London, 22 September 1892 

My dear Sir, 

So far, then, we agree upon this one point, that Russia, in 1892, 
could not exist as a purely agricultural country, that her agricultural 
production must be complemented by industrial production. 

Now I maintain, that industrial production nowadays, means 
grande industrie, steam, electricity, selfacting-mules, power-looms, fi- 
nally machines that produce machinery. From the day Russia intro- 
duced railways, the introduction of these modern means of produc- 
tion was a foregone conclusion. You must be able to repair your own 
locomotives, waggons, railways, and that can only be done cheaply if 
you are able to construct those things at home, that you intend to re- 
pair. From the moment, warfare became a branch of grande industrie 
(ironclad ships, rifled artillery, quickfiring and repeating cannon, re- 
repeating rifles, steelcovered bullets, smokeless powder etc.) la grande 
industrie without which all these things cannot be made became a po- 
litical necessity. All these things cannot be had without a highly devel- 
oped metal manufacture. And that manufacture cannot be had with- 
out a corresponding development in all other branches of manufac- 
ture, especially textile. 

I quite agree with you in fixing the beginning of the new industrial 

era of your country about 1861. It was the hopeless struggle of a na- 
tion, with primitive forms of production, against nations with modern 
production, which characterized the Crimean war. The Russian 
people understood this perfectly; hence their transition to modern 
forms, a transition rendered irrevocable by the emancipation act of 
1861.**! 

This necessity of the transition from the primitive methods of pro- 
‘duction that prevailed in 1854, to the modern methods that are now 
beginning to prevail — this necessity once conceded, it becomes a sec- 
ondary question whether the hot-house-process of fostering the indus- 
trial revolution by protective and prohibitive duties was advanta- 
geous or even necessary, or otherwise. 

This industrial hot-house-atmosphere renders the process acute, 
which otherwise might have retained a more chronic form. It crams 
into twenty years a development, which otherwise might have taken 
sixty or more years. But it does not affect the nature of the process it- 
self, which, as you say, dates from 1861. 

One thing is certain: if Russia really required, and was determined 
to have, a grande industrie of her own, she could not have it at all, ex- 
cept under some degree of protection and this you admit. From this 
point of view too, then, the question of protection is one of degree only, 
not of principle; the principle was unavoidable. 

Another thing is certain: if Russia required after the Crimean war 
a grande industrie of her own, she could have it in one form only: the 
capitalistic form. And along with that form, she was obliged to take 
over all the consequences which accompany capitalistic grande industrie 
in all other countries. 

Now I cannot see that the results of the industrial revolution which 
is taking place in Russia under our eyes, are in any way different from 
what they are, or have been, in England, Germany, America. In 
America the conditions of agriculture and landed property are dif- 
ferent, and this does make some difference. 

You complain of the slow increase of hands employed in textile in- 
dustry, when compared with the increase of quantity of product.— 
The same is taking place everywhere else. Otherwise, whence our re- 
dundant ‘industrial reserve’? (Capital, c. 23, sect. 3 and 4°). 

You prove the gradual replacing of men’s work by that of women 
and children — Capital, c. 13 (sect. 3, a). 

* Capital, Part VII, Ch. XXV, Sections 3, 4 (present edition, Vol. 35).-” /bid., Part 
IV, Ch. XXV, Section 3 (present edition, Vol. 35). 

You complain that the machine-made goods supersede the prod- 

ucts of domestic industry and thus destroy a supplementary produc- 
tion, without which the peasant cannot live. But we have here an ab- 
solutely necessary consequence of capitalistic grande industrie: the crea- 
tion of the home-market (Capital, c. 24, sect. 5*) and which has 
taken place in Germany during my lifetime and under my eyes. Even 
what you say, that the introduction of cotton-goods destroys not only 
the domestic spinning and weaving of the peasants, but also their 
Slax culture has been seen in Germany between 1820 and now. And 
as far as this side of the question: the destruction of home-industry 
and the branches of agriculture subservient to it—as far as this is 
concerned, the real question for you seems to me this: that the Rus- 
sians had to decide whether their own grande industrie was to destroy 
their domestic manufacture, or whether the import of English goods was 
to accomplish this. With protection, the Russians effected it, without 
protection, the English. That seems to me perfectly evident. 

Your calculation that the sum of the textile products of grande indus- 
trie and of domestic industry does not increase, but remains the same 
and even diminishes, is not only quite correct, but would not be cor- 
rect if it came to another result. So Jong as Russian manufacture is 
confined to the home market, its product can only cover home con- 
sumption. And that can only slowly increase, and, as it seems to me, 
ought even to decrease under present Russian conditions. 

For it is one of the necessary corollaries of grande industrie, that it de- 
stroys its own home market by the very process by which it creates it. It 
creates it by destroying the basis of the domestic industry of the peas- 
antry. But without domestic industry the peasantry cannot live. 
They are ruined, as peasants; their purchasing power is reduced to 
a minimum; and until they, as proletarians, have settled down into 
new conditions of existence, they will furnish a very poor market for 
the newly-arisen factories. 

Capitalist production being a transitory economical phase, is full of 
internal contradictions which develop and become evident in propor- 
tion as it develops. This tendency to destroy its own market at the 
same time it creates it, is one of them. Another is the 6e3BbIxoqHOe T10- 
Aoxenne to which it leads, and which is developed sooner in a coun- 
try without a foreign market, like Russia, than in countries which more 
or less are capable of competing on the open world-market. This sit- 

* Ibid., Part VIII, Ch. XXX (present edition, Vol. 35).-" desperate position (Russ.) 

uation without an apparent issue finds its issue, for the latter coun- 
tries, in commercial revulsions, in the forcible opening of new mar- 
kets. But even then the cul-de-sac stares one in the face. Look at Eng- 
land. The last new market which could bring on a temporary revival 
of prosperity by its being thrown open to English commerce, is 
China. Therefore English capital insists upon constructing Chinese 
railways. But Chinese railways mean the destruction of the whole 
basis of Chinese small agriculture and domestic industry, and, as 
there will not even be the counterpoise of a Chinese grande industrie, 
hundreds of millions of people will be placed in the impossibility of 
living. The consequence will be a wholesale emigration such as the 
world has not yet seen, a flooding of America, Asia and Europe by the 
hated Chinaman, a competition for work with the American, Aus- 
tralian and European workman on the basis of the Chinese standard 
of life, the lowest of all -— and if the system of production has not been 
changed in Europe before that time, it will have to be changed then. 

Capitalistic production works its own ruin, and you may be sure it 
will do so in Russia too. It may, and if it lasts long enough, it will sure- 
ly produce a fundamental agrarian revolution—JI mean a revolu- 
tion in the condition of landed property, which will ruin both the no- 
Mewnk * and the myxux+,” and replace them by a new class of large 
landed proprietors drawn from the kyaaxu ‘ of the villages and the 
bourgeois speculators of the towns. At all events, | am sure the con- 
servative people who have introduced capitalism into Russia, will be 
one day terribly astonished at the consequences of their own doings. 

Yours very truly, 
P. W. Rosher