The Agrarian Question and the Critics of Marx

The Agrarian Question and the Critics of Marx

X

The “Work” of the German Bulgakov, E. David

Ed. David’s book, Socialism and Agriculture, is an exceptionally clumsy and cumbrous summary of all the erroneous methods and arguments which we have seen in the works of Bulgakov, Hertz, and Chernov. We could, there fore, completely ignore David; but since his “work” is undoubtedly at the present time the principal work of revisionism on the agrarian question, we think it necessary once again to show how the revisionist fraternity write learned treatises.

To the question of machinery in agriculture David devotes the whole of Chapter IV of his book (pp. 115-93 of the Russian translation), apart from numerous references to the same subject in other chapters. The politico-economic essence of the matter is completely submerged in hundreds of technicalities which the author examines in minute detail. Machinery does not play the same role in agriculture as in industry; in agriculture there is no central motor; most of the machines are only temporarily employed; some machines make no saving in production costs, and so on and so forth. David regards such conclusions (see pp. 190-93, the question of machinery summed up) as a refutation of Marxist theory! But this merely obscures the question instead of clarifying it. That agriculture is backward compared with manufacturing industry is not open to the slightest doubt. This backwardness requires no proof. By examining, point by point, the various ways in which that backwardness is displayed, by piling example upon example and case upon case, David merely pushes into the back ground the actual subject of the research, namely: is the use of machines of a capitalist character? Is the increased use of machines due to the growth of capitalist agriculture?

David utterly fails to understand how the question should be presented by a Marxist. David’s standpoint is essentially that of the petty bourgeois, who consoles himself with the relatively, slow progress of capitalism and is afraid to look at social evolution as a whole. Thus, on the question of agricultural machinery, David quotes Bensing, quotes him innumerable times[13] (pp. 125, 135, 180, 182, 184, 186, 189, 506, and others of the Russian translation). David can positively be said to exasperate the reader by passing from detail to detail without sifting his material, without coherence, without a reasoned presentation of the question, without aim. Consequently, David provides no summing up of Bensing’s conclusions. What I said in 1901 in opposition to Mr. Bulgakov fully applies to David.[1] First, a summary of Bensing’s conclusions shows the in disputable advantage which farms using machines have over those that do not use them. None of the “corrections” to Bensing in minor details, with which David has stuffed his book, can alter this conclusion. David passes over this general conclusion in silence in exactly the same way as Mr. Bulgakov did! Secondly, while quoting Bensing without end, without reason, without coherence, David, like Mr. Bulgakov, failed to note Bensing’s bourgeois views concerning machinery in both industry and agriculture. In short, David does not even understand the socio-economic aspect of the question. He is unable to generalise and connect the factual data showing the superiority of large-scale over small-scale production. As a result, nothing remains but the reactionary lamentations of the petty bourgeois who places his hopes in technical backwardness, in the slow development of capitalism. In the matter of theory, the Right-wing Cadet and “Christian” renegade Mr. Bulgakov is quite on a level with the opportunist Social-Democrat David.

David fails, hopelessly fails to understand the socio economic aspect of other questions as well. Take his fundamental thesis, his pet idea, the “kingpin” of the whole work: the viability of small-scale production in agriculture and its superiority to large-scale production. Ask David: What is small-scale production?

On page 29, footnote, you will find a neat answer: “Wherever we refer to small-scale production we mean the economic category which functions without regular outside assistance and without an auxiliary occupation.” Though clumsily expressed and poorly translated by Mr. Grossman, this is more or less clear. After that we have a right to expect David to outline the conditions of small-scale (in area) farming from the standpoint of the employment of hired labour, or the sale of the latter by the farmer.

Nothing of the kind.

Nothing brings out David’s bourgeois nature so strongly as his complete disregard of the question of the employment of hired labour by “small” farmers and of the conversion of the latter into wage-labourers. Complete disregard— that is literally true. Statistical data on this are to be found in German statistics; Kautsky quotes them briefly in his Agrarian Question(I have quoted them in detail[2] ). David knows those statistics, but he does not analyse them. He gives a mass of references to separate monographs, but completely ignores the data they contain on this question. In short, this is a case of a petty bourgeois completely passing over in silence the question of the “farm-hands” employed by the thrifty muzhik.

