Lenin then examines the oil millers. That is those involved in growing flax and other such crops from which vegetable oils are extracted. The average wage of their agricultural labourers was 35.1 roubles. These producers had other benefits of larger scale capitalist production.
““The refuse, or oil-cake that remains after the milling process, serves as excellent cattle feed, thanks to which it is possible to manure the fields on a larger scale. Thus the household derives a triple advantage from the industry: the income from the industry itself, the income from livestock, and a higher yield from the fields” (164). “Agriculture is carried on by them” (the oil-millers) “on a wide scale, and many of them, not contenting themselves with the community allotments they get, also rent land from the poor households” (168). The data showing the distribution of flax and hemp growing by uyezds reveal “a certain connection between the area under flax and hemp and the distribution of the oil-milling industry among the uyezds of the gubernia” (170).” (p 389)
This kind of technical relation commonly results in industrial producers engaging in the primary production required for the provision of materials, not just in agriculture. For example, iron and steel producers were also often involved in coal mining.
“Hence, the commercial and industrial enterprises in this case are those known as technical agricultural industries, the development of which is always characteristic of the progress of commercial and capitalist agriculture.” (p 389)
Of the 421 flour millers, 385 were also involved in agriculture.
“Like the oil-milling industry, “flour-milling serves the millers as a means of marketing the produce of their own farms in the most profitable form”.” (p 389)
This was still not the kind of large-scale capitalist production that was seen in Western Europe and North America, but it was clearly small scale capitalist production that was rapidly developing towards the kind of concentration and centralisation of capital that was seen elsewhere.
“These examples, we think, should be quite sufficient to show how absurd it is to regard the term “handicraftsman agriculturist” as signifying something homogeneous and uniform. All the agriculturists we have cited are representatives of the agricultural petty bourgeoisie, and to combine these types with the rest of the peasantry, including even the ruined households, is to obscure the most characteristic features of reality.” (p 389)
The Narodniks argued that, although stratification in property ownership was not precluded, by the forms of communal production, it had never been a significant factor, and any such division tended to be obliterated rather than intensified. It was capitalist production that was the cause of stratification, they argued.
“To say that the claim that differentiation of the peasantry is growing and spreading is an “arbitrary” one, means to ignore well-known facts: peasants lose their horses and abandon the land on a mass scale and this is coupled with “technical progress in peasant farming” (cf. Progressive Trends in Peasant Farming by Mr. V. V.); the increase in the letting and mortgaging of allotments is coupled with increased land renting; the increase in the number of commercial and industrial establishments is coupled with an increase in the number of migratory industrialists, i.e., vagrant wage-workers; etc. etc.” (p 390)
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