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The concept of primitive

accumulation: Lenin's
contribution
a
Philip McMichael
a
The University of New England , Armidale, NSW,
Australia
Published online: 02 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Philip McMichael (1977) The concept of primitive accumulation:
Lenin's contribution, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 7:4, 497-512, DOI:
10.1080/00472337785390541

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00472337785390541

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 497

The Concept of Primitive Accumulation:

Lenin's Contribution
Philip McMichael*
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The intention of this discussion is to examine Lenin's contribution to our under-

standing of the process of 'primitive accumulation', in his work, The Development
o f Capital.sm in Russia. t Methodologically, this book is exemplary in its systematic
application of the Marxist theory of capitalist development to the study of late
nineteenth-century Russian economy. Apart from the subject of the study itself,
it offers an extremely suggestive framework for analysis of forms of capitalism
preceding capitalist production proper, under industrial capital. Our argument is
that these early forms of capitalism comprise aspects of the process of primitive
accumulation. This process is complex and contradictory, and the vitality of Lenin's
work is his representation of this process as part of his focus on emerging capitalist
social relations.
Marx and Primitive Accumulation
The status of the term, 'primitive accumulation', as used by Marx in the final
section of Volume I of Capital, is sufficiently ambiguous to have assumed different
interpretations in contemporary studies of capitalist development. This appears to
stem from the residual nature of Marx's section, 'The So-called Primitive Accumu-
lation', which comprises an uneasy combination of theory and historical sketch of
the genesis of capitalism in England, qua metropolitan economy.
Marx's discussion of Primitive Accumulation has a residual character as the
section is mainly historical while the preceding argument of Volume I is essentially
theoretical. The analysis of capital accumulation in Volume I (where surplus-value,
appropriated by capital from labour, is transformed into capital), rests on the
assumption of the universal existence of the conditions, of capitalist accumulation.
Capital is given in its most developed form. But, logically, such conditions rest on
basic preconditions, in the form of 'considerable masses of capital and of labour.
power in the hands of producers of commodities". 2 That is, capitalist accumulation
presumes a prior accumulation not based on capital itself, but nevertheless pro-
gressively realising it - the concomitant process being the creation of a proletariat.
Thus, 'primitive accumulation' is 'not the result of the capitalist mode of produc-
tion but its starting point'. 3 It is the logical premise of the establishment of the
capitalist mode of production, and, as such, must be characterised as the process
that anticipates capitalist production.

*Philip McMichael is lecturer in Economic History, The University of New England, Armidale,
NSW, Australia.
 498 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

Theoretically, then, primitive accumulation is counterposed to 'capitalist accu.

mulation' in its abstract integrity. As theoretical precondition of capitalist accumu-
lation, primitive accumulation as a process is reduced to its essentials: " . . . the
historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production". 4 Marx
then proceeds to a description of the historic process of expropriation of the
English peasantry and the simultaneous emergence of industrial capitalism, warning
us that primitive accumulation takes the "classic fi~rm only in England. s Here we
have a concrete account of a historically-unique process, the theoretical status of
which is abstractly defined as, simply, expropriation of the producer.
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The problem arises in the conception of primitive accumulation in other contexts.

This is so particularly, as Saville reminds us, because the English experience was sui
generis, and that this altered " . . . dramatically the parameters of all later develop-
ment ''6 of capitalism elsewhere. That is, transitions to capitalism in other contexts,
developing in structural relation to world centres of capitalism, have telescoped or
side-stepped the English path of long initial rural transformation. Nevertheless, the
issue remains the creation of capitalist social relations, and Marx himself observed
that "the history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different
aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at
different periods. ''7
His accompanying footnote describing the arrest of the process in Italy as a
result of its loss of commercial supremacy in the world market, suggests primitive
accumulation can assume an incomplete character in regions domh~ated by metro-
politan capital. 8 This idea is also appropriate to the kind of analysis adopted by
Barrington Moore, where he explores the relation between the completeness of the
process of dissolution of the peasantry and the democratisation of the national
society. 9 As Takahashi observed in the 'transition debate':
There is a deep inner relationship between the agrarian question and industrial capital,
which determines the characteristic structures of capitalism in the various countries. 10

The problem is further complicated by that perspective which seeks to shift the
level of analysis of capitalist development from that of the national unit to a global
level, t t
At the level of world economy, primitive accumulation is considered in terms
of the structural relationship suggested by Marx when he remarked that " . . . the
veiled slavery of the wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure
and simple in the new world".12 This posited the notion, which Rosa Luxemburg
developedr3 of primitive accumulation necessarily co-existing with capitalist
accumulation as a structural feature of metropolitan-periphery relations. Amin
considers primitive accumulation to be the process of world-wide appropriation of
value established by political-economic domination of peripheral regions by metro-
politan capitalism. In this sense, he argues, whether at the phase of mercantilism
or monopoly capitalism, center-periphery relations imply that "primitive accumu-
lation is not something that belongs only to the prehistory of capital, it is something
permanent, contemporary", t4
The tendency among some writers Is who consider primitive accumulation at the
level of world-economy is to emphasise surplus-value (usually 'surplus') approp-
riation as a primary function of metropolitan-periphery relations, and the object of
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 499

