A feature not treated by Postnikov, Lenin says, is the negative impact on the poor peasants of this dominance of the wealthy peasants. The poor peasants owned inadequate land to be self-sufficient, but it was the rich peasants that were able to rent available land rather than the poor peasants who needed it.
“In all three uyezds of Taurida Gubernia, the peasants rent a total of 476,334 dessiatines of land (non-allotment and allotment), of which 298,727 dessiatines, or more than three-fifths (63%), are taken by the prosperous group. Only 6% falls to the share of the poor group, and 31% to that of the middle group.” (p 65)
The rich peasants were also almost exclusively the only purchasers of land.
“... in Dnieper Uyezd they own 78% of all the purchased land, and in Melitopol Uyezd 42,737 dessiatines out of a total of 48,099 dessiatines, or 88%.” (p 67)
Finally, it was the rich peasants who had almost exclusive access to credit to finance capital accumulation.
“Summing up what has been said about the third group, we arrive at the following description of it: the prosperous peasants, who possess considerably more than the average quantity of means of production, and whose labour, as a consequence, is more productive, are the principal growers of agricultural produce in the district, and predominate over the remaining groups; this group’s farming is commercial in character, and is very largely based on the exploitation of hired labour.” (p 68)
Lenin's purpose in undertaking this analysis was to show that the Narodnik conception of Russian society, based upon the economic foundations of the peasant village was already only a memory. The idea that the peasant village economy could somehow be a basis for socialist construction was a reactionary utopian fantasy. The peasantry were already differentiated into separate socio-economic groups, and it was only the presentation of aggregated and average data that hid that reality.
Postnikov himself had an inadequate explanation for this process of differentiation, and the reason why, even in an area with abundant land and universal communal land ownership, an increasing proportion of peasants were abandoning farming to become wage labourers. He put the reason down to an inadequate allotment size per household, “which prevents him from making full use of the labour-power of his family” (p. 341).” (p 71)
But Postnikov's own data had shown why productivity improved with farm size, and so the wealthier peasants, with the larger farms, had a competitive advantage, and when this is combined with their greater ownership of animals and implements that advantage is multiplied.
Lenin quotes Postnikov's statement that the struggle over land ownership was not one between communalism and individualism, but a struggle of economic interests.
““It is quite an obvious truth,” says Postnikov elsewhere, “that with this land poverty and the small size of the farms, and the absence of sufficient industries, there can be no prosperity among the peasantry, and all that is economically weak is bound, one way or another, sooner or later, to be ousted from peasant farming” (p. 368).” (p 72)
The real phenomenon, Lenin says, is not so much the grabbing of land, but the fact that the larger farms have lower production costs, which provide them with competitive advantage, allowing them to expand, and to devote a larger proportion of output to the market.
As Postnikov says,
““If the size of a peasant farm falls below this minimum, farming becomes impossible. In such cases, the peasant will find it more profitable to give up farming and become a labourer, whose expenditure is more limited and whose needs can be more fully satisfied even with a smaller gross income” (p. 141).” (p 72)
Lenin notes,
“If, on the one hand, a peasant finds it profitable to expand his sown area far beyond his own grain requirements, it is because he can sell his produce. If, on the other hand, a peasant finds it profitable to give up farming and become a labourer, it is because the satisfaction of the greater part of his needs entails cash expenditure, that is, sale; and as, in selling his farm produce, he encounters a rival on the market with whom he cannot compete, the only thing left for him is to sell his labour-power. In a word, the soil in which the above-described phenomena grow is production for sale. The fundamental cause of the struggle of economic interests arising among the peasantry is the existence of a system under which the market is the regulator of social production.” (p 73)
No comments:
Post a Comment