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dant information has been published in our literature. But to whom much is given, much is required. The very wealth of the material entitles us to demand its thorough analysis by the investigators, but the Sketch is a long way from meeting this demand. Both in the tabulated data and in the method of grouping and analysing them there are many gaps, which the present author has had in part to fill by selecting material from various parts of the book and computing the appropriate data.

    Our purpose is to acquaint the reader with the material of the census, the methods by which it has been analysed, and the conclusions to be drawn from the data relative to the economic realities of our "handicraft industries." We underscore the words "economic realities," because we only deal with what exists in reality, and why that reality is what it is, and not something else. As to extending the conclusions drawn from the data on Perm Gubernia to "our handicraft industries" in general, the reader will see from what follows that such an extention is quite legitimate, for the forms of "handicraft industry" in Perm Gubernia are exceedingly varied and embrace every possible form ever mentioned in the literature on the subject.

    But there is one request we must earnestly make, namely, that the reader draw the strictest possible distinction between two aspects of the following commentary: the study and analysis of the actual facts, on the one hand, and the discussion of the Narodnik views held by the authors of the Sketch, on the other.

    The handicraft census of 1894-95 embraced 8,991 families (excluding the families of wage-workers) in all uyezds of the gubernia, or, in the opinion of the investigators, about 72 per cent of the total number of Perm handicraftsmen; other data point to the existence of 3,484 families more. The basic division according to type adopted in the Sketch is as follows: two groups of handicraftsmen are distinguished (indicated in the tables by the Roman numerals I and

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highly characteristic of the Narodniks, who at once adopt the viewpoint of the small producer and leave wage-labour in the shade. Below we shall find frequent gaps of this kind in the information on wage-workers, but for the moment let us confine ourselves to the remark that although the absence of information on wage-workers' families is a common feature of the literature on handicrafts, there are exceptions. In the Moscow Zemstvo statistics one occasionally comes across systematic information on wage-workers' families, and even more so in the well-known inquiry of Messrs. Kharizomenov and Prugavin, Industries of Vladimir Gubernia, which contains house-to-house censuses that register wage-workers' families on a par with those of masters. Secondly, by including the mass of landless industrialists under the heading of handicraftsmen, the investigators naturally removed the grounds for the common, although absolutely incorrect, method of excluding the urban industrialists from this category. And, indeed, we find that the 1894-95 census includes one town -- Kungur (p. 33 of the tables) -- but only one. No explanation is given in the Sketch, and it remains a mystery why the census was taken for one town only, and why this particular town was chosen -- whether by chance or for some sound reason. This causes no little confusion, and seriously detracts from the value of the general data. On the whole, therefore, the handicraft census repeats the usual Narodnik mistake of separating the country ("handicraftsmen") from the town, although often enough an industrial district embraces a town and the surrounding villages. It is high time to abandon this distinction, which is due to prejudice and an exaggeration of outdated divisions into social estates.

    We have already referred on several occasions to rural and urban artisans, sometimes excluding them from the number of handicraftsmen, and sometimes not. The fact is that these fluctuations are characteristic of all literature on "handicraft" industries, and demonstrate the unsuitability of a term like "handicraftsman" for the purposes of scientific investigation. The generally accepted opinion is that only those who work for the market, the commodity producers, should be regarded as handicraftsmen; but in practice it would be hard to find all investigation of the handicraft

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let us recall that the town of Kungur was included in Group II, which thus consists of a mixture of urban and rural industrialists. We see from the table that although there is a preponderance of agriculturists (Group I) among the rural industrialists and artisans, they are more backward in the development of forms of industry than those who do not cultivate the land (Group II). Among the former primitive artisanship is far more prevalent than production for the market. The greater development of capitalism among the non-agriculturists is shown by the larger proportion of establishments employing wage-workers, of the wage-workers themselves, and of handicraftsmen who work for buyers up. It may therefore be concluded that the tie with agriculture tends to preserve the more backward forms of industry, and vice versa, that the development of capitalism in industry leads to a break with agriculture. Unfortunately, exact information on this subject is not available, and we have perforce to content ourselves with indirect indications. For example, the Sketch tells us nothing about the division of the rural population of Perm Gubernia into agriculturists and landless people, and so we cannot determine in which of these categories the industries are most developed. There is a similar neglect of the highly interesting question of the territorial distribution of industry (the investigators were in possession of the most exact information on this point, for each village separately), of the concentra-

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in Perm Gubernia "continues to reflect the influence of those means of communication which determined the commercial and industrial physiognomy of the area not only in the pre-railway days, but even in pre-Reform days" (p. 39). Actually, the town of Kungur was the road junction in the Cis-Urals area: through it passes the Siberian highway which connects Kungur with Ekaterinburg, with branches to Shadrinsk; another commercial highway from Kungur, that of Blagodatnaya Gora, connects the town with Osa. Lastly, the Birsk highway connects Kungur with Krasnoufimsk. "We thus find that the handicraft industry of the gubernia became concentrated in districts around the highway junctions: in the Cis-Urals area -- in the uyezds of Kungur, Krasnoufimsk and Osa and in the Trans-Urals area -- in the uyezds of Ekaterinburg and Shadrinsk" (p. 39). Let us remind the reader that it is these five uyezds that constitute the group that is first in its development of handicraft industry, and that 70% of the total number of handicraftsmen are concen trated in them. Secondly, this fact shows us that the "organisation of exchange" in handicraft industry, about which the handicraft friends of the muzhik chatter so frivolously, has already been created and by none other than the Russian merchant class itself. Later on we shall find much to confirm this. Only in the third category of handicraftsmen (those who process metal) do we find that the distribution of raw material production and its processing by handicraftsmen correspond: 70% of this category of handicraftsmen are concentrated in the four uyezds producing 70.6% of the total pig-iron and malleable iron. But here the raw material is itself a product of the large-scale metallurgical industry, which, as we shall see, has its "own views" on the "handrcraftsman."

    Let us now summarise the data on wage-labour in the handicraft industries of Perm Gubernia. Without repeating the absolute figures already cited, let us confine ourselves to indicating the most interesting percentages;

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    We thus see that the percentage of wage-workers is higher among the non-agriculturists than among the agriculturists, and that the difference is chiefly accounted for by the second sub-group: among the farming artisans the proportion of wage-workers is 14.1%, and among the non-agriculturists it is 29.3%, or over twice as high. In the other two sub-groups, the proportion of wage-workers in Group II is slightly higher than in Group I. It has already been said that this results from capitalism being less developed among the agricultural population. Of course, the Perm Narodniks, like all other Narodniks, declare this to be of advantage to the agriculturists. We shall not, at this point, enter into a controversy on the general subject of whether the under-development and backwardness of the given social and economic relations may be regarded as an advantage; we shall merely say that the figures we quote below will show that this is an advantage that gives the agriculturists low earnings.

    It is interesting to note that insofar as the employment of wage-labour is concerned the difference between the

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groups is less than the difference between the sub-groups of the same group. In other words, the economic structure of the industry (artisans -- commodity producers -- workers for buyers-up) has a greater influence on the extent to which wage-labour is employed than the existence or absence of ties with agriculture. For example, the small agriculturist commodity producer is more akin to the small non-agriculturist commodity producer than to the agriculturist artisan. The proportion of wage-workers in the first sub-group is 29.4% in Group I and 31.2% in Group II, whereas in the second sub-group of Group I it is only 14.1%. Similarly, the agriculturist who works for a buyer-up is more akin to the non-agriculturist who does the same (23.2% and 27.4% wage-workers respectively) than to the agriculturist artisan. This shows us that the general prevalence of capitalist commodity relations in the country tends to reduce to one level the agriculturist and the non-agriculturist engaged in industry. This levelling process is brought out even more saliently by the data on the incomes of handicraftsmen. The second sub-group, as we have said, is an exception; but if, instead of the figures showing the percentage of wage-workers, we take the average number of wage-workers per establishment, we shall find that the agriculturist artisans are more akin to the non-agriculturist artisans (0.23 and 0.43 wage-workers per establishment respectively) than to the agriculturists in the other sub-groups. The average number of workers per establishment among the artisans of both groups is almost the same (1.7 and 1.8), whereas in the sub-groups of each group this average differs very considerably (Group I -- 2.6 and 1.7; Group II -- 2.5 and 1.8).

    The average figures per establishment in each sub-group also reveal the interesting fact that the number is lowest among the artisans of both groups: 1.7 and 1.8 workers per workshop respectively. This means that production is most scattered among artisans, the individual producers are most isolated, and co-operation in production least practised. First place in this respect is held by the first sub-group of each group, that is, by the small masters who produce for the market. The number of people engaged in the workshops in these sub-groups is the largest (2.6 and 2,5 persons); here handi-

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craftsmen with big families are the most numerous (20.3% and 18.5% have 3 or more workers in the family; the third sub-group of Group I -- 20.9% -- is something of an exception); at the same time the employment of wage-labour is the largest (0.75 and 0.78 wage-workers per workshop); and there is also the largest proportion of big establishments (2.0% and 1.3% of establishments employ six or more wage-workers). Consequently, co-operation in production is here most widespread, because of the most extensive employment of wage-labour, and of members of the family (1.8 and 1.7 family workers per establishment; the third sub-group of Group I, with 1.9 persons, is something of an exception).