study. As far as we are concerned the shift away from analysis of the emergence
(however uneven) of capitalist social relations as the essence of the process of
primitive accumulation, represents a shift towards the empiricist conception of
capital as a thing. Such a tendency, akin to "take-off" conceptions of the Industrial
Revolution, breeds conspiracy theories of'underdevelopment'.
Systematic analysis of primitive accumulation, then, must proceed according to
the structuring principle of the 'history' of capital. That is, in order to comprehend
the extent of development of the 'relationship between the agrarian question and
industrial capital', the various components of the process of primitive accumulation,
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beyond the abstract premise of expropriation of the direct producer, require elabor-
ation. These components are constituted systematically by the sequence of processes
are defined logically in relation to capital's most developed form (industrial capital),
and the conditions most adequate to its accumulation. Interruption, or retardation,
of the process of primitive accumulation arises from the character of early forms of
capital, such as usurer's or merchant's capital - particularly where they are asso-
ciated with landed property. These 'primitive' forms of capital, like any form of
capital, can have contradictory impacts on production relations depending on their
social context. 1"6 Merchant's capital, for instance, can conserve pre-capitalist pro-
duction relations on the one hand, and on the other, promote commodity produc-
tion and circulation. A retarding or accelerating effect on capitalist development
by early forms of capital will depend upon the course of struggles between the
classes involved in the particular context.
Lenin's study is a very appropriate exposition of the 'history' of capital in its
formative stages, that is, where landed property and early forms of capital par-
ticularly, co-exist. In his investigation of Russian rural economy, Lenin examines
this interrelation, from the position of stressing the intimations of capitalist social
relations in the transformations underway in Russian landed property following
the 1861 Reform. In his concern to reveal developing capitalism (as a polemical
attack on the Narodniks), however, Lenin has a tendency to underplay the survival
and presence of barriers to the completion of primitive accumulation. Nevertheless,
methodologically, his study has paradigmatic dimensions in respect of its approach
to the analysis of the range of processes, associated with that of the expropriation
of the producer.

The Developm en t o f Capitalism in Russia

What is immediately striking to the reader of Lenin's The Development o f Capitalism
in Russia 17 is the absence of discussion of the 'active forces' at work in the Empire's
urban centres in late nineteenth century Russian capitalist development. These
were essentially state agencies and the increasingly influential foreign capitalists
and financiers. Alexander Gerschenkron's celebrated discussions of backward
nations' industrialisation patterns in the context of a world capitalist economy
anchored by Western European industrial capital, stressed the significance of insti-
tutional (e.g., state, banking) intervention. In regard to Russia, he wrote: "The
strategic factor in the great industrial upsurge of the 1890's must be seen in the
changed policy of the g o v e r n m e n t . . . ". ws And Trotsky based his theory of uneven
and combined development on the Russian path of capitalist industrialisation noting
 500 J O U R N A L OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

the adaption of European technology "to its own backwardness", 19 under the
political and economic dominance of foreign capitalists.
What, then, accounts for Lenin's neglect of these institutional and class agents
of Russian industrial capitalist development? Essentially, Lenin's study constitutes
a skillful and polemical inversion of the Narodnik (and, notably, bourgeois) 'prob-
lematic' - namely, their identification of Russian capitalism with the factories
concentrated in cities like St. Petersburg. It was on this basis that they argued
capitalism in Russia was a Western phenomenon, alien to the surrounding rural
economy. In contrast, Lenin selected, as the focus of his analysis of Russian capital-
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ist development, not the incidence of large-scale industry per se, but that process
constitutive of the social relations necessary to establish and expand industrial
capital accumulation. That is, he was concerned with revealing capitalism as an
irrevocable presence within the structure of Russian social-economy - particularly
in the countryside, the Populists' presumed anti-capitalist stronghold. Hence the
sub-title of Lenin's study: "The Process of Formation of a Home Market for
Large-Scale Industry".
it is no coincidence, therefore, that Lenin's study took the process of dissolution
of the Russian peasantry as its point of departure. But, we must not lose sight of
the analytical importance of this focus of the fundamental transformation in rural
social relations, as precondition of the emergence o f capitalist production and accu-
mulation. The polarisation of agricultural producers (dissolution of the peasantry)
involves two essential conditions for the development of capitalism: emergence of
capitalist relations of production (concentration of means of production and prole-
tarianisation), and the separation of industry from agriculture. These two processes
ate integral to one another, constituting 'primitive accumulation'. Thus Lenin wrote:
The separation of the direct producer from the means of production, i.e., his expropriation,
signifying the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production (and
constituting the necessary conditions for this transition), creates the home market.20
Consideration of the theoretical import of the concept 'home market', and its
relation to the materials investigated, follows.

