[Part II -- Chapters 3 and 4]
Written: end of 1894 - |
Published according to |
From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972
First printing 1960
Second printing 1963
Third printing 1972
Vol. 1, pp. 333-507.
THE ECONOMIC CONTENT OF NARODISM AND THE CRITICISM |
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Chapter I |
A Line-by-Line Commentary on a Narodnik |
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Chapter II |
A Criticism of Narodnik Sociology . . . . |
395 |
Chapter III |
The Presentation of Economic Problems by |
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Chapter IV |
How Mr. Struve Explains Some Features of |
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I |
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . |
453 |
NOTES
[Chapters 3 and 4] |
THE ECONOMIC CONTENT OF NARODISM
AND THE CRITICISM OF IT IN MR. STRUVE'S BOOK
(THE REFLECTION OF MARXISM IN BOURGEOIS LITERATURE)
(Chapters 3 and 4)
page 424
.
THE PRESENTATION OF ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
After finishing with sociology, the author proceeds to deal with more "concrete economic problems" (73). He considers it "natural and legitimate" to start from "general propositions and historical references," from "indisputable premises established by human experience," as he says in the preface.
One cannot but note that this method suffers from the same abstractness noted at the beginning as being the main defect of the book under review. In the chapters we are now coming to (the third, fourth, and fifth), this defect has resulted in undesirable consequences of a twofold nature. On the one hand, it has weakened the definite theoretical propositions advanced by the author against the Narodniks. Mr. Struve argues in general, describes the transition from natural to commodity economy, points out that, as a rule, such and such happened on earth, and with a few cursory remarks proceeds to deal with Russia, applying
to it, too, the general process of the "historical development of economic life." There can be no doubt that it is quite legitimate to apply the process in this way, and that the author's "historical references" are absolutely necessary for a criticism of Narodism, which falsely presents history, and not only Russian history. These propositions should, however, have been expressed more concretely, and been more definitely set against the arguments of the Narodniks, who say that it is wrong to apply the general process to Russia; the Narodniks' particular way of understanding Russian reality should have been compared with the Marxists' other way of understanding that same reality. On the other hand, the abstract character of the author's arguments leads to his propositions being stated incompletely, to a situation where, though he correctly indicates the existence of a process, he does not examine what classes arose while it was going on, what classes were the vehicles of the process, overshadowing other strata of the population subordinate to them; in a word, the author's objectivism does not rise to the level of materialism -- in the above-mentioned significance of these terms.*
Proof of this appraisal of the above-mentioned chapters of Mr. Struve's work will be adduced as we examine some of its most important propositions.
Very true is the author's remark that "almost from the outset of Russian history we find that the direct producers' dependence (juridical and economic) on the lords has been the historical accompaniment of the idyll of 'people's production'" (81). In the period of natural economy the peasant was enslaved to the landowner, he worked for the boyar, the monastery, the landlord, but not for himself,
and Mr. Struve has every right to set this historical fact against the tales of our exceptionalist sociologists about how "the means of production belonged to the producer" (81). These tales constitute one of the distortions of Russian history, meant to suit the philistine utopia in which the Narodniks have always lavishly indulged. Fearing to look reality in the face, and fearing to give this oppression its proper name, they turned to history, but pictured things as though the producer's ownership of means of production was an "ancient" principle, was the "age-old basis" of peasant labour, and that the modern expropriation of the peasantry is therefore to be explained not by the replacement of the feudal surplus product by bourgeois surplus-value, not by the capitalist organisation of our social economy, but by the accident of unfortunate policy, by a temporary "diversion from the path prescribed by the entire historical life of the nation" (Mr. Yuzhakov, quoted by P. Struve, p. 15). And they were not ashamed to tell these absurd stories about a country which had but recently seen the end[*] of the feudal exploitation of the peasantry in the grossest, Asiatic forms, when not only did the means of production not belong to the producer but the producers themselves differed very little from "means of production." Mr. Struve very pointedly sets against this "sugary optimism" Saltykov's sharp rejoinder about the connection between "people's production" and serfdom, and about how the "plenty" of the period of the "age-old basis" "fell only" [note that!] "to the lot of the descendants of the leibkampantsi[127] and other retainers" (83).