Here are examples:

On page 109 we read: “On the whole, in market gardening as in agriculture, small-scale production flourishes.”

You look for proof. All you are given is the following:

“According to the industrialstatistics[3] for 1895, out of 32,540 orchards and vegetable gardens 13,247=40 per cent were of an area less than 20 ares; 8,257=25 per cent ranged from 20 to 50 ares; 5,707=14 per cent from 50 ares to one hectare; 3,397=10 per cent ranged in area from 1 to 2 hectares, and only 1,932=6 per cent occupied an area of 2 hectares and over.”

That is all. And this is supposed to prove that small-scale production is flourishing in market gardening. This is supposed to be a scientific work by a man well versed in agronomics. If it is, then we do not know what charlatanry in science is.

Only 6 per cent have an area of 2 hectares and over, says David. In the very same statistics from which he takes those figures there are figures showing the amount of land which these 6 per cent occupy. David ignores those figures. He ignores them because they demolish his theory. “But more than half of this area (51.39 per cent),” I wrote concerning those very figures,[4] “is concentrated in the hands of 1,932 proprietors, or 5.94 per cent of all the market gardeners.” Of these 1,932 market gardeners 1,441 have vegetable gardens ranging from two to five hectares, making an average of 2.76 hectares per farm and total land amounting to an average of 109.6 hectares per farm; 491 farmers have vegetable gardens of five hectares or more, making an average of 16.54 hectares per farm, and total land amounting to. an average of 134.7 hectares per farm (ibid.).

Thus, only 6 per cent of the market gardeners concentrate in their hands 51.39 per cent of the total market garden land. They are big capitalists for whom vegetable gardens are supplementary to capitalist agriculture (farms of 100 to 135 hectares). Consequently, market gardening is enormously concentrated capitalistically. But David has the

temerity to assert that “small-scale production is flourishing”, i.e., production not using hired labour. As to what size farms in market gardening require hired labourers he gives no information.

That is how the scholarly David handles statistics. An example of the way in which he handles monographs is provided by Hecht,[14] the same notorious Hecht quoted by Bulgakov, Hertz, and Chernov.[5] In his “work” David paraphrases Hecht for the space of two pages (pp. 394-95). But how does he paraphrase him? Not a word about hired labour. Not a word about the fact that Hecht embellishes the “settled state” of the factory worker who has a plot of land, lumping together workers and well-to-do peasants. Not a word about the fact that while a small number of well-to-do peasants are “flourishing”, the conditions of the bulk of the peasants are such that they even have to sell their milk and use cheaper margarine as a substitute.

David not only says nothing about this; he even declares that “Hecht quotes extremely interesting data on the high living standards of these peasants” (p. 395). A grosser example of bourgeois apologetics is difficult to imagine.

Incidentally, about Hecht’s statement that the peasants sell their milk in order to buy cheaper margarine. One would think that this is a generally known fact among economists. As far back as 1847, Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy referred to the deterioration of the people’s diet under capitalism.[15] In Russia, ever since the time of Engelhardt[16] (the 1870s), this fact has been noted very many times by all who have made a more or less conscientious study of the progress of capitalism in dairy farming. The “scholarly” David failed to notice this. He even sneers when socialists point to it.

On pages 427-28 of David’s book we read scoffing remarks about Kautsky, who says that the amalgamated dairies, which promote the sale of milk by the peasants, cause a deterioration in the latter’s diet. To enable the reader to judge the German Narodnik David at his true worth we shall quote his own words:

“...All other people are in the habit, when receiving a larger income, of using some part of it for the benefit of their stomachs. It is only human nature that a man should want to eat something better, if only he has a little money to enable him to do so. It is, therefore, very strange that the peasant who, as is generally admitted, is getting more money than before for his milk and pigs, thanks to the co-operative, should behave differently from other mortals,” and so on and so forth.