The H o m e Market
Lenin's opening chapter consists of a presentation of the basic theoretical propo-
sitions concerning the formation of a home market. These are organised in a sketch
of the conditions associated with the transformation of natural economy, through
simple commodity economy, to capitalist commodity production. Simple com-
modity economy provides the beginnings of social division of labour, whereby
various branches of industry separate from agriculture. The demographic conse-
quence is that the industrial population grows relative to the agricultural population
as part of the latter is diverted to industry. The social division of labour reaches its
most developed form under the ultimate dominance of industrial capital, when
agriculture itself is 'industrialised'.
Theoretically, simple commodity economy is logically prior to, and a pre-
condition of, capitalist commodity production. The market that initially served
as tile circulating medium of commodities sold by independent and petty producers,
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 501

is transformed, with the development of capitalism, into the h o m e m a r k e t - the

conceptual expression of tile increasing dominance of the commodity form under
capitalism. Specifically, this refers to the conditions where not only the product
of labour, but labour itself, assumes the form of a commodity, as labour-power.
Here the character of tile market for commodities extends beyond direct circula-
tion of commodities primarily for personal consumption to an increasingly inte-
grated home market, whose growing social character is expressed in the production
of commodities for productive consumption (exchange between different branches
of production) and a growing labour market.
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The home market presupposes the decline of the small commodity producer and
the development of capitalist commodity production, based on class relations, as
the expropriation of the direct producer's means of production proceeds. The
material elements of production (land, instruments of production, raw materials)
become concentrated in the form of capital, and a market for consumption goods
expands as a result of the conversion of labour into a commodity, which implies
the conversion of the labourer's former means of subsistence into the money-wage.
The character of the commodity market has been transformed together with the
social relations of production. Lenin writes:
The 'home markeI' for capitalism is created by developing capitalism itself, which deepens
the social division of labour and resolves the direct producers into capitalists and workers. 2 !
Lenin makes further reference to the corresponding cultural changes effected
by the development of capitalism. He bases this on the law of capitalist production,
which involves continual dissolution of prior systems of Iocalised agrarian economy,
and the progressive enlargement and interdependence of production units with the
development of the home market. The corresponding historical mission of capital-
ism is destruction of centuries-old isolation of populations "and, consequently,
the narrowness of intellectual life". 2~
While Lenin employed the 'home market' as his conceptual tool in formulating
the conditions of capitalist development, it is important to draw attention to its
polemical significance in terms of his addressing the political debate in Russia at
that time, about the proceeding direction of the Russian economy. In particular,
his study is directed at the iaeas of the Russian Populists.
According to Lenin's representations, we can characterise the Narodnik reser-
vations concerning the viability of capitalism in Russia in the following ways:
1. The problem of realisation of surplus-value produced was inherent in the decline
of purchasing-power in the Russian internal market due to post-Reform im-
poverishment of the peasantry,
2. In the context of the relative development of European capitalism, incipient
Russian capitalism 0dentified as simply urban industry such as in St. Peters-
burgh) was competitively too weak to gain access to the foreign market in order
to realise surplus-value
3. Consequently, the political implications of this situation were to strengthen the
rural commune as a basis for agrarian socialism, and as a Russian tradition anti-
thetical to European capitalism, which would thereby be circumvented.
In the light of the Narodniks' position, Lenin's focus on the importance of the
 302 J O U R N A L OF C O N T E M P O R A R Y ASIA

home market was of political, as well as theoreticalgsignificance. His argument was

two-prunged: firstly, that the problem of realisation, theoretically, did not require
the assumption of the need for foreign markets; and secondly, that the decline of
well-being of the peasantry was not an inhibition on the growth of the internal
market.
in fact, the realisation problem was simply an expression of the contradictory
nature of capitalist development itself, in that capital accumulation necessarily
requires the growth of that department of social production producing means of
production, at a faster rate than that of the consumption-goods industry. Realis-
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ation difficulties are due not to the absence of foreign markets, but to inherent
problems arising out of the anarchy of capitalist production, resulting in problems
of disproportion among the various branches of social production. 23 Inherent in
the development of capitalism (and not unique to Russia) is the basic contradic-
tion of the expansion of production at the expense of mass consumption standards,
which, as Lenin points out, corresponds to the specific social relations of produc-
tion under capitalism:
The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consump-
tion of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the produc-
tive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their outer
limit.24
In his discussion of the problem of realisation, Lenin assumed a growing internal
market, however uneven, which was an assumption that the Narodniks could not
make because they did not perceive the qualitative changes occurring beneath the
empirical phenomenon of peasant impoverishment. For Lenin, this was an expres-
sion of the disintegration o f independent peasant farming, and, as such, it was a
process effecting increasing dependence upon the internal market for access to
consumption goods, as well as for capital goods. This presumed the gradual prole-
tarianisation of a growing number of rural inhabitants, as their former means of
production were expropriated, and concentrated in the form of capital in the
hands of capitalist producers.
Theoretically, Lenin argues, Narodism considers consumption as a discrete
category, as a problem distinct from its relationship with the market, and thus
from the development of commodity production. Only by taking the concept of
the home market as the point of departure, can the various elements of the emerg-
ing capitalist social system, and their (often contradictory) relationships, become
intelligible.
The implications of this controversy - both political and theoretical - will be
discussed later. Our immediate purpose is to examine the way in which Lenin
related his theoretical framework to analysis of concrete conditions in Russia. The
following section considers this procedure with respect to Lenin's chapter on the
peasant economy.
The Peasant Economy
Lenin's analysis of peasant economy was concerned with giving theoretical content
to the phenomenon of peasant 'differentiation'. While it was clear that various
economic inequalities had grown amongst the peasantry since the Reform, Lenin's
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 503