Further, let us note Mr. Struve's following remark, which definitely concerns definite facts of Russian reality and contains an exceptionally true thought. 'When the producers start working for a distant and indefinite and not for a local, exactly delimited market, and competition, the struggle for a market develops, these conditions lead to technical progress. . . . Once division of labour is possible,
it has to be carried out as widely as possible, but before production is technically reorganised, the influence of the new conditions of exchange (marketing) will be felt in the fact of the producer becoming economically dependent on the merchant (the buyer-up), and socially this point is of decisive significance. This is lost sight of by our 'true Marxists' like Mr. V. V., who are blinded by the significance of purely technical progress" (98). The reference to the decisive significance of the appearance of the buyer-up is profoundly true. It is decisive in that it proves beyond doubt that we have here the capitalist organisation of production, it proves the applicability to Russia, too, of the proposition that "commodity economy is money economy, is capitalist economy," and creates that subordination of the producer to capital from which there can be no other way out than through the independent activity of the producer. "From the moment that the capitalist entrepreneur comes between the consumer and the producer -- and this is inevitable when production is carried on for an extensive and indefinite market -- we have before us one of the forms of capitalist production." And the author rightly adds that "if handicraft production is understood as the kind under which the producer, who works for an indefinite and distant market, enjoys complete economic independence, it will, I think, be found that in Russian reality there is none of this true handicraft production." It is only a pity that use is made here of the expression "I think," along with the future tense: the predominance of the domestic system of large-scale production and of the utter enslavement of the handicraftsmen by buyers-up is the all-prevailing fact of the actual organisation of our handicraft industries. This organisation is not only capitalist, but as the author rightly says, is also one that is "highly profitable to the capitalists," ensuring them enormous profits, abominably low wages and hindering in the highest degree the organisation and development of the workers (pp. 99-101). One cannot help noting that the fact of the predominance of capitalist exploitation in our handicraft industries has long been known, but the Narodniks ignore it in the most shameless fashion. In almost every issue of their magazines and newspapers dealing with this subject, you
come across complaints about the government "artificially" supporting large-scale capitalism [whose entire "artificiality" consists in being large-scale and not small, factory and not handicraft, mechanical and not hand-operated] and doing nothing for the "needs of people's industry." Here stands out in full relief the narrow-mindedness of the petty bourgeois, who fights for small against big capital and stubbornly closes his eyes to the categorically established fact that a similar opposition of interests is to be found in this "people's" industry, and that consequently the way out does not lie in miserable credits, etc. Since the small proprietor, who is tied to his enterprise and lives in constant fear of losing it, regards all of this as some thing awful, as some sort of "agitation" in favour of "a fair reward for labour, as though labour itself does not create that reward in its fruits," it is clear that only the producer employed in the "artificial," "hothouse" conditions of factory industry can be the representative of the working handicraftsmen.[*]
Let us deal further with Mr. Struve's argument about agriculture. Steam transport compels a transition to exchange economy, it makes agricultural production commodity production. And the commodity character of production unfailingly requires "its economic and technical rationality" (110). The author considers this thesis a particularly important argument against the Narodniks, who triumphantly claim that the advantages of large-scale production in agriculture have not been proved. "It ill becomes those," says the author in reply, "who base themselves on Marx's teachings, to deny the significance of the economic and technical peculiarities of agricultural production thanks to which small undertakings in some cases possess economic advantages over big ones -- even though Marx himself denied the importance of these peculiarities" (111). This passage is very unclear. What peculiarities is the author speaking of? Why does he not indicate them exactly? Why does he not indicate where and how Marx expressed his
views on the matter and on what grounds it is considered necessary to correct those views?