    This latter circumstance brings us to the highly important question of the relation between family labour and wage-labour employed by "handicraftsmen," a relation which prompts us to doubt the correctness of the prevailing Narodnik doctrine that wage-labour in handicraft production merely "supplements" family labour. The Perm Narodniks support this view when they argue on p. 55 that "the identification of the interests of the handicraftsmen with those of the kulaks" is refuted by the fact that the most prosperous handicraftsmen (Group I) have the largest number of family workers, whereas "if the handicraftsman were prompted solely by the profit motive, the sole incentive of the kulak, and not by the desire to consolidate and develop his establishment with the aid of all the members of his family, we should expect the proportion of members of the family who devoted their labours to production to be smallest in this sub-group of establishments" (?!). A strange conclusion! How can any conclusion regarding the role of "personal participation in work" (p. 55) be drawn if nothing is said about wage-labour? If the prosperity of handicraftsmen with large families did not indicate kulak tendencies, we should find among them the lowest proportion of wage-workers, the lowest proportion of establishments employing them, the lowest proportion of establishments with a large number of workers (more than five), and the smallest average number of workers per establishment. Actually, however, the most prosperous handicraftsmen (first sub-group) hold first, and not last place in all these respects, and this despite the fact that they have the largest families and the

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largest number of family workers, and constitute the largest proportion of handicraftsmen with three or more family workers! Clearly, the facts point to the very opposite of what the Narodniks would have them mean: the handicraftsman does, in fact, strive for profit, and by kulak methods; he takes advantage of his greater prosperity (one of the conditions for which is the possession of a large family) to employ wage-labour on a larger scale. Having a larger number of family workers than the other handicraftsmen he uses this to oust the others by hiring the largest numberof workers. "Family co-operation, "about which Mr. V. V. and the other Narodniks speak so unctuously (cf. Handicraft Industries, I, p.14), is a guarantee of the development of capitalist co-operation. This, of course, will seem a paradox to the reader who is used to Narodnik prejudices; but it is a fact. To obtain precise data on this subject, one should know not only the distribution of the establishments according to the number of family and of wage-workers (which is given in the Sketch ), but also according to the combination of family and wage-labour. The house-to-house returns furnished every opportunity of making such a combination, of calculating the number of establishments in each category employing one, two, etc., wage-workers and classifying them according to the number of family workers. Unfortunately, this was not done. In order to make up for this omission, if only partially, let us turn to the work already mentioned, Handicraft Industries, where we do find combined tables of establishments classified according to the number of family and wage-workers. The tables are given for five industries, embracing a total of 749 establishments with 1,945 workers (op. cit., 1, pp. 59, 78 and 160; III, pp. 87 and 109). In order to analyse these data with reference to the problem we are now considering, namely, the relation between family labour and wage-labour, we must divide all the establishments into groups according to the total number of workers (for it is the total number of workers which shows the size of the workshop and the degree of co-operation in production), and determine the role of family labour and wage-labour in each group. Let us take four groups: 1) establishments with one worker; 2) establishments with two to four workers; 3) establishments with five to nine workers, and 4) establish-

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ments with ten or more workers. This division according to the total number of workers is all the more necessary, as the establishments with one worker and those with ten, for example, obviously represent entirely different economic types; to combine them and strike "averages" would be utterly absurd as we shall see later in the case of the figures given in the Sketch. Grouping the data as indicated, we get the following table:

    These detailed figures fully confirm the proposition advanced above, which seemed so paradoxical at first glance, i.e., the larger the total number of workers in an establishment, the larger the number of family workers employed in it, and the more extensive, consequently, the "family co-operation"; but, at the same time, capitalist co-operation also increases, and does so far more rapidly. Despite the fact that they have a large number of family workers, the more prosperous handicraftsmen employ many additional wage-workers. "Family co-operation" is thus the pledge and foundation of capitalist co-operation.

    Let us examine the data of the 1894-95 census relating to family and wage-labour. The establishments are divided according to the number of family workers as follows:

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    The preponderance of one-man establishments should be noted: they constitute more than half the tolal. Even if we were to assume that all the establishments that combine family labour with wage-labour have no more than one family worker each, we would still find lhat 2,500 of them would be run by one man. These are the representatives of the most scattered producers, representatives of the most disunited small workshops -- a disunity that is generally characteristic of the much-vaunted "people's production." Let us take a glance at the opposite pole, the largest workshops:

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form of production" (sic !) can only have significance when the number of wage-workers exceeds five per establishment, and such establishments constitute only 1% of the total. The argument is purely artificial: in the first place, establishments with five family workers and five wage-workers are a pure abstraction, resulting from an inadequate analysis of the facts, for wage-labour is combined with family labour. An establishment with three family workers will, by hiring another three workers, have more than five workers and, compared with the one-man establishments, will occupy an exceptional competitive position. Secondly, if the statisticians really wanted to investigate the question of "competition" between the various establishments, dividing them according to the number of wage-workers they employ, why did they not make use of the data of the house to-house census? Why did they not group the establishments according to the number of workers and show the size of their incomes? Would it not have been more appropriate for statisticians who had such rich material at their disposal to make a real study of the facts, instead of treating the reader to all sorts of stuff of their own invention and hastily abandoning facts in order to "do battle" with the adversaries of Narodism?

    ". . . From the standpoint of the supporters of capitalism, this percentage may, perhaps, be considered sufficient ground for the prediction that the handicraft form must inevitably degenerate into the capitalist form; but in this respect it does not actually represent an alarming symptom at all, especially in view of the following circumstances. . ." (p. 56).

    Charming, is it not? Instead of taking the trouble to sift the available material for precise data on the capitalist establishments, the authors combined them with the one-man establishments and then began to controvert imaginary "predictors"! -- We do not know what these "supporters of capitalism" who are so repugnant to the Perm statisticians are likely "to predict," but for our part we can only say that all these phrases merely cover an attempt to evade the facts. And the facts show that there is no special "handicraft form of production" (that is an invention of "handicraft" economists), that the small commodity producers give rise to

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large capitalist establishments (in the tables we found a handicraftsman employing 65 wage-workers! -- p. 169), and that it was the investigators' duty to group the data in such a way that we could examine this process and compare the various establishments insofar as they approximate capitalist enterprises. The Perm statisticians not only failed to do this themselves, but even deprived us of the opportunity of doing so, for in the tables all the establishments in a given sub-group are lumped together so that it is impossible to separate the factory owner from the one-man producer. The compilers cover up the omission with meaningless aphorisms. The large establishments, you see, constitute only 1% of the total, so that if they are excluded, the conclusions based on the remaining 99% will not be affected (p. 56). But this one per cent, this one-hundredth part, is not commensurate with the others! One large establishment is equal to more than 15 establishments of the one-man producers who account for over 30 "hundredths" (of the total number of establishments)! This calculation relates to the number of workers. And if we take the gross output, or net income, we shall find that one large establishment is not equal to 15, but perhaps to 30 other establishments.* One-fourth of all the wage-workers is concentrated in this "one-hundredth" of the establishments, an average of 14.6 workers per establishment. To give the reader some idea of the significance of this latter figure, let us take the figures given for Perm Gubernia in the Collection of Data on Factory Industry in Russia (published by the Department of Commerce and Manufactures). As the figures vary considerably from year to year, we shall take the average for seven years (1885-91). The result for Perm Gubernia is 885 "factories and works" (as understood by the official statistics), with an aggregate output of 22,645,000 rubles and a total of 13,006 wage-workers, which gives us an "average" of 14.6 workers per factory.

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    In confirmation of their opinion that the large establishments are of no great significance, the compilers of the Sketch refer to the fact that very few (8%) of the number of wage-workers employed by the handicraftsmen are employed by the year, the majority being piece-workers (37%), seasonal workers (30%) and day labourers (25%, p. 51). The piece-workers "usually work in their own homes with their own implements and maintain themselves," while the day labourers are engaged "temporarily," like agricultural labourers. That being the case, "we cannot regard the relatively large number of wage-workers as unquestionable proof that these establishments are of the capitalist type" (56). . . . "It is our conviction that neither the piece-workers, nor the day labourers in general constitute the cadres of a working class similar to the West-European proletariat; only those who work regularly throughout the year can form these cadres."

    All praises to the Perm Narodniks for their interest in the relation between the Russian wage-workers and the "West-European proletariat." The question is an interesting one, there's no gainsaying that! Nevertheless, from statisticians we would have preferred to hear statements based on fact, and not on "conviction." For, after all, the mere utterance of one's "conviction" will not always convince others. . . . Would it not have been better to give more facts, instead of telling the reader about the "convictions" of Mr. X or Mr. Y? How incredibly few facts on the position of the wage-workers, working conditions, working hours in the establishments of various size, the families of the wage-workers, etc., are given in the Sketch. If the only purpose of the argument on the difference between the Russian workers and the West-European proletariat was to hide this omission, we should have to retract our praise. . . .

