The middle peasants, by contrast, could barely subsist. They obtain 19% of their income from “industries”. Of the seven households, only two engaged in industry (tailoring and charcoal-burning). The other five sold their labour-power as day labourers. For the poor peasants, whose agricultural production operated at a loss, they obtained 24% of their income from industries, and, for all but one of them, this meant the sale of their labour-power. In other words, what we have here is a clear differentiation of the peasantry into a class of capitalist farmers, on the one hand, and proletarians on the other. In fact, Lenin notes, that, in the case of two of the poor peasant households, they had no deficit, and that was because of the fact that they obtained the bulk of their income from wage labour, rather than agricultural production. The average income and expenditure for this group is ₽202.4 and ₽223.78. But, for these two households, the figures are ₽99 and ₽93.45, reflecting the fact that, although little revenue is produced, from agricultural production, little is expended in that activity either, thereby, providing a net income of ₽5.55, meaning these households were actually in a better position than the average middle peasant family.
This indicates why it becomes preferable for peasants in the poorest group to give up independent agricultural production, and to become full-time wage labourers. It means that they can also rent out their land to richer peasants.
Lenin notes that Scherbina, in collating the data, had grouped the peasant households according to size of allotment. For the 24 farms he selected, the general level of prosperity was about a third higher than the average for the uyezd in total. This means, Lenin says, that the data is inadequate for two reasons; firstly because its not representative of the uyezd as a whole, but; secondly because it fails to identify the wide differentiation within the 24 farms themselves.
“... the author’s thesis that the “allotments are the prime cause of the prosperity” of the peasant is absolutely wrong. Everybody knows that the “equal” distribution of land within the village community does not in any way prevent its horseless members from giving up the land, letting it, going away to work and turning into proletarians; or the members with many horses from renting large tracts of land and running big and profitable farms.” (p 223-4)
Looking at the data for the 24 farms, Lenin says, one rich peasant, with six dessiatines of allotment land, had a total income of ₽758.5; a middle peasant, with 7.1 dessiatines, ₽391.5; and a poor peasant, with 6.9 dessiatines, ₽109.5. The difference in income is a result of the factors previously analysed. The richer peasants buy and rent in addition to their own allotments. The poor peasants have to engage in wage labour, and do not have time to farm their allotment, which they rent out to richer peasants. The richer peasants can rent or buy more fertile land, they have more horses, and more and better equipment etc. They are able to employ wage labour from which they extract surplus value.
“In general, we have seen that the ratio of the incomes of the various groups is 4 : 2 : 1; while the ratio of allotment land is 22.1 : 9.2 : 8.5, which equals 2.6 : 1.08 : 1. This is quite natural, for we find, for example, that the rich peasants, with 22.1 dessiatines of allotment land per household, rent an additional 8.8 dessiatines each, whereas the middle peasants, who have smaller allotments (9.2 dessiatines), rent less—7.7 dessiatines, and the poor peasants, with still smaller allotments (8.5 dessiatines), rent only 2.8 dessiatines.” (p 224)
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