observation was that these inequalities were an expression of a more fundamental

process. That process was the disintegration of independent peasant farming, and
the resolving of the peasant population into new types of rural inhabitants. Lenin
reduced these types to capitalists and workers, standing in class relationship to one
another. This proceeded from his analytical focus, that of abstracting the deter-
minate process out of the complexity of Russian social-economy, namely, the
formation of capitalist relations of production.
In order to demonstrate this transformation undelway in rural economy, Lenin
had access to three sets of statistics: Zemstvo returns on peasant households,
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Zemstvo peasant budget data, and the army-horse census. His use of these sets of
statistics operated in a mutually reinforcing manner, confirming the coincidence
of a number of factors contributing to and expressing the creation of rural classes.
One of Lenin's main criticisms of Zemstvo statistics was their general tendency
to classify peasant households according to allotment land, that land legally allotted
to the peasants under the conditions of the Reform. As he pointed out, an impor-
tant feature of the process of differentiation is the extra-legal uneven distribution
of land among the rural population. Consequently, statistical classification of
households/groups-of-households must proceed on the basis of the 'economic
strength' of each group. This classification enabled Lenin to draw out the emerg-
ing relations of production in agriculture and their significance. For analytical
purposes, Lenin stressed that it was not sufficient to possess "too stereotyped an
understanding of the theoretical proposition that capitalism requires the free,
landless worker". 2s Such a proposition must inform analysis of the particular
undeveloped conditions in Russian economy - namely, recognition of the de-facto
emergence of a proletariat behind the juridical appearance of allotment rights.
Despite legal forms, the actual systems of land use and the corresponding systems
of agrarian production relations assign at least half of the rural population to the
incipient class status of 'proletariat', characterised by its 'inability to exist without
the sale of labour-power'. 26
The two indices of 'economic strength' that Lenin uses for grouping peasant
households were area under crops, and the number of draught animals. This
procedure accords with taking into account regional farming differences. For
instance, in Novorossia Gubemia, a predominantly grain-cultivating region, having
established that the independent peasant household required from 16 to 18 des-
siatines under crops to cover its average expenditure, 2~ he was then able to classify
the peasants into three groups:
1. Poor peasants, who cannot obtain their means of subsistence from farming;
2. Middle peasants, who cover their average subsistence needs from their land;
3. Well-to-do peasants, wlio engage in commercial cultivation.
Such grouping follows for each gubemia, in accordance with the particular con-
ditions and type of farming.
Throughout this chapter, the systematic classification of these three groups
with the available data is Lenin's primary focus. It is not with the classification of
the diversity of economic activities existing among the rural population that Lenin
is directly concerned. Rather, he is concerned with the abstraction from this diver-
 504 J O U R N A L OF C O N T E M P O R A R Y ASIA

sity of the two emerging and determining types of rural inhabitants, wage-worker
and entrepreneur, and the intermediary and declining type, the 'independent'
peasant; this latter type being progressively subject to elimination, as the relation-
ship between the former determining types consolidates.
The thrust of Lenin's analysis is that the process under way in the rural economy
is not simply defined by inequality in land use, nor by the inequality observable
in the distribution of other means of agricultural production such as horses and
ploughs. These economic inequalities are not simply empirical changes, they express
changes in the social relations of production whereby the material elements of
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production - land, instruments of production, and labour - are in process of con-

version into capital: individual private property giving way to capitalist private
property.
Further social contradictions that express the distinctive relations emerging
between these groups lie in the patterns of labour-hiring. To begin with, Lenin
suggests that the commercial cultivation of the well-to-do-group "becomes capital-
ist farming", 2s because the areas cultivated necessarily require a labour-force in
excess of the labour that the family can supply. Tile condition for this transfor.
mation to large commercial farming is provided by the sale of the labour-power of
poor neighbouring peasants, whose economic situation forces them to seek wage-
employment to supplement insufficient income from their own farms.
Subsequent data show that the employment of hired labour occurs in all groups,
however with a significant distinction between the percentages o f employing farms
in each of the two extreme groups. 29 One way to conceal this significance is to
proceed as did one of the Narodnik economists, who correlated the proportion of
employing farms with the total number of farms. The logical conclusion was that
the incidence of labour-hh'ing among all peasant farmers was quite insignificant.
But, as Lenin argues, the total number of 'peasant' farms includes within it the
plots of farm labourers, in order to draw attention to the determining relations of
production in agriculture,
It is far more correct to compare the number of farms employing labourers with the number
of actually independent farms, i.e. of those living on agriculture alone and not resorting to
the sale of their labour-power.30
And when the distribution o f the percentage of labour-hiring farms for each group
is further correlated with the proportion of land cultivated by each group, the
largest percentage of labour-hiring farms coincides with the well-to-do group, who
cultivate 50% of peasant land, therefore accounting for m o r e than 50% of the total
production (due to superior metheds o f farming). Thus, when labour-hiring among
all the groups is correlated both with the relative incidence in each group, and with
the proportion of cultivation undertaken by each group, the significance of capital-
ist farming becomes clear.
As final illustration of the relations of production formed within the process of
differentiation, Lenin considered the Zemstvo statistics on peasant budgets. These
sets of data are highly specific, dealing with aspects such as items of income, dis-
tribution of income and expenditure, items of farm expenditure, and a number of
aspects of living standards. All these various budget items express different aspects
of the same process, disintegration of thepeasantry.
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 505