    All we learn about wage-workers from the Sketch is their division into four categories: annual, seasonal, piece and day workers. To get some idea of these categories, we have to turn to the data scattered throughout the book. The number of workers in each category and their earnings are given for 29 industries (out of 43). In these 29 industries there are 4,795 wage-workers, earning a total of 233,784 rubles. In all the 43 industries, there are 4,904 wage-workers

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from industry of their own accord, and not because the master does not furnish them with work), than as the "predominance of the seasonal element in wage-labour" (p 52),

    The data collected by the handicraft census which indicate the foundation dates of practically all the establishments investigated are of great interest. Here are the general data on the subject:

    Thus, we see that the post-Reform period has stimulated a big development in handicraft industry. It seems the conditions favouring this development have been and are operating with ever-growing force as time goes on, since each succeeding decade has witnessed the opening of more and more establishments. This fact is clear evidence of the intensity with which the development of commodity production, the separation of agriculture from industry, and the growth of commerce and industry in general are proceeding among the peasantry. We say "separation of agriculture from industry," for this separation begins earlier than the separation of the agriculturists from the industrialists: every enterprise which produces for the market gives rise to exchange between agriculturists and industrialists. Hence, the appearance of such an enterprise implies that the agriculturists cease to produce articles in their homes and purchase them in the market, and to make such purchases the peasant has to sell agricultural produce. The growing number of commercial and industrial establishments thus

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    The figures showing the dates the establishments were founded are also inadequately treated in the Sketch : all the information given is for uyezds, and not for groups or sub-groups; nor is there any other grouping (according to size of establishment, whether located in the centre of the industry or in the surrounding villages, etc.). Although they did not analyse the census data in accordance with their own system of groups and sub-groups, the Perm Narodniks here too found it necessary to treat the reader to sermons that are amazing for their ultra-Narodnik unctuousness and . . . absurdity. The Perm statisticians have made the discovery that in the "handicraft form of production" there prevails a specific "form of continuity" of establishments, namely, "communal-labour continuity," whereas the system that prevails in capitalist industry is "property-inheritance continuity," and that "communal-labour continuity organically converts the wage-worker into an independent master" (sic !), which finds expression in the fact that when the owner of an establishment dies and there are no family workers among the heirs, the industry passes to another family, "perhaps to that of a wage-worker employed in the very same establishment," and also in the fact that "community land tenure guarantees the labour industrial independence of both the owner of a handicraft industrial establishment and his wage-worker" (pp. 7, 68, et al.).

    We have no doubt that this "communal-labour principle of continuity in the handicraft industries," as invented by the Perm Narodniks, will occupy a fitting place in the history of literature, alongside the sentimental theory of "people's production" propounded by Messrs. V. V., N.-on, and others. Both theories are of the same mould, both embellish and distort the truth with the help of Manilovian phrases. Everybody knows that the establishments, materials, tools, etc., of the handicraftsmen are private property which is transmitted by inheritance, and not by some sort of communal law; that the village community in no way guarantees independence even in agriculture, let alone industry, and that the same economic struggle and exploitation goes on within the community as outside it. What has been turned into the special theory of the"communal-

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labour-principle" is the simple fact that the small master, owning very little capital, has to work himself, and that the wage-worker may become a master (if he is thrifty and abstemious, of course); examples of this are cited in the Sketch on p. 69. . . . All the theoreticians of the petty bourgeoisie have always consoled themselves with the fact that in small production a worker may become a master, and none of their ideals have ever gone beyond the conversion of the workers into small masters. The Sketch even makes an attempt to cite "statistical data confirming the principle of communal-labour continuity" (45). These data relate to the tanning industry. Out of 129 establishments, 90 (i.e., 70%) have been founded since 1870; yet in 1869 there were 161 handicraft tanneries (according to the "list of inhabited places"), while in 1895 there were 153. That is to say, tanneries have been transferred from some families to others -- and this is regarded as the "principle of communal-labour continuity." It would be absurd, of course, to argue against this anxiety to detect some special "principle" in the fact that small establishments are easily opened and just as easily shut down, freely pass from one hand to another, and so on. Let us only add, with regard to the tanning industry in particular, that, firstly, the dates of origin of the establishments indicate that this industry developed far more slowly than the other industries, and that, secondly, it is absolutely useless to compare 1869 with 1895, for the term "handicraft tannery" is constantly confused with the term "leather factory." In the 1860s the overwhelming majority of the "leather factories" in Perm Gubernia (according to the factory statistics) had an output valued at less than 1,000 rubles (see the Ministry of Finance Yearbook, Part I, St. Petersburg, 1869. Tables and notes); in the 1890s establishments with an output of less than 1,000 rubles were, on the one hand, excluded from the list of factories, and the list of "handicraft tanneries," on the other, happened to include many establishments with an output of over 1,000 rubles, some even with an out put of 5,000 rubles, 10,000 rubles and more (Sketch, p. 70, and pp. 149 and 150 of the tables). What is the use of comparing data for 1869 and 1895 when no definite distinction is made between handicraIt and factory-type tanneries?

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Thirdly, even if it were true that the number of tanneries has decreased, might this not mean that many small establishments have been closed down and that larger establishments have been gradually opened in their place? Are we to believe that such a "change" also confirms the "principle of communal-labour continuity"?

    And the crowning incongruity is that all this sugary talk about the "communal-labour principle," the "guarantee of communal-labour independence," and the like, refers to the tanning industry, where the agriculturist handicraftsmen represent the purest type of petty bourgeois (see below), an industry which is highly concentrated in three large establishments (factories) that have been included in the list side, by side with the one-man handicraft and artisan establishments. Here are the figures showing this concentration:

    In all, there are 148 establishments in this industry. Workers: 267 family + 172 wage-workers = 439; aggregate output = 151,022 rubles; net income = 26,207 rubles. Among these establishments there are 3 with 0 family workers + 65 wage-workers = 65. Value of output = 44,275 rubles; net income = 3,391 rubles (p. 70 of the text, and pp. 149 and 150 of the tables).

    In other words, in three establishments out of 148 ("only 2.1%," as the Sketch reassuringly puts it -- p. 76) there is a concentration of nearly one-third of the total output of the "handicraft tanning industry," yielding their owners thousands of rubles of income without their taking any part in production. We shall encounter many similar incongruities in relation to other industries, too. But in describing this industry, the authors of the Sketch paused, by way of exception, to discuss the three establishments mentioned. With regard to one of them we are told that the owner (an agriculturist!) "is apparently occupied exclusively in commerce, having his leather shops in the village of Beloyarskoye and the city of Ekaterinburg" (pp.76-77). This is a specimen of how capital invested in production combines with capital invested in commerce -- a fact that should be noted by the authors of the Sketch, who depict "kulakdom" and commercial operations as something adventitious, divorced from produclion! In another establishment, the family

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consists of five males, not one of whom works at the trade "the father is engaged in commercial operations connected with his industry, and the sons (varying in age from 18 to 53), all of them educated, have apparently taken to other and more congenial pursuits than transferring hides from one vat to another and washing them" (p. 77). The authors magnanimously concede that these establishments are "capitalist in character" -- "but how far the future of these enterprises is ensured on the principle of transmission as inherited property is a question to which only the future can give its decisive answer" (76). How profound! "The future is a question to which only the future can give an answer." The sacred truth! But does it warrant a distortion of the present?

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    The house-to-house census of master handicraftsmen, big and small, provide very interesting data on the agriculture they engage in. Here are the figures, divided according to the sub-groups, as given in the Sketch :

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proportion of impoverished agriculturists among them is even higher. The house-to-house census, as we have already said, did not cover the wage-workers. At any rate, even the figures cited clearly show how ludicrous is the assertion in the Sketch that "community land tenure guarantees the labour industrial independence of both the owner of a handicraft industrial establishment and his wage-worker."

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    Take the handicraft oil-millers. The agriculturists among them number 173. A household, on the average, cultivates 10.1 dessiatines and possesses 3.5 horses and 3.3 cows. There is no household without at least one horse and a cow. Together, they employ 98 labourers (annual and seasonal) who receive in wages a total of 3,438 rubles, or an average of 35.1 rubles each. "The refuse, or oil-cake that remains after the milling process, serves as excellent cattle feed, thanks to which it is possible to manure the fields on a larger scale. Thus the household derives a triple advantage from the industry: the income from the industry itself, the income from livestock, and a higher yield from the fields" (164). "Agriculture is carried on by them" (the oil-millers) "on a wide scale, and many of them, not contenting themselves with the community allotments they get, also rent land from the poor households" (168). The data showing the distribution of flax and hemp growing by uyezds reveal "a certain connection between the area under flax and hemp and the distribution of the oil-milling industry among the uyezds of the gubernia" (170).

    Hence, the commercial and industrial enterprises in this case are those known as technical agricultural industries, the development of which is always characteristic of the progress of commercial and capitalist agriculture.

    Take the flour-millers. Most of them engage in agriculture -- 385 out of 421. A household, on the average, cultivates 11.0 dessiatines and possesses 3.0 horses and 3.5 cows. They employ 307 workers who are also agriculturists and who receive wages totalling 6,211 rubles. Like the oil-milling industry, "flour-milling serves the millers as a means of marketing the produce of their own farms in the most profitable form" (178).

    These examples, we think, should be quite sufficient to show how absurd it is to regard the term "handicraftsman agriculturist" as signifying something homogeneous and uniform. All the agriculturists we have cited are representatives of the agricultural petty bourgeoisie, and to combine these types with the rest of the peasantry, including even the ruined households, is to obscure the most characteristic features of reality.

