p In studying Russian life in the light of Marx’s theory of reproduction, and in developing and creatively applying it to the concrete analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, Lenin carefully checked every fact he handled. In his polemics he was never tired of repeating that the criterion of the correctness of the Marxist position on the way capitalism in Russia was 87 developing lay in its correspondence to "the facts of contemporary Russian economic reality".  [87•1 

p Lenin criticises the well-known representative of Narodism, Nikolai —on.  [87•2  The latter declared that capitalism in Russia had "dug its own grave, it brought ’people’s economy’ to the frightful crisis of 1891 and . . . stopped, having no ground under its feet, unable to ’continue along the same path’ ”. This theory is more than a strange variant of the theory of the automatic collapse of capitalism! Capitalism stopped ... as it were at the crossroads ... to think its hard and sad thoughts ... in search of new ways. . . . And this ridiculous theory was advanced by a man who was acquainted with Marx’s economic theory and who had indeed written an admiring foreword to the first Russian edition of Volume II of Capital printed in St. Petersburg in 1885 in his own translation!

p Lenin quoted Nikolai —on’s theory to illustrate the fact that in order to understand the development of capitalism in Russia, a knowledge of Marx’s schemes of the process of reproduction was far from sufficient. Lenin wrote, a propos Nikolai —on’s theory:

p "Wherein lies the absurdity of this ’ever new’ (for the Russian Narodniks) theory?

p "Is it that its author fails to understand the significance of the ’production of means of production as means of production’? Of course, not. Mr. Nik. —on knows that law very well and even mentions that it operates in our country, too. . . .

p "The absurdity of his theory lies in his inability to explain capitalism in this country and in basing his arguments about it on pure fictions."  [87•3 

p The application of Marx’s economic theory is unthinkable without a profound and all-sided analysis of the concrete field to which the theory is applied. Lenin’s development of Marxist economic theory is a remarkable creative effort based on the concrete analysis of economic reality. He condemns "the endeavour to look for answers to concrete questions in the simple logical development of the general truth".  [87•4  How many theoreticians have gone bankrupt in mechanically applying one or another general truth without taking into account changed conditions, changed 88 situations or changed relations of class forces! This is what dogmatism is, a thing alien to living Marxism.

p Lenin regarded the strict conformity of theory to reality as an cnsurance against dogmatism. "There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and sole criterion of a doctrine is its conformity to the actual process of social and economic development."  [88•1 

p Lenin also held that it was inadmissible to use the method of confirming this or that general statement by individual, separate facts. In his preface to the first edition of The Development of Capitalism in Russia, he writes: "The author has set himself the aim of examining the question of how a home market is being formed for Russian capitalism ... in answering the question raised it seemed to us that it was not enough to adduce facts showing the formation and growth of a home market, for the objection might be raised that such facts had been selected arbitrarily and that facts showing the contrary had been omitted. It seemed to us that it was necessary to examine the whole process of the development of capitalism in Russia, to endeavour to depict it in its entirety."  [88•2 

p The task set by Lenin in What the "Friends of the People" Arc and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, that of making a concrete study of all the forms of economic antagonism in Russia and presenting a complete picture of Russian economic reality as a definite system of social relations, was skilfully fulfilled by him in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. The solution of this task was an urgent necessity as the drafting of the Programme of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was then the most pressing task of the day.

p Lenin wrote that consistent Marxists develop "the basic tenets of Marxism in accordance with the changing conditions and with the local characteristics of the different countries".  [88•3  He ridiculed P. Skvortsov who "beats a retreat from an analysis of concrete and historically specific reality to simply copying Marx".  [88•4 

p Lenin did not go in for merely explaining or interpreting Marx’s theoretical tenets but made it his task to demonstrate the real process of the development of capitalism in Russia, to "ascertain exactly how and to what extent agriculture becomes capitalist, among peasants or among landlords, in one district 89 or in another . . . exactly which industry in Russia is becoming capitalist and to what extent it is doing so".  [89•1 

p Lenin attached great importance to the process of class differentiation in the countryside, to the process of division of small farmers into proprietors and workers. He saw in this the basis for the formation of a home market for big industry. It is natural that Lenin begins his analysis of the Russian national economy with a study of the rise of capitalism in agriculture, the disintegration of the peasantry, the transition from the corvee economy to a capitalist economy, and the growth of commercial farming.

