V. I.   Lenin

New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture

PART ONE—Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America

We have examined the major forms of the development of capitalism in agriculture, and have seen how extremely varied they are. The most important are: the break-up of the slave-holding latifundia in the South; the growth of large-scale extensive farming operations in the extensive area of the North; the most rapid development of capitalism in the intensive area of the North, where farms are, on the average, the smallest. The facts incontrovertibly prove that in some cases the development of capitalism is indicated by an increase in farm acreage and in others by an increase in the number of farms. In view of such a state of affairs we learn nothing from the returns on average farm acreages summarized for the country as a whole.

What then is the net result of the various local and agricultural peculiarities? An indication is given by the data on hired labour. The growing employment of hired labour is a general process transcending all these peculiarities. But in the vast majority of civilized countries agricultural statistics, paying tribute, intentionally or otherwise, to prevailing bourgeois notions and prejudices, either fail to furnish any systematic information on hired labour at all, or give it only for the most recent period (e.g., German Agricultural Census of 1907), so that it is impossible   to make a comparison with the past. I shall show in detail elsewhere that in the elaboration and tabulation of the returns of hired labour American statistics changed markedly for the worse between 1900 and 1910.

The most common and most popular method of presenting statistical summaries in America and most other countries is to compare big and small farms by acreage. I shall now proceed to a consideration of these data.

In grouping farms by acreage, American statisticians take total acreage and not just the improved area, which would, of course, be the more correct method, and is the one employed by German statisticians. No reason is given why seven groups (under 20 acres, 20 to 49, 50 to 99, 100 to 174, 175 to 499, 500 to 999, 1,000 and over) are used to tabulate the returns of the 1910 Census in the United States. Statistical routine must apparently have been of paramount consideration. I shall call the 100-to-174-acre group—medium, because it consists mostly of homesteads (the official size of a homestead is 160 acres), and also because land holdings of this size usually give the farmer the greatest degree of “independence” and require the least employment of hired labour. The groups above that I shall call large or capitalistic because, as a general rule, they do not manage without hired labour. Farms with 1,000 acres and over I shall regard as latifundia—of which three-fifths is unimproved land in the North, nine-tenths, in the South, and two-thirds, in the West. Small farms are those with less than 100 acres; how much economic independence they have is evident from the fact that in three groups, from the bottom up, 51%, 43% and 23% of the farms respectively, are recorded as having no horses. It goes without saying that this characteristic should not be taken in an absolute sense and should not he applied to all divisions or to localities with specific conditions without a special analysis.

I am unable to give here the returns for all the seven groups in the main sections of the United States, for this would overload the text with an excessive number of figures. I shall, therefore, merely outline the basic distinctions between the North, the South and the West, and give the full returns only for the United States as a whole. We should   not lose sight of the fact that three-fifths (60.6%) of all the improved land, is in the North; less than one third (31.5%), in the South; and under one-twelfth (7.9%), in the West.

The most striking distinction between the three main sections is that the capitalist North has the smallest number of latifundia, although their number, their total acreage, and their improved acreage are on the increase. In 1910, 0.5% of the farms in the North were of 1,000 acres and over; these big farms had 6.9% of all the land and 4.1% of the improved land. The South had 0.7% of such farms, with 23.9% of the total acreage and 4.8% of the improved acreage. In the West there were 3.9% of such farms, owning 48.3% of the total acreage, and 32.3% of the improved acreage. This is a familiar picture: the slave-holding latifundia of the South, and the even vaster latifundia of the West, the latter being partly the foundation of the most extensive stock-raising, and partly reserve tracts of land occupied by “settlers” and resold or (less often) leased to real farmers improving the “Far West”.

America demonstrates clearly that it would be imprudent to confuse the latifundia with large-scale capitalist agriculture, and that the latifundia are frequently survivals of pre-capitalist relationships—slave-owning, feudal or patriarchal. A break-up, a parcelling out of the latifundia, is taking place both in the South and in the West. In the North, the total farm acreage increased by 30.7 million acres, of which only 2.3 million is accounted for by latifundia, while 22 million belongs to big, capitalist farms (175 to 999 acres). In the South, the total acreage was reduced by 7.5 million. The latifundia decreased by 31.8 million acres. On the small farms there was an increase of 13 million, and on the medium farms, 5 million acres. In the West, the total acreage increased by 17 million; among the latifundia there was a decrease of 1.2 million; on the small farms, an increase of 2 million; medium, 5 million; large, 11 million acres.