    In the concluding part of their description of the oil-

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    We must therefore conclude that the compilers of the Sketch are mistaken in their desire to explain the difference between the earnings of the agriculturists and non-agriculturists by the difference in the length of the working periods. Their mistake was due to their not attempting to express the dilferences in the working periods by exact figures, and this led them astray. For example, on page 106 of the Sketch it is stated that the difference between the earnings of the agriculturist and the non-agriculturist furriers "is chiefly determined by the number of working days devoted to industry." Yet the earnings of the non-agriculturists in this industry are from two to four times greater than those of the agriculturists (65 and 280 rubles respectively per family worker in the first sub-group, and 27 and 62 rubles in the second sub-group), whereas the working period of the non-agriculturists is longer by only 28.7% (8.5 months as compared with 6.6).

    The fact that the tie with the land lowers earnings could not escape the attention even of the compilers of the Sketch ; but they expressed it in the usual Narodnik formula on the "superiority" of the handicraft to the capitalist form: "by combining agriculture with industry, the handicraftsman . . . is able to sell his wares cheaper than those of the factory" (p. 4); in other words, he can manage on smaller earnings. But where is the "superiority" of the tie with the land, if the market already so dominates the whole of the country's industrial life that it discounts this tie by lowering the earnings of the agriculturist handicraftsman: if capital can take advantage of this "tie" to exert greater pressure on the agriculturist handicraftsman, who is less able to defend his interests, to choose a different master, a different customer, or a different occupation? The lowering of wages (and of industrial earnings in general) when the worker (or the small industrialist) has a plot of land is something common to all capitalist countries, and is perfectly well known to all employers who have long ago appreciated the vast "superiority" of workers tied to the land. Only in the decadent West do they bluntly call a spade a spade, but in our country the lowering of wages, the lowering of the living standard of the working population, the delay in introducing machinery, and the perpetuation

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of all sorts of bondage is referred to as the "superiority" of "people's production," which "combines agriculture with industry.". . .

    In concluding our review of the 1894-95 census data on the working period, we cannot refrain from once again expressing our regret that the data obtained have been so incompletely analysed, nor from voicing the hope that this defect will not deter other investigators of this interesting problem. One cannot but admit that the method of investigation -- determination of the number of workers employed each month -- was very well chosen. Above we have given data for the working period by groups and sub-groups. There was some possibility of verifying the data for the groups. But it is utterly impossible to verify the data for the sub-groups, since the book furnishes absolutely no information on the differences in the length of the working period in the various sub-groups. Therefore, in citing these data, we make the reservation that we cannot guarantee their absolute reliability; and if we draw further conclusions, it is only for the purpose of raising this question and drawing the investigators' attention to it. The most important conclusion is that the smallest difference in the working periods in Groups I and II is in the first sub-group (only 1% in all: 10.1 months and 10.0 months); in other words, It is the most prosperous handicraftsmen and the biggest and wealthiest agriculturists who are least diverted from agriculture. The difference is largest in the case of the artisans (second sub-group: 9.5 months and 10.4 months), that is, the industrialists and middle agriculturists least affected by commodity production. It would appear that the prosperous agriculturists are diverted so little from agriculture either because of their larger families or their greater exploitation of wage-labour in industry or their hiring of agricultural labourers, and that the artisans are most diverted from agriculture because they have been less differentiated as agriculturists, have retained patriarchal relations to a great extent, and work directly for agricultural customes who reduce their orders in the summer.*

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prosperous non-agriculturist sub-groups of wage-workers, to say nothing of the non-agriculturist masters. The masters of Group I have very low incomes even when compared with the wage-workers of that group -- sometimes they are slightly higher and sometimes even lower than the workers' wages;

    3) retards the cultural development of the population whose consumption level is lower than that of the non-agriculturists and whose standard of literacy is far behind that of the latter.

    These conclusions will be useful later for our assessment of the Narodnik programme of industrial policy.

    4) Differentiation among the agriculturist handicraftsmen is seen to run parallel to that of the industrialists. The higher (more prosperous) categories of agriculturists constitute a pure type of peasant bourgeoisie who employ regular and day labourers to run their farms.

    5) The working period of the agriculturists is shorter than that of the non-agriculturists, but the difference is very small (5% to 20%).

    We must dwell in greater detail on the data of the 1894-95 census on incomes from handicrafts. The attempt to collect household data on incomes is very instructive, and it would be quite wrong to confine ourselves to general "averages" for the sub-groups (given above). We have already, on more than one occasion, referred to the fictitious nature of "averages" derived by adding together individual handicraftsmen and owners of big establishments and then dividing the total obtained by the number of the components. Let us endeavour to assemble the data contained in the Sketch on this subject in order to illustrate this method clearly and prove its fictitious nature and to demonstrate that in scientific investigations and in analysing house-to-house census data handicraftsmen must be grouped in categories according to number of workers (family and wage-workers) employed in the workshop, and all the census data arranged in accordance with these categories.

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    The compilers of the Sketch must have noted the all too obvious fact of higher incomes in the big establishments, and tried to minimise its significance. Instead of giving precise census data on the large establishments (which they could have selected with no difficulty), they again confined themselves to general discussions, arguments and inventions against conclusions which the Narodniks find unpleasant. Let us examine these arguments.

    "If in such" (big) "establishments we meet with a family income disproportionately larger than that of the small establishments, we must not lose sight of the fact that a considerable part of this income is mainly the reproduction of the value, firstly, of a certain portion of the fixed capital transmitted to the product, secondly, of the labour and expenses connected with commerce and transport which play no part in production, and, thirdly, of the value of food supplied to wage-workers who receive their board from the masters. These facts" (facts, indeed!) "limit the possibility of certain illusions arising which give an exaggerated notion of the advantages of wage-labour in handicraft industry or, what amounts to the same thing, of the capitalist element" (p. 15). That it is highly desirable in all investigations "to limit" the possibility of illusions is something which nobody, of course, doubts, but for this it is necessary to combat "illusions" by means of facts, facts taken from the household census, and not by citing one's own opinions, which are themselves sometimes mere "illusions." Is not, indeed, the authors' argument about commercial and transport expenses an illusion? Who does not know that these expenses per unit of product are far smaller for the big producer than the small producer,* that the former buys his material cheaper and sells his product dearer, knowing how (and being in a position) to choose time and place? The handicraft census, too, mentions these generally known facts -- cf. pp. 204 and 263, for example -- and one cannot but regret that the Sketch contains no facts about expenses on the purchase of raw materials and the sale of the product by

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and nearly ten times as high as that of the others, i.e., the smaller establishments. The latter have incomes but slightly higher than a worker's wages (34 and 26 rubles respectively).

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small handicraftsmen. The income of the small handicraftsman is, therefore, lower than a worker's wages (60.5 and 65.6 rubles).

    The pitch and tar industry:

    Although this industry is, in general, a small one that employs very few wage-workers (20%) we again find the same purely capitalist phenomenon of the superiority of the large (relatively large) establishments of the independent handicraftsmen in the agricultural group. And yet pitch and tar production is a purely peasant, "people's" industry! In the large establishments labour productivity is over three times, workers' wages about one-and-a-half times and net income about eight times the "average"; their net income, moreover, is ten times as high as that of other handicraft families who earn no more than the average wage-worker, and less than a wage-worker in the larger establishments. Let us note that pitch and tar production is chiefly a summer occupation, so that differences in the working period cannot be very great.*

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    The baking industry:

    Thus, here again, the averages for the entire sub-group are absolutely fictitious. The large establishments (of small capitalists) account for over half the total output, yield a net income six times the average and 14 times that of the small masters, and pay their workers wages exceeding the incomes of the small handicraftsmen. We do not mention productivity of labour; three or four of the large establishments produce a more valuable product -- treacle.

    The pottery industry. Here again we have a typical small peasant industry with an insignificant number of wage-workers (13%), very small establishments (less than two workers per establishment) and a predominance of agriculturists. And here too we get the same picture:

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    Here, consequently, it is at once apparent from the "average" figures that the wage-worker's earnings are higher than the family worker's income. By treating the large establishments separately, we get the explanation of this contradiction, which we have already recorded in numerous instances. In the large establishments labour productivity, wages and masters' incomes are all incomparably higher, while the small handicraftsmen get less than the wage-workers and less than half the earnings of the wage-workers in the best-organised shops.

    The brick industry:

    Thus, here too, the "average" income of a family worker is lower than the earnings of a wage-worker. Here again it is to be explained by combining the big establishments -- which are distinguished by a considerably higher labour productivity, higher payment of wage-workers, and a very high (comparatively) income -- and the small establishments, the income of whose owners is about half the earnings of the wage-workers in the big establishments.

    We might go on citing figures for other industries too,* but we think that those given are more than enough.

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    Let us now summarise the conclusions that follow from the facts examined:

    1) The combining of large and small establishments results in absolutely fictitious "average" figures, which give no conception of the real state of affairs, obscure cardinal differences, and present as homogeneous something that is heterogeneous, of mixed composition.

    2) The data for a number of industries show that the large establishments (where a large number of workers are engaged) are distinguished from the average and small establishments:

    a) by an incomparably higher productivity of labour;

    b) by better payment of wage-workers, and

    c) by a far higher net income.

    3) All the large establishments we have selected, without exception, employ wage-labour on an incomparably larger scale (than the average-sized establishments in the given industry), the proportion of wage-labour being substantially greater than that of family labour. The value of their output is as much as 10,000 rubles, while the number of wage-workers employed is ten and more per establishment. These large establishments, therefore, represent capitalist workshops. The census data consequently reveal the prevalence of purely capitalist laws and relations in the celebrated "handicraft" industry; they reveal the absolute superiority of the capitalist workshops, based on the co-operation of wage-workers, over the one-man workshops and small workshops in general -- a superiority both in productivity of labour and in remuneration for labour, even of wage-workers.

