Skvortov relates how the building of a railway links the countryside to the towns and cities. Larger markets for agricultural products now open up; agricultural prices rise, and there is an encouragement of additional commodity production, to meet the demand from the towns. This agricultural commodity production is still peasant production. Alongside it, as Marx also describes, had always gone domestic handicraft production. However, now, the same railway brings these same products to the countryside from the town. In the towns, these commodities are produced by large-scale capitalist production, and so undercut the peasant handicraft production. That means the peasants can no longer rely on the additional income from such production, which is one reason that some of them are ruined. The other reason is that peasant agriculture itself is inefficient and haphazard. It is prone to crop failures.
““Agriculture has also been conducted hitherto in a primitive fashion, i.e., always in an irrational way and, consequently, harvest failures are no rare occurrence, but with the building of the railway line the rise in the price of the product, that formerly resulted from crop failure, either does not take place at all or in any case is considerably smaller. That is why the natural consequence of the very first crop failure is usually the collapse of many farms. The smaller the surpluses left from normal harvests and the more the population have had to count on earnings from handicraft industries, the more rapidly the collapse occurs.”” (p 475-6)
So, as capitalist industry develops the old style peasant production is increasingly unable to provide the agricultural and primary products required, even having exhausted the land in trying to do so. That contributes to crop failures that ruin some peasant farmers and, as the towns are connected to rural areas this capitalist production of the towns destroys the rural handicraft production. As peasant farmers are destroyed, capitalist farms arise to replace them and now use efficient, scientific methods that reduce crop failures, prevent the former destruction of the land, and introduce capital intensive methods that require less land for any given level of output. Some of the ruined peasants become agricultural labourers, the rest move to the towns to join the ranks of the industrial proletariat.
The availability of cheap labour-power, as a result of the creation of this relative surplus population, means it is possible to establish factories producing modern agricultural implements, to replace primitive tools, used by peasant producers, and as these are introduced in capitalist farms that steadily increase in size, so productivity is raised further. The more the average farm size increases the this makes it possible to also introduce machines that raise productivity further still.
“Other kinds of industries also develop. “In general there is a development of urban life.” There is a development, out of necessity, of mining industries, “since, on the one hand, a mass of free hands is available and, on the other, thanks to the railways and the development of the mechanised manufacturing and other industries there is an increased demand for the products of the mining industry.” (p 477)
On this basis, a district that was previously densely populated becomes depopulated, as the former agricultural population is dispersed. A much smaller number are now employed in agriculture, but this agriculture now, as capitalist agriculture, is much more efficient in terms both of land use and employment of labour. It produces much more with less. And, the same is true with other primary production. At the same time, the transformation of agriculture and primary production into capitalist production, requires the development of industries to produce the machines and other equipment required for this production.
“Increased intensity is manifested by the change in the system of crop raising. The three-field system is impossible because of harvest fluctuations. A transition has to be made to a “crop rotation system,” which does away with harvest fluctuations. Of course, the complete crop rotation system, which requires a very high level of intensity, cannot be introduced immediately. At first, therefore, grain crop rotation [proper succession of crops] is introduced; cattle-raising, and the planting of fodder crops are developed.” (p 477-8)
All this demonstrates, Lenin says, once again, that technical progress, under commodity production, leads inexorably to bourgeois economy. The farmer, like the petty producer in the towns is divided into those that become capitalists and the rest who become proletarians.
“Mr. N. —on’s chief error is not that he ignores intensive agriculture and confines himself to extensive agriculture, but his vapid lamentations about “us” going the wrong way to which he treats the reader, instead of analysing the class contradictions in the sphere of Russian agricultural production. Mr. Struve repeats this error by obscuring the class contradictions with “objective” arguments, and only corrects Mr. N. —on’s secondary errors.” (p 478)
Its a shame that Struve does that, Lenin says, because, in doing so, he weakens his correct argument that ““fear” of technical progress in agriculture is absurd.” (p 478)
No comments:
Post a Comment