Prefaces

• • Prefaces
  • Chapter I. The Theoretical Mistakes of the Narodnik Economists
  • Chapter II. The Differentiation of the Peasantry
  • Chapter III. The Landowners’ Transition from Corvée to Capitalist Economy
  • Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture
  • Chapter V. The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry
  • Chapter VI. Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry
  • Chapter VII. The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry
  • Chapter VIII. The Formation of the Home Market
  • Appendices

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Preface to the First Edition

Cover of the first edition of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 1989

In the work here presented, the author has set himself the aim of examining the question of how a home market is being formed for Russian capitalism. As we know, he principal exponents of Narodnik views (chief among them being Messrs. V. V. and N.–on), and it will be our task to criticise these views. We have not considered it possible to limit ourselves in this criticism to examining the mistakes and misconceptions in our opponents’ views; in answering the question raised it seemed to us that it was not enough to adduce facts showing the formation and growth of a home market, for the objection might be raised that such facts had been selected arbitrarily and that facts showing the contrary had been omitted. It seemed to us that it was necessary to examine the whole process of the development of capitalism in Russia, to endeavour to depict it in its entirety. It goes without saying that such an extensive task would be beyond the powers of a single person, were a number of limitations not introduced. Firstly, as the title itself shows, we treat the problem of the development of capitalism in Russia exclusively from the standpoint of the home market, leaving aside the problem of the foreign market and data on foreign trade. Secondly, we limit ourselves purely to the post-Reform period. Thirdly, we deal mainly and almost exclusively with data concerning the interior, purely Russian, gubernias. Fourthly, we limit ourselves exclusively to the economic aspect of the process. But even with all the limitations indicated the topic that remains is an extremely broad one. The author does not close his eyes at all to the difficulty, and even the danger, of dealing with so broad a topic, but it seemed to him that to elucidate the problem of the home market for Russian capitalism it was absolutely necessary to show the connection between, and interdependence of, the various aspects of the process taking place in all spheres of the social economy. We therefore limit ourselves to an examination of the main features of the process, leaving a more specific study of it to further investigations.

The plan of our work is as follows: in Chapter I we shall examine, as briefly as possible, the basic theoretical propositions of abstract political economy on the subject of the home market for capitalism. This will serve as a sort of introduction to the rest of the work, the factual part of it, and will relieve us of the need to make repeated references to theory in our further exposition. In the three following chapters we shall endeavour to describe the capitalist evolution of agriculture in post-Reform Russia, namely, in Chapter II we shall examine Zemstvo statistical data on the differentiation of the peasantry; in Chapter III data on the transitional state of landlord economy, and on the replacement of the corvée system of this economy by the capitalist; and in Chapter IV data on the forms in which the formation of commercial and capitalist agriculture is proceeding. The next three chapters will be devoted to the forms and stages of the development of capitalism in our industry: in Chapter V we shall examine the first stages of capitalism in industry, namely, in small peasant (known as handicraft) industry ; in Chapter VI data on capitalist manufacture and on capitalist domestic industry, and in Chapter VII data on the development of large-scale machine industry. In the last chapter (VIII), we shall make an attempt to indicate the connection between the various aspects of the process that have been described and to present a general picture of that process.

P.S. To our extreme regret we have not been able to use for this work the excellent analysis of “the development of agriculture in capitalist society” made by K. Kautsky in his book Die Agrarfrage (Stuttgart, Dietz, 1899; I. Abschn. “Die Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft in der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft”).

