As we have already observed above, all small commodity producers who cover their expenditure by their independent husbandry come under this category, provided the general system of economy is based on the capitalist contradictions that were examined in chapter Secondly, the small, rural bourgeois (in Russia, as in other capitalist countries) combines by a number of transitional stages with the 'peasant' who owns a tiny plot of land, and with the rural proletarian who owns a small allotment.