THE DEVELOPMENT OF
CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA

    As our starting-point in examining the present system of landlord economy we must take the system of that economy which prevailed in the epoch of serfdom. The essence of the economic system of those days was that the entire land of a given unit of agrarian economy, i.e., of a given estate, was divided into the lord's and the peasants' land; the latter was distributed in allotments among the peasants, who (receiving other means of production in addition, as for example, timber, sometimes cattle, etc.) cultivated it with their own labour and their own implements, and obtained their livelihood from it. The product of this peasants' labour constituted the necessary product, to employ the terminology of theoretical political economy; necessary -- for the peasants in providing them with means of subsistence, and for the landlord in providing him with hands; in exactly the same way as the product which replaces the variable part of the value of capital is a necessary product in capitalist society. The peasants' surplus labour, on the other hand, consisted in their cultivation, with the same implements, of the landlord's land; the product of that labour went to the landlord. Hence, the surplus

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    The corvée system of economy was undermined by the abolition of serfdom. All the main foundations of this system were undermined: natural economy, the self-contained and the self-sufficient character of the landed estate, the close connection between its various constituents, and the landlord's power over the peasants. The peasant's farm was separated from that of the landlord; the peasant was to buy back his land and become the full owner of it; the landlord, to adopt the capitalist system of farming, which, as has just been observed, has a diametrically opposite basis. But such a transition to a totally different system could not, of course, take place at once, and for two different reasons. First, the conditions required for capitalist production did not yet exist. A class of people was required who were accustomed to work for hire; the peasants' implements had to be replaced by those of the landlord; agriculture had to be organised on the same lines as any other commercial and industrial enterprise and not as the business of the lord. All these conditions could only take shape gradually, and the attempts of some landlords,

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    Thus, although the labour-service system predominates in the purely Russian gubernias, the capitalist system of landlord farming must be considered the predominant one at present in European Russia as a whole. Moreover, our table gives a far from complete picture of this predominance, for Group I of the gubernias includes some in which the labour-service system is not applied at all (the Baltic gubernias, for example), whereas Group III includes not a single gubernia, and in all probability not a single farmed estate in which the capitalist system is not applied at least in part. Here is an illustration of this based on Zemstvo statistics (Raspopin; "Private-Landowner Farming in Russia According to Zemstvo Statistics," in Yuridichesky Vestnik [Legal Messenger ], 1887, Nos. 11-12. No. 12, p. 634):

    Lastly, it must be observed that sometimes the labour-service system passes into the capitalist system and merges with it to such an extent that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. For example, a peasant rents a plot of land, undertaking in return to perform a definite number of days' work (a practice which, as we know, is most widespread; see examples in the next section). How are we to draw a line of demarcation between such a "peasant" and the West-European or Ostsee "farm labourer" who receives a plot of land on undertaking to work a definite number of days? Life creates forms that unite in themselves with remarkable gradualness systems of economy whose basic features constitute opposites. It becomes impossible to say where "labour-service" ends and where "capitalism" begins.

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    Having established the fundamental fact that the whole variety of forms of contemporary landlord farming amounts to two systems -- the labour-service and the capitalist systems, in various combinations, we shall now proceed to give an economic description of the two systems and determine which of them is eliminating the other under the influence of the whole course of economic evolution.

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1 chicken + 1 day's female labour; for 43 dess. of spring crop land 12 rubles per dess., and 51 dess. of winter-crop land 16 rubles per dess. in cash + threshing of so many stacks of oats, 7 stacks of buckwheat and 20 stacks of rye + manuring of not less than 5 dessiatines of rented land with manure from own animals, at the rate of 300 cart-loads per dessiatine (Karyshev, Rentings, p. 348). In this case even the peasant's manure is converted into a constituent part of the private landowner's farm! The widespread and varied character of labour-service is indicated by the abundance of terms used for it: otrabotki, otbuchi, otbutki, barshchina, basarinka, posobka, panshchina, postupok, viyemka, etc. (ibid., 342). Sometimes the peasant pledges himself to perform "whatever work the owner orders" (ibid., 346), or in general to "pay heed," "give ear" to him, to "help out." Labour-service embraces the "whole cycle of jobs in rural life. It is as labour-service that all operations relating to field-cultivation and grain and hay harvesting get done, firewood is stocked and loads are carted" (346-347), roofs and chimneys are repaired (354, 348), and the delivery-of poultry and eggs is undertaken (ibid.). An investigator of Gdov Uyezd, St. Petersburg Gubernia, quite justly remarks that the types of labour-service to be met with are of the "former, pre-Reform, corvée character" (349).*

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    The question now arises: in what relation does the labour-service system stand to the post-Reform economy of Russia?