This book (which we received when the greater part of the present work had already been set up in type) is, after Vol. III of Capital, the most noteworthy contribution to recent economic literature. Kautsky investigates the “main tendencies” in the capitalist evolution of agriculture; his purpose is to examine the diverse phenomena in modern agriculture as “particular manifestations of one general process” (Vorrede, VI). It is interesting to note how far the main features of this general process in Western Europe and in Russia are identical, notwithstanding the tremendous peculiarities of the latter, in both the economic and non-economic spheres. For example, typical of modern capitalist agriculture in general is the progressive division of labour and the employment of machinery (Kautsky, IV, b, c), a phenomenon also noticeable in post-Reform Russia (see later, Chapter III, §§ VII and VIII; Chapter IV, particularly § IX). The process of the “proletarisation of the peasantry” (the heading of Chapter VIII of Kautsky’s book) is manifested everywhere in the spread of wage-labour in every form among the small peasants (Kautsky, VIII, b); we see the parallel of this in Russia in the formation of a huge class of allotment-holding wage-workers (see later, Chapter II). The existence of a small peasantry in every capitalist society is due not to the technical superiority of small production in agriculture, but to the fact that the small peasants reduce the level of their requirements below that of the wage-workers and tax their energies far more than the latter do (Kautsky, VI, b; “the agricultural wage-worker is better off than the small peasant,” says Kautsky repeatedly: S. 110, 317, 320); the same thing is also to be observed in Russia (see later, Chapter II, § XI, C). It is natural, therefore, that West-European and Russian Marxists should agree in their appraisal of such phenomena as “agricultural outside employments,” to use the Russian term, or the “agricultural wage-labour of migratory peasants,” as the Germans say (Kautsky, S. 192; cf. later, Chapter III, § X); or of such a phenomenon as the migration of workers and peasants from the villages to the towns and factories (Kautsky, IX, especially S. 343; and many other places. Cf. later, Chapter VIII, § II); the transplantation of large-scale capitalist industry to the rural districts (Kautsky, S. 187. Cf. later, VII, § VIII). This is quite apart from the same appraisal of the historical significance of agricultural capitalism (Kautsky, passim, especially S. 289, 292, 298. Cf. later, Chapter IV, § IX), from the same recognition of the progressive nature of capitalist relations in agriculture as compared with pre-capitalist relations [Kautsky, S. 382: “The ousting des Gesindes (of personally dependent farm labourers, servants) and der Instleute (“midway between the farm labourer and the tenant cultivator”: the peasant who rents land, making payment by labour-service) by day labourers who outside of working hours are free men, would mark great social progress.” Cf. later, Chapter IV, § IX, 4]. Kautsky categorically declares that the adoption by the village community of large-scale modern agriculture conducted communally “is out of the question” (S. 338); that the agronomists in Western Europe who demand the consolidation and development of the village community are not socialists at all, but people representing the interests of the big landowners, who want to tie down the workers by granting them patches of land (S. 334); that in all European countries those who represent the landowners’ interests want to tie down the agricultural workers by allotting them land and are already trying to give legislative effect to the appropriate measures (S. 162); that all attempts to help the small peasantry by introducing handicraft industry (Hausindustrie)—that worst form of capitalist exploitation—“should be most resolutely combated” (S. 181). We consider it necessary to emphasise the complete unanimity of opinion between the West European and the Russian Marxists, in view of the latest attempts of the spokesmen of Narodism to draw a sharp distinction between the two (see the statement made by Mr. V. Vorontov on February 17, 1899, at the Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Trade, Novoye Vremya [New Times ], No. 8255, February 19, 1899).

Preface to the Second Edition

Cover of the second edition of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 1908, autographed by the author.

Such a revision will possibly require a sequel to the present work. In that case the first volume would have to be confined to an analysis of Russian economy before the revolution, and the second volume devoted to a study of the results and achievements of the revolution.—Lenin

This book was written in the period preceding the Russian Revolution, during the slight lull that set in after the outbreak of the big strikes of 1895-1896. At that time the working-class movement withdrew, as it were, into itself, spreading in breadth and depth and paving the way for the beginning in 1901 of the demonstration movement.

The analysis of the social-economic system and, consequently, of the class structure of Russia given in this work on the basis of an economic investigation and critical analysis of statistics, has now been confirmed by the open political action of all classes in the course of the revolution. The leading role of the proletariat has been fully revealed. It has also been revealed that the strength of the proletariat in the process of history is immeasurably greater than its share of the total population. The economic basis of the one phenomenon and the other is demonstrated in the present work.

Further, the revolution is now increasingly revealing the dual position and dual role of the peasantry. On the one hand, the tremendous survivals of corvée economy and all kinds of survivals of serfdom, with the unprecedented impoverishment and ruin of the peasant poor, fully explain the deep sources of the revolutionary peasant movement, the deep roots of the revolutionary character of the peasantry as a mass. On the other hand, in the course of the revolution, the character of the various political parties, and the numerous ideological-political trends reveal the inherently contradictory class structure of this mass, its petty-bourgeois character, the antagonism between the proprietor and the proletarian trends within it. The vacillation of the impoverished small master between the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat is as inevitable as the phenomenon existent in every capitalist society that an insignificant minority of small producers wax rich, “get on in the world,” turn into bourgeois, while the overwhelming majority are either utterly ruined and become wage-workers or paupers, or eternally eke out an almost proletarian existence. The economic basis of both these trends among the peasantry is demonstrated in the present essay.

With this economic basis the revolution in Russia is, of course, inevitably a bourgeois revolution. This Marxist proposition is absolutely irrefutable. It must never be forgotten. It must always be applied to all the economic and political problems of the Russian Revolution.

