Lenin’s Theory of the Formation of Capitalism in Russian Industry

In his struggle with the Narodniks, Lenin analysed the process of capitalist development in Russian industry, based on Marx’s theory of the three stages of capitalist industrial development in Capital, in response to the error of the Narodniks in opposing rural small handicraft industry and peasant family industry (what Lenin called “people’s industry”) with capitalist industry and has further enriched Marx’s theory.

In order to deny the development of capitalist industry and prove that it has no foundation and future in Russia, Narodnik theorists completely opposed the small handicraft industry with the capitalist large industry, and asserted that the existence of small handicraft industry excluded or hindered the growth of capitalist large industry. According to the historical situation of Russia, Lenin explored the development and evolution of Russia’s “simplest and most primitive industrial form” step by step, and expounded the development process of Russian capitalism.

Russian capitalist industry developed on the basis of family industry and handicraft industry. Handicraft industry is the first form of industry separated from patriarchal agriculture. With the development of commodity economy and the expansion of the market, some businessmen began to build larger manual workshops, which belonged to the simple cooperation form of capitalism. On the one hand, a small number of small capitalists are differentiated, on the other hand, a large number of employed workers are differentiated, “we can see the most obvious germination of capitalism”, “small commodity producers establish larger workshops”, “it is a transition to a more advanced industrial form”. The difference between capitalist workshops and small handicraft workshops was initially only reflected in the number of workers employed.

However, as a result of using a large number of workers, production itself will inevitably lead to a series of changes and gradual reform of production. On the one hand, this reform promoted the expansion of simple cooperation of capitalism, on the other hand, it also prepared for further transition to capitalist workshop and handicraft industry. Workshop handicraft industry is a cooperation based on division of labor, it is the intermediate link between handicraft industry, small commodity production with primitive capital form and large machine industry, which plays an important role in the industrial development of capitalism. It is directly related to the initial stage of capitalist industry. On the one hand, workshops with a considerable number of workers gradually implemented division of labor, and capitalist simple cooperation became capitalist workshops and handicraft industries; on the other hand, the further development of commercial capital that actually turns small handicraftsmen into high-level forms of employing workers, that is to say, the systematic division of labor in production, or the production of several parts by the producers in their own workshops, or the emergence of large workshops at the same time of the distribution of family labor has become another process of capitalist workshop handicraft industry. The only technical improvement is the division of labor. The significance of this division of labor for the transition to the highest stage of capitalist industry, that is, the stage of big machine industry, lies in the following aspects. On the one hand, the production process is divided into a series of the simplest pure mechanical operations to prepare for the use of machines. On the other hand, we should train skilled workers and reserve workers for the rapid development of large machinery industry.

The big machine industry is the advanced stage in the development of capitalist industry, whose basic hallmark is the use of the machine system in production. The transition from the manual workshop to the factory marks a fundamental technological change which overthrows the craftsmanship accumulated over the centuries, and with this technological change inevitably comes the most violent destruction of social relations of production, a complete split between the various groups participating in production, a complete break with tradition, the intensification and expansion of all the darker aspects of capitalism, and the massive socialisation of capitalist labor. The big machine industry is thus the culmination of capitalism, the peak of its negative and positive elements.

According to Lenin, the connection and inheritance between the industrial forms of “petty commodity production (small, mainly peasant handicrafts), capitalist workshop handicrafts and factories (large machine industry)” the last one is the most direct and favorable in building socialism. This shows that the basic trend of small commodity production lies in the development of capitalism, especially in the formation of workshop handicraft industry, which has rapidly grown into a large machine industry in front of us. From the simple cooperation of capitalism to the development of capitalist large machine production. It is not only the different stages of the development of production technology, but also the symbol of various stages of capitalist production relations from germination to different levels of development. The transition from workshop handicraft to large-scale mechanized factory marked a fundamental change in technology, which overthrew thousands of years of accumulated craftsmanship. With this kind of technological change, it is inevitable that the old feudalistic relations of production are severely destroyed and disintegrated, the social groups are completely split and the opposition is open, and the socialized development of labor is inevitable. The socialized mass production training has transformed the feelings and concepts of the working class and prepared the economic and class conditions for the transition to socialist society.