    First of all, the growth of commodity economy conflicts with the labour-service system, since the latter is based on natural economy, on unchanging technique, on inseparable ties between the landlord and the peasant. That is why this system is totally impracticable in its complete form, and every advance in the development of commodity economy and commercial agriculture undermines the conditions of its practicability.

    Next we must take account of the following circumstance. From the foregoing it follows that labour-service, as practised in present-day landlord farming, should be divided into two types: 1) labour-service that can only be performed by a peasant farmer who owns draught animals and implements (e. g., cultivation of "cycle dessiatine," ploughing, etc.), and 2) labour-service that can be performed by a rural proletarian who has no implements (for example, reaping, mowing, threshing, etc.). It is obvious that for both peasant and landlord farming, the first and the second type of labour-service are of opposite significance, and that the latter type constitutes a direct transition to capitalism, merging with it by a number of quite imperceptible transitions. In our literature labour-service is usually referred to in general, without this distinction being made. Yet in the process of the elimination of labour-service by capitalism the shifting of the centre of gravity from the first type of labour-service to the second is of enormous importance. Here is an example from Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia : "On the majority of the estates . . . the cultivation of the fields and the crops, i.e., the jobs on the careful

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differentiation of the peasantry. The connection between labour-service (of the first type) and the middle group of the peasantry is clear and a priori -- as we have already observed above -- and can be proved by Zemstvo statistics. For example, the abstract for Zadonsk Uyezd, Voronezh Gubernia, gives returns of the number of farms doing job-work, in the various groups of peasantry. Here are the data in percentages:

    From the above it is clear that participation in job-work is less prevalent in the two extreme groups. The largest percentage of households taking job-work is to be found in the middle group of the peasantry. Since job-work is also frequently assigned in Zemstvo statistical abstracts to the category of "employments" in general, we see here, consequently, an example of the typical "employments" of the middle peasantry -- exactly as in the preceding chapter we acquainted ourselves with the typical "employments" of the bottom and top groups of the peasantry. The types of "employments" examined there express the development of capitalism (commercial and industrial establishments and the sale of labour-power), whereas the type of "employments" mentioned here, on the contrary, expresses the backwardness of capitalism and the predominance of labour-service (if we assume that in the sum-total of "job-work" the predominant jobs are such as we have assigned to labour-service of the first type).

    The greater the decline of natural economy and of the middle peasantry, the more vigorously is labour-service bound to be eliminated by capitalism. The well-to-do peasants cannot, naturally, serve as a basis for the labour-service system, for it is only dire need that compels the peasant to undertake the worst-paid jobs, jobs that are ruinous for his own farm. But the rural proletariat are equally

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    It is supremely important to note that this inseparable connection between the differentiation of the peasantry and the elimination of labour-service by capitalism -- a connection so obvious in theory -- has long been noted by agricultural writers who have observed the various methods of farming on the landlord estates. In the preface to his collection of articles on Russian agriculture written between 1857 and 1882, Prof. Stebut points out that . . . "In community peasant agriculture the farmer-industrialists are becoming differentiated from the farm labourers. The former, who are becoming cultivators on a big scale, are beginning to employ farm labourers and usually cease to take job-work, unless they find it absolutely necessary to enlarge their crop area somewhat, or to obtain the use of pasture land, which in most cases cannot be done except by taking job-work; the latter, on the other hand, cannot take any job-work for lack of horses. Hence the obvious necessity for a transition, and a speedy transition, to farming based on wage-labour, since the peasants who still take job-work by the dessiatine are, due to the feeble state of their horses and to the multitude of jobs they undertake, beginning to turn out work that is bad from the viewpoint both of quality and of promptness of fulfilment" (p. 20).