This buffoonery of a reactionary petty bourgeois is not worth answering, of course. It is sufficient to exhibit him to the reading public; it is sufficient to drag him into the light of day from under the heap of disconnected agronomic quotations scattered through five hundred and fifty pages. It is sufficient to note that even the bourgeois apologist Hecht, quoted by David, admits as a fact the deterioration in diet as a consequence of the substitution of cheap margarine for marketed milk. This applies to South Germany, the region where small-peasant farming predominates. Concerning another region, East Prussia, we have the very similar statement of Klawki[6] that the small peasants “consume very little butter and whole milk”.

David’s bourgeois apologetics can be traced in absolutely all the questions he deals with. Thus, he extols the dairy co-operatives of Germany and Denmark in over a score of pages (413-35 and others). He also quotes statistics... but only on the numerical growth of the co-operatives! He does not quote the German statistics showing the concentration of “co-operative” dairy farming iii the hands of big capitalist farms.[7] The Davids have a blind eye for such data in the statistics they handle!

“The Danish peasants organised in co-operatives,” says David, “have even excelled the privately owned farms of the big landed proprietors.” Then follows an example: a quotation from the 46th Report of a test laboratory to the effect that the butter produced by the co-operatives is of better quality than that manufactured by the landlord. And David continues:

“Such results have been achieved by peasants who at one time, on their small farms, produced only inferior grades of butter for which they obtained only half the price paid for that of the big proprietors. Moreover, by and large, we are dealing here with middle and small peasants [David’s italics]. In 1898, there were in Denmark 179,740.cow-sheds of which only 7,544 or 4 per cent contained 30 or more cows each; 49,371 or 27.82 per cent, each contained from 10 to 29 cows; 122,589, or 68.97 per cent contained less than 10 cows each. More than half of these cow-sheds, namely, 70,218, comprising 39.85 per cent of the total, contained only from 1 to 3 cows each, i.e., they belonged to quite small farms. That the great majority of these small farms belong to co-operative organisations is shown by the fact that in 1900 the milk of approximately 900,000 cows out of Denmark’s 1,110,000 milch cows was delivered to dairy co-operatives” (p. 424).

Thus argues the scholarly David. He avoids quoting precise data on the distribution of the cows among the farms in the various groups; that is distasteful to him. But even the fragmentary figures he does quote show that. he completely distorts the reality. By comparing the total number of cows with the distribution of cow-sheds according to the number of cattle in them we get the following picture, which, though an approximate one,[8] undoubtedly, on the whole, corresponds to the reality:

From these figures it is seen, first, that the concentration of dairy farming in Denmark is very high. 750,000 cows out of 1,100,000, i. e., over two-thirds of the total, belong to the big farms—57,000 out of 179,000, i. e., less than a third of the total number of farmers. Since each of these farms has ten or more cows, they certainly do not dispense with hired labour. Thus, David “failed to notice” that the size of the farms which keep livestock is by no means small here; Danish farms must not be judged by area of land. David “failed to notice” that here, as everywhere and always in capitalist agriculture, a vast number of small farms account for an insignificant share of the total production. The small farmers number 70,000, i.e., nearly 40 per cent; but they own one-eleventh of the total number of cows.

Secondly, the figures quoted show that both in Denmark and in Germany the benefits of co-operation are enjoyed mainly by the capitalists. If out of 1,100,000 cows the milk of 900,000 is delivered to the dairy co-operatives, it follows that 200,000 cows remain outside the “beneficial” scope of co-operative marketing. These are mainly the cows of the smallest farmers, for we have seen from the figures for Germany that of the farms up to two hectares, only 0.3 per cent of the total belong to dairy co-operatives, but of the farms of 100 hectares and over, 35.1 per cent belong to such co-operatives. Consequently, all this leads us to assume that the small farmers (70,000 owning 100,000 cows) least enjoy the benefits of co-operative marketing.

The example of Denmark completely refutes David, since it proves that not the small, and not the medium, but the big farms predominate in the production of dairy produce.