But one must know how to apply it. A concrete analysis of the status and the interests of the different classes must serve as a means of defining the precise significance of this truth when applied to this or that problem. The opposite mode of reasoning frequently met with among the Right-wing Social-Democrats headed by Plekhanov, i.e., the endeavour to look for answers to concrete questions in the simple logical development of the general truth about the basic character of our revolution, is a vulgarisation of Marxism and downright mockery of dialectical materialism. Of such people, who from the general truth of the character of this revolution deduce, for example, the leading role of the “bourgeoisie” in the revolution, or the need for socialists to support the liberals, Marx would very likely have repeated the words once quoted by him from Heine: “I have sown dragon’s teeth and harvested fleas.”

With the present economic basis of the Russian Revolution, two main lines of its development and outcome are objectively possible:

Either the old landlord economy, bound as it is by thousands of threads to serfdom, is retained and turns slowly into purely capitalist, “Junker” economy. The basis of the final transition from labour-service to capitalism is the internal metamorphosis of feudalist landlord economy. The entire agrarian system of the state becomes capitalist and for a long time retains feudalist features. Or the old landlord economy is broken up by revolution, which destroys all the relics of serfdom, and large landownership in the first place. The basis of the final transition from labour-service to capitalism is the free development of small peasant farming, which has received a tremendous impetus as a result of the expropriation of the landlords’ estates in the interests of the peasantry. The entire agrarian system becomes capitalist, for the more completely the vestiges of serfdom are destroyed the more rapidly does the differentiation of the peasantry proceed. In other words: either—the retention, in the main, of landed proprietorship and of the chief supports of the old “superstructure”; hence, the predominant role of the liberal-monarchist bourgeois and landlord, the rapid transition of the well-to-do peasantry to their side, the degradation of the peasant masses, not only expropriated on a vast scale but enslaved, in addition, by one or other kind of Cadet–proposed land-redemption payments, and downtrodden and dulled by the dominance of reaction; the executors of such a bourgeois revolution will be politicians of a type approximating to the Octobrists. Or—the destruction of landlordism and of all the chief supports of the corresponding old “superstructure”; the predominant role of the proletariat and the peasant masses, with the neutralising of the unstable or counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie; the speediest and freest development of the productive forces on a capitalist basis, under the best circumstances for the worker and peasant masses at all conceivable under commodity production;—hence, the establishment of the most favourable conditions for the further accomplishment by the working class of its real and fundamental task of socialist reorganisation. Of course, infinitely diverse combinations of elements of this or that type of capitalist evolution are possible, and only hopeless pedants could set about solving the peculiar and complex problems arising merely by quoting this or that opinion of Marx about a different historical epoch.

The essay here presented to the reader is devoted to an analysis of the pre-revolutionary economy of Russia. In a revolutionary epoch, life in a country proceeds with such speed and impetuosity that it is impossible to define the major results of economic evolution in the heat of political struggle. Messrs. the Stolypins, on the one hand, and the liberals on the other (and not only Cadets  la Struve, but all the Cadets in general), are working systematically, doggedly and consistently to accomplish the revolution according to the first pattern. The coup d’état of June 3, 1907, that we have recently witnessed, marks a victory for the counter-revolution, which is striving to ensure the complete predominance of the landlords in the so-called representative body of the Russian people. But how far this “victory” is a lasting one is another matter; the struggle for the second outcome of the revolution goes on. Not only the proletariat, but also the broad masses of the peasantry are striving, more or less resolutely, more or less consistently, and more or less consciously, for this outcome. However much the counter-revolution tries to strangle the direct mass struggle by outright violence, however much the Cadets try to strangle it by means of their despicable and hypocritical counter revolutionary ideas, that struggle, in spite of all, is breaking out, now here and now there, and laying its impress upon the policy of the “labour,” Narodnik parties, although the top circles of petty-bourgeois politicians are undoubtedly contaminated (especially the “Popular Socialists” and Trudoviks) with the Cadet spirit of treachery, Molchalinism and smugness characteristic of moderate and punctilious philistines or bureaucrats.

How this struggle will end, what the final result of the first onset of the Russian Revolution will be—it is at present impossible to say. Hence, the time has not yet come (moreover, the immediate Party duties of a participant in the working-class movement leave no leisure) for a thorough revision of this essay. The second edition cannot overstep the bounds of a characterisation of Russian economy before the revolution. The author had to confine himself to going over and correcting the text and also to making the most essential additions from the latest statistical material. These are recent horse-census data, harvest statistics, returns of the 1897 census of the population of Russia, new data from factory statistics, etc.

The Author

July 1907

Cover of the German edition (1894) of K. Marx's Capital, Vol. III, Part 1, used by Lenin.