p The general theory of capitalism presupposes developed and fully-formed capitalist production. Agriculture is regarded mainly as a special sphere of capitalist production where a part of surplus value takes the form of rent (differential and absolute), and where, accordingly, the law of average profit and price of production is modified. It follows, therefore, that both the question of rent and that of the specific features of capitalist development in agriculture within the framework of the general theory, can only be stated in terms of the theory of surplus value, average profit and price of production. It is in this order that Marx presents them in Capital. But things were different when it came to proving whether the complete development of capitalism in Russia was possible.

p In Russian conditions, the question of capitalist development in agriculture assumed the foremost importance. After studying all the data relating to the process of class differentiation in the countryside, Lenin arrived at the conclusion that economic relations in the “communal” village (described as "people’s production”, and the like) were no more than straight-forward petty- bourgeois relations and that class differentiation among the peasantry did not involve only the simple “differentiation” produced by the appearance of property inequalities, but involved the ousting of the old peasantry by entirely new classes of country dwellers, vix., the rural bourgeoisie (mostly petty) and the agricultural proletariat.

p Lenin further conclulcd, on the basis of a precise analysis of the economic situations of the various peasant groupings, that it was necessary to distinguish three groups of peasants (who numbered 97 million in 1897): the lowest group, that is, the 90 proletarian and semi-proletarian section of the agricultural population; the middle group, that is, the poor small farmers; and the highest, that is, the well-to-do small farmers.

p Lenin was thus the first to define the class structure of the agricultural population (then 77 per cent of the country’s total population) by showing that about 48.5 million people were rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, about 29.1 million were poor small farmers and, finally, about 19.4 million were well-to-do small farmers.

p Lenin further demonstrated that the so-called small craft industries represented rudimentary forms of capitalist co-operation and capitalist manufacture: that was why it was wrong to oppose the small craft industries—which to a large extent constituted the first stage of capitalist production—to capitalism, which some economists thought of only as factory industry.

p Lenin proved that big capitalist industry in Russia not only continued to grow, but possessed an "enormous capacity to develop its productive forces”, and that a technical revolution was in progress at that time (the 18905) in Russia.

p After investigating in detail all the forms of capitalist industry, Lenin also became the first to define the class composition of the commercial and industrial population of Russia. It consisted of four groups:

p 1. Big bourgeoisie..............about 1.5 million
2. Well-to-do small producers......... " 2.2 million
3. Needy small producers........... " 4.8 million
4. Proletarians and semi-proletarians..... " 13.2 million

p Then by combining the agricultural, commercial and industrial, and unproductive sections of the population, Lenin arrived at the following approximate distribution of the entire population of Russia according to class status:

p Big bourgeoisie, landlords, bigh officials, etc. about 3.0 million
Well-to-do small proprietors......... " 23.1
Poor small proprietors............ " 35.8 "
Proletarians and semi-proletarians...... " 63.7
Total 125.6 million.  [90•1 

p In the course of his analysis of the statistics relating to the socio-economic relations existing in the country, Lenin showed that small production was being replaced more and more by big capitalist production and that the latter was growing rapidly, as were the number of workers in big factories. The concentration of both production and population by big capitalist enterprises, the steadily decreasing share of the population engaged in agriculture (in which the most backward forms of socio-economic relations arc always to be found), and the increasing number of large industrial centres convincingly spoke of the development of capitalism in Russia.

p Lenin wrote that if one compared the pre-capitalist period in Russia with the capitalist period, one would have to admit that the progress of the national economy had been exceedingly rapid. But if one compared this rate of progress with what might have been possible with modern technological and cultural standards, the capitalist development of Russia would have to be regarded as slow. And Lenin indicated the causes of this relative backwardness: "in no single capitalist country has there been such an abundant survival of ancient institutions that are incompatible with capitalism, retard its development, and immeasurably worsen the condition of the producers."  [91•1 

The picture of the actual process of Russia’s economic development in the post-Reform period, and the precise analysis of the class structure of Russia given by Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia, laid the foundations for the tremendous amount of work which he did in preparing the Programme of the RSDLP.