    4) In the case of a number of the industries the earnings of the small independent handicraftsmen prove to be no higher, and often even lower, than the earnings of wage-workers in the same industry. This difference would be even greater if to the wage-workers' earnings were added the value of the board received by some of them.

    We have dealt with this last conclusion separately because the first three concern phenomena that are universal and inevitable under the laws of commodity production, whereas the last does not contain phenomena that are every-

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where inevitable. We accordingly formulate this concept as follows: because of lower labour productivity in small establishments and the defenceless position of their owners in the market (especially in the case of agriculturists), it is possible that the earnings of an independent handicraftsman may be lower than those of a wage worker -- and the facts show that this very often is the case.

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to 100 rubles," "less than 100 rubles," and sometimes even "100 rubles each." The top and bottom limits of the category are not always indicated, that is, sometimes the classification begins with the category "up to 100 rubles," sometimes with that of "up to 50 rubles," "up to 10 rubles," and so on; sometimes the classification ends with the category "1,000 rubles and over," sometimes the categories "2,000 to 3,000 rubles" and others are introduced. None of these inaccuracies is of any serious importance. We have unified all the categories contained in the Sketch (there are fifteen of them: up to 10, up to 20, up to 50, up to 100, up to 200, up to 300, up to 400, up to 500, up to 600, up to 700, up to 800, up to 900, up to 1,000, 1,000 and over, and 2,000 to 3,000 rubles), and we have eliminated all minor inaccuracies and misunderstandings by assigning them to one or another of these categories.

    2) The Sketch only indicates the number of establishments in certain income categories, but does not indicate the income of all the establishments in each category. Yet it is these latter figures that we need most. We have therefore assumed that the aggregate income of the establishments in any category is determined with sufficient accuracy by multiplying the number of establishments by the average income, that is, by the arithmetical mean of the maximum and minimum of the given category (for example, 150 rubles in the case of the 100 to 200 ruble category, etc.). Only in the case of the lowest two categories (up to 10 rubles and up to 20 rubles) have the maximum incomes (10 rubles and 20 rubles respectively) been taken instead of the averages. Verification has shown that this method (one generally permissible in statistical calculations) yields results that approximate very closely to reality. For instance, the aggregate net income of the handicraft families in these 28 industries, according to the Sketch, amounts to 951,653 rubles, while according to our approximate figures, based on the income categories, it amounts to 955,150 rubles, an excess of 3,497 rubles = 0.36%. Consequently, the difference or error is less than 4 kopeks in 10 rubles.

    3) From our summary we learn the average income per family (in each category), but not per family worker. To

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determine the latter, another approximate calculation had to be made. Knowing the division of families according to the number of family workers (and separately -- according to the number of wage-workers employed), we assumed that the lower the income of a family, the smaller its size (i.e., the smaller the number of family workers per establishment) and the fewer the establishments employing wage-workers. On the contrary, the higher the income per family, the larger the number of establishments employing wage-workers and the larger the family, that is, the number of family workers per establishment is larger. Obviously, this assumption is the most favourable for anyone who might want to contest our conclusions. In other words, whatever other assumption was made, it would only help to reinforce our conclusions.

    We now give a summary showing the division of the handicraftsmen according to the income of their establishments.

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    These data are too detailed and have therefore to be combined under simpler and clearer headings. Let us take five income categories of handicraftsmen: a) poor, with incomes of up to 50 rubles per family; b) in straitened circumstances, with incomes of 50 to 100 rubles per family; c) medium, with incomes of 100 to 300 rubles per family; d) well-to-do, with incomes of 300 to 500 rubles per family, and e) affluent, with incomes of over 500 rubles per family.

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78.7 rubles (Material for a Statistical Survey of Perm Gubernia. Krasnoufimsk Uyezd. Zavodsk District, Kazan, 1894), or over twice as much. And it is a generally known fact that the wages of ironworkers from among the former possessional peasants are always lower than wages of "free" workers in the factories. One can, therefore, see that reduced consumption, a miserable standard of living, is the price paid for the celebrated "independence" of the Russian handicraftsman "based on an organic tie between industry and agriculture"!

    c) In the category of "medium" handicraftsmen we have included families with incomes of 100 to 300 rubles, or an average of about 180 rubles per family. They constitute almost one-fourth of the total number (24.1%). Absolutely, their income is very, very low: counting two-and-a-half family workers per establishment, it amounts to about 72 rubles per family worker -- a very inadequate sum, and one which no factory worker would envy. Compared, however, with the incomes of the mass of handicraftsmen this sum is fairly high! It appears that even this meagre "sufficiency" is only secured at the expense of others: the majority of the handicraftsmen in this category employ wage-workers (roughly about 85% of the masters employ wage-labourers, and the average for the 2,016 establishments is over one wage-worker per establishment). Hence, in order to fight their way out of the mass of poverty-stricken handicrafts men, this category, under the existing commodity-capitalist relations, have to win a "sufficiency" for themselves from others, have to engage in economic struggle, to squeeze out the mass of the small producers still further and become petty bourgeois. Either poverty and the lowering of their standard of living to the nec plus ultra, or (for a minority ) the building-up of their (absolutely very meagre) welfare at the expense of others -- such is the dilemma with which commodity production confronts the small producer. Such is the language of facts.

    d) The category of well-to-do handicraftsmen embraces only 3.8% of the families, those with an average income of about 385 rubles, or about 100 rubles per family worker (assuming that under this heading come masters with 4 or 5 family workers per establishment). Such an income,

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about double the earnings of a wage-worker, is already based on a considerable employment of wage-labour: all the establishments in this category employ an average of about 3 wage-workers per establishment.

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be wrong to describe the economic relations in large-scale factory industry without mentioning the size of the manufacturers' incomes, so is it wrong to describe the economics of "handicraft" industry without mentioning the incomes of the buyers-up -- incomes obtained from the same industry in which handicraftsmen are also engaged, and constituting part of the value of goods produced by handicraftsmen. We are therefore entitled, in fact we are obliged, to conclude that the actual distribntion of incomes in handicraft industry is far more uneven than was shown above, for the categories which include the largest industrialists of all have been omitted.

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    Above we called the buyers-up the biggest of the industrialists. From the ordinary Narodnik viewpoint, this is heresy. It is customary to depict our buyers-up as individuals who take no part in production, who are extraneous and alien to industry itself, and depend "solely" on exchange.

    This is not the place to dwell in detail on the theoretical fallacies contained in this view, which is based on a failure to understand the general and principal groundwork, foundation, or background of present-day industry (handicraft industry included) -- namely, commodity economy, of which merchant capital is an essential component, and not a casual and incidental adjunct. Here we must stick to the facts and figures of the handicraft census, and our task will now be to examine and analyse the data on buyers-up. A circumstance favouring this examination is the fact that handicraftsmen who work for buyers-up have been put into a separate sub-group (the third). But this advantage is outweighed by the great number of omissions and uninvestigated factors, which rather seriously complicates our inquiry. No data are available on the number of buyers-up, on large buyers-up and small, on their ties with the well-to-do handicraftsmen (ties of origin, ties between the commercial operations of the buyer-up and production in his workshop, etc.), on the business of the buyer-up. The Narodnik prejudice of treating the buyer-up as extraneous prevented most investigators of handicraft industry from examining business done by buyers-up, although this is obviously a prime and prin-

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cipal question for the economist. A careful and detailed study should be made of the business methods of the buyer up, how his capital is built up, how this capital operates in the purchase of raw material and the sale of the product, what are the conditions (social and economic) in which capital operates in these spheres, what expenses he incurs in organising purchases and sales, how these expenses vary according to the amount of merchant capital and the volume of purchases and sales, and what conditions sometimes induce the buyer-up to process the raw material partly in his own workshops and then to give out the semi-finished product to domestic workers for further processing (the final finishing process sometimes being done by the buyer up himself), and sometimes to sell the raw material to small industrialists, in order, later, to buy their wares in the market. A comparison should be made between the cost of production of an article turned out by a small handicraftsman, by a large producer in a workshop where several wage-workers are employed, and by a buyer-up who gives out material to be worked up by domestic workers. The unit of investigation should be each enterprise, that is, each separate buyer-up, and it is necessary to determine the amount of his turnover, the number of persons working for him in his workshop or workshops, or in their own homes, the number of workers he employs to acquire raw materials, to store them and the finished product, and to sell the latter. A comparison should be made between the technique of production (number and quality of implements and fixtures, division of labour, etc.) used by the small master, the workshop owner who employs wage-workers, and by the buyer-up. Only such an economic investigation can give an exact scientific answer to the questions: what is a buyer-up, what is his significance in the economic process and in the historical development of the forms of industry under commodity production. The absence of such information in the conclusions of the house-to house census, which made a detailed study of all these questions for each handicraftsman, cannot but be regarded as a serious omission. Even if it was impossible (for some reason or another) to register and investigate the business of each buyer-up, much of this information could have been drawn from the household data on handicraftsmen who

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work for buyers-up. Instead, we find nothing in the Sketch but hackeyed Narodnik phrases, such as: the "kulak" is "essentially alien to production itself" (p. 7) -- the kulak category being extended to include both buyers-up and owners of assembly workshops, on the one hand, and usurers, on the other; "wage-labour is governed not by its technical concentration, as in the case of the factory (?), but by the monetary dependence of the handicraftsmen . . . one of the forms of kulakism" (309-10); "the source of the exploitation of labour . . . lies in the function of exchange, and not in the function of production" (101); or what we often meet with in the handicraft industries is not the "capitalisation of production," but the "capitalisation of the process of exchange" (265). Of course, we have no intention of accusing the Sketch investigators of originality: they simply borrowed wholesale the maxims scattered so profusely in the works of, say, "our well-known" Mr. V. V.

