Monday 6 December 2021

The Handicraft Census In Perm, Article I, Section I - Part 4 of 6

The same process of differentiation that occurred in the towns is then transferred to the countryside, and so the same process that led to capitalist production in the towns now begins to develop in agriculture. The data provided by Lenin shows that, of the establishments in Group I, owning land, 37.3% were in sub-group 1, 46.1% in 2, and 16.6% in 3. That is the largest proportion were those not engaged in commodity production, but were artisans working to meet the orders of private clients. The next largest group produced commodities to be sold by themselves on the market, with only a small proportion producing for buyers-up. By contrast, in the second group, the largest proportion 46.4% were in the third sub-group, with 32.6% in the first sub-group, and only 21% in the second sub-group.

Similarly, in Group I, the proportion of family workers to wage workers is higher, and this is more pronounced in relation to sub-group 2. For Group I, the ratio, in sub-group 2 is 6:1, whereas, in Group II it is 3:1. Of all establishments employing wage workers, the proportion is just over 25%, in Group I, and 33% in Group II.

“... the Sketch tells us nothing about the division of the rural population of Perm Gubernia into agriculturists and landless people, and so we cannot determine in which of these categories the industries are most developed. There is a similar neglect of the highly interesting question of the territorial distribution of industry (the investigators were in possession of the most exact information on this point, for each village separately), of the concentration of industrialists in the non-agricultural, factory, or trade and industrial settlements generally, of the centres of each branch of industry, and of the spread of the industries from these centres to the surrounding villages.” (p 362-3)

The data collected on when establishments were created would illustrate that point, but was not provided. In fact, we know that the process is one in which commodity production accelerates first in the towns, leading to a differentiation of producers into capitalists and wage labourers, and only subsequently extends into the rural areas. Lenin provides another table (p 344) which shows the distribution of establishments by uyezd. The data is grouped to show,

“1) the five “uyezds where the proportion of handicraftsmen working for the market is largest and where, simultaneously, the development of handicraft industry is relatively high”; 2) the five “uyezds where the development of the handicraft industry is relatively weak, and where the handicraftsmen working for the market predominate”; 3) the two “uyezds where it is also at a low level, but where the majority often consists of handicraftsmen who fulfil orders for private customers.”” (p 363)

The conclusions from the data are clear. The more highly developed the industry, the greater the proportion of commodity production; the larger the proportion of handicraftsmen who are part of the non-agricultural population; the more developed are capitalist relations.

Lenin summarises the data from the table showing that it is in the more rural uyezds where production is developed least, and where commodity production and capitalist relations are least developed.

“The district with the largest (absolute and relative) number of “handicraftsmen” is the one where capitalism is most developed: the growth of commodity production forces artisan production into the background, leads to the development of capitalism and to the transfer of industries to non-agriculturists, in other words, to the separation of industry from agriculture (or, perhaps, to the concentration of industries among the non-agricultural population).” (p 365)

In other words, this is consistent with the growth of commodity production in the towns, which leads to a differentiation into an urban bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the subsequent spreading out of this process from the towns to the rural areas.

“The reader may doubt whether it is right to regard capitalism as being more developed in the first group of uyezds, where there are fewer wage-workers than in the second, but where more handicraftsmen work for buyers-up. Domestic industry, it may be objected, is a lower form of capitalism. But we shall see below that many of these buyers-up are manufacturers who own large capitalist establishments. Here domestic industry is an adjunct of the factory, and signifies a higher degree of concentration of production and capital (some of the buyers-up have 200, 500, even 1,000 persons and more, working for them), a higher degree of division of labour, and, consequently, a more highly developed form of capitalism. This form is to the small workshop of the owner who employs wage-workers as capitalist manufacture is to capitalist simple co-operation.” (p 365)


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