of farms, namely, the South, where the process signifies a
transition from latifundia worked by slaves to small-scale
commercial farms. There is another area where the average acreage
of farms is diminishing—a part of the North: New England and
the Middle Atlantic states. Here are the figures for these
divisions:

Average acreage per farm (improved land)
New England | Middle Atlantic States
1850186018701880189019001910 | 66.566.466.463.456.542.438.4 | 70.870.369.268.067.463.462.6

The average farm in New England is smaller than in any other
division of the U.S.A. In two Southern divisions the average is 42
to 43 acres, and in the third, the West South Central, where
homesteading is still going on, it is 61.8 acres, i.e., almost as
much as in the Middle Atlantic states. It is the reduction in the
average size of farms in New England and the Middle Atlantic
states, “the areas with an older culture and a higher level
of economic development” (Mr. Himmer, p. 60), where homesteading is no longer taking place, that has led Mr. Himmer,
as it has very many other bourgeois economists, to draw the
conclusion that “capitalist agriculture is disintegrating”, that “production is breaking up into
smaller units”, that there are “no areas where colonization is no longer continuing, or where large-scale
capitalist agriculture is not decaying and is not being replaced
by family-labour farms”.

Mr. Himmer arrived at these conclusions, which are the very
opposite of the truth, because he forgot a mere “trifle”: the intensification of agriculture! It is
incredible, but it is a fact. This matter requires a particularly
thorough analysis because quite a few bourgeois economists, almost
all in fact, contrive to forget this “trifle” when dealing with small and large-scale production in agriculture,
although “in theory” they are all “aware” of and accept the intensification of farming. This is indeed one
of the basic sources of all the misadventures of bourgeois
(including Narodnik and opportunist) economics on the question of
small “family” farms. The “trifle” they forget is this: owing to the technical peculiarities of
agriculture, the process of its intensification frequently leads
to a reduction in the improved acreage on the farm, and
at the same time expands it as an economic unit , increasing its output , and making it more and more of a capitalist enterprise.

Let us first see whether or not there is any fundamental
difference in farming techniques, in the general character of
farming and degree of its intensification between New England and
the Middle Atlantic states, on the one hand, and between the rest
of the North and the country’s other divisions, on the other.

The differences in the crops grown are shown in the following table:

valign="middle" colspan=3>
Percentage of total crop value(1910)
Divisions | Cereals | Hay andforage | Vegetables, fruitsand similar specialcrops
New England Middle Atlantic | 7.629.6 | 41.931.4 | 33.531.8
- - - - - - - -
East North Central West North Central | 65.475.4 | 16.514.6 | 11.05.9

The difference in farming conditions is fundamental. In the
first two divisions agriculture is highly intensive; in the other
two it is extensive. In the latter, cereals account for the bulk
of the total crop value; in the former, they contribute not only a
minor part, but sometimes a negligible part (7.6%), while the
special “commercial” crops (vegetables, fruits, etc.) yield
a greater part of the crop value than cereals. Extensive
agriculture has given way to intensive agriculture. Grass
cultivation has become widespread. Of the 3.8 million acres under
hay and forage in New England, 3.3 million acres were under cultivated grasses. The figures for the Middle Atlantic
states are 8.5 and 7.9 million respectively: By contrast, of the
27.4 million acres under hay and forage in the West North Central
states (an area of colonization and extensive agriculture), 14.5
million, i.e., the greater part, were unimproved grass lands, etc.

Yields are considerably higher in the “intensive” states:

Divisions | Per-acre yield in bushels
Corn | Wheat
1909 | 1899 | 1909 | 1899
New England Middle Atlantic | 45.232.2 | 39.434.0 | 23.518.6 | 18.014.9
- - - - - - - - - -
East North Central West North Central | 38.627.7 | 38.331.4 | 17.214.8 | 12.912.2

The same is true of commercial livestock and dairy farming,
which are especially highly developed in these divisions:

Divisions | Average numberof dairy cowsper farm | Average production ofmilk per cow (gallons)
(1900) | 1909 | 1899
New England Middle Atlantic | 5.86.1 | 476490 | 548514
- - - - - -
East North Central West North Central | 4.04.9 | 410325 | 487371
- - - - - -
The South (3 divisions) | 1.9-3.1 | 232-286 | 290-395
- - - - - - - -
The West (2 divisions) | 4.7-5.1 | 339-475 | 334-470
- - - - -
The U.S.A. | 3.8 | 362 | 424

This table shows that in the “intensive” states dairy farming is on a considerably larger scale than in
all the others. The areas with the smallest farms (in terms of improved acreage) have the largest dairies. This
fact is of tremendous importance, for, as everyone knows, dairy
farming develops most rapidly in suburban localities and in very
highly industrialized countries (or areas). Statistics from
Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, which are dealt with elsewhere,
improved [1] also show a growing concentration of dairy cattle.

As we have seen, hay and forage in the “intensive” states constitute a considerably greater proportion of the total
crop value than cereals. Accordingly, livestock farming there
develops largely on the basis of purchased feed . Here are
the relevant figures for 1909:

Division | Receipts fromsale of feed | Outlays on feed | Excess of receiptsor outlays
($000,000) |
New England Middle Atlantic | + 4.3+21.6 | -34.6-54.7 | -30.3-33.1
- - - - - -
East North Central West North Central | +195.6+174.4 | -40.6-76.2 | +155.0+ 98.2

The extensive states of the North sell feed. The intensive
states buy it. It is clear that if feed is purchased large-scale operations of a highly capitalistic nature
can be conducted on a small tract of land.

Let us make a comparison between the two intensive divisions
of the North, New England and the Middle Atlantic states, and the
most extensive division of the North, the West North Central:

Division | Improvedland(000,000acres) | Value oflivestock($000,000) | Receipts fromsale of feed($000,000) | Outlays onfeed($000,000)
New England +Middle Atlantic | 36.5 | 447 | 26 | 89
West North Central | 164.3 | 1,552 | 174 | 76

We find that there is more livestock per acre of improved land
in the intensive states (447:36 = $12 per acre) than in the
extensive states (1,552:164 = $9). More capital in the form of
livestock is invested in a unit of land area. And the total
per-acre turnover of the feed trade (purchases +sales) is also
very much greater in the intensive states (26+89 = $115 million
for 36 million acres) than in the extensive states (174+76 = $250
million for 164 million acres). In the intensive states farming is
obviously much more commercialized than in the extensive
states.

Expenditure on fertilizers and the value of implements and
machinery are the most exact statistical expression of the degree
of intensification of agriculture. Here are the figures:

Divisions | Percentageof farms withoutlays onfertilizers | Averageoutlaysper farm | Average outlaysper acre ofimproved land($) | Averageimprovedacreageper farm
1909 | 1899 | (1909)
The North | New England Middle Atlantic | 60.957.1 | 8268 | 1.300.62 | 0.530.37 | 38.462.6
- - - - - - - - - -
East North Central West North Central | 19.62.1 | 3741 | 0.090.01 | 0.070.01 | 79.2148.0
The South | South Atlantic East South Central West South Central | 69.233.86.4 | 773753 | 1.230.290.06 | 0.490.130.03 | 43.642.261.8
The West | Mountain Pacific | 1.36.4 | 67189 | 0.010.10 | 0.010.05 | 86.8116.1
- - - - - - - - - -

This fully brings out the difference between the extensive
divisions of the North, with an insignificant proportion of farms
using purchased fertilizers (2-19%), and with negligible
expenditure on fertilizers per acre of improved land (
$0.01-$0.09)—and the intensive states, where the majority of farms (57-60%) use purchased fertilizers and
where expenditure on fertilizers is substantial. In New England,
for example, the per-acre expenditure is $1.30—the maximum figure for all divisions (once again a case of farms with the smallest acreage and the largest expenditure on
fertilizers!), which exceeds the figure for one of the divisions
of the South (South Atlantic). It should be noted that in the
South especially large quantities of artificial fertilizers are
required by cotton, on which, as we have seen, the labour of Negro
share-croppers is most widely employed.

In the Pacific states, we find a very small percentage of
farms using fertilizers (6.4%) but the maximum average per farm
expenditure ($189)—calculated, of course, only for the farms
which used fertilizers. Here we have another example of the growth
of large-scale and capitalist agriculture with a simultaneous reduction of the farm acreage. In two of the
three Pacific states—Washington and Oregon—the use of fertilizers is quite insignificant, a mere $0.01 per acre. It is
only in the third state, California, that the figure is relatively
high: $0.08 in 1899, and $0.19 in 1909. In this state, the fruit
crop plays a special role, and is expanding at an extremely rapid
rate along purely capitalist lines; in 1909, it accounted for
33.1% of the total crop value, as against 18.3% for cereals, and
27.6% for hay and forage. The typical fruit-growing farm has a smaller-than-average acreage but the use of fertilizers
and hired labour is much greater than average. We shall
later have occasion to dwell on relationships of this type, which
are typical of capitalist countries with an intensive agriculture
and which are most stubbornly ignored by statisticians and
economists.

But let us return to the “intensive” states of the
North. Not only is expenditure on fertilizers—$1.30 per
acre—in New England the highest and the average farm acreage
the smallest (38.4 acres); expenditure on fertilizers is
increasing at an especially rapid rate. In the 10 years between
1899 and 1909, this expenditure increased from $0.53 per acre to
$1.30, i.e., two and one-half times. Consequently, here
intensification of agriculture, technical progress and improvement
of farming techniques are extremely rapid. To get a more graphic
picture of what this means let us compare New England, the most
intensive division of the North, with West North Central, the most
extensive division. In the latter division, scarcely any
artificial fertilizers are used at all (2.1% of the farms and
$0.01 per acre); its farm acreage is larger than that of any other
division of America (148 acres), and is growing at a faster
rate. This particular division is usually taken as the model of
capitalism in American agriculture—and this Mr. Himmer also
does. As I shall show in detail later on, this is incorrect. It is
due to the crudest, most primitive form of extensive agriculture
being confused with technically progressive intensive agriculture. In the West North Central division, the average farm
is four times as big as in New England (148 acres as against
38.4), while average expenditure on fertilizers per user is only
half as great: $41 as against $82.

Hence, in actual practice there are instances of a substantial reduction in farm acreage being accompanied by a
substantial increase in expenditure on artificial fertilizers, so that “small” production—if we
continue, as a matter of routine, to regard it as being small in
terms of acreage—turns out to be “large” in terms of the capital invested in the land. This is not an
exception, but the rule for any country where extensive
agriculture is giving way to intensive agriculture. And this
applies to all capitalist countries, so that when this typical, essential and fundamental characteristic of agriculture
is ignored, the result is the common error of the votaries of
small-scale agriculture who base their judgement only on farm
acreage.