Following his theoretical propositions, Lenin concluded accordingly:

C o n s e q u e n t l y , the transformation o f the peasantry into a rural proletariat creates a m a r k e t
mainly for articles of consumption, whereas its transformation into a rural bourgeoisie
creates a market mainly for means of production. In other words, among the bottom groups
of the 'peasantry' we observe the transformation of labour-power into a commodity, and in
the top ones the transformation of means of production into capital. ]~oth these transfor-
mations result in precisely that process of the creation of a home market which theory has
established for capitalist countries in general.3 I
And so, Lenin's chapter on peasant economic conditions was concerned with
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isolating the determining process, however gradual and uneven, emerging from the
socio-economic antagonisms as peasant differentiation proceeds. The organisation
of differentiation data, in accordance with his theoretical precepts, focusses the
underlying tendencies of capitalist development. Categorisation of the peasantry
into three groups necessarily involves some abstraction from concrete conditions.
However, such analytical categories are employed to draw out the dynamics of
social transformation (as opposed to empirical details of stratification/differen-
tiation) - in the context of the disintegration of the middle peasant as an inter-
mediary social form. It is this rural category that finds itself at the centre of social
change in the rural economy:
In its social relations this group fluctuates between the top group, towards which it gravitates
but which only a small minocity of lucky ones succeed in entering, and the bottom group,
into which it is pushed by the whole course of social evolution. 32

The Structure of Lenin's Analysis

Following Lenin's analysis of the disintegration of peasant economy are carefully
structured chapters which reflect the logic of the theory of capital. From the analy.
sis of peasant differentiation, we move to a chapter on landlord economy and its
decline. The final chapter of the section on agriculture deals with the growth of
commercial agriculture - differentiated into the various agricultural specialisations,
but focussing generally upon the technical developments that express the emergence
of capitalist social relations in agriculture.
The unity of this section on agriculture rests on the initiating analysis of the
decline of peasant economy. Apart from the more obvious need to begin with the
numerically preponderant peasantry as the centre of social change (and, accordingly,
the centre of contention in the ideological debate) and the most durable represen-
tative of pre-capitalist private property, the decline of the peasant proprietor is
simultaneously the decline of landlord economy. The latter depends on labour-
service, and Lenin shows that the advance of the two new types of rural inhabitant
('peasant bourgeoisie' and rural proletariat) means the decline of the middle peasant
as source of labour for the landlords' labour-service system. To survive, a landlord
of necessity adopts the capitalist wage-labour system.
The next three chapters comprise the section concentrating on industry in
Russia, each chapter coinciding with the three theoretical stages of capitalist deve-
lopment in industry. These are: small-scale peasant handicrafts (petty commodity
production), capitalist manufacture, and large-scale machine (factory) industry.
Although these stages co-existed in late nineteenth-century Russia they are con-
 •506 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

sidered separately in their logically consecutive forms in order to distinguish essen-

tial technical and social characteristics of commodity production at each stage.
Isolating the stages allowed Lenin to identify certain trends in Russian industry
overall that indicated an extensive process of capitalist development, beyond the
simplistic equation of capitalism with urban factory industry by the Narodniks.
Even their category of 'factory' industry was ambiguous, because, like the avail-
able 'factory' statistics, they failed to distinguish between the stages of capitalist
manufacture and factory production. To Le,in, the importance of distinguishing
between stages was that it allowed the identification of broad trends in industrial
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development in the economy, thus creating, the "possibility of understanding the

transforming, progressive role of capitalism .33 Lenin stressed the significance of
this often, drawing attention to the profound changes effected by capitalist develop-
ment. With the arrival of the highest stage of development of capitalist commodity
production - Modern Industry - the social contradictions of capitalism are brought
into their sharpest relief:
• . . the socialisation o f labour effected on a vast scale by the factory, and the transfor-
mation o f the sentiments and conceptions o f the people it employs (in particular, the des-
truction o f patriarchal and petty-bourgeois traditions) cause a reaction: large-scale machine
industry, unlike the preceding stages, imperatively calls for the planned regulation o f pro-
ductinn and public control over i t . . . 3 4

The division of the chapters into sections on agriculture and industry relates
more to theoretical and organisat~onal requirements than to the concrete circum-
stances of Russian social-economy. The process of development of the social
division of labour between town and country is neither clear-cut nor rapid. In fact,
it is an inherent feature of intermediate stages of capitalist development that agri-
culture and industry are not completely separate. While a significant phenomenon
in the various systems of local economy that exist in undeveloped Russian capitalist
economy is that of the diverse combinations of agriculturist and industrialist, it is
also significant that Lenin considers agriculture and industry separately, in order to
focus determining trends of capitalist development. However, within these sections
he emphasises various relations and combinations of agriculture and industry, as
illustrations of types of intermediate and regressive forms of capitalism.
For example, in the stage of petty commodity production, when there is unity
of agriculture and industry, the development of the process of differentiation is
simultaneously the process of gradual destruction of home industry. It is the
emerging rural bourgeoisie that establish small industrial operations, hiring farm
labourers (and migratory workers) both for their workshops and to work their
land. Alongside this process, peasant handicraftsmen come under the dominance
of merchant capital. In each case, the poor peasants ultimately forfeit their means
of production, which are capitalised by the prosperous peasants, rural industrialists
and merchants. The corresponding process is the separation of industry from agri-
culture as industrial establishments become independently viable. The disintegration
of the peasantry proceeds hand in hand with the process of differentiation between
agriculture and industry.
Implicit within the stage of capitalist manufacture is a more developed separation
of agriculture and industry. The locus of manufacture is generally an urban centre,
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 507

