The Handicraft Census In Perm Gubernia, Article II, Section V - Part 1 of 4

Part V - Large and Small Establishments.—The Incomes of the Handicraftsmen

In this section, Lenin examines incomes in handicraft industry more closely. In doing so, he looks at incomes in a range of industries, but, rather than using the “average” figures that were the hallmark of Narodnik analysis, Lenin divides these industries into large, average and small producers. In doing so, he exposes the petty-bourgeois, moralistic nonsense that is manifest in claims that capitalism immiserates the workers. He shows the opposite is the case, with workers incomes not only being higher in the larger capitalistic enterprises, but also, in many cases, even being higher than that of the masters in the smaller businesses.

The only sense in which it impoverishes workers was in the sense described by Marx, of depriving them of the individual ownership of the means of production, but, in doing so, it creates the conditions in which the ownership of the means of production, assumes the superior forms, firstly, of capitalist property, then of collectively owned socialised capital, which represents the material form upon which Socialism itself is constructed.

Lenin provides a series of tables, for different industries, summarising these findings. As the basic conclusions, for each industry, are the same as outlined above, I am providing one table summarising the results for all industries, focusing on the relative differences between big and small producers.

Industry	Output Per Worker		Wages Per Worker		Masters/Family Income Per Head
	Large	Small	Large	Small	Large	Small
Felt Boot	168.00	82.40	45.60	28.50	75.00	42.00
Bast Matting	171.40	58.20	26.50	26.40	327.00	34.00
Rope & String	800.00	146.00	83.80	45.00	1,119.00	60.50
Pitch & Tar	170.70	47.30	40.80	23.20	269.70	26.80
Baking	525.00	273.00	48.80	34.40	694.00	46.80
Pottery	161.00	48.90	80.20	30.00	152.00	34.30
Brick	57.90	20.00	31.40	18.20	144.00	16.00

The Narodnik authors of The Sketch tried to deny the implications of the data, in relation to the superiority of the larger, more capitalistic production, but, as Lenin describes, their arguments were also fallacious. For example, they tried to argue that the higher gross incomes of the larger establishments were due to a larger element of wear and tear of fixed capital. Lenin cites Marx's analysis that, although large-scale machine production involves a larger absolute value of wear and tear, it represents a relatively smaller proportion of total costs, because the value of fixed capital does not rise in the same proportion as the volume of production it makes possible. Lenin counters similar arguments in relation to transport and marketing costs, showing that these are also proportionately smaller for the large producer.

As with other Narodnik analysis, therefore, Lenin shows that the combining of data for large and small enterprises, to produce an “average” figure for supposed “people's production”, creates entirely spurious results that hide real differences and present as homogeneous something that was heterogeneous, and already in a state of advanced differentiation, resulting from competition.

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