## Notes

[1] See The Agrarian Question and the
“Critics of Marx”, Vol. 13.
— Lenin

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

### 7. Machinery and Hired Labour in Agriculture

Let us consider another form of capital investment in land which
is technically different from the form examined above—implements and machinery. All European agricultural
statistics provide irrefutable evidence that the larger the farm
acreage, the greater is the proportion of farms using all types
of machines and the greater the number of machines used. The
superiority of big farms in this highly important respect has
been established beyond doubt. In this field, too, American
statisticians have a rather unconventional approach: neither
implements nor farm machinery are recorded separately, only
their total value being given. Such data may, of course, be less
exact in each individual case, but taken as a whole they allow
definite comparisons between divisions and between groups of
farms—comparisons which are impossible with other kinds of
data.

Below are the figures for farm implements and machinery by
divisions:

|  | Value of implements and
machinery (1909)
Divisions | Average per farm($) | Averageper acreof all farmland($)
The North | New England Middle Atlantic | 269358 | 2.583.88

East North Central West North Central | 239332 | 2.281.59

The U.S.A. | 199 | 1.44

Average per acre of all farmland ($)

The former slave-owning South, the area of share-cropping,
occupies a bottom place in the use of machinery. The value of
implements and machinery per acre—for its three divisions—is one-third, one-quarter, one-fifth of the
figures for the intensive states of the North. The latter lead
the rest and, in particular, are far ahead of the West North
Central states, America’s most agricultural area and her
granary, which superficial observers still frequently regard as
a model area of capitalism and of the use of machinery.

It should be noted that the American statistical method of
determining the value of machinery, as well as of land,
livestock, buildings, etc., per acre of all farmland and not per
acre of improved land, understates the superiority of the
“intensive” areas of the North and cannot, in general, be
considered correct. The difference between the divisions in
regard to the proportion of improved acreage is very great: in
the West, it is as low as 26.7% for the Mountain states, and as
high as 75.4% for the East North Central states in the
North. For the purposes of economic statistics, improved land is
undoubtedly of much greater importance than total acreage. In
New England, improved acreage in farms and its proportion of the
total has decreased substantially, especially since 1880,
probably under the impact of competition from the free lands of
the West (i.e., free from ground-rent, from tribute to the
landowning gentry). At the same time, the use of machinery in
this division is very extensive and the value of machinery per
acre of improved land is especially high. In 1910, it amounted to $7 per acre, while in the Middle Atlantic States it
was about $5.50 and not more than $2-3 in the other divisions.

Again, the division with the smallest farms, in terms of acreage, turns out to have the largest capital
investments in land in the form of machinery.

Comparing the Middle Atlantic, one of the “intensive” divisions
of the North, with the most extensive region of the North, the
West North Central, we discover that as far as improved acreage
per farm is concerned, that of the former is less than half
that of the latter —62.6 acres as against
148.0—while the value of machinery used is greater —$358 per farm as against $332. The smaller
farms are thus larger enterprises in terms of-machinery used.

We still have to compare the data on the intensive nature of
agriculture with the data on the employment of hired labour. I
already gave these figures in brief above, in Chapter 5. We must
now examine them in greater detail by divisions .

| Divisions | Percentage
of farmshiring labourin 1909 | Averageoutlayson hiredlabour perhiring farm | Outlays onlabour per acreof improved land($) | Increaseof outlaysfrom 1899to 1909(%)
1909 | 1899
The North | New England Middle Atlantic | 66.065.8 | 277253 | 4.762.66 | 2.551.64 | +86+62

East North Central West North Central | 52.751.0 | 199240 | 1.330.83 | 0.780.56 | +71+48
The South | South Atlantic East South Central West South Central | 42.031.635.6 | 142107178 | 1.370.801.03 | 0.800.490.75 | +71+63+37
The West | Mountain Pacific | 46.858.0 | 547694 | 2.953.47 | 2.421.92 | +22+80
|
The U.S.A. | 45.9 | 223 | 1.36 | 0.86 | +58

This shows, firstly, that capitalism is undoubtedly much more
developed in the agriculture of the Northern intensive states
than in that of the extensive states; secondly, that in the
former, capitalism is developing faster than in the latter;
thirdly, that the division with the smallest farms, New England,
has both the highest level of development of capitalism in
agriculture and the highest rate of its development. There the
increase of expenditure on hired labour per acre of improved
land is 86%; the Pacific states come second in this respect. California, where, as I have said, “small-scale”
capitalist fruit-raising is rapidly developing, is also the
leader in this respect among the Pacific states.

The West North Central division, with the largest farm acreages
(an average of 148 acres in 1910, counting improved land only)
and with the most rapid and steady growth of farm acreages since
1850, is commonly regarded as the “model” capitalist region of
American agriculture. We have now seen that this contention is
profoundly erroneous. The extent to which hired labour is used
is certainly the best and most direct indicator of the development of capitalism. And it tells us that America’s
“granary”, the region of the much vaunted “wheat factories”,
which attract so much attention, is less capitalist than the industrial and intensively farmed region, where the
indication of agricultural progress is not an increase in
improved acreage but an increase in capital investments
in the land, together with a simultaneous reduction of the acreage.

It is quite possible to imagine that with the use of machinery
the improvement of the “black soil” or unploughed virgin lands
in general can proceed very rapidly despite a small increase in
the employment of hired labour. In the West North Central states
expenditure on hired labour per acre of improved land was $0.56
in 1899, and $0.83 in 1909, an increase of only 48%. In New
England, where the improved area is decreasing and not increasing and where the average size of farms is decreasing and
not in creasing, expenditure on hired labour was not only very
much higher both in 1899 ($2.55 per acre) and in 1909 ($4.76 per
acre), but had grown during the period at a much faster rate
(+86%).

The average farm in New England is one-fourth the size of farms in the West North Central states (38.4 as against 148
acres), yet its average expenditure on hired labour is greater : $277 as against $240. Consequently, the
reduction in the size of farms means in such cases that a
greater amount of capital is invested in agriculture, and that
the capitalist nature of agriculture is intensified; it
signifies a growth of capitalism and capitalist production.

While the West North Central states, which comprise 34.3% of the
total improved acreage in the U.S.A., are the most typical
division of “extensive” capitalist agriculture, the Mountain states offer an example of similar extensive
farming in conditions of the most rapid colonization. Here less
hired labour is employed, in terms of the proportion of farms
employing labour, but the average expenditure on hired labour is
very much higher than in the West North Central division. But in
the former the employment of hired labour increased at a slower
rate than in any other division of America (only +22%). This
type of evolution was apparently due to the following conditions. In this division, colonization and the distribution
of homesteads are extremely widespread. The area under crops
increased more than in any other division: by 89% from 1900 to
1910. The settlers, the owners of the homesteads, naturally
employ little hired labour, at any rate when starting their
farms. On the other hand, hired labour must be employed on a
very large scale, firstly, by some latifundia, which are
especially numerous in this division as in the West in general;
and secondly, by farms raising special and highly capitalist
crops. In some states of this division, for instance, a very
high proportion of the total crop value comes from fruits
(Arizona—6%, Colorado—10%), and vegetables (Colorado—11.9%, Nevada—11.2%), and so forth.

In summing up, I must say the following: Mr. Himmer’s assertion
that “there are no areas where colonization is no longer
continuing, or where large-scale capitalist agriculture is not
decaying and is not being replaced by family-labour farms”, is a
mockery of the truth, and entirely contrary to the actual
facts. The New England division, where there is no colonization
at all, where farms are smallest, where farming is most intensive, shows the highest level of capitalism
in agriculture and the highest rate of capitalist development. This conclusion is most essential and basic for an
understanding of the process of capitalist development in
agriculture in general, because the intensification of agriculture and the reduction in the average farm acreage that
goes with it is not some accidental, local, casual phenomenon,
but one that is common to all civilized countries. Bourgeois economists of every stripe make a host of
mistakes when considering data on the evolution of agriculture
(as in Great Britain, Denmark, and Germany) because they are not
familiar enough with this general phenomenon, they have not
given it enough thought and have not understood or analysed it.

## Notes

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

### 8. Displacement of Small by Big Enterprises. Quantity of Improved Land

We have examined the major forms of the development of capitalism in agriculture, and have seen how extremely varied
they are. The most important are: the break-up of the slave-holding latifundia in the South; the growth of large-scale
extensive farming operations in the extensive area of the North;
the most rapid development of capitalism in the intensive area
of the North, where farms are, on the average, the smallest. The
facts incontrovertibly prove that in some cases the development
of capitalism is indicated by an increase in farm acreage and in
others by an increase in the number of farms. In view of such a
state of affairs we learn nothing from the returns on average
farm acreages summarized for the country as a whole.

What then is the net result of the various local and agricultural peculiarities? An indication is given by the data
on hired labour. The growing employment of hired labour is a
general process transcending all these peculiarities. But in the vast majority of civilized countries
agricultural statistics, paying tribute, intentionally or
otherwise, to prevailing bourgeois notions and prejudices,
either fail to furnish any systematic information on hired
labour at all, or give it only for the most recent period (e.g.,
German Agricultural Census of 1907), so that it is impossible to
make a comparison with the past. I shall show in detail
elsewhere that in the elaboration and tabulation of the returns
of hired labour American statistics changed markedly for the
worse between 1900 and 1910.

The most common and most popular method of presenting statistical summaries in America and most other countries is to
compare big and small farms by acreage. I shall now proceed to a
consideration of these data.

In grouping farms by acreage, American statisticians take total
acreage and not just the improved area, which would, of course,
be the more correct method, and is the one employed by German
statisticians. No reason is given why seven groups (under 20
acres, 20 to 49, 50 to 99, 100 to 174, 175 to 499, 500 to 999,
1,000 and over) are used to tabulate the returns of the 1910
Census in the United States. Statistical routine must apparently
have been of paramount consideration. I shall call the
100-to-174-acre group—medium, because it consists mostly of
homesteads (the official size of a homestead is 160 acres), and
also because land holdings of this size usually give the farmer
the greatest degree of “independence” and require the least
employment of hired labour. The groups above that I shall call
large or capitalistic because, as a general rule, they do not
manage without hired labour. Farms with 1,000 acres and over I
shall regard as latifundia—of which three-fifths is unimproved land in the North, nine-tenths, in the South, and
two-thirds, in the West. Small farms are those with less than
100 acres; how much economic independence they have is evident
from the fact that in three groups, from the bottom up, 51%, 43%
and 23% of the farms respectively, are recorded as having no
horses. It goes without saying that this characteristic should
not be taken in an absolute sense and should not he applied to
all divisions or to localities with specific conditions without
a special analysis.

I am unable to give here the returns for all the seven groups in
the main sections of the United States, for this would overload
the text with an excessive number of figures. I shall, therefore, merely outline the basic distinctions between the
North, the South and the West, and give the full returns only
for the United States as a whole. We should not lose sight of
the fact that three-fifths (60.6%) of all the improved land, is
in the North; less than one third (31.5%), in the South; and
under one-twelfth (7.9%), in the West.

