It means secondly, that by eliminating capitalist middlemen from trade transactions, industry is enabled to give a lead to the peasant economy, to influence it to raise its productivity, to rationalise and industrialise it.
It means, thirdly, that by linking up agriculture with industry the State is in a position to develop agriculture according to plan, to supply it with first-rate seeds and fertilisers, to determine the volume of its production, to influence it in regard to prices, etc.
It means finally, that favourable conditions are created in the countryside for the liquidation of capitalist elements, for a further limitation and gradual elimination of kulakdom, for the organisation of non-kulak peasant homesteads into producers' societies, for bringing about the financing of these societies out of State funds.
Let us take, for instance, the production of sugar beet for the sugar industry and the production of cotton for the textile industry. The volume of production of this kind of raw material and prices for them, as well as their quality, are determined, not by the elemental play of forces on an unorganised market, through profit-making middlemen, marts and other capitalist trade organs, etc., but according to a definite plan, by definite preliminary agreements between the sugar and textile syndicates on the one hand, and tens of thousands of peasant farms represented by beet and cotton sowing co-operatives on the other hand. Here we have no more marts, exchanges, commercial offices, and price speculations, etc. All these adjuncts of capitalist economy no longer exist with us in this sphere. Here two parties meet without any middleman, marts, etc.—State syndicates on the one hand, co-operative peasants on the other hand. The State syndicates, sign contracts with corresponding co-operative organisations for the production of a certain quantity of sugar-beet and cotton, for supplying the peasantry with seéds, loans, etc. At the end of the financial year the total production is placed at the disposal of the syndicates, and the peasants receive for it the amounts agreed upon
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