To put some life into these lifeless figures and tables and show the class character of bourgeois agriculture (which the obtuse petty bourgeois David totally ignores) we shall quote an outstanding fact from the history of the working-class movement in Denmark. In 1902, the Danish shipowners reduced the wages of the stokers, who answered by going on strike. The union to which all the dock workers belonged supported the stokers and also ceased work. But ... they were unable to make the strike a general one, to extend it to all the ports of Denmark. “Port Esbjerg [on the west coast of Denmark, important for trade with England], which plays such a great part in the. export of Danish agricultural produce, could not be drawn into the strike because the Danish agricultural co-operatives declared that they would immediately send the required number of their members to work on loading the ships, that the Danish peasants would not allow a stoppage in the export of their produce.”[9]

Thus, the Danish co-operatives took the side of the shipowners against the workers and made the strike a failure. It is quite understandable, of course, that capitalist farmers, owning ten and more cows each, should support their fellow-capitalists against the workers. What is not understandable is that writers like David, who gloss over the class struggle, call themselves socialists.

On the question of combining farming with technical-crop industries (sugar refining, distilling, etc.) David makes the very same mistake as Mr. Bulgakov. Like the Russian professor, the German “learned” opportunist simply copied the tables given in the German enquiry, without stopping to think what these tables refer to! Kautsky asserts that sugar production is an example of agricultural large-scale industry. To refute this David, like Bulgakov, quotes figures showing that there are more small farms connected with technical-crop industries than big ones (pages 406, 407, and 410 of David’s book). The learned statistician forgot that, in general, there are more small farms than big ones. Instead of showing what percentage of the farms in each group is combined with technical industries he copied a table giving the percentage of such farms in each group in relation to the total number of farms. I have already dealt in detail with this mistake made by Mr. Bulgakov.[10] It only remains for me to point out that the equally scientifically conscientious Ed. David equally failed to take the trouble to glance at the figures showing what share of the land under sugar beet is in the hands of capitalists.

What a comical degree of soul affinity exists between the German opportunist and the Russian liberal professor can be seen from the fact that not only do they both handle statistics with the same carelessness and lack of skill, but both quote Marx with the same carelessness. Like Bulgakov David recognises the “law of diminishing returns”. True, he tries to expound it with special limitations, to surround it with special conditions, but that does not improve matters in the least. For example, on page 476, David says that “this law does not at all concern the change of productivity in the transition from one scientific-technical stage of agriculture to another. It concerns exclusively the change of productivity at one and the same scientific-technical stage.” This is exactly the limitation of the notorious law that I mentioned when opposing Mr. Bulgakov,[11] and I at once added that this makes the “law” “so relative that it cannot be called a law, or even a cardinal specific feature of agriculture”.

Nevertheless, David continues to elevate this law to a specific feature of agriculture. The result is a hopeless muddle, for if “scientific-technical” conditions remain unchanged, additional investments of capital are extremely restricted in industry too.

“The backwardness of agriculture,” says David in the concluding chapter, “is due, in the first place, to the conservatism of organic nature, which finds expression in the law of diminishing returns” (501). This conclusion throws overboard the very thesis that has just been put forward, namely, that the “law” does not apply to transitions to a higher technical stage! “The conservatism of organic nature” is simply a verbal subterfuge of reactionary philistinism, which is incapable of understanding the social conditions that hinder particularly the development of agriculture. David shows that he does not understand that among those social conditions are, first, the survivals of feudalism in agriculture, the inequality of rights of agricultural labourers, and so on and so forth; and secondly, ground rent, which inflates prices and embodies high rents in the price of land.

“We think,” writes David, “that German agriculture today could not produce the total quantity of grain required at the level of productivity which, thanks to overseas production, is considered normal from the standpoint of world economy. The law of diminishing returns does not permit an unlimited increase in the quantity of products on a limited area of land without a diminution in productivity” (519)—the last sentence is in italics in David’s book.

Take a look, if you please, at this economist! He declares that the “law” of diminishing returns deals exclusively with the change of productivity at one and the same scientific-technical stage (476). Yet he draws the conclusion: “the law does not permit an ‘unlimited’ increase in the quantity of products!” (519). Why, then, does it follow that German agriculture could not be raised to the next “scientific technical stage” if this were not prevented by the private ownership of the land, by inflated rent, by the lack of rights, the downtrodden state, and degradation of the agricultural labourer, by the barbarous medieval privileges of the Junkers?

The bourgeois apologist naturally tries to ignore the social and historical causes of the backwardness of agriculture and throws the blame on the “conservatism of organic nature” and on the “law of diminishing returns”. That notorious law contains nothing but apologetics and obtuseness.