The most striking distinction between the three main sections is
that the capitalist North has the smallest number of latifundia, although their number, their total acreage, and
their improved acreage are on the increase. In 1910, 0.5% of the
farms in the North were of 1,000 acres and over; these big farms
had 6.9% of all the land and 4.1% of the improved land. The
South had 0.7% of such farms, with 23.9% of the total acreage
and 4.8% of the improved acreage. In the West there were 3.9% of
such farms, owning 48.3% of the total acreage, and 32.3% of the
improved acreage. This is a familiar picture: the slave-holding
latifundia of the South, and the even vaster latifundia of the
West, the latter being partly the foundation of the most
extensive stock-raising, and partly reserve tracts of land
occupied by “settlers” and resold or (less often) leased to real
farmers improving the “Far West”.

America demonstrates clearly that it would be imprudent to
confuse the latifundia with large-scale capitalist agriculture,
and that the latifundia are frequently survivals of pre-capitalist relationships—slave-owning, feudal or
patriarchal. A break-up, a parcelling out of the latifundia, is
taking place both in the South and in the West. In the North,
the total farm acreage increased by 30.7 million acres, of which
only 2.3 million is accounted for by latifundia, while 22
million belongs to big, capitalist farms (175 to 999 acres). In
the South, the total acreage was reduced by 7.5 million. The
latifundia decreased by 31.8 million acres. On the small farms there was an increase of 13 million, and on the
medium farms, 5 million acres. In the West, the total acreage
increased by 17 million; among the latifundia there was a
decrease of 1.2 million; on the small farms, an increase of 2
million; medium, 5 million; large, 11 million acres.

The improved acreage increased in the latifundia of all
three sections: substantially in the North (+3.7 million acres =
+47.0%), very slightly in the South (+0.3 million = +5.5%), and
more in the West (+2.8 million = +29.6%). But in the North, the
maximum increase in the improved acreage-occurred on the large farms (175 to 999 acres); in the South, on the small and medium ; in the West, on the large and medium . Hence, it is the large farms
that are increasing their share of the improved land in
the North, and the small and in part the medium farms, in the
South and the West. This picture fully corresponds to what we
already know about the different conditions in these sections. In the South, there is a growth ot small-scale
commercial farming at the expense of the disintegrating
slave-holding latifundia; the process is similar in the West,
except that the break-up of even larger latifundia, which had
their origin not in slave-holding but in extensive stock ranches and pre-empted tracts, is not as
pronounced. Moreover, American statisticians say the following
about the Pacific division:

“ The great development of small fruit and other farms on the
Pacific coast, due, in part at least, to irrigation projects
organized in recent years, is reflected in the increase in small
farms of less than 50 acres in the Pacific division” (Vol. V,
p. 264).

The North has neither slave-holding nor “primitive” latifundia,
there is no disintegration of them, no growth of the small farms
at the expense of the large.

The process for the United States as a whole appears as follows:

Size group (acres) | Number of farms(000) | Ditto (%) | Increase ordecrease
1900 | 1910 | 1900 | 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | 6741,2581,3661,42286810347 | 8391,4151,4381,51697812550 | 11.721.923.824.815.11.80.8 | 13.222.222.623.815.42.00.8 | +1.5+0.3-1.2-1.0+0.3+0.2

Totals | 5,739 | 6,361 | 100.0 | 100.0 |

Thus, the number of latifundia in proportion to the total number
of farms remains unchanged. The most characteristic change in
the relationship between the other groups in the reduction
in the number of medium-size farms and the strengthening of
the farms at both ends. The medium-size group (100 to 174 acres)
and its smaller neighbor have lost ground. The smallest and the
small farms show the greatest gains, and are followed by the
large-scale capitalist farms (175 to 999 acres).

Let us take a look at the total acreage.

Size group(acres) | All farmland(000) | Ditto(%) | Increase ordecrease
1900 | 1910 | 1900 | 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over. | 7,18141,53698,592192,680232,95567,864197,784 | 8,79445,378103,121204,481265,28983,653167,082 | 0.95.011.823.027.88.123.6 | 1.05.211.723.430.29.519.0 | +0.1+0.2-0.1+0.4+2.4+1.4-4.6

Totals | 838,592 | 878,798 | 100.0 | 100.0 |

We find above all a very substantial reduction in the share of
total acreage held by the latifundia. It should be borne in mind
that an absolute reduction is taking place only in the South and
the West, where the proportion of un improved land in the latifundia in 1910 was 91.5% and 77.1% respectively. There
was also an insignificant decrease in the share of the top small
group in the total acreage (—0.1% in the 50-to-99-acre size
group). The greatest increase was shown by the large-scale
capitalist groups, the 175-to-499-acre and the 500-to-999-acre
groups. There was a relatively small increase in the share of
the very small groups in the acreage. The medium group (100 to
174 acres) was practically stagnant (+0.4%).

Let us now take a look at the improved acreage.

Size group(acres) | Improved land in farms(000) | Ditto (%) | Increase ordecrease
1900 | 1910 | 1900 | 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | 6,44033,00167,345118,391135,53029,47424,317 | 7,99236,59671,155128,854161,77540,81731,263 | 1.68.016.228.632.77.15.9 | 1.77.614.926.933.88.56.5 | +0.1-0.4-1.3-1.7+1.1+1.4+0.6

Totals | 414,498 | 478,452 | 100.0 | 100.0 |

The size of the farming enterprise is indicated with some degree of approximation and allowing for certain exceptions
to which I have referred and shall refer again below—only
by the improved and not the total acreage. Once again we find
that while the share of the total acreage held by the latifundia
substantially decreased, their share of the improved acreage increased . In general, all the capitalistic groups
gained ground, and most of all the 500-to-999-acre group. The
largest reduction was in the medium-size group (—1.7%),
followed by all the small groups, with the exception of the
smallest, the group under 20 acres, which showed a negligible
increase (+0.1%).

Let us note in advance that the smallest-size group (under 20
acres) includes farms of less than 3 acres, which are not
included in American statistics unless they raise at least $250
worth of products a year. For that reason these tiny farms (of
less than 3 acres) have a greater volume of production and a
more highly developed capitalist character than the next group
up the scale. To illustrate this point here are the returns for
1900—unfortunately the corresponding returns for 1910 are
not available:

| Average per farm:
Size groups(1900)(acres) | Improvedland(acres) | Value ofallproducts($) | Outlayson hiredlabour($) | Value ofimplementsandmachinery($) | Value oflivestock($)
Under 3 ....3 to 10 ....10 to 20 ....20 to 50 .... | 1.75.612.626.2 | 592203236324 | 77181618 | 53424154 | 867101116172

Even the 3-to-10-acre farms, to say nothing of farms with less
than 3 acres, turn out in some respects to be “larger” (outlays
on hired labour, value of implements and machinery) than the
10-to-20-acre farms. [1] Consequently, there is good reason to
attribute the increase in the share of the total improved land
held by farms under 20 acres to an increase in the improved land
of the pronounced capitalist-type farms of the smallest-size
group.

On the whole, the returns for 1900 and l910 on the distribution
of improved land in the U.S.A. between small and large farms
warrant this absolutely definite and indubitable conclusion: the large farms are becoming stronger , the medium
and the small farms , weaker . Hence, insofar as the capitalist or non-capitalist character
of agriculture can be deduced from the data relating to farms
grouped by acreage, the United States in the last decade shows,
as a general rule, a growth of the large-scale, capitalist farms
and the obliteration of small farms.

The statistics on the increase in the number of farms and the improved acreage in each group will confirm this conclusion:

| Increase for 1900-10
(%)
Size groups(acres) | Number offarms | Improvedacreage
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | +24.5+12.5+ 5.3+ 6.6+12.7+22.2+ 6.3 | +24.1+10.9+ 5.7+ 8.8+19.4+38.5+28.6

Overall increase | +10.9 | +15.4

The largest percentage increase in the improved acreage took
place in the two topmost groups. The least increase occurred in
the medium-size group and the next smaller group (50 to 99
acres). In the two smallest groups the percentage increase in
the improved acreage was less than the percentage increase in
the number of farms.

## Notes

[1] For 1900 we have returns by size groups for the number of high
income farms, i.e., farms with a product valued over
$2,500. Here are these figures: among farms of less than 3
acres, the proportion of high-income farms was 5.2%; 3 to 10
acres—0.6%; 10 to 20 acres—0.4%; 20 to 50 acres—0.3%; 50 to 100—0.6%; 100 to 175—1.4%; 175
to 260—5.2%; 260 to 500—12.7%; 500 to
1,000—24.3%; 1,000 and over—39.5%. We find the proportion of high-income farms in all the under-20-acre groups
to be greater than in the 20-to-50-acre group.
— Lenin

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

### 9. Continued. Statistics on the Value of Farms

American statistics, unlike European statistics, determine, for
each farm and each group of farms, the value of the various
elements making up the farming enterprise—the land, buildings, implements, livestock and the enterprise as a
whole. These data are probably not quite as accurate as the data
relating to acreage, but generally speaking they are equally
reliable, and in addition give some idea of the general state of
capitalism in agriculture.

In order to supplement the above analysis I shall now take the
data relating to the total value of farms with all their
agricultural property, and also the data on the value of
implements and machinery. I single out implements and machinery
from among the various elements of the enterprise because they
are a direct indication of the agricultural operations being
conducted, and of how they are being conducted i.e., whether
more or less intensively, and whether they employ technical
improvements to a greater or lesser extent. Here are the figures
for the U.S.A.:

Size groups(acres) | Percentage distribution of value
All property on farms | Increase ordecrease | Implements andmachinery | Increase ordecrease
1900 | 1910 |  | 1900 | 1910 |
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | 3.87.916.728.030.55.97.3 | 3.77.314.627.133.37.16.9 | -0.1-0.6-2.1-0.9+2.8+1.2-0.4 | 3.89.119.329.327.15.16.2 | 3.78.517.728.930.26.34.7 | -0.1-0.6-1.6-0.4+3.1+1.2-1.5

Totals | 100.0 | 100.0 | — | 100.0 | 100.0 | — The absolute figures show that from 1900 to 1910 the value of
all farm property more than doubled; it increased from $20,440
million to $40,991 million, i.e., 100.5%. The rise in the prices
of farm products and rents put millions and thousands of
millions of dollars into the pockets of the landowners at the
expense of the working class. What were the comparative gains of
the small and the big farms? The above figures supply the
answer. They show that the latifundia declined (their total
acreage fell from 23.6% to 19.0%, or 4.6%), and that the small and medium-size farms are being displaced by the
large , capitalist farms (175 to 999 acres). Adding up the
figures for the small and medium farms we find that their share
in the total property decreased from 56.4 to
52.7%. Adding up the figures for the large farms and the
latifundia we find that their share increased from
43.7% to 47.3%. There were absolutely identical changes in the
distribution of the total value of implements and machinery
between the small and large farms.

We also observe the phenomenon noted above in the figures
relating to the latifundia. Their decline is limited to two
sections: the South and the West. It is a decline, on the one
hand, of the slave-holding latifundia, and on the other, of the
primitive-squatter and the primitive-extensive latifundia. We
find a growth of latifundia in the populated industrial
North: this applies to the number of farms of this type, their
total acreage, their improved acreage, their share in the total
value of all farm property (2.5% in 1900; 2.8% in 1910), and
their share in the total value of all implements and machinery.