and manufacturing technique demands a degree of specialisation o f labour that

tends to differentiate industrial and agricultural wage-labour. However, both tech-
nique and location do not necessarily mitigate against some combinations of semi-
industrial and semi-agricultural workers, as the manufactory workshops do not
have the technical basis for eliminating petty handicrafts still based in agriculture.
In types o f production where hete~ogeneous manufacture occurs, tile existence o f
large workshops can precipitate the growth of small workshops that work up
materials in the surrounding countryside, being integrated with the manufactories
by merchant capital. As Lenin writes.
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The manufactory period, however, of capitalist development, with its characteristic reten-
tion of the workers' connection with the land, and with an abundance of small establish-
ments around big ones - can be imagined with difficulty, or hardly at all, without the
distribution of home work. 3 S
Finally, although the stage o f large-scale machine industry completes the separa-
tion o f industry from agriculture by revolutionising production and the social
existence o f the wage-labourer, as Lenin concludes:
• by destroying patriarchal and petty-bourgeois relationships, large-scale machine industry
. .

creates, on the other hand, conditions which draw wage-workers in agriculture and industry
closer together...36
At this stage, agriculture has fallen under the dominance o f industrial capital, and
the socialisation o f labour has reached its most developed form.
Lenin's final chapter, 'The Formation o f the Home Market, details the extent o f
social division o f labour and commodity circulation in Russia, generally emphasising
the interdependence o f the trends and processes that Lenin has isolated in his
preceding analysis. The point is that formation of the home market is essentially a
singular process, containing a variety o f contradictor./processes and combi,lations
of forms of economy that expresses the simultaneous dissolution of pre-capitalist,
and the emergence of capitalist, relations o f production.

The Specificity of Lenin's analysis

As a conceptual tool, the "home market' serves a very specific purpose in Lenin's
analysis o f tile development o f capitalism in Russia• And that is to serve as a charac-
terisation o f the social whole in such a way that the variety o f economic and social
relations within Russia can be ordered and brought into relation to one another as
expressions o f differential realisation o f a governing process - the development of a
home market for industrial capital• That is, the tendencies at work in the market
are ultimately determined by the most developed form o f capital, industrial capital,
whose dominance presumes a developed internal market. Tile St. Petersburg factory
constitutes the touchstone, and not, as Lenin stresses, the entirety of capitalism in
Russia.
• only by examining the whole of the present economic system from the angle of the
. .

relationships that have grown up in this "corner" can one become clear about the main
relations between the various groups of persons taking part in production, and, conse-
quently, trace the system's main treud of development. On the other hand, whoever turns
his back on this "corner" and examines economic phenomena from the angle of petty
 •5 0 8 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

patriarchal production, is turned by the match of history into either an innocent dreamer
o r an ideologist of the petty bourgeoisie and the agrarians.3?

Lenin's emphasis on the totality of capitalism in Russia, involving incorporation

of the various levels of development into a conceptual whole, contrasts sharply with
the empiricism of the Narodniks, who separated urban factory from rural economy,
losing sight of the relation between the two, Their identification of capitalism with
the numerical incidence of urban factory workers left the remaining, and numerically
predominant, rural population as the sphere for their populist schemes. Lenin
remarks: " . . . ]hey failed completely to understand that the very existence and
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development of capitalism in this country require an enormous mass of reserve

workers "3a - accounted for in large part by the real process of expropriation
underway in the countryside behind the appearance of allotment farming. The
contrasting positions are important both from a theoretical, as well as a political,
standpoint.
Theoretically, the Narodniks' position was that Russia's internal market was too
undeveloped (with a persistence of poor, but independent, peasant farmers) to
complement what they saw as the penetration of European capitalism in the indus.
trial cities and sustain a general industrialisation. Lenin, however, went to great
lengths to show the extent of incipient capitalist social relations in the countryside,
countering the Narodniks' typical populist conception of capitalism as an external
and alien presence. To be sure, the backwardness of Russian capitalism implied a
host of contradictory processes and the particularly severe exploitation of the
masses due to the incompleteness of its development, 39 but this, to Lenin, did not
invalidate its ultimately progressive character, which meant the simultaneous des-
truction of reactionary landlordism and the expansion of an urban and rural prole-
tariat. Politically, it was tO the latter that Russian revolutionaries should look as the
leading element of the revolution, rather than looking, as did the Narodniks, to the
bourgeoisie, with its reactionary alliance with 'Junkerism'.
Lenin's analysis is replete with instances of the intermediate and contradictory
character of primitive forms of capital, though in focussing upon developing capital-
ism he sometimes understates the regressive phenomena. The clearest example of
this is in his treatment of the peasantry, where his data and his focus concern dif-
ferential relationships, tie is explicit about it:
When we said above that the peasant bourgeoisie are the masters of the contemporary
countryside, we disregarded the factors retarding differentiation: bondage, usury, labour-
service, etc. Actually, the real masters of the contemporary countryside are often enough
not the representatives of the peasant bourgeoisie, but the village usurers and the neigh-
bouring landowners. It is, however, quite legitimate to disregard them, for otherwise it
is impossible to study the internal system of economic relationships among the peasantry. 40
This last point may be so, but it would seem that in order to understand the
nature of capital accumulation in this particular instance, the role of usurer's capital
or landed capital becomes crucial. The accumulation of capital in the hands of the
usurer, for instance, is one form of fettering the growth of the market.
This constitutes a significant omission in Lenin's study - t h a t is, analysis of the
social classes involved in capital accumulation in Russia, and their relative impor-
tance politically and economically. Such analysis would provide a more 'sociological'
 THE C O N C E P T O F P R I M I T I V E A CCUMULA TION 509