"Small-scale agricultural production," continues the author, "must increasingly assume a commodity character, and the small agricultural undertakings, if they are to be viable enterprises, must satisfy the general requirements of economic and technical rationality" (111). "It is not at all a matter of whether the small agricultural enterprises are absorbed by the big ones -- one can hardly anticipate such an outcome to economic evolution -- but of the met amorphosis to which the entire national economy is subjected under the influence of exchange. The Narodniks over look the fact that the ousting of natural economy by exchange economy in connection with the above-noted 'dispersal of industry' completely alters the entire structure of society. The former ratio between the agricultural (rural) and non-agricultural (urban) population is changed in favour of the latter. The very economic type and mental make-up of the agricultural producers is radically changed under the influence of the new conditions of economic life" (114).
The passage cited shows us what the author wished to say by his passage about Marx, and at the same time clearly illustrates the statement made above that the dogmatic method of exposition, not supported by a description of the concrete process, obscures the author's thoughts and leaves them incompletely expressed. His thesis about the Narodniks' views being wrong is quite correct, but incomplete, because it is not accompanied by a reference to the new forms of class antagonism that develop when irrational production is replaced by rational. The author, for example, confines himself to a cursory reference to "economic rationality" meaning the "highest rent" (110), but forgets to add that rent presupposes the bourgeois organisation of agriculture, i.e., firstly, its complete subordination to the market, and, secondly, the formation in agriculture of the same classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, as are peculiar to capitalist industry.
When the Narodniks argue about the non-capitalist, as they believe, organisation of our agriculture, they pose the problem in an abominably narrow and wrong way, reducing everything to the ousting of the small farms by the
big, and nothing more. Mr. Struve is quite right in telling them that when they argue that way they overlook the general character of agricultural production, which can be (and really is in our country) bourgeois even where production is small-scale, just as West-European peasant farming is bourgeois. The conditions under which small-scale independent enterprise ("people's" -- to use the expression of the Russian intelligentsia) becomes bourgeois are well known. They are, firstly, the prevalence of commodity economy, which, with the producers isolated[*] from one another, gives rise to competition among them, and, while ruining the mass, enriches the few; secondly, the transformation of labour-power into a commodity, and the means of production into capital, i.e., the separation of the producer from the means of production, and the capitalist organisation of the most important branches of industry. Under these conditions the small independent producer acquires an exceptional position in relation to the mass of producers -- just as now really independent proprietors constitute in our country an exception among the masses, who work for others and, far from owning "independent" enterprises, do not even possess means of subsistence sufficient to last a week. The condition and interests of the independent proprietor isolate him from the mass of the producers, who live mainly on wages. While the latter raise the issue of a "fair reward," which is necessarily the gateway to the fundamental issue of a different system of social economy, the former have a far more lively interest in quite different things, namely, credits, and particularly small "people's" credits, improved and cheaper implements, "organisation of marketing," "extension of land tenure," etc.
The very law of the superiority of large enterprises over small is a law of commodity production alone and consequently is not applicable to enterprises not yet entirely drawn into commodity production, not subordinated to
the market. That is why the line of argument (in which, by the way, Mr. V. V. also exercised himself) that the decline of the nobles' farms after the Reform and the renting of privately-owned land by the peasants refute the view of the capitalist evolution of our agriculture, merely proves that those who resort to it have absolutely no understanding of things. Of course, the destruction of feudal relations, under which cultivation had been in the hands of the peasants, caused a crisis among the landlords. But, apart from the fact that this crisis merely led to the increasing employment of farm labourers and day labourers, which replaced the obsolescent forms of semi-feudal labour (labour service); apart from this, the peasant farm itself began to change fundamentally in character: it was compelled to work for the market, a situation that was not long in leading to the peasantry splitting into a rural petty bourgeoisie and a proletariat. This split settles once and for all the issue of capitalism in Russia. Mr. Struve explains the process in Chapter V, where he remarks: "There is differentiation among the small farmers: there develops, on the one hand, an 'economically strong'" [he should have said: bourgeois] "peasantry, and, on the other -- a proletarian type of peasantry. Features of people's production are combined with capitalist features to form a single picture, above which is clearly visible the inscription: here comes Grimy" (p. 177).