There is moreover a growth of the role of the latifundia not
only throughout the North in general but also in both the intensive divisions of the North in particular, where there
is absolutely no colonization, namely New England and the Middle
Atlantic states. These divisions must be analyzed in greater
detail because, for one thing, they have misled Mr. Himmer and
many others by the particularly small average size of their
farms and a reduction of that size, and, for another, these most
intensive divisions are most typical of the older, long settled,
civilized countries of Europe .

Between 1900 and 1910, the number of farms, the total acreage
and the improved acreage decreased in both these divisions. In
New England, there was an increase only in the number of the smallest farms, those under 20 acres, by 22.4% (the
improved land on them increased by 15.5%), and in the number of
latifundia—by 16.3%, and their improved acreage by
26.8%. In the Middle Atlantic states there was an increase in
the smallest farms (+7.7% in the number, and +2.5% in the improved acreage) and also in the number of the 175-to-499-acre farms (+1.0%) and the improved land on the 500-to-999-acre
farms (+3.8%). In both divisions, there was an increase in the share of the smallest farms and the share of the
latifundia in the total value of all farm property and also of
implements and machinery. Here are some figures which give a
clearer and fuller picture of each of these divisions:

| Percentage increase from 1900 to 1910
New England | Middle Atlantic
Size groups(acres) | Value of allfarm property | Value of implementsand machinery | Value of all farmproperty | Value ofimplements and machinery
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and overTotals | 60.931.427.530.333.053.7102.7

35.6 | 48.930.331.238.544.653.760.5

39.0 | 45.828.323.824.929.431.574.4

28.1 | 42.937.039.943.854.750.865.2

44.1

This makes it clear that in both divisions it was the latifundia that gained most ground, showed the greatest
economic gains, and made the greatest technical advance. Here
the largest capitalist enterprises are displacing the others, the smaller farms. A minimum increase in the value of
all property and also of implements and machinery is evident in
the medium-size group and in the small group, but not in the
smallest. Hence, it is the medium and small farms that mostly
lag behind.

As for the smallest farms (under 20 acres), their advance in
both divisions is above the average , and second only to
the latifundia. We already know the reason: 31 to 33% of the
crop value in both these intensive divisions comes from the
highly capitalist crops (vegetables, and also fruits, flowers,
etc.) which yield extremely great values on very small acreage’s. In these divisions, cereal crops account for only 8
to 30% of the crop value; and hay and forage, 31 to 42%; there
is a growth of dairy farming which is characterized by smaller -than-average acreages, but a greater -than-average value of produce and capital outlays on
hired labour.

In the most intensive divisions, there is a decrease in the
average improved acreage in farms because the average is
obtained by combining the acreage of the latifundia and that of
the smallest farms, the number of which is increasing more
rapidly than that of the medium-size farms. The smallest farms
are increasing in number faster than the latifundia. But there
is a dual growth of capitalism: it increases-the size of farms
worked by old technical methods; and creates new enterprises
raising special commercial crops on very small and tiny
acreages, with an extremely great volume of production and
employment of hired labour.

The net result is the greatest gains by the latifundia and the
giant farms, the obliteration of the medium and small farms, and
the growth of the smallest highly capitalist enterprises.

We shall presently see how the net result of such contradictory—seemingly contradictory—phenomena of
capitalism in agriculture can be expressed in statistical
terms.

## Notes

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

### 10. Defects of Conventional Methods of Economic Analysis. Marx on the Peculiarities Of Agriculture

The grouping of farms by acreage, total or improved, is the only
kind of grouping which was used in the American Census reports
for 1910, and which is used in the great majority of European
countries. Generally speaking, it is indisputable that apart
from fiscal, bureaucratic and administrative reasons there are
scientific considerations arguing the need and correctness of
this kind of grouping. Still it is obviously inadequate for it
completely fails to take account of the intensification of
agriculture, the increasing expenditure of capital per unit of
area in the form of livestock, machinery, improved seeds, better
methods of crop cultivation, etc. Meanwhile, with the exception
of a very few areas and countries with a primitive or purely
extensive agriculture, it is this very process that is most
typical for capitalist countries everywhere. For this reason the
grouping of farms by acreage in the vast majority of cases gives
an oversimplified and entirely inadequate picture of agricultural development in general, and of capitalist
development in agriculture in particular.

When the verbose economists and statisticians who express the
most popular bourgeois views hold forth on the dissimilarity of
conditions in agriculture and industry, the specific nature of
the former, and so on and so forth, one is always tempted to
say: Gentlemen! You yourselves are most to blame for maintaining
and spreading oversimplified and crude notions of evolution in
agriculture! Remember Marx’s Capital . In it you will find references to the extreme variety of forms of land
ownership, such as feudal, clan, communal (and primitive-squatter), state, etc., which capitalism encounters
when it makes its appearance on the historical scene. Capital
subordinates to itself all these varied forms of land ownership
and remolds them after its own fashion, and if one is to
understand, evaluate and express this process in statistical
terms, one must learn to modify the formulation of the question
and the methods of investigation in accordance with the changing form of the process. Capitalism subordinates to itself
all these forms of land ownership: communal-allotment holdings
in Russia; squatter tracts or holdings regulated by free
distribution in a democratic or a feudal state, as in Siberia or
the American Far West; the slave-holding estates in the American
South, and the semi-feudal landholdings of the “purely Russian”
gubernias. In all these cases, the development and victory of
capitalism is similar, though not identical in form. In order to
study and understand the precise nature of the process one must
go beyond the trite petty-bourgeois phrases about “family
farming” or the routine methods of comparing acreage alone.

You will also find that Marx analyses the origin of the
capitalist type of ground-rent and its relationship to its
forerunners in history, such as rent in kind, labour service
(corvée and its survivals); money-rent (quit-rent, etc.). But who among the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois, Narodnik,
economists or statisticians has given any serious thought to
applying these theoretical guiding principles of Marx’s to an
investigation of the rise of capitalism from the slave-holding economy of the American South, or from the corvée economy in central Russia?

Finally, you will find throughout Marx’s analysis of ground-rent
systematic references to the varied conditions of agriculture
engendered not only by the differences in quality and location
of the land, but also by the differences in the amount of
capital invested in it . Now what does application of capital to land imply? It implies technical changes in
agriculture, its intensification, the transition to higher
systems of field cropping, increased use of artificial fertilizers, the wider use and improvement of implements and
machinery, greater employment of hired labour, etc. A record of
the acreage alone will not express all these complex and varied
processes, which all combine to make up the general process of
the development of capitalism in agriculture.

Russian Zemstvo statisticians, [3] especially those of the “good old”
pre-Revolutionary days, won universal respect because they
avoided the routine approach and took a certain scientific
interest in their business, going beyond its purely fiscal,
bureaucratic and administrative aspects. They were probably the
first statisticians to notice the inadequacy of grouping farms
by acreage alone, and, accordingly, introduced other methods of
classification, such as by sown area, number of draught animals,
employment of hired labour, etc. Unfortunately, the sporadic and
scattered operations of our Zemstvo statistics—in the past
ever what you might call an oasis in the desert of feudal
obscurity, bureaucratic routine, and every kind of stupid
red-tapism—have not yielded any long-term results either
for Russian or European economics.

It should be noted that the grouping of the returns canvassed in
modern agricultural censuses is not such a purely technical or
highly specialized question as may appear at first sight. The
returns contain an immense wealth of complete information on
each enterprise as a unit, but due to the clumsy, thoughtless,
routine approach to tabulation and grouping, this extremely
valuable material is all lost, wasted, and discolored, which
often makes it practically useless for any study of the laws of
agricultural evolution. The returns make it possible to say
quite categorically whether a farm is a capitalist enterprise,
and to what extent; whether its farming operations are intensive, and to what degree, etc.; but when data relating to
millions of farms are tabulated the most essential distinctions,
features and characteristics—which ought to be most effectively brought out , determined and taken
into account—tend to disappear, so that all the economist
gets, instead of a sensible statistical review, is routine,
meaningless columns of figures, a kind of statistical “game of
digits”.

The American Census of 1910 with which we are now concerned is
an excellent example of how first-class material of surpassing
wealth and completeness has been devalued and spoiled by the
routine approach and scientific ignorance of the statisticians. The processing is very much worse than in the
1900 Census, and even the traditional grouping of farms by
acreage has not been fully carried out, so that we have no
possibility of making a comparison between the enterprises in
the various groups, say, as regards their employment of hired
labour, the difference in their systems of field cropping, the
use of fertilizers, etc.

I am compelled, therefore, to turn to the 1900 Census. It gave,
to my knowledge, the world’s only example of the use of three different methods, instead of one, to group or
“classify” (as the Americans say) the great abundance of
material on more than five and a half million farms, collected
in a single country, at a single time, and under a single
program.

It is true that here, too, no classification gives all the
essential characteristics of the type and size of farm. Still
the resultant picture of capitalist agriculture and the
capitalist evolution of agriculture is, as I hope to show, very
much fuller, and reflects the real situation much more correctly
than can ever be the case when the conventional, one-sided and
inadequate single method of classification is used. Given the
opportunity for a fuller study of facts and trends, which may be
safely considered common to all the capitalist countries of the
world, the most serious errors and dogmas of bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois, Narodnik political economy are shown up and
exposed.

Since the data in question are so important I shall have to
examine them in greater detail and employ statistical tables
more frequently than hitherto. Realizing fully that statistical
tables burden the text and make reading more difficult, I have
tried to keep them down to a minimum, and hope the reader will
be lenient with me if I now have to increase that minimum, for
on the analysis of the points examined here depends not only the
general conclusion on the principal question—the trend,
type, character and law of evolution of modern agriculture—but also the general assessment of the data
furnished by modern agricultural statistics which are so often
cited and just as often distorted.

The first grouping—“by acreage”—gives the following picture of American agriculture in 1900:

| Average per farm
Size group(acres) | Percentage offarms | Percentage of total acreage | Improvedacreage | Outlays
On hired labour($) | Value ofproduce[1]($) | Value ofimplements
andmachinery($)
Under 33 to 1010 to 2020 to 5050 to 100100 to 175175 to 260260 to 500500 to 10001,000 and over | 0.74.07.121.923.824.88.56.61.80.8 | _ _[2]0.20.74.911.722.912.315.48.123.8 | 1.75.612.626.249.383.2129.0191.4287.5520.0 | 7718161833601091663121,059 | 5922032363245037211,0541,3541,9135,334 | 534241541061552112633771,222

Average for all farms |  |  | 72.3 |  | 656 | 133

It is safe to say that the statistics of any capitalist
country—the inessential particulars apart—would present an absolutely similar picture. This is confirmed by the
latest censuses in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland and
Denmark. As total farm acreage increases from group to group,
there is also an increase in the average improved acreage, the
average value of the produce, the value of implements and
machinery, the value of livestock (I have omitted these figures)
and the expenditure on hired labour (earlier on I pointed out
the significance of the slight exception of the under-3-acre
farms and in part of the 3-to-10-acre farms).