    References to the fact that the ruin of the peasantry is leading to the elimination of labour-service by capitalism are also made in current Zemstvo statistical material. In Orel Gubernia, for example, it has been observed that the drop in grain prices ruined many tenants and that the land owners were compelled to increase the area cultivated on capitalist lines. "Simultaneously with the expansion of the area cultivated by the landlords, we observe everywhere a tendency to replace job-work by the labour of regular farm hands and to do away with the use of peasants' implements . . . a tendency to improve the cultivation of the soil by the introduction of up-to-date implements . . . to change the system of farming, to introduce grass crops, to expand and improve livestock farming and to make it profitable" (Agricultural Suruey of Orel Gubernia for 1887-88, pp. 124-126. Quoted from P. Struve's Critical Remarks, pp. 242-244). In Poltava Gubernia, in 1890, when grain prices were low, there was observed "a diminution in peasant renting of land . . . through-

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out the gubernia. . . . Correspondingly, in many places, despite the severe drop in grain prices, there was an increase in the area cultivated by landowners employing regular labour" (The Influence of Harvests, etc., I, 304). In Tambov Gubernia, a considerable increase has been observed in the prices paid for work done by horses: for the three years 1892-1894, these prices were 25 to 30% higher than for the three years 1889-1891 (Novoye Slovo, 1895, No. 3, p. 187). This rise in the cost of work done by horses, a natural result of the decline in the number of peasant horses, cannot but entail the ousting of labour-service by the capitalist system.

    It is by no means our intention, of course, to use these separate references in order to prove that labour-service is being eliminated by capitalism: no complete statistics on this subject are available. We are merely using them to illustrate the point that there is a connection between the differentiation of the peasantry and the elimination of labour-service by capitalism. General and mass-scale data, which prove irrefutably that this elimination is going on, relate to the employment of machinery in agriculture and to the employment of labour freely hired. But before passing to these data, we must first deal with the views of the Narodnik economists on contemporary farming by private landowners in Russia.

    The point that the labour-service system is simply a survival of corvée economy is not denied even by the Narodniks. On the contrary, it is admitted -- although in an insufficiently general form -- by Mr. N.-on (Sketches, § IX) and by Mr. V. V. (particularly explicitly in his article "Our Peasant Farming and Agronomy," in Otechestvenniye Zapiski, 1882, No. 8-9). The more astonishing is it that the Narodniks do their utmost to avoid admitting the clear and simple fact that the present system of private-landowner farming is a combination of the labour-service and the capitalist systems, and that, consequently, the more developed the former, the weaker the latter, and vice versa. They avoid analysing the relation of each of these systems to the productivity of labour, to the payment of the worker's labour,

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to the basic features of the post-Reform economy of Russia, etc. To put the question on this basis, on the basis of recognising the "change " actually taking place, meant to admit the inevitability of the progressive elimination of labour-service by capitalism. To avoid drawing that conclusion, the Narodniks did not stop even at idealising the labour-service system. This monstrous idealisation is the basic feature of the Narodnik views on the evolution of landlord economy. Mr. V. V. even went so far as to write that "the people . . . are the victors in the struggle for the form of agricultural technique, although their victory has resulted in their greater ruin" (The Destiny of Capitalism, p. 288). To admit such a "victory" is more eloquent than to admit defeat! Mr. N.-on discerned in the allotment of land to the peasants under corvée and under labour-service economy the "principle" "of linking the producer and the means of production," but he forgot the tiny circumstance that this allotting of land served as a means of guaranteeing a supply of labour for the landlords. As we have indicated, Marx, in describing pre-capitalist systems of agriculture, analysed all the forms of economic relations that, in general, exist in Russia, and clearly emphasised the necessity of small-scale production and of a tie between the peasant and the land in the case of both labour-rent, rent in kind and money rent. But could it ever have entered his head to elevate this allotting of land to the dependent peasant into a "principle" of an eternal tie between the producer and the means of production? Did he forget even for a moment that this tie between the producer and the means of production was the source of, and condition for, medieval exploitation, constituted the basis for technical and social stagnation and necessarily required all sorts of "other than economic, pressure"?