To cover up his shameful retreat to the old prejudices of bourgeois political economy David, exactly like Bulgakov, presents us with a falsified quotation from Marx. David quotes the same page of Volume III of Capital (III. B., II. Teil, S. 277) which Mr. Bulgakov quotes! (See page 481 of David’s book and our previous criticism of Mr. Bulgakov.[12] )

What I have said about the scientific conscientiousness of Mr. Bulgakov applies wholly to David as well. Mr. Bulgakov garbled a passage from Marx. David con fined him self to quoting the first words of the same passage: “Concerning decreasing productiveness of the soil with successive investments of capital, see Liebig” (Das Kapital, III. B., II. Teil, S. 277).[17] Like Bulgakov, David distorted Marx, making it appear to the reader that this is the only reference by Marx. Actually, we repeat, anyone who has read Volume III of Capital (and the second part of Volume II of Theorien über den Mehrwert[18]) knows that the opposite is the case. Marx points out dozens of times that he regards cases of diminished productivity of additional investments of capital as being quite as legitimate and quite as possible as cases of increased productivity of additional investments of capital.

In a footnote on page 481 David promises in the future to examine the connection between this law and rent, and also “to examine critically Marx’s attempt to develop and extend the theory of rent, while rejecting the basis given by Malthus and Ricardo”.

We venture to predict that David’s critical examination will be a repetition of bourgeois prejudices à la Mr. Bulgakov, or... à la Comrade Maslov.

Let us now examine another radically erroneous thesis of David’s. To refute his apologetics or his distortion of statistics is a very thankless task. On the question we are now about to deal with we have some new data which enable us to contrast a factual picture of reality with the theories of present-day philistinism.

Livestock in Small and Large Farms

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx”

XI

Livestock in Small and Large Farms

The “critics” or Bernsteinians in the agrarian question, when defending small-scale production, very often refer to the following circumstance. Small farmers keep far more cattle on a given unit of land than big farmers. Consequently, they say, the small farmers manure their land better. Their farms are on a technically higher level, for manure plays a decisive role in modern agriculture, and the manure obtained from cattle kept on the farm is far superior to any artificial fertilisers.

Ed. David in his book Socialism and Agriculture attaches decisive significance to this argument (pp. 326, 526, and 527 of the Russian translation). He writes in italics: “manure is the soul of agriculture” (p. 308), and makes this truism the main basis of his defence of small-scale farming. He quotes German statistics showing that the small farms keep far more cattle per unit of land than the big ones. David is convinced that these figures definitely decide in his favour the question of the advantages of large-scale or small-scale production in agriculture.

Let us examine this theory and the manurial soul of agriculture more closely.

The main argument advanced by David and his numerous adherents among the bourgeois economists is a statistical one. They compare the number of cattle (per unit of land) on different-sized farms, it being tacitly assumed that identical quantities are compared, i. e., that an equal number of cattle of a particular kind represents an equal agricultural value, so to speak, on both big and small farms. It is assumed that an equal number of cattle provides an equal quantity of manure, that the cattle on big and small farms have more or less the same qualities, and so forth.

Obviously, the cogency of the argument in question depends entirely upon whether this usually tacit assumption is correct. Is this postulate correct? If we pass from the bare and rough, indiscriminate statistics to an analysis of the socio-economic conditions of small-scale and large-scale agricultural production as a whole we shall find at once that that postulate takes for granted the very thing that has still to be proved. Marxism affirms that the conditions under which cattle are kept (and also, as we have seen, the tending of the land and the conditions of the agricultural worker) are worse in small-scale than in large-scale farming. Bourgeois political economy asserts the opposite, and the Bernsteinians repeat this assertion, namely, that thanks to the diligence of the small farmer, cattle are kept under far better conditions on a small farm than on a big one. To find data which would throw light on this question requires quite different statistics from those with which David operates. It requires a statistical study not of the number of cattle on different-sized farms, but of their quality. Such a study exists in German economic literature, and perhaps more than one. It is highly characteristic that David, who filled his book with a mass of irrelevant quotations from all kinds of works on agronomics, completely ignored the attempts to be found in the literature to reveal the internal conditions of small-scale and large-scale farming by means of detailed research. We shall acquaint the reader with one of those researches undeservedly ignored by David.