It would seem that it could not be otherwise. The increase in
expenditure on hired labour appears to confirm beyond any doubt
that the division of farms into large and small on the strength
of acreage is entirely in accord with their division into
capitalist and non-capitalist enterprises. Nine-tenths of the
usual arguments about “small-scale” agriculture are based on
identification in this way and on such data.

Let us now consider the average per acre of (all) land, instead of per farm:

| Per acre of all land in dollars
Size group(acres) | Outlayson hiredlabour | Outlayson fertilizers | Value oflivestock | Value ofimplementsand machinery
Under 33 to 1010 to 2020 to 5050 to 100100 to 175175 to 260260 to 500500 to 10001,000 and over | 40.302.951.120.550.460.450.520.480.470.25 | 2.360.600.330.200.120.070.070.040.030.02 | 456.7616.328.305.214.514.093.963.613.162.15 | 27.576.712.951.651.471.141.000.770.570.29

Allowing for some absolutely negligible exceptions we find a
uniform decline in the characteristics of intensive farming from
the lower groups to the higher.

The conclusion appears to be incontrovertible that “small-scale”
production in agriculture is more intensive than large-scale
production, that the smaller the “scale” of production, the
greater the intensity and productivity of agriculture, and that,
“consequently”, capitalist production in agriculture is
maintained only by the extensive, primitive nature of the
economy, etc.

In fact, the same conclusions are being drawn all the time, on
every hand, in all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois (opportunist-“Marxist” and Narodnik) writings, for when farms
are grouped by acreage (which is not only the most common but
practically the only kind of grouping done) the picture will be
similar for any capitalist country, that is, it will show the
same decline in the characteristics of intensive agriculture
from the lower groups to the higher. There is, for instance, the
celebrated work of the celebrated Eduard
David— Socialism and Agriculture —a collection of bourgeois prejudices and bourgeois lies under the cover of
quasi-socialist catchwords. It uses just that kind of data to
prove the “superiority”, “viability”, etc., of “small-scale”
production.

One factor has especially facilitated such conclusions. It is
that data similar to the above are ordinarily available on the
quantity of livestock; but practically nowhere are data
collected on hired labour—especially in such a summarized
form as expenditure on hired labour. But it is precisely the
data on hired labour that reveal the incorrectness of all such
conclusions. In effect, if the increase, say, in the value of
livestock (or the total number of animals, which is the same
thing) per unit of area down the scale is taken as evidence of
the “superiority” of “small-scale” agriculture, it should be
borne in mind that as we go down the scale this “superiority”
turns out to be connected with increasing expenditure on hired labour! But such an increase in the
expenditure on hired labour—notice that we have all along
been dealing with values per unit of area, per acre, per
hectare, per dessiatine—signifies a growth of the capitalist nature of the enterprise! But the capitalist
nature of the enterprise clashes with the popular notion of
“small-scale” production because small-scale production implies
enterprise which is not based on hired labour.

This seems to create a knot of contradictions. The overall
acreage returns for the size groups indicate that the “small”
farms are non-capitalist, whereas the big farms are. Yet the
very same data show that the “smaller” the enterprise, the more
intensive it is, and the larger its expenditure on hired labour
per unit of land area!

In order to explain this let us consider another type of
grouping.

## Notes

[1] Excluding produce used as feed.
— Lenin

[2] Less than 0.1%.
— Lenin

[3] 

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 ($) | Number Acreage of farms(percentage of total) | Improvedacreage | Hired labour($) | Implementsandmachinery($)
01 and under 5050 and under 100100 and under 250250 and under 500500 and under 1,0001000 and under 2,500Over 2,500 | 0.92.95.321.827.924.014.52.7 | 1.81.22.110.118.123.623.219.9 | 33.418.220.029.248.284.0150.5322.3 | 244471852158786 | 5424284278154283781

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 oflivestock | Value ofimplementsand machinery
01 and under 5050 and under 100100 and under 250250 and under 500500 and under 1,0001000 and under 2,500Over 2,500 | 0.080.060.080.110.190.360.670.72 | 0.010.010.030.050.070.070.080.06 | 2.971.792.012.463.003.754.633.98 | 0.19.0380.480.620.821.071.210.72

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.

## Notes

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

### 12. Different Types of Enterprises in Agriculture

What I have said above about the intensive, large-scale
capitalist enterprises on small tracts raises this question: is
there any reason to believe that the intensification of
agriculture leads to a reduction of farm acreage? In other
words, are there any conditions relating to modern farming
techniques as such that require smaller farm acreage for greater
intensity of farming?

No answer is provided either by general theoretical reasoning or
by examples. In each case it is a matter of the concrete
technical level of agriculture under a given set of conditions,
and the actual amount of capital required by a given system of
farming. In theory, any amount of capital can be invested in any
acreage in any possible way, but it is obvious that “this
depends” on the existing economic, technical, and cultural
conditions, etc., and the whole point is the kind of conditions
prevalent in a given country at a given time. Examples serve no
purpose at all, because in the sphere of such complex, varied,
interwoven and contradictory trends in the economics of modern
agriculture, any number of examples will be found to support
opposite views. What this calls for above all—and more so
than in any other sphere—is a picture of the process as
a whole , with all the trends taken into account and summed
up in the form of a resultant.

The third method of grouping used by American statisticians in
1900 helps to find an answer to this question. It is classification according to the principal source of
income . Accordingly, farms fall into one of the following
groups: (1) hay and grain as the principal source of income; (2)
miscellaneous; (3) livestock; (4) cotton; (5) vegetable; (6)
fruit; (7) dairy produce; (8) tobacco; (9) rice; (10) sugar;
(11) flowers and plants; (12) nursery products; (13) taro; and
(14) coffee. The last seven groups (8-14) together make up only
2.2% of the total number of farms, i.e., such an insignificant
share, that I shall not consider them separately. These groups
(8-14) are similar to the preceding three groups (5-7) in
economic characteristics and significance and constitute a
single type.

Here are the data characterizing the various types of farms;

| Average per acre of all land ($)
Groups of farms byprincipal sourceof income | Percentageof totalnumber offarms | Averageacreageper farm | Totalimproved | Outlaysonlabour | Outlays on fertilizers | Value ofimplementsandmachinery | Value oflivestock
Hay and grainMiscellaneous | 23.018.5 | 159.3106.9 | 111.146.5 | 0.470.35 | 0.040.08 | 1.040.94 | 3.172.73

Livestock Cotton | 27.318.7 | 226.983.6 | 86.142.5 | 0.290.30 | 0.020.14 | 0.660.53 | 4.452.11

Vegetables Fruits Dairy produce | 2.71.46.2 | 65.174.8121.9 | 33.841.663.2 | 1.622.460.86 | 0.590.300.09 | 2.122.341.66 | 3.743.355.58

Average for all farms | 100.0 | 146.6 | 72.3 | 0.43 | 0.07 | 0.90 | 3.66

It is clear that the first two groups of enterprises (hay and
grain, and miscellaneous) may be classified as average both as
regards the degree of their capitalist development (their
expenditures for hired labour are nearest the average—0.35
to 0.47, as against an average of 0.43 for the U.S.A.) and the
intensiveness of agriculture. All the characteristics of
intensive operations—expenditures for fertilizers, the per-acre value of machinery and livestock—are nearest to
the general average for the U S.A.

There is no doubt that these two groups are especially typical
of the majority of agricultural enterprises in general. Hay and
grain, followed by a combination of various farm products
(“miscellaneous” sources of income), are the chief types of
agricultural enterprises in all countries. It would be extremely
interesting to have more detailed data about these groups, such,
for instance, as a breakdown into more and less commercialized
enterprises, etc. But, as we have seen, the American Census,
having made one step in that direction, did not go forward, but
went back.

The next two groups, livestock and cotton, are an example of
farms with the least capitalistic development (the expenditures
for hired labour: 0.29 to 0.30 as against the average of 0.43),
and the least intensive methods of agriculture. Their values of
implements and machinery are the lowest and considerably lower
than the average (0.66 and 0.53 as against 0.90). Farms whose
principal source of income is livestock naturally have more
livestock per acre than the average for the U.S.A. (4.45 as
against 3.66), but appear to be engaged in extensive livestock
raising: their expenditures for fertilizers are the minimum,
they have the largest average acreage (226.9 acres) and the
smallest proportion of improved acreage (86.1 out of 226.9). The
cotton farms have a higher than-average figure for fertilizers,
but other indexes indicative of intensive agriculture (the
per-acre value of livestock and machinery) are very low.

Finally, the last three groups—vegetables, fruit, and dairy
produce—include farms which are, first, the smallest in
acreage (33 to 63 acres of improved land, as against 42 to 86
and 46 to 111 in the other groups); secondly, the most capitalist: they have the heaviest expenditure of hired labour, from 2 to 6 times the average; and thirdly, the most
intensive. Almost all the indexes of intensive agriculture are
above the average: the expenditure on fertilizers, the value of
machinery, the value of livestock (a minor exception are the
fruit-growing farms which lag behind the average, but are well
ahead of the farms which derive their income chiefly from hay
and grain).

Let us now see what is the share of these highly capitalist
farms in the country’s economy. But we must first examine their
intensive character in somewhat greater detail.

Take the farms whose main income is derived from vegetables. It
is well known that in all capitalist countries the development
of towns, factories, industrial settlements, railway stations,
ports, etc., stimulates a demand for this type of product, it
pushes up their prices, and increases the number of agricultural
enterprises raising them for the market. The average “vegetable”
farm has less than one-third of the improved acreage of
an “ordinary” farm deriving income chiefly from hay and grain:
the former is 33.8 acres, and the latter, 111.1. This means that
this particular technical level with this particular accumulation of capital in agriculture requires “vegetable”
farms of smaller acreage; in other words, if capital invested in
agriculture is to yield a not less-than average profit, a
vegetable-raising farm should have, technology being what it is,
a smaller acreage than a hay-and grain farm.

But that is not all. The growth of capitalism in agriculture
consists above all in a transition from natural agriculture to
commercial agriculture. This is being constantly forgotten, and
must be brought up again and again. Commercial agriculture, it
should be noted, does not develop along the “simple” lines
imagined or projected by bourgeois economists, namely, through
an ever greater output of the same products. Not at all. Commercial agriculture very frequently develops by shifting
from one type of product to another, and the shift from hay and
grain to vegetables is very common. But what bearing does it
have on the question before us, that of farm acreage and the
growth of capitalism in agriculture?

Such a shift signifies the split-up of a “large”
111.1-acre farm into more than three “small” 33.8-acre farms. The old farm produced a value of $760—the average
value of its products, less the feed raised on the farm, whose
chief source of income is hay and grain. Each of the new farms
produces a value of $665, or a total of $665 x 3 = $1,995, i.e.,
more than double the original figure.

As large-scale production displaces small-scale production, farm
acreage is reduced .

The average expenditure on hired labour on the old farm was $76;
on the new farm it is $106, or almost half as much again, while
acreage is one-third or even less. Expenditure on fertilizers
has gone up from $0.04 per acre to $0.59, an increase of almost
15 times; the value of implements and machinery has doubled from
$1.04 to $2.12, etc.

