Lenin’s Theory of the Formation of Capitalism in Agriculture

Starting from the general principles of Marxism and combining with the specific historical conditions of Russia, Lenin focused on the analysis of how capitalism developed in agriculture in “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”. Lenin argued that the formation process of Russian capitalism in agriculture was, on the one hand, the differentiation of peasants, on the other hand, the evolution from feudal landlord economy to capitalist economy, and there are close relations and obvious differences between them, the differentiation of peasants is often an important factor in the transformation of landlord economy to capitalist economy.

Social division of labor is the foundation of commodity economy and capitalist development. In Russia, it is embodied in the separation of direct producers and means of production, and the development of commercial agricultural specialization; the separation of handicraft industry and agriculture, the separation of processing industry and mining industry; the emergence of new industrial centers and new cities, the growth of industrial population and the decrease of agricultural population. Social division of labor accelerated the development of commodity exchange and the formation of Russian capitalist domestic market. The peasant economy of Russian rural commune is the most profound and solid foundation for the development of capitalism. The differentiation of peasants forms three classes: rich peasants, agricultural employed workers and middle peasants. The rich peasants are the rural bourgeoisie, including the operators and farmers of various forms of commercial agriculture.They only account for a small number of rural population, but in terms of land and means of production advantage; agricultural employed workers, namely the rural proletariat, include farm laborers, day workers, unskilled workmen, construction workers and other workers in agriculture, accounting for about half of the rural population, in addition to selling labor, they also owned a small piece of land; the middle peasants were in an extremely unstable state in economy, and their social and political inclination swayed between the rich peasants and the agricultural workers. With the differentiation of the peasants, the economic structure of the old patriarchal system has been completely destroyed, and a new type of residents, the rural bourgeoisie and the proletariat, have emerged in the countryside.

The differentiation of peasants promoted the transition from feudal landlord economy to capitalist economy. Lenin argued that the dominant landlord economic structure in the period of serfdom in Russian history was the starting point of Russian capitalist economic development. He pointed out that the essence of the economic system at that time was that all the land of the agricultural unit, that is, all hereditary territory, was divided into landlord land and peasant land, the latter is distributed to farmers as a share of land (in addition, they also get other means of production, such as forests or livestock), and farmers use their own labor and farm tools to cultivate the land to feed themselves… The surplus labor of the peasants shows that they use their own farm tools to cultivate the land of the landlords, and the products of their labor are owned by the landlords. This kind of economic system (commonly called “corvée system”) is based on the following necessary conditions: Natural economy is dominant; secondly, direct producers must be divided into general means of production, especially land, and be bound to the land; thirdly, the peasants attached themselves to the landlords; fourthly, the production technology was extremely inferior and stagnant. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the remaining form of this kind of corvée system of economy was the “labor-service system”. Because the corvée system of economy has not been completely eliminated, and the necessary conditions for capitalist production have not yet been met, the transition to capitalist economy can be carried out slowly and in complex forms. “With all the endless variety of forms characteristic of a transitional epoch, the economic organisation of contemporary landlord farming amounts to two main systems, in the most varied combinations – the labor-service system and the capitalist system.” Although these two systems are intertwined, they are antagonistic or mutually exclusive. In the process of rural economic development, the system of labor service is becoming smaller and smaller. As the capitalist system expands more and more, the general trend must be the transition from the landlord economy to the capitalist economy. In fact, this is a process in which the capitalist system increasingly excludes or replaces the labor service system. Lenin pointed out that there are two kinds of labor-service systems: (1) The labor-service system (such as all inclusive farming and cultivated land) that can only be undertaken by farmers who have farm animals and farm tools; (2) Labor-service system (such as harvesting, weeding, threshing, etc.) that can be undertaken by rural proletarians without any farm tools. With the differentiation of the peasants, the focus gradually shifted from the first to the second type of labor-service, and “the latter type constitutes a direct transition to capitalism, merging with it by a number of quite imperceptible transitions”. With the development of urban and rural commodity economy and the progress of agricultural technology, machinery has been gradually adopted in agriculture, which means that capitalism has excluded the labor service system, and the labor-service system is bound to collapse day by day.

Lenin combined with the rural economic situation after Russian reform, from the differentiation of farmers and landlord economy to capitalist economy, analyzed the formation process of capitalism in agriculture, and made a valuable contribution to Marxist theory.