Drechsler, a well-known German writer on agricultural questions, published the results of a monographic “agricultural statistical investigation”, which, he rightly said, “for the accuracy of its results is surely without equal”. In the Province of Hanover, 25 settlements were investigated (22 villages and three landlord estates), and data showing not only the amount of land and number of cattle, but also the quality of the cattle were collected separately for each farm. To determine the quality of the cattle a particularly accurate method was adopted: thelive weight[1] of each animal was ascertained in kilogrammes “on the basis of the most careful possible appraisal of the individual animals—an appraisal made by experts”. Data were obtained giving the live weight of each type of animal on different-sized farms. The investigation was carried out twice: the first in 1875, the second in 1884. The figures were published by Drechsler[2] in rough form for each of three estates and for three groups of villages, the peasant farms in the villages being divided into seven groups according to the amount of land (over 50 hectares; 25 to 50; 12.5 to 25; 7.5 to 12.5; 2.5 to 7.5; 1.25 to 2.5, and up to 1.25 hectares). Considering that Drechsler’s figures relate to eleven different types of animals, the reader will realise how complicated all these tables are. To obtain summarised figures which will enable us to draw general and basic conclusions, we shall divide all the farms into five main groups: (a) big estates; (b) peasant farms having over 25 hectares of lands; (c) 7.5 to 25 hectares; (d) 2.5 to 7.5 hectares; and (e) less than 2.5 hectares.

The number of farms in these groups and the amount of land in them in 1875 and in 1884 were as follows:

To explain these figures we shall deal first of all with the economic types of the different-sized farms. Drechsler considers that all the farms of 7.5 hectares and over employ hired labour. Thus, we get (in 1875) 325 peasant farms employing workers. All the farmers having up to 2.5 hectares have to hire themselves out. Of the farmers having 2.5 to 7.5 hectares (average=4.3 ha) half, according to Drechsler’s calculations, do not employ labour, while the other half have to provide hired labourers. Thus, of the total peasant farms, 325 are capitalist farms, 221. are small “Trudovik” farms (as our Narodniks would call them) which do not employ labour nor provide hired labourers, and 1,670 are semi-proletarian, which provide hired labourers.

Unfortunately, Drechsler’s grouping differs from that of the general German statistics, which regard as middle peasants those having from 5 to 20 hectares. Nevertheless, it remains an undoubted fact that the majority of these middle peasants do not dispense with hired workers. The “middle peasants” in Germany are. small capitalists. The peasants who do not hire labour and do not hire themselves out constitute an insignificant minority: 221 out of 2,216, i.e., one-tenth.

Thus, the groups of farms which we have selected according to their economic type are characterised as follows: (a) big capitalist; (b) middle capitalist (“Grossbauer”); (c) small capitalist; (d) small peasant; and (e) semi-proletarian.

The total number of farms and the total amount of land they occupied diminished between 1875 and 1884. This decrease mainly applied to the small farms: the number of farms occupying up to 2.5 hectares dropped from 1,449 to 1,109, i. e., by 340, or nearly one-fourth. On the other hand, the number of the biggest farms (over 25 hectares) increased from 54 to 61, and the amount of land they occupied increased from 2,638 to 3,215 hectares, i.e., by 577 hectares. Consequently, the general improvement in farming and the raising of agricultural standards in the given area, about which Drechsler goes into raptures, signify the concentration of agriculture in the hands of a diminishing number of owners: “Progress” has pushed out of agriculture nearly 400 farmers out of 2,219 (by 1884 there remained 1,825), and raised the average amount of land per farm among the remainder from 4.2 to 5 hectares. In one locality capitalism concentrates the given branch of agriculture and pushes a number of small farmers into the ranks of the proletariat. In another locality the growth of commercial farming creates a number of new small farms (for example dairy farming in suburban villages and in entire countries which export their produce, such as Denmark). In still other localities the splitting up of the medium farms increases the number of small farms. Indiscriminate statistics conceal all these processes, for the study of which detailed investigations must be made.