There will, of course, be the usual objection that the number of
such highly capitalist farms with specialized “commercial” crops
is negligible, as compared with the total. The answer is that,
first, the number and the role , the economic role of such farms, are much greater than is generally realized; and
secondly—and this is the most important point— it is such crops that are developed more rapidly than
others in the capitalist countries. That is just why a reduction
in farm acreage with the intensification of agriculture so often
implies an increase and not a reduction in the scale of
operations, an increase and not a decrease in the exploitation
of hired labour.

Here are the exact American statistics for the country as a
whole. Let us take all the special, or “commercial”, crops
listed above under heads 5-14, namely, vegetables, fruit, dairy
produce, tobacco, rice, sugar, flowers, nursery products, taro,
and coffee. In 1900, these products were the principal source of income for 12.5% of all farms in the U.S.A. This is
one-eighth, a very small minority. Their acreage was 8.6%, or
one-twelfth, of the total. But to continue. Let us take the
total value of the products of American agriculture (less
feed). Of this value the farms in question accounted for as much
as 16%, i.e., their share of the value was almost double their
share of the acreage.

This means that the productivity of labour and land on these
farms was almost double the average.

Let us take the sum total of expenditure on hired labour in
American agriculture. Of this total, 26.6%, i.e., over one-quarter, fell to the farms in question. This is more than
three times their share of the acreage, and more than three
times the average. This means that these farms are very much
more capitalist than the average.

Their share of the total value of implements and machinery is
20.1%, and of the expenditures for fertilizers, 31.7%, i.e.,
slightly less than one-third of the total, and nearly four times the average.

Consequently, an incontrovertible fact is established for the
country as a whole. It is that the especially intensive farms
have an especially small acreage, especially great employment of
hired labour, and especially high productivity of labour; that
the economic role of these farms in the nation’s agriculture is
two, three and more times greater than their proportion of the
total number of farms, to say nothing of their share of the
total acreage.

As time goes on, does the role of these highly capitalist and
highly intensive crops and farms increase or decrease in
comparison with other crops and farms?

The answer is provided by a comparison of the last two census
reports: their role is unquestionably increasing . Let us take the acreage planted to the various crops. From 1900 to
1910, the acreage under grain increased by only 3.5% for the
U.S.A.; under beans, peas, and the like, 26.6%; hay and forage,
17.2%; cotton, 32%; vegetables, 25.5%; sugar-beets, sugar-cane,
etc., 62.6%.

Let us examine the crop returns. From 1900 to 1910, the grain
crop went up only 1.7%; beans, 122.2%; hay and forage, 23%;
sugar-beets, 395.7%; sugar-cane, 48.5%; potatoes, 42.4%; grapes,
97.6%; there was a poor crop of berries, apples, etc., in 1910,
but the orange and lemon crops, etc., were treble those of
1900.

Thus, the apparently paradoxical but nevertheless proven fact
bas been shown to apply to U.S. agriculture as a whole that,
generally speaking, small-scale production is not only being
displaced by large scale production, but also that this
displacement is taking place in the following form:

Small-scale production is being crowded out by large-scale production
through the displacement of farms which are “larger” in acreage,
but are less productive, less intensive and less capitalist, by
farms which are “smaller” in acreage, but are more productive,
more intensive, and more capitalist.

## Notes

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

### 13. How the Displacement of Small-Scale by Large-Scale Production in Agriculture is Minimised

The objection may be raised that if the displacement of
small-scale production “also” proceeds in the form of the intensification (and “capitalization”) of operations on the
smaller-size farms , is the grouping by acreage of any use at all? Is this not a case of two contradictory tendencies
which make any general conclusion impossible?

This objection can be met by a complete picture of
American agriculture and its evolution; to meet it we must try
to compare all three methods of grouping which present, as it
were, the maximum of information social statistics has produced
in the sphere of agriculture in recent years.

Such a comparison is possible. All it calls for is a table which may at first
sight appear to be so abstract and complex that it may “scare”
the reader away. However, it takes only a little bit of
concentration to “read”, understand and analyzes the table.

To compare the three different groupings we need take only their percentage ratios . All the necessary calculations are
given in the American Census report for 1900. Each grouping is
tabulated under three main heads. By acreage we have:
(1) small farms (under 100 acres), (2) medium (100 to 175
acres), and (3) large (175 and over). By value of product we
have: (1) non-capitalist farms (under $500), (2) medium ($500
to 1.000), and (3) capitalist ($1,000 and over). By the
principal source of income we take (1) slightly capitalist
(livestock, cotton), (2) medium (hay and grain; and miscellaneous), and (3) highly capitalist (the special
“commercial” crops listed above, in Chapter 12, under heads 5 to
14).

For every group we first take the percentage of farms, i.e., the
number of farms in a given group expressed as a percentage ratio
of the total number of farms in the U.S.A. We then take the
percentage of all land, i.e., the total acreage in a given group
expressed as a percentage ratio of the total acreage of all
farms in the U.S.A. The acreage serves as an indicator of the
extensive character of the enterprise (unfortunately, the only
figures available are for total acreage, instead of the
improved acreage only, which would have been more exact). If the
percentage share of the total acreage is higher than the percentage share of the number of farms, for example, if
17.2% of the farms have 43.1% of the land, it is evident that we
are dealing with large farms, larger-than-average farms, which
are besides more than double the size of the average farm. The
reverse is true if the percentage of land is lower than
the percentage of farms.

Next come the indexes of intensiveness of agriculture:
the value of implements and machinery, and the total expenditure
on fertilizers. Here, too, we take the value and the expenditure
in the given group expressed as a percentage share of the totals
for the country as a whole. Here again, if the percentage is higher than the percentage of land , the
conclusion is that intensiveness is above the average, etc.

Finally, in order to determine exactly the capitalist character
of the enterprises, the same method is applied to the total
expenditure on hired labour; while in order to determine the
scale of production this is done in relation to the total value
of the agricultural product for the entire country.

This has produced the following table, which I shall now proceed
to explain and analyze:

Number of farms | By principal source of income | By farm acreage | By value of product |
Slightlycapitalist | Medium | Highlycapitalist | Small | Medium | Large | Non-capitalist | Medium | Capitalist
46.0 | 41.5 | 12.5 | 57.5 | 24.8 | 17.7 | 58.8 | 24.0 | 17.2 | Index of extensiveness of agriculture
Total acreage | 59.2 | 38.5 | 8.6 | 17.5 | 22.9 | 59.6 | 33.3 | 23.6 | 43.1
Constant capital | Value of implementsand machineryOutlays on fertilizers | 37.236.5 | 42.731.8 | 20.131.7 | 31.741.9 | 28.925.7 | 39.432.4 | 25.329.1 | 28.026.1 | 46.744.8 | Index of intensiveness of agriculture
Variable capital | Outlays on hired labour | 35.2 | 38.2 | 26.6 | 22.3 | 23.5 | 54.2 | 11.3 | 19.6 | 69.1 | Index of capitalist character of enterprise
Scale of production | Value of product | 45.0 | 39.0 | 16.0 | 33.5 | 27.3 | 39.2 | 22.1 | 25.6 | 52.3

Let us consider the first grouping—according to the principal source of income. Here farms are grouped, so to say,
according to their line of farming, which is to some extent
similar to the grouping of industrial enterprises by branches of
industry. But the picture is immensely more complex in agriculture.

The first column shows the group of slightly capitalist
farms. It comprises almost one-half the total number of
farms—46%. They own 52.9% of the total a acreage, i.e.,
they are larger than average (this group includes both the very
large, extensive, livestock farms and the smaller-than-average
cotton farms). Their shares of the value of machinery (37.2%)
and the expenditure on fertilizers (36.5%) are lower than their
acreage percentages, which means that their intensiveness is
lower than the average. The same thing is true of the capitalist
character of the enterprise (35.2%) and the value of the product
(45%). Hence, their productivity of labour is lower than the
average.

The second column shows the medium farms. Because farms which
are “medium” in every respect fall into the medium group by all three methods of grouping, we find here
that all their percentage ratios are closer to each other than in any of the other groups. The fluctuations are
relatively small.

The third column shows the highly capitalist farms. I gave above
a detailed analysis of what the figures in this column mean. Be
it noted that only for this type of farm do we have accurate and comparable data both for 1900 and 1910—data
testifying that these highly capitalist crops have a faster
than-average rate of development.

In what way is this more rapid development evident in the
ordinary classification in use in most countries? This is shown
in the next column: the small farms grouped by acreage.

This group consists of a great number of farms (57.5 por cent of
the total). Its acreage is only 17.5% of the total, i.e., less
than one-third of the average. Hence, this is the “poorest”
group, the most “land-starved” group. But then we and that it
has a higher-than-average intensiveness of agriculture (the
value of machinery and expenditures for fertilizers); that it is
more capitalist (expenditures for hired labour); and that it has
a higher -than-average-productivity of labour (value of
product): 22.3 to 41.9% with 17.5% of the acreage.

What is the explanation? Obviously that an especially large
number of highly capitalist farms—see the preceding vertical column—fall into this “small”-acreage
group. A minority of rich, capital-owning farmers conducting large scale capitalist operations on small tracts of
land are added to a majority of really small farmers who have
little land and little capital. Such farmers make up only 12.5%
( = the percentage of highly capitalist farms) of the total in
America, which means that even if they were all to be put into
this one group of small-acreage farms, 45% of the farmers in
that group (57.5—12.5) would still be short of land and
capital. Actually, of course, a part of the highly capitalist
farms, even if only a small one, consists of medium and
large-acreage farms, so that the figure of 45% in fact understates the actual number of farmers who have
little land and no capital.

It will be easily seen how the condition of these 45%—a
minimum of 45%—of the farmers who are poor in land and capital is embellished by the inclusion into the same
group of some 12,10 or so per cent of farmers who are supplied
with higher-than-average amounts of capital, machinery, money to
buy fertilizers, hire labour, and the rest of it.

I shall not dwell separately on the medium and large farms of
this grouping, for this would be to repeat, in slightly
different words what has been said about the small farms. For
instance, if the data on the small-acreage farms put a better
complexion on the oppressed condition of small-scale production , the data on the large-acreage farms
obviously minimize the actual concentration of agriculture by large-scale production. We shall presently see an
exact statistical expression of this minimized concentration.

We thus arrive at the following general proposition which may be
formulated as a law applicable to the grouping of farms by
acreage in any capitalist country:

The broader and more rapid the intensification of agriculture,
the more the classification by acreage serves to give a rosy picture of the oppressed condition of
small-scale production in agriculture, the condition of the
small farmer who is short of both land and capital; the more it serves to blunt the real sharpness
of the class contradiction between the prospering large-scale
producer and the small-scale producer going to the wall; the
more it serves to minimize the concentration of capital
in the hands of big operators and the displacement of the
small.