The improved acreage increased in the latifundia of all three sections: substantially in the North (+3.7 million acres = +47.0%), very slightly in the South (+0.3   million = +5.5%), and more in the West (+2.8 million = +29.6%). But in the North, the maximum increase in the improved acreage-occurred on the large farms (175 to 999 acres); in the South, on the small and medium; in the West, on the large and medium. Hence, it is the large farms that are increasing their share of the improved land in the North, and the small and in part the medium farms, in the South and the West. This picture fully corresponds to what we already know about the different conditions in these sections. In the South, there is a growth ot small-scale commercial farming at the expense of the disintegrating slave-holding latifundia; the process is similar in the West, except that the break-up of even larger latifundia, which had their origin not in slave-holding but in extensive stock ranches and pre-empted tracts, is not as pronounced. Moreover, American statisticians say the following about the Pacific division:

“The great development of small fruit and other farms on the Pacific coast, due, in part at least, to irrigation projects organized in recent years, is reflected in the increase in small farms of less than 50 acres in the Pacific division” (Vol. V, p. 264).

The North has neither slave-holding nor “primitive” latifundia, there is no disintegration of them, no growth of the small farms at the expense of the large.

The process for the United States as a whole appears as follows:

Thus, the number of latifundia in proportion to the total number of farms remains unchanged. The most characteristic change in the relationship between the other groups in the reduction in the number of medium-size farms and the   strengthening of the farms at both ends. The medium-size group (100 to 174 acres) and its smaller neighbor have lost ground. The smallest and the small farms show the greatest gains, and are followed by the large-scale capitalist farms (175 to 999 acres).

Let us take a look at the total acreage.

We find above all a very substantial reduction in the share of total acreage held by the latifundia. It should be borne in mind that an absolute reduction is taking place only in the South and the West, where the proportion of unimproved land in the latifundia in 1910 was 91.5% and 77.1% respectively. There was also an insignificant decrease in the share of the top small group in the total acreage (—0.1% in the 50-to-99-acre size group). The greatest increase was shown by the large-scale capitalist groups, the 175-to-499-acre and the 500-to-999-acre groups. There was a relatively small increase in the share of the very small groups in the acreage. The medium group (100 to 174 acres) was practically stagnant (+0.4%).

Let us now take a look at the improved acreage.

The size of the farming enterprise is indicated with some degree of approximation and allowing for certain exceptions to which I have referred and shall refer again below—only by the improved and not the total acreage. Once again we find that while the share of the total acreage held by the latifundia substantially decreased, their share of the improved acreage increased. In general, all the capitalistic groups gained ground, and most of all the 500-to-999-acre group. The largest reduction was in the medium-size group (—1.7%), followed by all the small groups, with the exception of the smallest, the group under 20 acres, which showed a negligible increase (+0.1%).

Let us note in advance that the smallest-size group (under 20 acres) includes farms of less than 3 acres, which are not included in American statistics unless they raise at least $250 worth of products a year. For that reason these tiny farms (of less than 3 acres) have a greater volume of production and a more highly developed capitalist character than the next group up the scale. To illustrate this point here are the returns for 1900—unfortunately the corresponding returns for 1910 are not available:

Even the 3-to-10-acre farms, to say nothing of farms with less than 3 acres, turn out in some respects to be “larger” (outlays on hired labour, value of implements and machinery) than the 10-to-20-acre farms.^[1] Consequently,   there is good reason to attribute the increase in the share of the total improved land held by farms under 20 acres to an increase in the improved land of the pronounced capitalist-type farms of the smallest-size group.

On the whole, the returns for 1900 and l910 on the distribution of improved land in the U.S.A. between small and large farms warrant this absolutely definite and indubitable conclusion: the large farms are becoming stronger, the medium and the small farms, weaker. Hence, insofar as the capitalist or non-capitalist character of agriculture can be deduced from the data relating to farms grouped by acreage, the United States in the last decade shows, as a general rule, a growth of the large-scale, capitalist farms and the obliteration of small farms.

The statistics on the increase in the number of farms and the improved acreage in each group will confirm this conclusion:

The largest percentage increase in the improved acreage took place in the two topmost groups. The least increase occurred in the medium-size group and the next smaller group (50 to 99 acres). In the two smallest groups the percentage increase in the improved acreage was less than the percentage increase in the number of farms.

Notes

[1] For 1900 we have returns by size groups for the number of high income farms, i.e., farms with a product valued over $2,500. Here are these figures: among farms of less than 3 acres, the proportion of high-income farms was 5.2%; 3 to 10 acres—0.6%; 10 to 20 acres—0.4%; 20 to 50 acres—0.3%; 50 to 100—0.6%; 100 to 175—1.4%; 175 to 260—5.2%; 260 to 500—12.7%; 500 to 1,000—24.3%; 1,000 and   over—39.5%. We find the proportion of high-income farms in all the under-20-acre groups to be greater than in the 20-to-50-acre group. —Lenin