The progress of agriculture in the locality described found particular expression in the improvement of livestock rearing, although the total head of livestock diminished. In 1875, there were 7,208 head of livestock (in terms of cattle); in 1884 there were 6,993. Going by the gross statistics, this decrease in the total number of livestock would be a sign of decline in livestock breeding. Actually, there was an improvement in the quality of the stock, so that, if we take not the number of animals, but their total “live weight”, we shall get 2,556,872 kilogrammes in 1875 and 2,696,107 kilogrammes in 1884.

Capitalist progress in livestock rearing shows itself not only, sometimes even not so much, in an increase in numbers as in an improvement in quality, in the replacement of inferior by better cattle, increase in fodder, etc.

On the biggest farms the number of cattle diminished. In the smallest the number grew, and the smaller the farm the more rapid was the increase. This seems to show progress in small-scale and regression in large-scale production, that is, confirmation of David’s theory, does it not?

But we have only to take the figures of the average weight of the cattle for this illusion to be dispelled.

The first conclusion to be drawn from these figures is that the bigger the farm the better the quality of the cattle. The difference in this respect between the capitalist farms and the small-peasant, or semi-proletarian, farms is enormous. For example, in 1884, this difference between the biggest and smallest farms was over one hundred per cent: the average weight of the average animal on the big capitalist farms was 619 kilogrammes; on the semi-proletarian farms it was 301 kilogrammes, i.e., less than half! One can judge from this how superficial are the arguments of David and those who think like him when they assume that the quality of the cattle is the same on large and small farms.

We have already mentioned above that cattle are generally kept worse in small farms. Now we have factual confirmation of this. The figures for live weight give us a very accurate idea of all the conditions under which the cattle are kept: feeding, housing, work, care—all this is summarised, so to speak, in the results which found statistical expression in Drechsler’s monograph. It turns out that for all the “diligence” displayed by the small farmer in care for his cattle—a diligence extolled by our Mr. V.V.[9] and by the German David—he is unable even approximately to match the advantages of large-scale production, which yields products of a quality twice as good. Capitalism condemns the small peasant to eternal drudgery, to a wasteful expenditure of labour, for with insufficient means, insufficient fodder, poor quality cattle, poor housing, and so forth, the most careful tending is a sheer waste of labour. In its appraisal bourgeois political economy puts in the forefront not this ruin and oppression of the peasant by capitalism, but the “diligence” of the toiler (toiling for the benefit of capital under the worst conditions of exploitation).

The second conclusion to be drawn from the figures quoted above is that the quality of cattle improved during the ten years both on the average and in all the categories of farms. But as a result of this general improvement, the difference in the conditions of livestock rearing in the large and small farms became not less, but more glaring. The general improvement widened rather than narrowed the gulf between the large and small farms, for in this process of improvement large-scale farming outstrips small-scale farming. Here is a comparison of the average weight of the average animal by groups in 1875 and in 1884.

The improvement is greatest on the big capitalist farms, then come the medium-sized capitalist farms; it is entirely negligible on the small peasant farms and very inconsiderable in the rest. Like the great majority of agronomists who write on problems of agricultural economics, Drechsler noted only the technical aspect of the matter. In the fifth conclusion he draws from the comparison between 1875 and 1884 he says: “A very considerable improvement in.the keeping of livestock[4] has taken place: a reduction in the number of cattle and an improvement in quality; the aver age live weight per animal increased considerably in each of the three groups of villages.[5] That shows that the marked improvement in cattle rearing, feeding, and tending of cattle was more or less general (ziemlich allgemein).”

The words “more or less general”, which we have underlined, show precisely that the author ignored the socio-economic aspect of the question; “more” applies to the big farms, “less” to the small ones. Drechsler overlooked this, because he paid attention only to the figures concerning the groups of villages and not groups of farms of different types.