This is graphically confirmed by the third, and last, classification, according to the value of product. The
percentage of non-capitalistic farms (or not very profitable
farms in terms of gross income) is 58.8%, i.e., even somewhat
more than the “small” farms (57.5%). They have much more land than the group of “small” farmers (33.3% as
against 17.5%). But their share of the total value of the
product is one-third smaller : 22.1% as against 33.5%!

What is the explanation? It is that this group does not include
the highly capitalistic farms on small tracts which have artificially and falsely inflated the small farmers’
share of the capital in the form of machinery, fertilizers,
etc.

Thus, the oppression and dispossession—and hence the ruin—of the small producer in agriculture turn out
to be much more advanced than one would suppose from the data on small farms .

The returns for the small and large farms, grouped by acreage,
take no account of the role of capital , and the failure
to reckon with this “trifle” in capitalist enterprise distorts
the condition of the small producer, puts a false colour on it,
for it “could be” tolerable “but for” the existence of capital,
i.e., the power of money, and the relationship between the hired
labourer and the capitalist, between the farmer and the merchant
and creditor, etc.

For that reason the concentration of agriculture as shown by the
large farms is much lower than its concentration as shown by
large-scale, i . e ., capitalist, production:
39.2% of the value of the product (slightly more than double the
average) is concentrated on 17.7% of “large” farms, while 52.3%
of the total value of the product, i.e., more than three times the average, is concentrated on 17.2% capitalist farms.

In the country which practices the free distribution of vast
tracts of unoccupied land, and which the
Manilovs [1] consider a country of “family” farms, more than one-half of the
total agricultural production is concentrated in about one-sixth
of the capitalist enterprises, whose expenditure on hired labour is four times greater than the per-farm average
(69.1% on 17.2% of the total number of farms), and are half as
great again as the per-acre average (69.1% of the expenditure on
hired labour on farms owning 43.1% of the total amount of
land).

At the other pole, more than one-half, almost three-fifths, of
the total number of farms (58.8%) are non-capitalist. They have
one-third of the land (33.3%) but on it they have less than the
average quantity of machinery (25.3% of the value of machinery);
they use less fertilizers than the average (29.1% of the
expenditures for fertilizers) and so its productivity is only two-thirds of the average . With one-third of the total
acreage, this immense number of-farms, which suffer the greatest
oppression under the yoke of capital, produce less than
one-quarter (22.1%) of the total product and of its total
value.

Consequently, we arrive at a general conclusion concerning the
significance of classification by acreage, namely, that it is
not entirely useless. The one thing that should never be
forgotten is that it understates the displacement of small-scale
by large-scale production, and that the understatement increases
with the pace and scope of intensification of agriculture, and
with the gap between the amounts of capital invested by the
farms per unit of land. With modern methods of research, which
produce an abundance of sound information about each farm, it
would, for instance, be sufficient to combine two methods of
classification—say, each of the five acreage groups could
bo broken down into two or three subgroups according to the
employment of hired labour. If this is not done it is largely
because of the fear of giving a much too naked picture of
reality, a much too striking picture of the oppression,
impoverishment, ruin, expropriation of the mass of small
farmers, whose condition is so “conveniently” and “unnoticeably”
made to look better by the “model” capitalist enterprises, which
are also “small” in acreage and which are a small minority
within the mass of the dispossessed. From the scientific
standpoint no one would dare deny that not only land, but also
capital has a part to play in modern agriculture. From the
standpoint of statistical techniques, or the amount of statistical work involved, a total number of 10 to 15 groups is
not at all excessive in com parison, for instance, with the 18
plus 7 groups based on acreage given in the German statistical
report of 1907. This report, which classifies an abundance of
material about 5,736,082 farms into the above number of acreage
groups, is an example of bureaucratic routine, scientific
rubbish, a meaningless juggling of figures, for there is not
a shadow of any reasonable, rational, theoretical or practical ground for accepting such a number of groups as
typical.

## Notes

[1] 

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

### 14. The Expropriation of the Small Farmers

The question of the expropriation of the small farmers is
immensely important to an understanding and assessment of
capitalism in agriculture in general, and it is highly characteristic of modern political economy and statistics, which
are saturated through and through with bourgeois notions and
prejudices, that this question is either practically not
considered at all or is given the least attention.

The general statistics in all capitalist countries show that the
urban population is growing at the expense of the rural, that
the population is abandoning the countryside. In the U.S.A.,
this process is steadily advancing. The proportion of the urban
population increased from 29.5% in 1880, to 36.1% in 1890, 40.5%
in 1900, and 46.3% in 1910. In every part of the country the
urban population is growing more rapidly than the rural
population: from 1900 to l910, the rural population in the
industrial North-went up by 3.9% and the urban by 29.8%; in the
former slave-holding South, the rural population increased by
14.8%, and the urban, by 41.4%; in the homestead West, the
figures were 49.7 and 89.6%, respectively.

One should think that such a universal process would also have
to be studied in the taking of agricultural censuses. A most
important question from the scientific standpoint naturally
arises as to what sections, strata or groups of the rural
population provide the fugitives from the countryside and in
what circumstances. Since highly detailed information about each
agricultural enterprise and about each animal in it is collected
every ten years, it would be no trouble at all to include
questions as to how many and what kind of farms were sold or
rented with an eye to moving into town, and how many members of
households abandoned farming temporarily or for good, and in
what circumstances. But no such questions are asked: the
investigation does not go beyond the official stereotyped
statement: “The rural population decreased from 59.5% in 1900 to
53.7% in 1910.” The census-takers seem to have no inkling of the
mass of misery, oppression and ruin concealed behind these
routine figures. As a general rule, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois economists turn a blind eye to the obvious
connection between the night of the population from the
countryside and the ruin of the small producers.

There is no alternative, therefore, but to try and bring
together the relatively meager and very badly compiled data on
the expropriation of the small farmers gleaned from the 1910
Census report.

There are the figures on the forms of farm tenure: the number of
owners, subdivided into full and part owners; and the number of share-cropping tenants and cash-paying
tenants. These figures are tabulated for the various divisions
but not the farm groups.

Here is the first picture we get from the totals for 1900 and 1910:

Total rural population increaseTotal number of farms increasedTotal number of owners increasedTotal number offullowners increased | 11.2%10.9%8.1%4.8%

This picture is a clear indication of the growing expropriation
of small-scale agriculture. The rural population is increasing
more slowly than the urban. The number of farmers is increasing
more slowly than the rural population; the number of owners is
increasing more slowly than the number of farmers; the number of full owners—more slowly than the number of owners
in general.

The proportion of owners in the total number of farmers has been
decreasing steadily over a period of several decades, as
follows:

1880189019001910 | 74.0%71.6%64.7%63.0%

There is a corresponding growth in the proportion of tenants,
with the number of share-cropping tenants going up faster than
that of cash-paying tenants. The number of share-cropping
tenants was 17.5% in 1880; then it rose to 18.4% and 22.2%, and
finally to 24% in 1910.

It is evident from the following figures that the decrease in
the proportion of owners and the increase in the proportion of
tenants is, on the whole, an indication of the dispossession and
displacement of the small farmers:

| Percentage of farms owning
Class of farm | domestic animals | horses
Owners Tenants | 96.794.2 | 96.192.9 | -0.6-1.3 | 85.067.9 | 81.560.7 | -3.5-7.2

According to all the returns for both census years the owners
are economically stronger. The condition of the tenants is
deteriorating more rapidly than that of the owners.

Let us examine separately the figures for the sections.

The greatest number of tenants, as I have already said, is in
the South, and there tenancy has the fastest rate of growth: it
rose from 47% in 1900, to 49.6% in 1910. Capital defeated
slavery half a century ago, merely to restore it now in
a new form as share tenancy.

In the North, the number of tenants is considerably smaller and
is growing at a much slower rate: it went up from 26.2% in 1900,
to only 26.5% in 1910. The West has the smallest number of
tenants, and it is the only section where tenancy, instead of increasing, decreased: it fell from 16.6% in 1900 to
14.0% in l910. “A very low proportion of tenant farms,” says the
Census report for 1910, “is also shown for the Mountain and
Pacific divisions, [the two divisions constituting “The West”] [1] , where it is doubtless attributable mainly to
the fact that those divisions have been only recently settled
and that many of the farmers in them are homesteaders who have
obtained their land from the Government” free or for a very
small price (Vol. V, p. 104).

This is a striking example of the peculiar characteristic of the
U.S.A., to which I have repeatedly referred, namely, the
availability of unoccupied, free land. This explains, on the one
hand, the extremely rapid and extensive development of capitalism in America. The absence of private property in land
in some parts of a vast country does not exclude capitalism—our Narodniks should make a note of
this!—on the contrary, it broadens its base, and accelerates its development. Upon the other hand, this
peculiarity, which is entirely unknown in the old, long-settled
capitalist countries of Europe, serves in America to cover
up the expropriation of the small farmers—a process already under way in the settled and most industrialized parts
of the country.

Let us take the North. We get the following picture:

Total rural population increase (000,000)Total number of farms increased (000)Total number of owners increased (000)Total number offullowners increased (000) | 22.22,8742,0881,794 | 23.12,8912,0911,749 | +3.9+0.6+0.1-2.5 |

We see not only a relative reduction in the number of owners,
not only a decline in their proportion of the total number of
farmers, etc., but even an absolute decrease in the number of owners, against a background of growing production in
the main section of the U.S.A., which embraces 60% of the
country’s improved acreage!

It should, besides, be borne in mind that in one of the four
divisions making up the North, namely, the West North Central, the allotment of homesteads continues to this very day ,
and that 54 million acres were allotted in the 10 years from
1901 to 1910.

The tendency of capitalism to expropriate small-scale agriculture is so strong that the American “North” shows an absolute decrease in the number of landowners, in
spite of the distribution of tens of millions of acres of
unoccupied, free land.

Only two factors still serve to paralyze this tendency in the
U.S.A.: (1) the existence of the still unparcelled slave-holding
plantations in the South, with its oppressed and downtrodden
Negro population; and (2) the fact that the West is still partly
unsettled. Both these factors tend to widen the future base of
capitalism, and so prepare the conditions for its even more
extensive and more rapid development. The sharpening of
contradictions and the displacement of small-scale production
are not removed but are transferred to a larger arena. The
capitalist fire appears to be “damped down”—but at the price of an even greater accumulation of new and more
inflammable material.

Furthermore, on the question of the expropriation of small-scale
agriculture, we have the returns for the number of farms owning
livestock. Here are the figures for the U.S.A.

Percentage of farms owning | 1900 | 1910 | + or - |
Domestic animals in generalDairy cowsHorses | 95.878.779.0 | 94.980.873.8 | -0.9+2.1-5.2 |

These figures show, on the whole, a reduction in the number of
owners in proportion to the total number of farmers. The
increase in the percentage of those who owned dairy cows was
smaller than the drop in the percentage of those who owned
horses.

Let us now examine the figures for farms grouped in relation to
the two major kinds of livestock.

