Another point at issue with the Narodniks was the question of whether capitalist production was possible, in Russia, without the development of a foreign market, to provide the necessary demand. Lenin deals with this issue in the next text I will examine, “On The So Called Market Question”. Postnikov's data also settles this question, Lenin says.
The larger farms had a greater proportion of output destined for the market, but, Lenin says, these larger farms constitute only 20% of the total. The smallest farms constituted 40% of the total, and these were often too small to provide an adequate level of subsistence. Not only, therefore, did the peasants on this larger number of small farms have to resort to wage labour, to achieve subsistence, but they also had to resort to the market to buy the commodities required for their subsistence, to supplement their own production.
“... the fact is that in the bottom groups, the farm is so small that the family’s needs cannot be fully covered by agriculture; to avoid dying of starvation, the members of these bottom groups have to take their labour-power to the market, where its sale provides them with monetary resources and thus counterbalances (to some degree) the lesser demand due to the smaller size of the farms.” (p 41)
Lenin assumes that a given area of land, 1600 dessiatines, is divided in two different ways. First, he assumes an homogeneous peasantry with the land divided in 16 dessiatines per household. Postnikov's data showed that farms with 16 dessiatines under crops obtained a cash income of 191 Roubles. Say 1600 dessiatines, divided into 16 dessiatine farms means 100 farms with 191 Roubles income = 191 x 100 = 19,100 Roubles of demand. Next, Lenin assumes that the 1600 dessiatines is divided in the same proportion as Postnikov's data suggests. Lenin's figures are slightly out, but his conclusions remain correct. On the basis of Postnikov's data, monetary demand in the market rises to R22,498, leaving out farms under 5 dessiatines, which had no income due to their production, but which, in fact, would have income from wage labour.
In other words, the size of the market, which depends on this monetary demand from cash income, grows as a result of this differentiation of the peasantry, and the growth in production, destined for the market. Postnikov, who describes the role of the introduction of machines and other technologies, in relation to the developments in peasant life, however, does not give the same attention to this fact that the peasant households in the bottom 40% are increasingly led to have to sell their labour-power, whereas the top 20% have to buy labour-power, in order to utilise it to farm their larger farms, and use their fixed capital effectively. But, as Lenin points out, this development is more significant than the introduction of machines etc., because it is what signifies the differentiation of the peasantry into two new social classes, a class of agricultural proletarians on the one hand, and a class of capitalist farmers on the other.
Lenin gives Postonikov's table showing the proportion of households in each group employing hired labour.
Cultivating no land
" up to 5 dess . " 5 to 10 " " 10 to 25 " " 25 to 50 " " over 50 " |
%
3.8
2.5 2.6 8.7 34.7 64.1 |
Average
|
12.9
|
What Postnikov's data shows is not simply a quantitative differentiation of the peasantry into rich and poor peasants, with the former farming larger areas, using more equipment etc. What it shows is a qualitative division into a bourgeoisie and proletariat. The former, by buying additional land, and renting additional land, at the same time, deprive the poor peasants of that land, which they needed simply to farm on a scale required for subsistence. The bourgeois farmers no longer produced on a larger scale, to meet the needs of their household, or to enjoy a higher standard of living, but, in order to produce profits, and thereby, accumulate additional capital. The poor peasants increasingly had to sell their labour-power, and thereby accept the reality of their labour being exploited by the capitalist farmer, as the means by which the latter produced profits, and accumulated land and capital.
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