Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
III. Description of the Labour-Service System
Labour-service, as has already been observed above, is of exceedingly
varied types. Sometimes peasants undertake for a money payment to
cultivate with their own implements the fields of the landowner –
so-called “job-hire,” “dessiatine
employments,”[1]
cultivation of
“cycles”[2]
[10]
(i.e., one dessiatine of spring crop and
one of winter crop), etc. Sometimes the peasant borrows grain or money,
under taking to work off either the entire loan or the interest on
it.[3]
Under this form a
feature peculiar to the labour-service system in general stands out with
great clarity – the bondage, the usurious character of this sort of hire
of labour. In some cases the peasants work “for trespass”
(i.e., undertake to work off the legally established fine for cattle
trespass), or work simply “out of respect” (cf. Engelhardt,
loc. cit., 56), i.e., gratis, or just for a drink, so as
not to lose other “employments” by the landowner. Lastly,
labour-service in return for land is very widespread in the shape either
of half-cropping or directly of work for land rented, for grounds used,
etc.
Very often the payment for rented land assumes the most diverse forms,
which sometimes are even combined, so that side by side with money rent we
find rent in kind and “labour-service.” Here are a couple of
examples: for every dessiatine, 1 1/2 dess. to be cultivated + 10 eggs +
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).[4]
Particularly interesting is the form of labour-service for land, so-called
labour-service renting and rent payment in
kind.[5]
In the preceding chapter we have seen
how capitalist relations are manifested in peasant renting of land; here
we see “renting” which is simply a survival of
Corvée
economy,[6]
and which sometimes passes imperceptibly into the capitalist system of
providing the estate with agricultural workers by alloting patches of land
to them. Zemstvo statistics establish beyond doubt this connection
between such “renting” and the lessors’ own
farming. “With the development of their own farming on the private
landowners’ estates, the owners had to guarantee themselves a
supply of workers at the required time. Hence, there develops in many
places the tendency among them to distribute land to the peasants on the
labour-service basis, or for a part of the crop together with
labour-service. . . .” This system of farming “. . . is fairly
widespread. The more frequently the lessors do their own farming, the
smaller the amount of land available for leasing and the greater the
demand for such land, the more widely does this form of land renting
develop” (ibid., p. 266, cf. also 367). Thus, we have here
renting of a very special kind, under which the landowner does not abandon
his own farm, but which expresses the development of private-landowner
cultivation, expresses not the consolidation of the peasant farm by
the enlargement of area held, but the conversion of the peasant into
an agricultural labourer. In the preceding chapter we have seen that
on the peasant’s farm the renting of land is of contradictory
significance: for some it is a profitable expansion of their farms; for
others it is a deal made out of dire need. Now we see that on the
landlord’s farm, too, the leasing of land is of contradictory
significance: in some cases it is the transfer of the farm to another
person for a payment of rent; in others it is a method of conducting
one’s own farm, a method of providing one’s estate with
manpower.
Let us pass to the question of the payment of labour under
labour-service. The data from various sources are at one in testifying to
the fact that the payment of labour where it is hired on a labour-service
and bonded basis is always lower than under capitalist
“free” hire. Firstly, this is proved by the fact that rent in
kind, i.e., on the basis of labour-service and half-cropping (which, as we
have just
seen, is merely labour-service and bonded hire), is every where, as a
general rule, more costly than money rent, very much more costly
(ibid., p. 350), sometimes twice as much (ibid., 356,
Rzhev Uyezd, Tver Gubernia). Secondly, rent in kind is developed to the
greatest degree among the poorest groups of peasants (ibid., 261
and foll.). This is renting from dire need, “renting” by the
peasant who is no longer able to resist his conversion, in this way, into
an agricultural wage-worker. The well-to-do peasants do what they can to
rent land for money. “The tenant takes advantage of every
opportunity to pay his rent in money, and thus to reduce the cost of using
other people’s land” (ibid., 265) – and we would
add, not only to reduce the cost of renting the land, but also to escape
bonded hire. In Rostovon-Don Uyezd the remarkable fact was even observed
of money rent being abandoned in favour of
skopshchina,[11] as rents went up,
despite a drop in the peasants’ share of the harvest
(ibid., p. 266). The significance of rent in kind, which utterly
ruins the peasant and turns him into a farm labourer, is quite clearly
illustrated by this
fact.[7]
Thirdly,
a direct comparison between the price of labour in the case of
labour-service hire and of capitalist “free” hire shows the
latter to be greater. In the above-quoted publication of the Department of
Agriculture, Hired Labour, etc., it is calculated that
the average pay for the complete cultivation, with the peasant’s own
implements, of a dessiatine of land under winter grain is 6 rubles (data
for the central black-earth belt for the 8 years, 1883-1891). If, however,
we calculate the cost of the same amount of work on a hired labour basis,
we get 6 rubles 19 kopeks for the work of the labourer alone, not counting
the work of the horse (the pay for the horse’s work cannot be put at
less than 4 rubles 50 kopeks, loc. cit., 45). The
compiler rightly considers this to be “absolutely abnormal”
(ibid.). We would merely observe that the fact that payment for
labour under purely capitalist hire is greater than under all forms of
bondage and under other pre-capitalist relations has been established not
only in agriculture, but also in industry, and not only in Russia, but
also in other countries. Here are more precise and more detailed Zemstvo
statistics on this question (Statistical Returns for Saratov
Uyezd, Vol. I, Pt. III, pp. 18-19. Quoted from Mr. Karyshev’s
Rentings, p. 353). (See Table on p. 203.)