Size group (acres) | Percentage of farmsowning dairy cows | + or -
1900 | 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | 49.565.984.188.992.690.382.9 | 52.971.287.189.893.589.686.0 | +3.4+5.3+3.0+0.9+0.9-0.7+3.1

Average for the U.S.A. | 78.7 | 80.8 | +2.1

We find that the greatest increase was in the number of small
farms with dairy cows, then came the latifundia, and then the
medium-size farms. There was a decrease in the percentage of
farms reporting dairy cows among the big owners, with 500 to 999
acres of land.

On the whole, this seems to indicate a gain for small-scale
agriculture. Let us recall, however, that in farming the
ownership of dairy cattle has a twofold significance: on the one
hand, it may generally indicate a higher living standard and
better conditions of nutrition. On the other hand, it signifies—and rather more frequently—a development of
one branch of commercial farming and cattle-breeding: the
production of milk for the market in the towns and industrial
centers. We saw above that farms of this type, the “dairy”
farms, were classified by American statisticians under a special
head, according to the principal source of income. A characteristic of this group is that it has a smaller -than-average total and improved acreage, but a greater -than-average value of output, and a double-the-average employment of hired labour per acre. The increasing importance
of small farms in dairy farming may simply mean—and most
likely does mean—a growth of capitalist dairy farms of the type described, on small tracts of land. For the
sake of comparison here are some figures on the concentration of dairy cattle in America:

Sections | Average number ofdairy cows per farm | Increase
1890 | 1900
The North The South The West | 4.82.35.0 | 5.32.45.2 | +0.5+0.1+0.2

Overall average | 3.8 | 4.0 | +0.2

We find that the North, which is richest of all in dairy cattle,
also showed the greatest increase in wealth. Here is a distribution of this increase among the groups:

The North

Size group (acres) | % increase or decrease in number of dairy cows from 1900 to 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | -4 (+10.0 in the number of farms)-3 (-12.6 in the number of farms)+ 9 (-7.3 in the number of farms)+14 (+2.2 in the number of farms)+18 (+12.7 in the number of farms)+29 (+40.4 in the number of farms)+18 (+15.4 in the number of farms)

Overall increase | +14 (+15.4 in the number of farms)

The more rapid growth in the number of small farms with
dairy cattle did not prevent its more rapid concentration in the large enterprises.

Let us now turn to the figures on the number of farms reporting
horses. This information about draught animals is an indication
of the general pattern of farming and not of any special branch
of commercial farming.

Size group (acres) | Percentage of farmsreporting horses | Decrease
1900 | 1910
Under 2020 to 4950 to 99100 to 174174 to 499500 to 9991,000 and over | 52.466.382.288.692.093.794.2 | 48.957.477.686.591.093.294.1 | -3.5-8.9-4.6-2.1-1.0-0.5-0.1

Average for the U.S.A. | 79.0 | 73.8 | -5.2

We find that as we go down the size-group scale there is a
rising number of farms not reporting horses. With the exception
of the smallest farms (under 20 acres) which, as we know,
include a comparatively greater number of capitalistic farms
than the neighboring groups, we observe a rapid decrease in the
number of horseless farms and a much slower increase in their
number. The use of steam ploughs and other engines on the rich
farms may partly compensate for the reduction in draught
animals, but such an assumption is out of the question for the
mass of the poorer farms.

Finally, the growth of expropriation is also evident from the
returns on the number of mortgaged farms:

Sections | Percentage of mortaged farms
1890 | 1900 | 1910
The North. . . . .The South. . . . .The West . . . . . | 40.35.723.1 | 40.917.221.7 | 41.923.528.6

Average for the U.S.A. | 28.2 | 31.0 | 33.6

The percentage of mortgaged farms is on a steady increase in all
sections, and it is highest in the most populous industrialized
and capitalist North. American statisticians point out (Vol. V,
p. 159) that the growth in the number of mortgaged farms in the
South is probably due to the “parceling out” of the plantations,
which are sold in lots to Negro and white farmers, who pay only
a part of the purchase price, the rest being covered by a
mortgage on the property. Consequently a peculiar buying-up
operation is under way in the slave-holding South. Let us
note that in 1910 Negroes in the U.S.A. owned only 920,883
farms, i.e., 14.5% of the total; between 1900 and 1910, the
number of white farms increased 9.5%, and that of Negro farms,
twice as fast—19.6%. The Negro urge to emancipation from
the “plantation owners” half a century after the “victory” over
the slave-owners is still marked by an exceptional intensity.

The American statisticians also point out that the mortgaging of
a farm does not always indicate lack of prosperity; it is
sometimes a way of obtaining capital for land improvement; and
the like. This is indisputable, but this indisputable observation should not conceal the fact—as is much too
often the case with bourgeois economists—that only a well-to-do minority are in a position to obtain capital for
improvements, etc., in this way, and to employ it productively;
the majority are further impoverished and fall into the clutches
of finance capital assuming this particular form.

Researchers could—and should—have paid much more attention to the dependence of farmers on finance capital. But
although this aspect of the matter is immensely important, it
has remained in the background.

The growth in the number of mortgaged farms in any case means
that the actual control over them is transferred to the
capitalists. It stands to reason that apart from officially
recorded and notarized mortgages, a considerable number of farms
are steeped in private debt, which is not covered by strict
legal instruments and is not recorded by the census.

## Notes

[1] Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin) have
been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.— Ed .

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

### 15. A Comparative Picture of Evolution in Industry and Agriculture

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.

| 1900 | 1910
Industry Agriculture | 207.55,737 | 268.56,361 | +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.

Industry | Capital of all enterprisesValue of products | 8,97511,406 | 18,42820,671 | 105.381.2
Agriculture | Value of all farm propertyValue of all cereal crops
Production of cereals inbushels (000,000) | 20,4401,4834,439 | 40,9912,6654,513 | 100.579.81.7

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:

Industry | Number of wage-earners (000)Their wages ($000,000) | 4,7132,008 | 6,6153,427 | 40.470.6
Agriculture | Number of wage-earners (000)Their wages ($000,000) | ?357 | ?652 | c. 47.182.3

Number of farmers (000)Value of their major product, cereal crops ($000,000) | 5,7371,483 | 6,3612,665 | 10.979.8

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.

Industry | Small Medium Large | 1444824 | 66.622.211.2 | 1805731 | 67.221.311.5 | 25.018.729.1

Total | 216 | 100.0 | 268 | 100.0 | 24.2
Agriculture | Small Medium Large | 3,2971,4221,018 | 57.524.817.7 | 3,6911,5161,154 | 58.023.818.2 | 11.96.613.3

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.

Industry | Small Medium Large | 9272,12911,737 | 6.314.479.3 | 1,1272,54417,000 | 5.512.382.2 | 21.519.544.8

Total | 14,793 | 100.0 | 20,671 | 100.0 | 37.9
Agriculture | Small Medium Large | 5,7905,7218,929 | 28.428.043.6 | 10,49911,08919,403 | 25.627.147.3 | 81.393.8117.3

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

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

### 16. Summary and Conclusions

The agricultural censuses taken in the United States in 1900 and
1910 are the last word in social statistics in this sphere of
the economy. It is the best material of any available in the
advanced countries, covering millions of farms and allowing
precise well-founded conclusions on the evolution of agriculture
under capitalism. One other particular reason why this material
can be used to study the laws of the evolution is that the
U.S.A. has the largest size, the greatest diversity of relationships, and the greatest range of nuances and forms of
capitalist agriculture.

We find here, on the one hand, a transition from the slave-holding—or what is in this case the same, from the
feudal—structure of agriculture to commercial and capitalist agriculture; and, on the other hand, capitalism
developing with unusual breadth and speed in the freest and most
advanced bourgeois country. We observe alongside of this
remarkably extensive colonization conducted on democratic
capitalist lines.

We find here areas which have long been settled, highly
industrialized, highly intensive, and similar to most of the
areas of civilized, old-capitalist Western Europe; as well as
areas of primitive, extensive cropping and stock-raising, like
some of the outlying areas of Russia or parts of Siberia. We
find large and small farms of the most diverse types: great
latifundia, plantations of the former slave-holding South, and
the homestead West, and the highly capitalist North of the
Atlantic seaboard; the small farms of the Negro share-croppers,
and the small capitalist farms producing milk and vegetables for
the market in the industrial North or fruits on the Pacific
coast; “wheat factories” employing hired labour and the homesteads of “independent” small farmers, still full
of naïve illusions about living by the “labour of their own
hands”.

This is a remarkable diversity of relationships, embracing both
past and future, Europe and Russia. The comparison with Russia
is especially instructive, by the way, in regard to the question
of the consequences of a possible transfer of all land to the
peasants without compensation, a measure that is progressive but
undoubtedly capitalist.

The U.S.A. offers the most convenient example for the study of
the general laws of capitalist development in agriculture and
the variety of forms these laws assume. A study of this kind
leads up to conclusions which may be summed up in the following
brief propositions.

In agriculture, as compared with industry, manual labour
predominates over machinery to an immeasurably greater extent. But the machine is steadily advancing, improving farming
techniques, extending the scale of operations and making them
more capitalist. In modern agriculture, machinery is used in the
capitalist way.

Hired labour is the chief sign and indicator of capitalism in
agriculture. The development of hired labour, like the growing
use of machinery, is evident in all parts of the country, and in every branch of agriculture. The growth in the
number of hired labourers outstrips the growth of the country’s
rural and total population. The growth in the number of farmers
lags behind that of the rural population. Class contradictions
are intensified and sharpened.

The displacement of small-scale by large-scale production in
agriculture is going forward. This is fully proved by a
comparison of the returns for 1900 and 1910 on total farm
property.

However, this displacement is understated, and the condition of
the small farmers is shown in bright colors because statisticians in America in 1910 confined themselves—as in
fact they did almost everywhere in Europe—to grouping the
farms by acreage. The wider and faster the intensification of
agriculture, the higher is the degree of this understatement and
the brighter the colors.

Capitalism grows not only by accelerating the development of
large-acreage farms in extensive areas, but also by creating in
the intensive areas enterprises on smaller tracts whose
operations are on a much larger scale and are much more
capitalist.

As a result, the concentration of production in the large
enterprises is actually much greater—and the displacement
of small-scale production actually goes farther and deeper—than is indicated by ordinary data about farms
grouped by acreage. The returns of the 1900 Census, compiled
with greater care and in greater detail, are more scientific and
leave no doubt at all on this score.

The expropriation of small-scale agriculture is advancing. In
the last few decades, the proportion of owners to the total
number of farmers declined steadily, while the growth in the
number of farmers lagged behind population increase. The number
of full owners is declining absolutely in the North, the most
important section, which yields the largest volume of farm
products and has neither any vestiges of slavery nor any
extensive homesteading. In the last decade, the proportion of
farmers reporting livestock in general decreased; in contrast to
the increased proportion of owners reporting dairy cattle there
was an even greater increase in the proportion of operators
without horses, especially among the small farmers.

On the whole, a comparison of corresponding data on industry and
agriculture for the same period shows that although the latter
is incomparably more backward, there is a remarkable similarity
in the laws of evolution, and that small-scale production is
being ousted-from both.

## Notes