    In order to judge the true value of such phrases, we have only to remember, for example, that in one of our principal industries, textiles, the "buyer-up" was the immediate forerunner, the father, of the big manufacturer engaged in large-scale machine production. All our textile industries began with supplying yarn to be worked up by handicraftsmen at home; this, in other words, was work for the "buyer-up," for the "kulak," who, while possessing no workshop of his own ("was alien to production"), "merely" supplied the yarn, and took the finished goods. Our good Narodniks did not even attempt to investigate the origin of these buyers-up, their genealogical connections with the owners of small workshops, their role as organisers of the buying of raw materials and the selling of products, the role of their capital in concentrating means of production, in gathering together masses of scattered small handicraftsmen, in introducing division of labour, and in creating the elements of what is not only large-scale production but which is also becoming machine production. Our good Narodniks confined themselves to whining and complaining about this "deplorable," "artificial," etc., etc., phenomenon; they consoled themselves with the belief that this was not the "capitalisation" of production, but "merely" of the process of exchange, and talked sentimentally about "different paths for the fatherland." Meanwhile

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these "artificial" and "unsubstantial" "kulaks" kept on following their old path, continued to concentrate capital, to "gather together" means of production and producers, to extend their purchases of raw materials, to further the division of production into separate operations (warping, weaving, dyeing, finishing, etc.) and to transform scattered, technically backward capitalist manufacture, based on hand labour and servitude, into capitalist machine industry.

    An exactly similar process is now taking place in the bulk of our so-called "handicraft" industries; and the Narodniks in just the same way shun an investigation of realities as they develop, in just the same way replace a discussion of the origin of existing relations and their evolution by a discussion of what might be (if what is were not), in just the same way-console themselves with the thought that so far these are "merely" buyers-up, and in just the same way idealise and paint in rosy colours the worst forms of capitalism -- worst in technical backwardness, economic imperfection, and the social and cultural conditions of the working masses.

    Let us turn to the data of the Perm handicraft census. Wherever necessary, we shall endeavour to make good the above-mentioned omissions by drawing upon Handicraft Industries of Perm Gubernia, etc., a book to which we have already referred. Let us first of all pick out the industries which account for the bulk of the handicraftsmen employed by buyers-up (third sub-group). For this purpose we shall have to turn to our own summary, which (as already mentioned) does not coincide with the Sketch figures.

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    Thus, about nine-tenths of the handicraftsmen working for buyers-up are concentrated in these seven industries. It is to these industries that we shall turn first.

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correct (sic !) association with handicraft industry, with the object, in its own interests (exactly!), of developing and not reducing . . . its capacity (III, p. 3). For example, Fominsky, the manufacturer, was awarded a gold medal at the 1887 Ekaterinburg Exhibition not only for the excellent quality of his leather, but also for his "extensive operations, which furnish work for the surrounding population " (ibid., p. 4, author's italics). Indeed, of the 1,450 persons he employed, 1,300 were domestic workers. Of the 120 persons employed by Sartakov, another manufacturer, 100 were domestic workers, etc. Hence the Perm manufacturers vie very successfully with the Narodnik intellectuals in implanting and developing handicraft industries. . . .

    The organisation of the bootmaking industry in Krasnoufimsk Uyezd (Handicraft Industries, I, pp. 148-49) is in every way analogous; the leather goods manufacturers also stitch leather boots, partly in their workshops, partly by giving the work out to domestic workers. One of the biggest of the owners of a leather and boot establishment employs about 200 regular workers.

    We are now in a position to form a fairly clear idea of the economic organisation of the bootmaking and of many other allied "handicraft" industries. They are nothing but branches of large capitalist workshops ("factories," according to the terminology used in our official statistics), performing nothing but detailed operations in the large-scale capitalist manufacture of leather goods. The entrepreneurs have organised the buying of materials on a broad scale, have set up factories for tanning the hides, and have established a whole organisation for the further processing of the leather based on the division of labour (as the technical condition) and wage-labour (as the economic condition): some of the operations (such as cutting out leather for boots) are performed in their workshops, others are performed by "handicraftsmen" who work for them in their homes, the employers determining the amount of output, the rates of payment, the kind of goods to be made, and the quantity of each kind. They have also organised the wholesale marketing of the product. Obviously, in scientific terminology this is nothing but capitalist manufacture, in part already passing into the higher form of factory industry (inasmuch as machines and machinery

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upon, for it would promote technical progress by eliminating a host of middlemen and would pave the way for the regulation of working hours and working conditions; in a word, it would eliminate the most crying abuses in our "people's" industry.

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workshops belong to one master -- stands out very clearly. The handicraftsmen who act as buyers-up, giving out work to be done at home, are among the biggest masters (of whom there are 25) who have organised the most profitable purchase of raw material and the marketing of the product on a large scale; these twenty-five handicraftsmen (and they alone) take their goods to the fair or have their own shops. In addition to them, the big "manufacturer traders" are also buyers-up; they exhibited their wares at the Factory Department of the Ekaterinburg Exhibition. The author of the book classes them under "factory-handicraft (sic !) industry" (Handicraft Industries, I, pp. 98-99). Thus, on the whole, we get a very typical picture of capitalist manufacture, interwoven in the most diverse and fantastic ways with small establishments. In order to demonstrate clearly how little the division of industrialists into "handicraftsmen" and "manufacturers," into producers and "buyers-up," helps us to understand these complex relations, let us take the figures given in this book and show the economic relations in the industry in a table:

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    And now we shall be told that the buyers-up, like the usurers, are "alien to production itself," that their domination merely implies the "capitalisation of the process of exchange," and not the "capitalisation of production"!

    Another highly typical instance of capitalist manufacture is the chest-making industry (Sketch, pp. 334-39; Handicraft Industries, I, pp. 31-40). It is organised as follows: a few big proprietors who own workshops employing wage-workers purchase the materials, partly manufacture the goods in their own workshops, but mainly give out material to small detailed workshops, subsequently assembling the various parts of the chest in their own workshops and sending the finished article to market. Division of labour -- the typical condition and technical basis of manufacture -- is widely employed in production: the making of a complete chest is divided into ten or twelve detailed operations each performed by different handicraftsmen. Thus, the organisation of the industry consists in combining detail workers (Theilarbeiter, as they are called in Das Kapital ) under the command of capital. Why capital prefers to give out work to be done at home rather than employ wage-workers in a workshop is made quite clear by the data provided in the 1894-95 handicraft census on the establishments of the Nevyansk Factory, Ekaterinbure Uyezd (one of the centres of the industry), where, side by side with assembly workshops, we also meet with detail handicraftsmen. Hence a comparison between the two is quite possible. Here are comparative figures given in a table (on p. 173 of the tables):

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    Before examining this table, we must say that if we had taken the data for the entire first and third sub-groups (Sketch, p. 335) and not for the Nevyansk Factory alone, the conclusions would have been the same. The gross income in the two sub-groups obviously cannot be compared, for the same material passes through the hands of various detail workers and through the assembly workshops. But the data for incomes and wages are characteristic. We find that the wages of hired workers in the assembly workshops are higher than the incomes of the dependent handicraftsmen (100 rubles and 89 rubles respectively), notwithstanding the fact that the latter exploit wage-workers in their turn. But the wages of these latter are less than half those of the workers in the assembly workshops. Why, then, should our employers not prefer "handicraft" industry to factory industry, when the former yields them such substantial "advantages"! We find a fully analogous organisation of production for the buyers-up in the vehicle-building industry (Sketch, p. 308, et. seq.; Handicraft Industries, I, p. 42, et. seq.) -- the same assembly workshops, whose owners are "buyers-up" (and work-distributors, work-givers) in relation to the handicraftsmen who make the parts, and the earnings of the wage-worker in the workshop are again higher than the income of the dependent handicraftsman (not to mention his wage-worker). These higher wages are recorded for both agriculturists (Group I) and non-agriculturists (Group II). In the cabinet-making industry, the buyers-up are the furniture shops in the city of Perm (Sketch, 133; Handicraft Industries, II, 11) that supply the handicraftsmen with models when placing orders, and in this way, incidentally, have "gradually improved the technique of production."

    In the tailoring trade, the ready-made clothing shops in Perm and Ekaterinburg give out material to be made up by handicraftsmen. As we know, an exactly similar organisation of the tailoring and dressmaking industry also exists in other capitalist countries, in Western Europe and America. The difference between the "capitalist" West and Russia, with her "people's industry," is that this state of affairs

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    We might be accused of one-sidedness, of accentuating only the dark sides of handicraft industry, were we to pass over in silence the facts mentioned in the Sketch which are intended to stress its "bright side" and "gratifying features."