Now it is to this aspect of the matter, to the bourgeois organisation of the new, "rational" agriculture that attention should have been directed. The Narodniks should have been shown that by ignoring the process mentioned they change from ideologists of the peasantry into ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie. "The improvement of people's production," for which they thirst, can only mean, under such an organisation of peasant economy, the "improvement" of the petty bourgeoisie. On the other hand, those who point to the producer who lives under the most highly developed capitalist relations, correctly express the interests not only of this producer, but also of the vast mass of the "proletarian" peasantry.
Mr. Struve's exposition is unsatisfactory in character, is incomplete and sketchy; on account of this, when dealing
with rational agriculture, he does not describe its social and economic organisation, and, when he shows that steam transport replaces irrational by rational production, natural by commodity production, he does not describe the new form of class antagonism that then takes shape.
This same defect in the presentation of problems is to be observed in most of the arguments in the chapters under examination. Here are some more examples to illustrate this. Commodity economy -- says the author -- and extensive social division of labour "develop on the basis of the institution of private property, the principles of economic freedom, and the sense of individualism" (91). The progress of national production is bound up with the "extent to which the institution of private property dominates society." "Maybe it is regrettable, but that is how things happen in actual life, it is empirically, historically established coexistence. At the present time, when the ideas and principles of the eighteenth century are treated so light-heartedly -- the mistake it made being in fact repeated -- this cultural-historical tie between economic progress and the institution of private property, the principles of economic freedom, and the sense of individualism is too often forgotten. Only by ignoring this tie can one expect economic progress to be possible in an economically and culturally undeveloped society, without the principles mentioned being put into effect. We feel no particular sympathy for these principles and perfectly well understand their historically transient character, but at the same time we cannot help seeing in them a tremendous cultural force, of not only a negative, but also a positive character. Only idealism which, in its hypotheses, imagines it has no ties with any historical succession, can fail to see it" (91).
The author is quite right in his "objective" statement of "historical coexistences"; all the more pity that his argument is incompletely stated. One would like to say to him: complete the argument! reduce all these general propositions and historical notes to a definite period of our Russian history, formulate them in such a way as to show why and in precisely what way your conception differs from that of the Narodniks, contrast them with the reality that has to serve as the criterion for the Russian Marxist,
show the class contradictions that are concealed by all these examples of progress and culture.[*]
The "progress" and the "culture" that post-Reform Russia brought in its train are undoubtedly bound up with the "institution of private property" -- it was not only introduced for the first time in all its fulness by the creation of a new "contentious" civil process which ensured the same sort of "equality" in the courts as was embodied in life by "free labour" and its sale to capital; it covered the holdings both of the landlords, rid of all obligations and duties to the state, and of the peasants, turned into peasant proprietors ; it was even made the basis of the political rights of "citizens" to participate in local government (the qualification), etc. Still more undoubted is the "lie" between our "progress" and the "principles of economic freedom" we have already heard in Chapter I from our Narodnik how this "freedom" consisted in liberating the "modest and bearded" gatherers of Russia's land from the need to "humble themselves to a junior police official." We have already spoken of how the "sense of individualism" was created by the development of commodity economy. By combining all these features of Russia's progress, one cannot but reach the conclusion (drawn, too, by the Narodnik of the seventies) that this progress and culture were thoroughly bourgeois. Contemporary Russia is far better than pre-Reform Russia, but since all this improvement is wholly and exclusively due to the bourgeoisie, to its agents and ideologists, the producers have not profited by it. As far as they are concerned the improvements have only meant a change in the form of the surplus product, have only meant improved and perfected methods of separating the producer from the means of production. That is why the Narodnik gentlemen display the most incredible "flippancy" and forgetfulness when they address their protest against Russian capitalism and bour-
geoisdom to those who in fact were their vehicles and exponents. All you can say of them is: "they came unto their own, and their own received them not."
