The data shows that the condition for the middle peasants is one of permanent instability. For the mass of poor peasants, it shows their expropriation and conversion into wage labourers. For the 10% who are in the group of rich peasants, their net income is sufficient to enable them to accumulate capital, and, thereby, to buy up, concentrate and centralise the means of production of the poor peasants who could no longer subsist. It means they do not have to engage in domestic industry, but can concentrate on operating as capitalist farmers. They are able to employ some of the ruined poor peasants as wage labourers.
“Because he ignored this latter circumstance, the author failed to observe another very interesting feature of these budgets, namely, that they likewise prove that the differentiation of the peasantry is creating a home market. On the one hand, as we pass from the top group to the bottom, we observe the growing importance of income from industries (6.5%, 18.8% and 23.6% of the total budget of the prosperous, middle and poor peasants, respectively), that is, chiefly from the sale of labour-power. On the other hand, as we pass from the bottom to the top groups, we observe the growing commodity (nay, more: bourgeois, as we have seen) character of agriculture and an increase in the proportion of produce disposed of:” (p 228-9)
Lenin provides a calculation of money income to total income. It required a complex calculation that Scherbina did not provide. Lenin provides the details of the calculation required in Note * p 229. On the basis of this calculation, Lenin says that the money income comprises 45.9%, 28.3%, and 25.4% of the total income for the rich, middle and poor peasants respectively.
Lenin quotes Krivenko, who, in his own work, was forced to the correct conclusion, by the words of a local peasant, who said,
“it is precisely this circumstance, commodity economy, that “cultivates” “special abilities” and gives rise to one preoccupation: “to get it (the hay) mown as cheaply as possible” and “sell it as dear as possible” (p. 156). This serves as a “school” which “awakens” (quite true!) “and refines commercial gifts.” “Talented people come to the fore to become the Kolupayevs, the Derunovs and other types of blood-suckers, while the simple-hearted and simple-minded fall behind, deteriorate, become impoverished and pass into the ranks of the farm labourers” (p. 156). (p 229)
Krivenko was also led to conclude that,
“The worker must be hired cheap and the most made out of him,” (Note ** p 229)
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