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eight wage-workers and with an output of 10,000 rubles is proclaimed to be "by its labour situation (sic !) a handicraft enterprise in the strict sense of the term." On pp. 272-74, we are told how another small manufacturer (employing seven wage-workers and five apprentices, and with an output of 7,000 rubles) erected a blast furnace on a site rented from a village community and applied to the Handicraft Bank for a loan of 5,000 rubles with which to erect a furnace, explaining that his "whole enterprise is of purely local interest, inasmuch as the ore will be mined on community allotments by the local peasants themselves." The bank refused the loan for purely formal reasons. And the Sketch uses this as a peg on which to hang an attractive picture of the conversion of this enterprise into a co-operative: "this will undoubtedly please the employer, as one who has at heart the interests of the fellow community members around him and not only those of the industry." The enterprise "embraces numerous labour interests of the fellow community members, who will be mining ore and felling timber and carrying them to the factory." "Householders will deliver ore, charcoal, etc., to the factory, just as the womenfolk deliver milk to the public cheese factory. Of course, this presupposes a more complex organisation than that of a public cheese factory, especially if the local skilled and unskilled labourers are employed in running the business itself, that is, smelting iron from ore." How idyllic! Manual labourers ("fellow community members") will "deliver" ore, fuel and the rest "to the factory," just as peasant women deliver milk to the cheese factory! We will not deny that the Handicraft Bank can (if its bureaucratic organisation does not prevent it) perform the same sort of service as other banks in developing commodity production and capitalism, but it would be very sad indeed if it were at the same time to develop the pharisaism and Manilov chit-chat of loan-seeking employers.

    So far we have seen how enterprises employing large numbers of wage-workers have been proclaimed "handicraft" on the ground that their owners work themselves. But for petty bourgeois people this condition would be rather restrictive, and so the Sketch endeavours to expand it: it appears that an enterprise which "is conducted solely with the help of

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    Since practical recommendations and measures are always connected with what is considered to be "gratifying" and promising in reality, one knows a priori what wishes for the handicraft industry would be expressed in the Sketch since it has reduced all "gratifying features" to drawing a rose-coloured picture of wage-labour in petty economy and an exalted notion of the extremely scanty and one-sided associations of small proprietors. These wishes, a rehash of the usual Narodnik recipes, amaze one by their contradictory character, on the one hand, and by their inordinate exaggeration of commonplace "measures," converted by phrase-mongering into solutions of great problems, on the other. At the very beginning of the Sketch, in the introduction, before the census data are even dealt with, we meet with verbose statements about the "task of handicraft credit" being "to over come (sic !) the money shortage," about the "co-operative organisation of exchange between production and consumption" (p. 8), about "spreading artel organisations," establishing handicraft warehouses, technical advice bureaus, technical schools, and the like (p. 9). These statements recur in the book over and over again. "The economics of the industry must be so reorganised as to place the handicraftsmen in possession of money; or, to put it more plainly, to emancipate the handicraftsman from the kulak" (119) "The task of our

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time" is to effect "the emancipation of the handicraftsman by means of credit," etc. (267). "Exchange processes must be rationalised," measures must be adopted "to implant rational principles of credit, exchange and production in peasant farming" (362); what is needed is the "economic organisation of labour" (sic ! -- p. 363), "the rational arrangement of the economics of the national economy," and so on, and so forth. All this, as we see, is the familiar Narodnik panacea, tacked on to the census data. And, as though in final confirmation of their Narodnik orthodoxy, the compilers did not fail to condemn money economy in general, and for the reader's edification inform him that artisan production "performs a valuable service to the national economy, by affording it the opportunity to avoid the conversion of natural economy into money economy." "The national economy is vitally interested in demanding that the raw materials it produces be worked up on the spot, as far as possible without the intervention of money in the exchange processes" (p. 360).

    Here we have the Narodnik programme expounded with a fullness and frankness that leave nothing to be desired! We say the "Narodnik programme," for we are interested, not in what distinguishes the compilers of the Sketch from other Narodniks, but, on the contrary, in what they have in common. What interests us is the practical Narodnik programme for the handicraft industries in general. It is easy to see that the main features of this programme are saliently stressed in the Sketch : 1) condemnation of money economy and sympathy for natural economy and primitive artisan production; 2) various measures for the encouragement of small peasant production, such as credits, technical developments, etc.; 3) the spreading of associations and societies of all kinds among the masters, big and small -- raw material, warehousing, loan-and-savings, credit, consumers' and producers' societies; 4) "organisation of labour" -- a current phrase in all and sundry Narodnik good intentions. Let us examine this programme.

    To take first the condemnation of money economy: as far as industry is concerned, it is already of a purely Platonic character. Even in Perm Gubernia, artisan production has already been forced far into the background by commodity production, and is in such a piliful state that we find the

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Sketch itself talking about the desirability of "emancipating the handicraftsman from dependence," in other words, of abolishing the artisan's dependence on the private customer "by seeking means of extending the marketing area beyond the local consumption demand" (p. 33). In other words, condemnation of money economy in theory and a desire to convert artisan production into commodity production in practice! And this contradiction is by no means peculiar to the Sketch, it is characteristic of all Narodnik projects: however much they may kick against commodity (money) economy, realities driven out of the door fly in at the window, and the measures they advocate only serve to develop commodity production. Credit is an illustration of this. In their plans and proposals the Narodniks cannot dispense with commodity economy. The Sketch, for example, does not even hint that the proposed reforms should not be based on commodity economy. On the contrary, all it wants is rational principles of exchange, the co-operative organisation of exchange. Commodity economy remains, and is only to be reformed on rational lines. There is nothing new in this utopia; it had many an eminent exponent in the old economic literature. Its theoretical unsoundness was disclosed long ago, so that there is no need to dwell on the subject here. Instead of uttering absurd phrases about the necessity of "rationalising" economy, would they not do better first "to rationalise" their notions of the existing economy, of the socio-economic relations existing among that extremely variegated and dissimilar mass of "handicraftsmen" whose destinies our Narodniks wish to decide so bureaucratically and frivolously from above? Has not actual life shown us time and again that Narodnik practical measures, concocted in accordance with supposedly "pure" ideas on "organisation of labour," etc., lead in practice to nothing but encouragement and support for the "enterprising muzhik," the small manufacturer or the buyer-up and all the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie in general? This is not fortuitous, it is not because individual measures are imperfect or unsuitable. On the contrary, given the general basis of commodity economy, it is the petty bourgeois above all and before all who inevitably and necessarily make use of credits, warehouses, banks, technical advice and the like.

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    But, it may be objected, if that is so, if the Narodniks in the practical measures they suggest, unconsciously and involuntarily serve to develop the petty bourgeoisie, and, hence, capitalism in general, why should their programme be attacked by people who on principle regard the development of capitalism as a progressive process? Is it reasonable to attack practical and useful programmes because their ideological integument is wrong, or, to put it mildly, debatable, for surely nobody will deny the "usefulness" of technical education, credits and of producers' societies and associations?

    These are not imaginary objections. In one form or another, in one connection or another, they are constantly to be heard in the replies to the arguments levelled against the Narodniks. We shall not dwell here on the point that even if such objections were justified, they do not in the least refute the fact that the dressing-up of petty-bourgeois projects as the most exalted social panaceas is in itself a cause of grave social harm. We intend to put the question on the practical footing of the vital and immediate needs of the times, and to judge the Narodnik programme from this deliberately narrowed viewpoint.

    Although many of the Narodnik measures are of practical value in serving to develop capitalism, nevertheless, taken as a whole, they are 1) supremely inconsistent, 2) lifelessly doctrinaire, and 3) paltry compared with the actual problems with which developing capitalism confronts our industry. Let us explain. We have shown, firstly, how inconsistent the Narodniks are as practical men. Side by side with the measures indicated above, which are usually described as a liberal economic policy, and which have always been inscribed on the banners of bourgeois leaders in the West, the Narodniks contrive to cling to their intention of retarding contemporary economic development, of preventing the progress of capitalism, and of supporting small production, which is being bled white in the struggle against large-scale production. They advocate laws and institutions which restrict the freedom of the mobilisation of land and freedom of movement, and which retain the peasantry as a closed social estate, etc. Are there, we ask, any reasonable grounds for retarding the development of capitalism and big industry? We have seen from the census data that the notorious "inde-

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of laughter). But do not defend that which artificially retards present-day development, do not drown the problem of removing the obstacles from the existing path in talk about a "different path."

    Here is another thing that should be borne in mind-when judging the Narodniks' practical programme. We have already seen that the Narodniks try to formulate their ideas as abstractly as possible, to present them as the abstract demands of "pure" science or "pure" justice, and not as the real needs of real classes having definite interests. Credit -- that vital need of every master, big and small, in capitalist society -- is presented by the Narodnik as a sort of element in the system of the organisation of labour; masters' associations and societies are depicted as the embryonic expression of the idea of co-operation in general, of the idea of "handicraft emancipation," etc., whereas everybody knows that all such associations actually pursue aims which have nothing in common with such lofty matters, but are simply connected with the size of these masters' incomes, with the growing strength of their position and with their increasing profits. To thus convert commonplace bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wishes into a sort of social panacea only emasculates them, robs them of their vitality, of the guarantee of their urgency and practicability. The Narodnik endeavours to present the urgent needs of each proprietor, buyer-up, or merchant (credits, associations, technical assistance) as general questions towering above individual interests. The Narodnik imagines that he is thereby enhancing their significance, exalting them, whereas actually he is only converting a vital matter that interests certain specific groups of the population into a philistine wish, into armchair speculation, bureaucratic "reflections on the benefits" of things. Directly connected with this is a third circumstance. Not realising that such practical measures as credits and artels, technical assistance, etc., reflect the needs of developing capitalism, the Narodnik is unable to voice the general and fundamental needs of this development, and instead proposes paltry, casually selected, half measures which in themselves are incapable of exerting any serious influence and are inevitably doomed to failure. Had the Narodnik openly and consistently adopted the standpoint of an exponent of the needs of social development along

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capitalist lines, he would have been able to note the general conditions, the general demands of this development, and he would have seen that, given these general conditions (the chief of them, in the present case, being freedom of industry), all his petty projects and measures would be achieved automatically, that is, by the activities of the interested parties themselves, whereas, by ignoring these general conditions and proposing nothing but practical measures of an utterly incidental character, he is only beating about the bush. Let us, by way of illustration, take the question of the freedom of industry. On the one hand, it is so much the general and fundamental question of questions concerning industrial policy, that an examination of it is particularly appropriate. On the other hand, the specific conditions of the Perm area furnish interesting corroboration of the cardinal importance of this question.