    An exactly similar idealisation of labour-service and of bondage is displayed by Messrs. Orlov and Kablukov in Moscow Zemstvo Returns when they quote as a model the farm of a certain Mme. Kostinskaya in Podolsk Uyezd (see Vol. V, Pt. I, pp. 175-176, and Vol. II, pp. 59-62, Sect. II). In Mr. Kablukov's opinion, this farm proves "that it is possible to arrange matters in such a way as to preclude (sic !!) such an antagonism" (i.e., antagonism of interests

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    Quite a special place among the Narodniks is held by Engelhardt. To criticise his appraisal of labour-service and capitalism would mean to repeat what has already been said in the preceding section. We think it far more expedient to set against Engelhardt's Narodnik views the story of Engelhardt's own farm. Such a critique will also be of positive value, because the evolution of this farm reflects in miniature, as it were, the main features of the evolution of all private-landowner farming in post-Reform Russia.

    When Engelhardt settled down on the farm it was based on the traditional labour-service and bondage, which preclude "proper farming" (Letters from the Countryside, 559). Labour-service was the cause of the poor condition of cattle raising, of the poor cultivation of the soil and of the monotonous persistence of obsolete systems of field cultivation (118). "I saw that it was impossible . . . to go on farming in the old way" (118). The competition of grain from the steppe regions was bringing down prices and making farming unprofitable (p. 83).* We would observe that from the

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very outset, along with the labour-service system a certain part was played on the farm by the capitalist system: wage-workers, although very few in number, were also employed on the farm when it was run in the old way (the cowman and others), and Engelhardt asserts that the wages of his farm labourer (drawn from among allotment-holding peasants) were "fabulously low" (11), low because "it was imposszble to give more " considering that cattle-raising was in a bad way. The low productivity of labour made it impossible to raise wages. Thus, the starting-point on Engelhardt's farm was the features, familiar to us, of all Russian farms: labour-service, bondage, the very lowest productivity of labour, "incredibly low" payment of labour, routine farming.

    What changes did Engelhardt introduce into this state of things? He began to sow flax -- a commercial and industrial crop requiring the employment of labour on a big scale. The commercial and capitalist character of the cultivation was accordingly enhanced. But how was he to obtain labour? Engelhardt tried at first to employ in the new (commercial) cultivation the old system, that of labour-service. Nothing came of that; the work was badly done, the "dessiatine" proved to be beyond the strength of the peasants, who resisted with all their might "gang work" and bonded terms of labour. "The system had to be changed. Meanwhile I got on my feet. I acquired my own horses, harness, carts, ploughs and harrows and was already in a position to run the farm with regular workers. I began to produce flax, partly with my regular workers and partly on a job basis, hiring labourers for definite jobs" (218). Thus, the transition to the new system of farming and to commercial cultivation demanded the replacement of labour-service by the capitalist system. To increase productivity of labour, Engelhardt resorted to the well-tried method of capitalist production: piece work. Women were engaged to work by the stack, or the pood, and Engelhardt (not without some naïve triumph) tells of the success of this system; the cost of cultivation increased (from 25 rubles per dess. to 35 rubles), but profit also increased by 10 to 20 rubles; the women's productivity

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of labour increased following the change from bonded to hired labour (from half a pood per night to a whole pood) and the earnings of the women increased to 30-50 kopeks per day ("unprecedented in our parts"). The local textile merchant was full of praise for Engelhardt: "Your flax has given a great fillip to trade" (219).

    Applied at first to the cultivation of the commercial crop, hired labour gradually began to embrace other agricultural operations. One of the first operations to be withdrawn by capital from the labour-service system was threshing. It is well known that on all farms run by private landowners this work is mostly performed on capitalist lines. "Part of the land," wrote Engelhardt, "I lease to peasants for cultivation in cycles, for otherwise I would find it hard to cope with the reaping of the rye" (211). Thus, labour-service functions as a direct transition to capitalism, by ensuring the farmer a supply of day labourers in the busiest season. At first cycle-cultivation included threshing, but here, too, the poor quality of the work done compelled the farmer to resort to hired labour. Land began to be leased for cycle-cultivation without threshing, which latter was done partly by farm labourers and partly, through the medium of a contractor, by a team of wage-workers, at piece rates. Here, too, the results of replacing labour-service by the capitalist system were: 1) an increase in the productivity of labour: formerly 16 people threshed 900 sheaves per day, now 8 did 1,100 sheaves; 2) an increase in the yield; 3) a reduction in threshing time; 4) an increase in the worker's earnings; 5) an increase in the farmer's profits (212).

