The review of the census data, Lenin says, confirmed the view that the term “handicraft industry” was meaningless.
“We have seen that this term has been used to cover the most diverse forms of industry, we might even say: practically every form of industry known to science. And, indeed, the term has been made to include patriarchal artisans who work for private customers using the customers’ own materials and receiving remuneration sometimes in kind, sometimes in cash. Further, it has been made to include representatives of an entirely different form of industry—the small commodity producers who work together in families. It has been made to include owners of capitalist workshops who employ wage-workers, and also these wage-workers themselves, who sometimes number several dozen to an establishment. It has been made to include manufactory owners who possess capital in considerable quantity and command a whole system of detail workshops. It has likewise been made to include workers employed at home for capitalists. In all these subdivisions, both agriculturists and non-agriculturists, peasants and town dwellers have equally been regarded as “handicraftsmen.”” (p 436)
No socio-economic analysis and conclusions could be drawn from such a classification. Yet, that classification was used by the Narodniks wherever they were undertaking such analysis, throughout Russia.
“And it is a favourite method of our Narodnik economists to lump together this endless variety of forms of industry, to call this jumble “handicraft,” “people’s” industry, and—risum teneatis, amici!—to contrast this meaningless hodge podge with “capitalism,” with “factory industry.” This admirable method, which testifies to the remarkable profundity and erudition of its initiator, was, if we are not mistaken, “theoretically justified” by Mr. V. V., who on the very first pages of his Essays on Handicraft Industry takes the official figures for the number of “factory” workers in Moscow, Vladimir and other gubernias, compares them with the number of “handicraftsmen,” and finds, of course, that “people’s industry” in Holy Russia is developed to a far greater extent than “capitalism.”” (p 436)
What Vorontsov failed to mention was that the overwhelming majority of these handicraftsmen worked for capitalist manufacturers. And, these same methods are used today by liberals who seek to present a vision of capitalism based upon the small business myth. The data for Perm showed annual output of “handicraft” industry as 5 million roubles, and factory output as 30 million roubles, but showed 19,000 people employed in factories, as against 26,000 in handicraft production.
“Naturally, such a classification offers endless scope for reflections on the “possibility of a different path for the fatherland”!” (p 437)
And, the same is argued today by the liberals who point to the existence of 5 million small businesses in Britain, for example, and the large number of people employed by them. But, as I have pointed out in relation to this small business myth, a) the large majority of those businesses are transient, about 75% go out of business in the first five years, b) for that same reason they account for a large proportion of unemployment as well as employment, c) they are, for the reasons discussed earlier, dependent upon large businesses, which is why, whenever a large producer in an area closes, a much larger number of these small businesses get taken down with it. They are not the backbone of the economy, but mere adjuncts of it.
Lenin, therefore, turns to an analysis of this data in relation to the workers employed in these two sectors, and to produce a more rational and useful classification.
The data included in this table was compiled from a range of sources, and, as Lenin says, is still not entirely satisfactory, because it does not include factory owners, but does include handicraftsmen who, in some cases, employed dozens of workers and so on.
“In any case, this classification gives an accurate idea of the real state of affairs, it explains the real social and economic relations of the various participants in industry, and, consequently, their status and their interests—and such an explanation is the supreme task of any scientific economic investigation.” (p 439)
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