    The metallurgical industry, as we know, is the major feature of the economic life of the area and has laid a very specific impress on it. Both the history of the area's colonisation and its present condition are closely connected with the needs of the Urals iron industry. "Generally speaking, the peasants were settled in the Urals in order to furnish hands for the ironmasters," we read in the letter of Babushkin, a resident of Nizhniye Sergi, quoted in the Transactions of the Commission of Inquiry into Handicraft Industry.* And these artless words very faithfully depict the tremendous part played by the ironmasters in the life of the area, their significance as landlords and factory owners combined, accustomed to undivided and unrestricted rule, as monopolists who base their industry on possessional rights and not on capital and competition. The monopoly basis of the Urals metallurgical industry has been reflected in law, in the well-known Article 394 of Volume VII of the Code of Laws (Mining Statute), an article about which so much has been and is still being written in literature on the Urals. This law, promulgated in 1806, provides, firstly, that the sanction of the mining authority shall be required for mining towns to open any factory and, secondly, forbids the opening in the ironworks area of "any manufactory or

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    First. We can be sure that the overwhelming majority of the Narodniks will indignantly deny the correctness of our identifying "freedom of industry" with "freedom of capitalism." They will say that the abolition of monopolies and of the survivals of serfdom is "simply" a demand for equality, that it is in the interest of the "entire" national economy in general and of peasant economy in particular, and not of capitalism at all. We know that the Narodniks will say this. But it will be untrue. Over a hundred years have elapsed since the days when "freedom of industry" was regarded in this idealistic abstract way, as a fundamental and natural (cf. the word italicised in the Sketch ) "right of man." Since then the demand for "freedom of industry" has been advanced and achieved in a number of countries, and everywhere this demand has expressed the discrepancy between growing capitalism and the survivals of monopoly and regulation, everywhere it has served as the watchword of the advanced bourgeoisie, and every where it has resulted in the complete triumph of capitalism, and nothing else. Theory has since fully explained the absolute naïveté of the illusion that "freedom of industry" is a demand of "pure reason," of abstract "equality," and has shown that freedom of industry is a capitalist issue. The achievement of "freedom of industry" is by no means a "legal" reform only; it is a profound economic reform. The demand for "freedom of industry" is always indicative of a discrepancy between the legal institutions (which reflect production relations that have already outlived their day) and the new production relations, which have developed in spite of the old institutions, have outgrown them and demand their abolition. If the order of things in the Urals is now evoking a general cry for "freedom of industry," it means that the traditional regulations, monopolies and privileges that benefit the landlord ironmasters are restricting existing economic relations, existing economic forces. What are these relations and forces? These relations are the relations of commodity economy. These forces are the forces of capital, which guides commodity economy. We have only to remember the "confession" of the Perm Narodnik quoted above: "Our entire handicraft industry is in bondage to private capital." And, even without this confession, the handicraft census data speak quite eloquently for themselves,

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    Second remark. We welcome the defence of freedom of industry by the Narodniks. But we make this welcome contingent on its being conducted consistently. Does "freedom of industry" merely consist in abolishing the ban on the opening of fire-using establishments in the Urals? Does not the fact that the peasant has no right to leave his village community, or to engage in any industry or pursuit he likes, constitute a far more serious restriction on "freedom of industry"? Does not the absence of freedom of movement, the fact that the law does not recognise the right of every citizen to choose any town or village community in the country as his place of domicile, constitute a restriction on freedom of industry? Does not the peasant community, with its social-estate exclusiveness -- the fact that members of the trading and industrial class cannot enter it -- constitute a restriction on freedom of industry? And so on, and so forth. We have enumerated far more serious, more general and widespread restrictions on freedom of industry, restrictions that affect all Russia, and the entire mass of the peasantry most of all. If "large, medium and small" industries are to have equal rights, should not the small industries be granted the same right to alienate land as is enjoyed by the large industries? If the Urals mining laws are "exceptional fetters, restricting natural development," do not collective responsibility, the inalienability of allotments and the special social-estate laws and regulations governing trades and occupations, migration and transfer from one social estate to another, constitute "exceptional fetters"? Do they not "restrict natural development"?

    The truth is that on this question, too, the Narodniks have betrayed the half-heartedness and two-facedness that are characteristic of every Kleinbürger ideology. On the one hand, the Narodniks do not deny that in our society there are a host of survivals of the "organisation of labour" whose origin dates back to the days of apanage rights, and which are in crying contradiction to the modern economic system and to the country's entire economic and cultural development. On the other hand, they cannot help seeing that this economic system and development threaten to ruin the small producer, and, fearful for the fate of this palladium of their "ideals," the Narodniks try to drag history back, to halt

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development, beg and plead that it be "forbidden," "not allowed," and cover up this pitiful reactionary prattle with talk about "organisation of labour," talk that can only sound as a bitter mockery.

    The chief and fundamental objection we have to make to the practical Narodnik programme for modern industry should now, of course, be clear to the reader. Insofar as the Narodnik measures are part of, or coincide with, the reform which, since the days of Adam Smith, has been known as freedom of industry (in the broad sense of the term), they are progressive. But, firstly, in that case, they contain nothing specifically "Narodnik," nothing that gives special support to small production and "special paths" for the fatherland. Secondly, this favourable side of the Narodnik programme is weakened and distorted by the substitution of partial and minor projects and measures for a general and fundamental solution of the problem -- freedom of industry. Insofar, however, as Narodnik aspirations run counter to freedom of industry and endeavour to retard modern development, they are reactionary and meaningless, and their achievement can bring nothing but harm. Let us illustrate this by examples. Take credit. Credit is an institution of most developed commodity circulation, of the most developed, nation-wide turnover of commodities. Wherever achieved, "freedom of industry" in evitably leads to the formation of credit institutions as commercial enterprises, to the breaking-down of the peasants' social-estate exclusiveness, to their mingling with the classes which make most frequent resort to credit, to the independent formation of credit societies by interested persons, and so on. On the other hand, what value can there be in credit measures conferred on the "muzhiks" by Zemstvo officials and other "intellectuals" if the laws and institutions keep the peasantry in a condition which precludes the possibility of a proper, developed commodity circulation, in a condition in which labour service is far easier, far more practicable, attainable and workable than property responsibility (the foundation of credit)? Under these conditions, credit measures will always be something adventitious, an alien growth planted in absolutely uncongenial soil; they will be still-born, some thing only dreamy intellectual Manilovs and well-meaning officials could give birth to, and which the real traders in

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money capital will always jeer at. So as to make no unfounded assertion, let us quote the opinion of Yegunov (in the article mentioned above) whom nobody can suspect of -- "materialism." Speaking in reference to handicraft warehouses, he says: "Even under the most favourable local conditions, a stationary warehouse, and the only one in the whole uyezd at that, never can and never will replace a perpetually mobile and personally interested trader." In reference to the Perm Handicraft Bank, we are told that in order to obtain a loan the handicraftsman must hand in an application to the bank or its agent and name his guarantors. The agent comes, verifies his statement, gathers detailed information about his business, etc., "and this whole pile of documents is sent, at the handicraftsman's expense, to the head office of the bank." If it decides to grant the loan, the bank sends (through the agent, or through the volost administration) a bond for signature, and only when the borrower has signed it (his signature being certified by the volost authorities) and sent it back to the bank, does he receive his money. If an artel applies for a loan, a copy of the articles of association is required. It is the function of the agents to see that loans are expended for the specific purposes for which they have been granted, that the business of clients is run on sound lines, etc. "Obviously, in no way can it be said that handicraftsmen can easily obtain bank loans; it may be safely said that the handicraftsman will far more readily turn to the local moneyed man for a loan than submit to all the trying formalities we have described, pay postage, notary's and local government fees, patiently wait all the months that elapse between the moment the need for the loan arises and the day it is granted, and put up with supervision for the whole period of the loan" (op. cit., p. 170). The Narodnik view on some sort of anti-capitalist credit is just as absurd as the incongruous, clumsy and useless at tempts (using wrong methods) to get done by "intellectuals" and officials things that have everywhere and always been the business of traders.

    Technical education. There is hardly need, we think, to dwell on this subject . . . except to remind the reader of the project, worthy of "eternal memory," of our well-known progressive writer, Mr. Yuzhakov, to implant agricultural gymnasia in Russia, at which poor peasant men and women

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