    Further, the capitalist system also embraced tillage operations. Iron ploughs were introduced in place of the old wooden ones, and the work passed from the bound peasant to the farm labourer. Engelhardt triumphantly reports the success of his innovation, the diligence of the labourers, and quite justly shows that the customary accusations flung at the labourer of being lazy and dishonest are due to the "brand of serfdom" and to bonded labour "for the lord," and that the new organisation of farming also demands something of the farmer: a display of enterprise, a knowledge of people and ability to handle them, a knowledge of the job and its scope, acquaintance with the technical and commercial

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imports of agricultural machinery, due partly to the abolition, in 1881, of the duty-free import of pig-iron and cast-iron for the needs of factories producing agricultural machinery. The third period extended from 1885 to the beginning of the 90s. Agricultural machinery, hitherto imported duty-free, now had an import duty imposed (of 50 kopeks gold per pood) . The high duty caused an enormous drop in machinery imports, while home production developed slowly owing to the agricultural crisis which set in at that time. Finally, the beginning of the 90s evidently saw the opening of a fourth period, marked by a fresh rise in the import of agricultural machinery, and by a particularly rapid increase of its home production.

    Let us cite statistics to illustrate these points. Average annual imports of agricultural machinery at various periods were as follows:

    There are, unfortunately, no such complete and precise data on the production of agricultural machinery and implements in Russia. The unsatisfactory state of our factory and-works statistics, the confusing of the production of machinery in general with the production of specifically agricultural machinery, and the absence of any firmly established rules for distinguishing between "factory" and "handicraft" production of agricultural machinery -- all this prevents a complete picture of the development of agricultural machinery production in Russia being obtained. Combining all the data available from the above-mentioned sources, we get the following picture of the development of agricultural machinery production in Russia:

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    These data show the vigorousness of the process in which primitive agricultural implements are giving way to improved ones (and, consequently, primitive forms of farming to capitalism). In 18 years the employment of agricultural machinery increased more than 3.5-fold, and this was mainly because of the expansion of home production, which more than quadrupled. Noteworthy, too, was the shifting of the main centre of such production from the Vistula and Baltic gubernias to the south-Russian steppe gubernias. Whereas in the 70s the main centre of agricultural capitalism in Russia was the western outer gubernias, in the 1890s still more outstanding areas of agricultural capitalism were created in the purely Russian gubernias.*

    It is necessary to add, regarding the data just cited, that although they are based on official (and, as far as we know, the only) information on the subject under examination, they are far from complete and are not fully comparable for the different years. For the years 1876-1879 returns are available that were specially compiled for the 1882 exhibition; they are the most comprehensive, covering not only "factory"

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is why there can be no doubt that the data for 1890 and 1894 greatly understate the actual facts; this is confirmed by the opinion of experts, who considered that in the beginning of the 1890s agricultural machinery and implements were manufactured in Russia to a sum of about 10 million rubles (Agriculture and Forestry, 359), and in 1895 to a sum of nearly 20 million rubles (Vestnik Finansov, 1896, No. 51).

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published by the Pskov Gubernia Zemstvo Administration (Severny Kurier [Northern Courier ], 1899, No. 32), the in creasing use of machinery is noted, particularly of flax scutcherst in connection with the transition from flax production for home use to that for commercial purposes. There is an increase in the number of iron ploughs. Reference is made to the influence of migration in augmenting the number of agricultural machines and in raising wages. In Stavropol Gubernia (ibid., No. 33), agricultural machinery is being employed on an increasing scale in connection with the growing immigration into this gubernia. In 1882, there were 908 machines: in 1891-1893, an average of 29,275; in 1894-1896, an average of 54,874; and in 1895, as many as 64,000 agricultural implements and machines.