Thus, under labour-service (just as under bonded hire combined with usury)
the prices paid for labour are usually less than half those under
capitalist
hire.[8]
Since
labour
service can only be undertaken by a local peasant, and one who must
be “provided with an allotment,” the fact of the tremendous
drop in pay clearly indicates the importance of the allotment as wages in
kind. The allotment, in such cases, continues to this day to serve as a
means of “guaranteeing” the landowner a supply of cheap
labour. But the difference between free and
“semi-free”[9]
labour is far from
exhausted by the difference in pay. Of enormous importance also is the
circumstance that the latter form of labour always presupposes the
personal dependence of the one hired upon the one who hires him, it always
presupposes the greater or lesser retention of “other than economic
pressure.” Engelhardt very aptly says that the lending of money for
repayment by labour-service is explained by the greater security of such
debts: to extract payment from the peasant on a distraint order is a
difficult matter, “but the authorities will compel the
peasant to perform the work he
has undertaken to do, even if his own grain remains ungathered”
(loc. cit., 216). “Only long years of slavery, of
serf labour for the lord, have been able to produce the
indifference” (only apparent) with which the cultivator leaves his
own grain in the rain to go carting somebody else’s sheaves
(ibid., 429). Without one or other form of binding the population
to their domiciles, to the “community,” without a certain lack
of civic rights, labour-service as a system would be impossible. It stands
to reason that an inevitable consequence of the above-described features
of the labour-service system is low productivity of labour: methods of
farming based on labour-service can only be the most stereotyped; the
labour of the bonded peasant cannot but approximate, in quality, to the
labour of the serf.
The combination of the labour-service and the capitalist systems makes the
present system of landlord farming extremely similar in its economic
organisation to the system that prevailed in our textile industry before
the development of large-scale machine industry. There, part of the
operations was done by the merchant with his own implements and with
wage-workers (fixing the yarn, dyeing and finishing the fabric, etc.), and
part with the implements of peasant handicraftsmen who worked for him,
using his material. Here, part of the operations is performed by
wage-workers, using the employer’s implements, and another part by
the labour and the implements of peasants working on the land of
others. There, combined with industrial capital was merchant’s
capital, and the handicrafts man, besides being weighed down by capital,
was burdened with bondage, the operations of the subcontractor, the truck
system, etc. Here, likewise, combined with industrial capital is
merchant’s and usurer’s capital accompanied by all forms of
pay reduction and intensification of the producer’s personal
dependence. There, the transitional system lasted for centuries, being
based on a primitive hand-labour technique, and was smashed in some three
decades by large-scale machine industry; here, labour-service has
continued almost since the rise of Rus (the landowners forced the
villeins into bondage as far back as the time of Russkaya
Pravda[12]),
perpetuating routine technique, and has begun rapidly to give way to
capitalism only in the post-Reform epoch. In both
cases, the old system merely implies stagnation in the forms of production
(and, consequently, in all social relations), and the domination of the
Asiatic way of life. In both cases, the new, capitalist forms of economy
constitute enormous progress, despite all the contradictions inherent in
them.