treatment of 'Russian capitalism', rather than the more abstract study of the
development of capitalism in Russia that Lenin did. His intent was not to write a
history of Russian capitalism, nor to analyse the character of Russian class structure
in the late nineteenth century. Instead it was to highlight the extent of capitalism
in Russia (in contrast to popular conceptions) by undertaking a comprehensive
analysis of diverse forms of economy in Russia, to reveal that these forms were all,
despite unevenness, providing a c o n t e x t for capitalism and capital accumulation.
That context he characterised as 'the home marl~et', which was the organising
framework for the study. Thus Lenin began:
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• . the question of how a home market is being formed for Russian capitalism reduces
.

itself to the following: How and in what direction are the diverse aspects of the Russian
national economy developing? What constitutes the connection between and interdepen-
dence of these diverse aspects?4 !
By organising contemporary data within the framework of the theory of for-
mation of the home market, and noting the incidence of certain relations of pro-
duction, Lenin could logically project various tendencies of developing capitalism.
For example, in drawing attention to the transitional nature of landlord farming
following the 1861 Reform's undermining of corvee (labour-service)economy,
Lenin considers the relations of production in landlord economy. Due to the
insufficiency of peasant allotments for independent cultivation, the limited size
of the rural proletariat, and the .undeveloped process of conversion of means of
production into capital, the forms of labour-hiring in landlord economy exhibit
some characteristics of the former corvee system. Lenin reduces the incidence of
labour-hiring to two distinct forms, albeit existing in reality in a variety of com-
binations. The one is based on cultivation of the landlord's land by peasants with
their own implements (and this includes forms of tenant farming), and the other
on direct hiring of workers who cultivate with the landowner's implements.
The importance of this distinction'*: to Lenin's analysis is that it establishes
direct reference to the process of differentiation, and it articulates from the com-
plexity of rural production relations a process that can be identified as the develop-
ment of capitalism. Lenin points out that the relative incidence of corvee-type
labour-service and capitalist wage-labour employment is difficult to establish
empirically, but, given the context and character of the differentiation process,
there is a logical tendency for the decline of tile first type, and the emergence of
the second. Lenin subsequently confirms this logical proposition with his analysis
of the undermining of the middle group of the peasantry. 43 tlere he shows that
this group provides the bulk of participation in tile first type of labour-service,
being the group most likely to undertake such "job-work', or land-renting, 44 to
supplement the product of their own precarious allotment-farming.
Methodologically, a substantial part of Lenin's study follows this form of re-
organising available data in accordance with his theoretical requirements of specify-
ing social relations, and making logical inference from those relationships as to
tendencies of capitalist development. 4s Development is inherent in the contradic-
tions involved in these relationships, and the articulation of this immanence is what
Lenin, working from the theory of capital, achieves.
This may be illustrated by reference to Lenin's treatment of the role of met-
 .510 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

chant's capital in small industries. Essentially, Lenin is concerned here to trace the
transformation o f petty handicraft industry into capitalist domestic industry. This
involves the eventual expropriation of the small producer, and his conversion into
a domestic wage-worker, as the transitional stage of the labour: capital relationship
that precedes the introduction of this relationship on a mass scale in the stage of
large-scale machine industry.
To illustrate this development process, Lenin cites the example of the transfor-
mation of the Moscow lace industry. In considering the biography of a tradeswoman
who acts as the marketing representative of a group of lace-workers, he presents her
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as coming to personify the resolution of the contradiction between the scattered

production of lace and the centraiised Moscow market, as well as the developing
contradiction between the merchant and the producers. That is, her actions embody
the dialectic ol, one the one hand, exploitation of her one-time fellow lace-workers,
and on the other, their increasing dependence on her for access to the market. 4~ As
Lenin concludes, the implication of this story is the "indissoluble connection be-
tween commodity production and capitalist marketing". 47 That is. the coexistence
of commodity production and an expanding commodity market with its com-
petitive forces, posits the emergence of capital in its early forms - in this case
merchant's capital.