    The growing employment of machines naturally gives rise to a demand for engines: along with steam-engines, "oil engines have latterly begun to spread rapidly on our farms" (Productive Forces, I, 56), and although the first engine of this type appeared abroad only seven years ago, there are already 7 factories in Russia manufacturing them. In Kherson Gubernia in the 70s only 134 steam-engines were registered in agriculture (Material for the Statistics of Steam-Engines in the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, 1882), and in 1881 about 500 (Historico-Statistical Survey, Vol. II, section on agricultural implements). In 1884-1886, in three uyezds of the gubernia (out of six), 435 steam threshing machines were registered. "At the present time (1895) there must be at least twice as many" (Tezyakov, Agricultural Workers and the Organisation of Sanitary Supervision over Them, in Kherson Gubernia, Kherson, 1896, p. 71). The Vestnik Finansov (1897, No. 21) states that in Kherson Gubernia, "there are about 1,150 steam-threshers, and in the Kuban Region the number is about the same, etc. . . . Latterly the acquisition of steam-threshers has assumed an industrial character. . . . There have been cases of a five thousand-ruble threshing machine with steam-engine fully covering its cost in two or three good harvest years, and of the owner immediately getting another on the same terms. Thus, 5 and even 10 such machines are often to be met with on small farms in the Kuban Region. There they have become an essential accessory of every farm that is at all well

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    According to the report of the Ekaterinoslav Gubernia Zemstvo Board for 1895, "the use of improved agricultural implements in the gubernia is spreading very rapidly." For example, in the Verkhne-Dnieper Uyezd there were:

    According to the data of the Moscow Gubernia Zemstvo Board, peasants in Moscow Gubernia in 1895 owned 41,210 iron ploughs; 20.2% of all householders owned such ploughs (Vestnik Finansov, 1896, No. 31). In Tver Gubernia, according to a special record made in 1896, there were 51,266 iron ploughs, owned by 16.5% of the total number of householders. In Tver Uyezd there were only 290 iron ploughs in 1890, and 5,581 in 1896 (Statistical Returns for Tver Gubernia, Vol. XIII, Pt. 2, pp. 91, 94). One can judge, therefore, how rapid is the consolidation and improvement of the farms of the peasant bourgeoisie.

    Having established the fact of the extremely rapid development of the production of agricultural machinery and of the employment of machines in Russia's post-Reform agriculture, we must now examine the social and economic significance of this phenomenon. From what has been said above regarding the economics of peasant and landlord farming, the following conclusions may be drawn: on the one hand, capitalism is the factor giving rise to, and extending the use of, machines in agriculture; on the other, the application of machinery to agriculture is of a capitalist character, i.e., it leads to the establishment of capitalist relations and their further development.

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    Let us dwell on the first of these conclusions. We have seen that the labour-service system of economy and the patriarchal peasant economy inseparably connected with it are by their very nature based on routine technique, on the preservation of antiquated methods of production. There is nothing in the internal structure of that economic regime to stimulate the transformation of technique; on the contrary, the secluded and isolated character of that system of economy, and the poverty and downtrodden condition of the dependent peasant preclude the possibility of improvements. In particular, we would point to the fact that the payment of labour under the labour-service system is much lower (as we have seen) than where hired labour is employed; and it is well known that low wages are one of the most important obstacles to the introduction of machines. And the facts do indeed show us that an extensive movement for the transformation of agricultural technique only commenced in the post-Reform period of the development of commodity economy and capitalism. The competition that is the product of capitalism, and the dependence of the cultivator on the world market made the transformation of technique a necessity, while the drop in grain prices made this necessity particularly urgent.*

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dictions. Machines enormously increase the productivity of labour in agriculture, which, before the present epoch, was almost entirely untouched by social development. That is why the mere fact of the growing employment of machines in Russian agriculture is sufficient to enable one to see how utterly unsound is Mr. N.-on's assertion that there is "absolute stagnation" (Sketches, p. 32) in grain production in Russia, and that there is even a "decline in the productivity" of agricultural labour. We shall return to this assertion, which contradicts generally established facts and which Mr. N.-on needed for his idealisation of the pre-capitalist order.

    Further, machines lead to the concentration of production and to the practice of capitalist co-operation in agriculture. The introduction of machinery, on the one hand, calls for capital on a big scale, and consequently is only within the capacity of the big farmers; on the other hand, machines pay only when there is a huge amount of products to be dealt with; the expansion of production becomes a necessity with the introduction of machines. The wide use of reaping machines, steam-threshers, etc., is therefore indicative of the concentration of agricultural production -- and we shall indeed see later that the Russian agricultural region where the employment of machines is particularly widespread (Novorossia) is also distinguished by the quite considerable size of its farms. Let us merely observe that it would be a mistake to