Notes
[1]
Statistical Returns for Ryazan Gubernia.—Lenin
[2]
Engelhardt, loc. cit.—Lenin
[3]
Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Vol. V, Pt 1, Moscow,
l879, pp, 186-189. We give these references only as an illustration. A
mass of similar information is to be found in all the literature on
peasant and private-landowner farming.—Lenin
[4]
It is noteworthy that the enormous variety of forms of labour-service in
Russia, and of forms of land renting with all sorts of supplementary
payments, etc., are covered in their entirety by the main forms
of pre-capitalist relations in agriculture indicated by Marx in Chapter
47, Vol. III of Capital. In the preceding chapter, we have
indicated that there are three main forms: 1) labour-rent, 2) rent in
kind, and 3) money rent. It is, therefore quite natural that Marx should
want specifically Russian data as illustrations for the section dealing
with ground-rent.—Lenin
[5]
According to Results of Zemstvo Statistical Investigations
(Vol. II), of all the land rented by peasants, 76% is paid for in money;
3 to 7% by labour-service, 13 to 17% with part of the product and,
finally, 2 to 3% by a combination of methods.—Lenin
[6]
Cf. examples given in footnote to pp. 194-195. When Corvée economy
existed, the landlord gave the peasant land so that the peasant might work
for him. When land is leased on the labour-service basis, the economic
aspect of the matter is obviously the same.—Lenin
[7]
The summary of the latest data on land renting (Mr. Karyshev in the book:
The Influence of Harvests, etc., Vol 1) has fully
confirmed the fact that it is only want that compels peasants to rent land
on a half-crop or a labour-service basis, and that the well-to-do peasants
prefer to rent land for money (pp. 317-320), as rent in kind is everywhere
incomparably more costly for the peasant than in cash (pp. 342-346). All
these facts, however, have not prevented Mr. Karyshev from presenting the
situation as though “the poor peasant . . . is better able to
satisfy his need for food by slightly extending his crop area to other
people’s land on a half-crop basis” (321). Such are the
fantastic ideas to which a bias in favour of “natural economy”
can lead one! It has been proved that the payment of rent in kind is more
costly than payment in cash, that it constitutes a sort of truck-system in
agriculture, that the peasant is completely ruined and turned into a farm
labourer – and yet our economist talks of improving “food”!
Half-crop payment for rent, if you please, “helps . . . the needy
section of the rural population to obtain” land by renting it
(320). Our economist here calls it “help” to obtain land on
the worst conditions, on the condition that the peasant is turned into a
farm labourer. The question arises: what is the difference between the
Russian Narodniks and the Russian agrarians, who always have been and
always are ready to render the “needy section of the rural
population” this kind of “help”? By the way, here is an
interesting example. In Khotin Uyezd, Bessarabia Gubernia, the average
daily earnings of a half cropper are estimated at 60 kopeks, and a day
labourer in the summer
at 35 to 50 kopeks. “It seems that the
earnings of a half-cropper are, after all, higher than
the wages of a farm labourer ” (344; Mr. Karyshev’s
italics). This “after all” is very characteristic. But, unlike
the farm labourer, the half-cropper has his farm expenses, has he not? He
has to have a horse and harness, has he not? Why was no account taken of
these expenses? Whereas the average daily wage in the summer in Bessarabia
Gubernia is 40 to 77 kopeks (1883-1887 and 1888-1892) the average wage of
a labourer with horse and harness is 124 to 180 kopeks (1883-1887 and
1888-1892). Does it not rather “seem” that the farm labourer
“after all” earns more than the half-cropper? The average
daily wage of a labourer working without a horse of his own (average for a
whole year) is estimated at 67 kopeks for Bessarabia Gubernia in the
period 1882-1891 (ibid., 178)—Lenin
[8]
After this, what can one do but describe as reactionary the criticism of
capitalism made, for instance, by a Narodnik like Prince Vasilchikov? The
very word “hired,” he exclaims pathetically, is contradictory,
for hire presupposes non-independence, and non-independence
rules out
“freedom.” This Narodnik-minded landlord forgets, of course,
that capitalism substitutes free non-independence for bonded
non-independence.—Lenin
[9]
An expression employed by Mr. Karyshev, loc. cit. It is
a pity Mr. Karvshev did not draw the conclusion that half-crop renting
“helps” the survival of “semi-free” labour!—Lenin
[10]
Cultivation of cycles – an enslaving form of labour-service
rendered to the landlord by the peasant as rental for land obtained from
him in post-Reform Russia. The landlord lent the peasant land or made him
a loan in cash or kind for which the peasant undertook to cultivate a
“cycle,” using his own implements and draught animals; this
meant cultivating one dessiatine of spring crops and one of winter crops,
occasionally supplemented by reaping a dessiatine of crops.
[11]
Skopshchina – the name given in the southern parts of Russia to
the payment of land rent in kind, on terms of bondage, the tenant paying
the landowner “s kopny” (from the corn-shock) a portion of the
harvest (a half, and sometimes more), and usually fulfilling miscellaneous
labour services in addition.
[12]
Villeins – feudally dependent peasants in ancient Rus (9th-13th
centuries) who performed Corvée service for the princes and other temporal
and clerical lords and also paid rent in kind. The feudal lords seized the
land of the villeins and compelled them to work on the feudal estates.
Russkaya Pravda (Russian Law ) – the first written
codification of laws and princes’ decrees (11th-12th centuries). The
statutes of the Russkaya Pravda protected the lives and property
of the feudal lord and are indicative of the bitter class struggle between
peasants in feudal bondage and their exploiters.