Conclusion
Thus, using the 'home market' as his conceptual framework, Lenin was able to
account for, and bring into relation, the diverse forms of production in Russia, and
demonstrate overall tendencies of capitalist development. Despite the numerically
small incidence of an industrial proletariat in Russia in proportion to the total
population, analysis o f the remaining economy demonstrated the combination of
differential stages of formation of a home market for industrial capital. In other
words, instead of conducting a purely empirical study of the extent of formation
of a wage-labour force, Lenin revealed, through his focus on social relations of
production, primitive accumulation in process. Rather than constituting simply
the creation of a proletariat, the process of primitive accumulation involved a series
of relationships, realising, to a greater or lesser extent, the conditions of capitalist
accumulation proper.
What Lenin's study reveals, therefore, is the range and complexity of the process
of primitive accumulation at the 'local level'. It is important to note that 'home
market' does not refer to a territorial unit so much as a series of social relationships.
Lenin's methodology is exemplary in demonstrating this. In this sense, it stands as
a guide to analysis of'primitive accumulation' in other social formations.

FOOTNOTES
1. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 111,(ProgressPublishers, 1972).
2. K. Marx, Capital, I, (Progress Publishers, 1965), p.713.
3. Idem.
4. Ibid.,p.714.
5. Ibid., p.716.
 THE CONCEPT OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULA TION 511

6. J, Saville, 'Primitive Accumulation and Early Industrialization in Britain', 77ze Socialist

Register, eds., Ralph Miliband and John Saville, (Merlin Press, 1969) p.268.
7. Marx, op.cit., p.716.
8. This notion is developed in ]airus Banaji, 'Backward Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation
and Modes of Production', Journal of Contemporary Asia, voi.3, No.4, 1973, pp.393-413.
9. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins o f Dictatorship and Democracy, (Beacon, 1967).
This is developed in Richard Garrett, 'Capitalist Development in the American South,
A Study of Primitive Accumulation and Uneven Capitalist Development' (unpublished
Ph.D. draft, New School for Social Research, N.Y., 1975).
10. H.K. Takahashi, "A Contribution to the Discussion", in The Transition from Feudalism
to Capitalism, (Science and Society, 1967), p.55.
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1 I. See Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World.Economy in the Sixteenth Century, (Academic Press,
1974).
12. Marx, op.cit., p.760.
13. Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, (Modern Reader, 1968).
14. Samir Amin,Accumulation on a World Scale, l, (Modern Reader, 1974),p.22.
15. See, e.g., Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, (Modern Reader, 1968); Im-
manuel Wailerstein, op.cit.; and Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, (Andre Deutsch,
1964).
16. This notion has been elaborated in Richard Garrett, op.cit.
17. 1 am indebted to Terence K. Hopkins (Sociology, State University of New York at
Binghmaton) for his stimulating introduction of this book to me.
18. A. Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, (Praeger, 1962),
p.125.
19. L. Trotsky, The Russian Revolution, (Doubleday-Anchor, 1959), p.9.
20. Lenin, op.cit., pp.67-68.
21. Ibid., p.69.
22. Ibid., p.67.
23. c.f. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Foreign Languages Press, 1965;
where Lenin argues that capital is exported from the advanced countries seeking higher
profits than are attainable at home, where "agriculture... lags behind industry", p.73.
29. Lenin, op.cit. (1972) p.57.
25. Ibid., p.78.
26. ibid., p.177.
27. it is not made clear in Lenin's study how the average family size is determined. However,
he does draw attention to the fact that the families of the third group, well-to-do peasants,
arc larger, ibid., p.94, which implies that there is a direct relation to the greater area of
allotment land consolidated by these families.
As Eric Wolf, in his Peasant Wars o f the Twentieth Century. Harper Torchbooks,
1969, pp.63, points out, the well-off in 1881 constituted 20% of households, but between
26-36% of the rural population - hence they gathered larger allotments to correspond
with the size of the family labour-force.
28. Lenin, op.cit. (1972) p.72.
29. Ibid., p.76.
30. Ibid., p.77.
31. Ibid., p.166.
32. Ibid., p.181.
33. Ibid., p.455.
34. Ibid., p.544.
35. Ibid., p.442.
36. Ibid., p.541.
37. ibid., p.586.
38. Ibid., p.583.
39. c.f.: "In countries like Russia the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as
from the insufficient development of capitalism • • • ",
 .512 J O U R N A L OF C O N T E M P O R A R Y ASIA

Lenin, 'Two Tactics... ', in Selected Works, v.l (lnt'l Pub.)p.486.

40. Lenin, op.c/t. (1972) p.186.
41. Ibid., p.69.
42. "In our literature labour-service is usually referred to in general, without this distinction
being made. Yet in the process of elimination of labour-service by capitalism the shifting
of the centre of gravity from the first type of labour-service to the second is of enormous
importance." ibid., p.205.
43. Ibid. p.207.
44. As Lenin points o ~ , the leasing of land to peasants by landowners is essentially a
method by which the landowners provide their estates with manpower, thereby guaran-
teeing a cheap labour-supply in the absence of developed capitalist production, ibid.,
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p.200.
45. As Lenin stresses:
It is a question not only of statistics, but of the forms assumed and the stages traversed
by the development of capitalism in industry of the country under consideration.
Only after the substance of these forms and their distinguishing features have been
made clear is there any sense in illustrating the development of this or that form by
means of properly compiled statistics, ibid. p.455.
46. Ibid., p.364.
47. Ibid. p.366.

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