Lenin makes the point that an objection that, in the given example, the proportion of wage workers is high is irrelevant, because what is being discussed is the capitalist nature of the production, and the social relations it represents, along with the trajectory it projects. To illustrate this point, Lenin takes another example, the pottery industry, which has a “weak bourgeois character”. Lenin takes data from the book produced by Isayev. Lenin again divides the pottery producers into three groups – those employing 1-3 workers, 4-5 workers, and over 5 workers. The data is collated in the following table.
“Obviously, the relations in this industry too—and similar examples could be quoted indefinitely—are bourgeois: we find the same break-up arising out of commodity economy and it is a specifically capitalist break-up, leading to the exploitation of wage-labour, which already plays a primary part in the top group, where one-eighth of all the establishments and 30% of the total workers produce nearly one-third of the total output, and the productivity of labour is considerably above the average. These production relations alone are enough to explain the appearance and power of the buyers-up. We see how a minority, owning larger and more profitable establishments, and receiving a “net” income from the labour of others (in the top group of potters there is an average of 5.5 wage-workers per establishment), accumulate “savings,” while the majority are ruined, and even the petty masters (not to mention the wage-workers) are unable to make ends meet.” (p 216)
These bourgeois social relations are the available result of generalised commodity production, and the development of social labour. The more efficient commodity producers grow larger, the least efficient go bust, and are turned into wage workers, their means of production taken over by the former, which, thereby, becomes capital.
“And do not think that this exploitation, this oppression, is any less marked because relations of this kind are still poorly developed, because the accumulation of capital, concomitant with the ruination of the producers, is negligible. Quite the contrary. This only leads to cruder, serf forms of exploitation, to a situation where capital, not yet able to subjugate the worker directly, by the mere purchase of his labour-power at its value, enmeshes him in a veritable net of usurious extortion, binds him to itself by kulak methods, and as a result robs him not only of the surplus-value, but of an enormous part of his wages, too, and, what is more, grinds him down by preventing him from changing his “master,” and humiliates him by compelling him to regard as a boon the fact that capital “gives” (sic!) him work. It is obvious that not a single worker would ever consent to exchange his status for that of a Russian “independent” handicraftsman in “real,” “people’s” industry.” (p 216-7)
In other words, this is an affirmation of the point cited earlier, in the quote from Marx. The small handicraft producers had the appearance of being “independent” but were, in reality, wage workers. A similar example is given by Marx of the Scottish pebble collectors, who could only sell their pebbles to the stonemasons at a price way below their value, and barely enough to cover the value of their labour-power. A modern equivalent would be the Uber driver, or other “independent” or “self-employed” gig economy workers, who, in reality, are tied to a large capital, and deprived even of the employment rights of a full-time, permanent wage worker.
“Actually, the organisation of our “people’s” handicraft industries furnishes an excellent illustration to the general history of the development of capitalism. It clearly demonstrates the latter’s origin, its inception, for example, in the form of simple co-operation (the top group in the pottery industry)” (p 218)
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