Let us now pass to the figures on draught animals, which throw light on farming conditions in the narrow sense of the term “agriculture”. In regard to the number of draught animals the farms under review are characterised by the following figures:

Thus, the overwhelming majority of the semi-proletarian farms (up to 2.5 hectares; in 1884, they numbered 1,109 out of 1,825) had no draught animals at all. They cannot even be regarded as agricultural farms in the real sense of the term. In any case, as regards the use of draught animals, there can be no comparison between the big farms and those farms of which 93 or 84 per cent employ no draught animals at all. If, however, we compare the big capitalist farms with the small peasant farms in this respect, we shall find that the former (group a) have 132 draught animals to 766 hectares of land, and the latter (group d) 632 to 1,774 hectares (1884), i.e., the former has one draught animal to approximately six hectares, and the latter one to approximately three hectares. Obviously, the small farms spend twice as much on the keeping of draught animals. Small-scale production implies dispersion of the technical means of farming and a squandering of labour as a result of this dispersion.

This dispersion is partly due to the fact that the small farmers are obliged to use draught animals of an inferior quality, that is, to use cows as draught animals. The percentage of cows in relation to the total number of draught animals was as follows:

From this it is clearly evident that the use of cows in field work is increasing, and that cows are the principal draught animals on the semi-proletarian and small-peasant farms. David is inclined to regard this as progress in exactly the same way as Drechsler, who takes entirely the bourgeois standpoint. In his conclusions Drechsler writes: “A large number of the small farms have gone over to the use of cows as draught animals, which is more expedient for them.” It is “more expedient” for the small farmers because it is cheaper. And it is cheaper because inferior draught animals are substituted for better ones. The progress of the small peasants which rouses the admiration of the Drechslers and Davids is quite on a par with the progress of the vanishing hand weavers, who are going over to worse and worse materials, waste products of the mills.

The average weight of draught cows in 1884 was 381kilogrammes,[6] that of draught horses being 482 kilogrammes, and oxen 553 kilogrammes. The latter type of draught animal, the strongest, accounted in 1884 for more than half of the total draught animals of the big capitalist farmers, for about a fourth of those of the medium and small capitalists, for less than a fifth of those of the small peasants, and for less than a tenth of those of the semi-proletarian farmers. Consequently, the bigger the farm the higher the quality of the draught animals. The average weight of an average draught animal was as follows:

Consequently, on the whole, the draught animals have deteriorated. Actually, in the large capitalist farms we see a considerable improvement;.in all the others there was either no change, or a deterioration. As regards the quality of draught animals, the difference between large-scale and small-scale production also increased between 1875 and 1884. The use of cows as draught animals by the small farmers has become general practice in Germany.[7] Our figures show with documentary accuracy that this practice denotes a deterioration of the conditions of agricultural production, the increasing poverty of the peasantry.

To complete our survey of the data in Drechsler’s mono graph, we shall quote an estimate of the number and weight of all animals per unit of land area, i. e., the estimate which David made on the basis of the general statistics of German agriculture:

The figures of the number of livestock per hectare of land are the figures to which David confines himself. In our example, as in German agriculture as a whole, these figures show a reduction in the number of livestock per unit of land area in the big farms. In 1884, for example, the semi-proletarian farms had exactly twice as many cattle per hectare as the big capitalist farms (1.18 as against 0.59). But we are already aware that this estimate seeks to compare the incomparable. The actual relationship between the farms is shown by the figures for weight of livestock: in this respect, too, large-scale production is in a better position than small-scale, for it has the maximum of livestock in weight per unit of land area, and consequently, also the maximum of manure. Thus, David’s conclusion that, on the whole, the small farms are better supplied with manure is the very opposite of the truth. Moreover, it must be borne in mind, first, that our figures do not cover artificial fertilisers, which only well-to-do farmers can afford to buy; and secondly, that comparing the amount of livestock by weight puts cattle and smaller animals on the same level, for example, 45,625 kilogrammes—the weight of 68 head of cattle in the big farms and 45,097 kilogrammes—the weight of 1,786 goats in the small farms (1884). Actually, the advantage the big farms enjoy as regards supplies of manure is greater than that shown in our figures.[8]

Summary: by means of the phrase “manure is the soul of agriculture”, David evaded socio-economic relations in livestock farming in particular and presented the matter in an utterly false light.

Large-scale production in capitalist agriculture has a tremendous advantage over small-scale production as regards the quality of livestock in general, and of draught animals in particular, as regards the conditions under which the, livestock is kept, its improvement, and its utilisation for providing manure.

The “Ideal Country” from the Standpoint of the Opponents of Marxism on the Agrarian Question

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx”