* Mr. Bulgakov stated: "The share of large-scale farming will be seen from the following figures" (II, 117) and he cited only these figures, which do not reveal "the share of large-scale farming, but (unless compared with other data) rather serve to obscure it.
page 217
of the large, obviously capitalist, farms which participate in co-operative societies is from three to seven times greater than that of even the middle-peasant farms. The percentage of the latifundia participating in co-operatives is largest of all. We can now form an idea of the boundless naïveté of the Austrian Voroshilov, Hertz, who, in retorting to Kautsky, states that the "German Agricultural Co-operative Wholesale Society [Bezugsvereinigung], with which the largest co-operative societies are affiliated, represents 1,050,000 farmers" (S. 112, Russian translation, p. 267, Hertz' italics) from which he concludes that this means that not only big farmers (holding more than 20 hectares, who number 306,000) participate in these co-operatives, but peasants too! Hertz had only to ponder a little over his own assumption (that all the large farms participate in co-operatives), in order to realise that if all big farmers are members of co-operative societies, this implies that of the rest a smaller percentage participate in them, which means that Kautsky's conclusion concerning the superiority of large-scale over small-scale farming even with respect to co-operative organisation is fully confirmed.
   
But still more interesting are the data on the number of cows furnishing the products, the sale of which is organised by the co-operatives. The overwhelming majority of these cows, almost three-fourths (72%), belong to big farmers engaged in capitalist dairy farming and owning ten, forty, and (on the latifundia) even eighty cows per farm. And now let us listen to Hertz. "We assert that co-operative societies bring most benefit to the small and smallest farmers. . ." (op. cit., S. 112, Russian translation, p. 269, Hertz' italics). The Voroshilovs are alike everywhere: be it in Russia or in Austria. When the Voroshilovs beat their breasts and exclaim vehemently, "We assert", we can be quite sure that they are asserting that which is not.
   
To conclude our review of German agrarian statistics, let us examine briefly the general situation in regard to the distribution of the agricultural population according to its position in the economy. Of course, we take agriculture proper (A 1, and not A 1 to 6, according to the German nomenclature, i.e., we do not include among the agriculturists fishermen, lumbermen, and hunters); we then take the
page 218
data on persons for whom agriculture is the principal occupation. German statistics divide this population into three main groups: (a) independent (viz., farmer owners, tenant farmers, etc.), (b) non-manual employees (managers, foremen, supervisors, office clerks, etc.), and (c) labourers. The last-named group is split up into the following four subgroups: (c1) "members of families employed on a farm belonging to the head of the family -- father, brother, etc.," in other words, labourers that are members of the family, as distinct from hired labourers, to which category all the other subgroups of group c belong. Clearly, therefore, in order to study the social composition of the population (and its capitalist evolution), the labourers that are members of the family must not be grouped with the hired labourers, as is usually done, but with the farmers in group a; for they are in fact the farmers' partners, enjoying right of inheritance, etc. Other subgroups are: (c2) agricultural labourers, men and women (Knechte und Mägde), and (c3) "agricultural day-labourers and other labourers (shepherds, herdsmen) owning or renting land". Consequently, the last-named subgroup consists of persons who are at the same time farmers and wage-labourers, i.e., an intermediate and transitional group which should be placed in a special category. Finally, there is the subgroup (c4) "ditto -- neither owning nor renting land". In this way, we obtain three main groups: I. Farmers -- owners of land and the members of their families. II. Farmers -- owners of land and at the same time wage-labourers. III. Wage-workers not owning land (non-manual employees, labourers, and day-labourers). The following table illustrates the manner in which the rural population* of Ger-
   
* We speak only of the "active" population (as the French term it; in German, erwerbsthätige), i.e., those actually engaged in agriculture, not including domestic servants and those members of families who are not regularly and permanently engaged in agricultural work. Russian social statistics are so undeveloped that we still find lacking a special term like "active", "erwerbsthätig", "occupied ". Yanson, in his analysis of the data on the occupations of the population of St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg According to the Census of 1890), employs the term "independent"; but this is not a suitable term, for it usually implies masters, and, consequently, division according to participation or non-participation in industrial activity (in the broad sense of the term) is confused with division according to the position occupied in industry (individual self-employed workman). [cont. onto p. 219. -- DJR] The term "productive population" could be used, but even that would be inexact, for the military, rentier, and similar classes are not at all "productive". Perhaps the most suitable term would be "self-employed" population, viz., those engaged in some "trade" or other occupation (= producing an income) as distinct from those who live at the expense of those "self-empioyed".
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many was distributed among these groups in the years 1882 and 1895:
|
Active (self-employed) population engaged
in agriculture as the main occupation
(thousands)
|
1882
|
1895
|
|
|
a) Farm owners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c1)
Members of farmers'
families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
2,253
1,935
|
2,522
1,899
|
+ 269
- 36
|
I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c2) Labourers with allotments
(II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I + II
(b) Non-manual employees . . . . . . . .
(c3) Laboures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c4) Labours without allotments . . .
|
4,188
866
5,004
47
1,589
1,374
|
4,421
383
4,804
77
1,719
1,445
|
+ 233
- 483
- 250
+ 30
+ 130
+ 71
|
+5.6%
-55.8%
|
III . . . . . . . . . . .
|
3,010
|
3,241
|
+ 231
|
+ 7.7%
|
Totals . . . .
|
8,064
|
8,045
|
- 19
|
- 0.2%
|
   
Thus, the active population has diminished, although only slightly. Among this population we see a diminution in the landowning section (I+II) and an increase in the landless section (III). This clearly shows that the expropriation of the rural population is progressing, and that it is precisely the small landowners who are being expropriated; for we know by now that the wage-labourers with small plots of land belong to the group of smallest farmers. Furthermore, of the persons owning land, the number of farmer-labourers is diminishing, while the number of farmers is increasing. We see, therefore, the disappearance of middle groups and the growth of the extreme groups: the intermediary group is disappearing; capitalist contradictions are becoming more acute. Of the wage-labourers there is an increase in the number of those entirely expropriated, while the number owning land is diminishing. Of the farmers there is an increase in the number directly owning enterprises, while
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the number employed in the enterprises of heads of families is diminishing. (In all prohability the latter circumstance is due to the fact that in the majority of cases working members of peasant families receive no pay whatever from the head of the family and for that reason are particularly prone to migrate to the cities.)
   
If we take the data on the population for whom agriculture is an auxiliary occupation, we shall see that this (active or self-employed) population increased from 3,144,000 to 3,578,000, i.e., by 434,000. This increase is almost entirely due to the growth in the number of working members of farmers' families, which expanded by 397,000 (from 664,000 to 1,O61,000). The number of farmers increased by 40,000 (from 2,120,000 to 2,160,000); the number of labourers owning land increased by 51,000 (from 9,000 to 60,000); while the number of landless labourers diminished by 54,000 (from 351,000 to 297,000). This enormous increase from 664,000 to 1,O61,000, or 59.8% in the course of 13 years, is further evidence of the growth of proletarisation -- the growth of the number of peasants, members of peasants' families, who have come to regard agriculture merely as an auxiliary occupation. We know that in those cases the principal occupation is working for wages (next in importance being petty trading, handicraft, etc.). If we combine the numbers of all working members of peasant families -- those for whom agriculture is the principal occupation and those for whom it is merely an auxiliary occupation -- we shall get the following: 1882 -- 2,559,000; 1895 -- 2,960,000. This increase may easily provide occasion for erroneous interpretations and apologetic conclusions, especially if it is compared with the number of wage-labourers, which, on the whole, is diminishing. Actually, the general increase is obtained by the diminution in the number of working members of peasant families for whom agriculture is the principal occupation and by the increase in the number for whom it is an auxiliary occupation; the latter amounted in 1882 to only 21.7% of the total number of working members of peasant families, whereas in 1895 they amounted to 35.8%. Thus, the statistics covering the entire agricultural population distinctly reveal to us the two processes of proletarisation to which orthodox Marxism has always pointed, and
page 221
which opportunist critics have always tried to obscure by stereotyped phrases. These processes are: on the one hand, the growing separation of the peasantry from the land, the expropriation of the rural population, which either moves to the towns or is turned from landowning labourers into landless labourers; on the other hand, the development of "auxiliary employment" among the peasantry, i.e., the combination of agriculture with industry, which marks the first stage of proletarisation and always leads to increased poverty (longer working day, malnutrition, etc.). Regarded only from the external aspect, these two processes, to a certain extent, even tend in opposite directions: an increase in the number of landless labourers and an increase in the number of working members of peasant landowning families. For this reason, to confound the two processes, or to ignore either of them, may easily lead to the crudest blunders, numerous examples of which are scattered through Bulgakov's work.[87] Finally, the occupational statistics reveal to us a remarkable increase in the number of non-manual employees,[*] from 47,000 to 77,000, or 63.8%. Simultaneously with the growth of proletarisation, there is a growth of large-scale capitalist production,which requires non-manual employees to a degree rising in proportion to the increase in the use of machinery and the development of agricultural industries.
   
Thus, notwithstanding his vaunted "details", Mr. Bulgakov proved unable to grasp the German data. In the occupational statistics he merely saw an increase in the number of landless labourers and a diminution in the number of landowning labourers, which he took to be an index of the "changes that have taken place in the organisation of agricultural labour" (II, 106). But these changes in the organisation of labour in German agriculture as a whole have remained for him a fortuitous and inexplicable fact, in no way connected with the general structure and evolution of agricultural capitalism. In reality, it is only one of the aspects of the process of capitalist development. Mr. Bulgakov's
   
* In regard to this fact Mr. Bulgakov delivered himself in Nachalo of the banal joke, "The increase in the number of officers in a dwindling army". A vulgarised view of the organisation of labour in large-scale produclion!
page 222
opinion notwithstanding, the technical progress of German agriculture is first and foremost the progress of large-scale production, as has been irrefutably proved by statistics relating to the use of machinery, the percentage of enterprises using draught animals and the type used, the development of industries connected with agriculture, the growth of dairy farming, and so forth. Inseverably connected with the progress of large-scale production are the growth of the proletarisation and expropriation of the rural population; the expanding number of small allotment farms and of peasants whose principal source of livelihood is auxiliary occupations; the increased poverty among the middle-peasant population, whose farming conditions have deteriorated most (the largest increase in the percentage of horseless farms and in the percentage of farms using cows for field work), and, consequently, whose general living conditions and quality of land cultivation have undergone greatest deterioration.