Lenin points out that it would, of course, be wrong to conclude, purely on the data for these 24 farms, that the thesis that the size of allotment was the determining factor was wrong. However, data for several uyezds had apparently been provided in the missing Part II of the pamphlet. More comprehensive data, confirming Lenin's thesis, has, however, already been provided in the previous texts covered in this series. The most comprehensive analysis is to be found in Lenin's “The Development of Capitalism In Russia”, and the question of differentiation is covered, there, in detail, in Chapter 2.
However, Lenin points out that Scherbina's data cannot be blamed for Krivenko arriving at false conclusions. Scherbina also analysed the data on a faulty basis, but his data was so comprehensive as to enable a more accurate and scientific analysis to be undertaken, as Lenin has demonstrated. That Krivenko failed to do so is not the fault of Scherbina, but of Krivenko, whose false conclusions flow directly from his subjectivist ideology, and desire to present the Russian village and “People's Industry” as still being intact, and not having already succumbed to capitalist production, and a differentiation of the peasants into a bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Scherbina provides a table classifying the 24 households by draught animals.
“... that is, a classification on economic, not legal lines—and this gives us every ground for asserting that the ratios between the various categories of the selected 24 typical households are absolutely identical with the ratios between the various economic groups throughout the uyezd.” (p 224)
Lenin produces a table for the whole uyezd, on this basis.
Within this table, the 2 farm labourers, previously referred to, have been removed from the group of 7 poor peasant households. Lenin notes that, here, again, for yet another uyezd, the data shows that the amount of land rented increases with the prosperity of the household.
“Thus the facts for one more uyezd confirm the fallacy of the idea that the allotments are of prime importance. On the contrary, we find that the proportion of allotment land to the total holding of a given group diminishes as the prosperity of the group increases.” (Note ***, p 225-6)
Lenin draws the conclusion from the data that,
“... in the uyezd as a whole not less than one-tenth of the peasants engage in regular, profitable farming and have no need for outside work. (Their income—it is important to note—is expressed in money, and therefore presupposes agriculture of a commercial character.) To a large extent they conduct their farming with the help of hired labourers: not less than one-fourth of all the households employ regular farm labourers, and the number employing temporary day labourers is not known. Further, more than half the peasants in the uyezd are poor (nearly six-tenths: horseless and one-horse peasants, 26% + 31.3% = 57.3%), who conduct their farming at a dead loss and are consequently sinking into ruin, steadily and inexorably being expropriated. They are obliged to sell their labour-power and about one-fourth of the peasants already gain their livelihood more by wage-labour than by agriculture. The remaining are middle peasants, who carry on somehow, farming at a regular loss made up by outside earnings, and who, consequently, have no economic stability whatever.” (p 227-8)
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