To agree with that description of post-Reform Russia and "society" will be beyond the capacity of the contemporary Narodnik. And to challenge it, he would have to deny the bourgeois character of post-Reform Russia, to deny the a very thing for which his distant forefather, the Narodnik of the seventies, rose up and "went among the people" to seek "guarantees for the future" among the direct producers themselves. Of course, the contemporary Narodnik will possibly not only deny it, but will perhaps seek to prove that a change for the better has taken place in the relation under review; by doing so, however, he would merely show all who have not yet seen it, that he is absolutely nothing more than the most ordinary little bourgeois individual.
As the reader sees, I have only to round off Mr. Struve's propositions, to formulate them in another way, "to say the same thing, only differently." The question arises: is there any need for it? Is it worth while dealing in such detail with these additions and conclusions? Do they not follow automatically?
It seems to me that it is worth while, for two reasons. Firstly, the author's narrow objectivism is extremely dangerous, since it extends to the point of forgetting the line of demarcation between the old professorial arguments about the paths and destiny of the fatherland, so rooted in our literature, and a precise characterisation of the actual process impelled by such and such classes. This narrow objectivism, this inconsistency in relation to Marxism, is the main defect of Mr. Struve's book, and it will be necessary to dwell on it in particularly great detail, so as to show that it originates not from Marxism but from its inadequate application; not from the author seeing criteria of his theory other than reality, from his drawing other practical conclusions from the doctrine (they are impossible, I repeat, unthinkable unless you mutilate all its main tenets), but from the fact that the author has limited himself to one, the most general aspect of the theory, and has not applied it quite consistently. Secondly, one cannot but agree with the idea which the author ex-
pressed in his preface that before criticising Narodism on secondary issues, it was necessary "to disclose the very fundamentals of the disagreement" (VII) by way of a "principled polemic." But in order to ensure that the author's aim should not remain unachieved a more concrete meaning must be given to almost all his propositions, all his rather general remarks must be applied to the concrete problems of Russian history and present-day reality. On all these problems the Russian Marxists still have much to do to "reconsider the facts" from the materialist standpoint -- to disclose the class contradictions in the activities of "society" and the "state" that lay behind the theories of the "intelligentsia," and, finally, to establish the tie between all the separate, endlessly varied forms of appropriating the surplus product in Russia's "people's" enterprises, and the advanced, most developed, capitalist form of this appropriation, which contains the "guarantees for the future" and now puts in the forefront the idea and the historical task of the "producer." Consequently, however bold the attempt to indicate the solution of these problems may seem, however numerous the changes and corrections that result from further, detailed study, it is none the less worth indicating specific problems, so as to evoke as general and broad a discussion of them as possible.
The culminating point of Mr. Struve's narrow objectivism, which gives rise to his wrong presentation of problems, is the way he argues about List, about his "splendid doctrine" concerning a "confederation of national productive forces," about the importance for agriculture of developing factory industry, and about the superiority of the manufacturing and agricultural state over the purely agricultural, etc. The author finds that this "doctrine" very "convincingly speaks of the historical inevitability and legitimacy of capitalism in the broad sense of the term" (123), and about the "cultural-historical might of triumphant commodity production" (124).
The professorial character of the arguments of the author, who rises, as it were, above all definite countries, definite historical periods, and definite classes, stands out here in particular relief. However you look at this argument -- whether from the purely theoretical or from the practi-
cal aspect, such an assessment will be equally correct. Let us begin from the former. Is it not strange to think of being able to "convince" anybody at all of the "historical inevitability and legitimacy of capitalism" in a particular country by advancing abstract, dogmatic propositions about the significance of factory industry? Is it not a mistake to raise the problem in this way, so beloved of the liberal professors of Russkoye Bogatstvo ? Is it not obligatory for a Marxist to reduce everything to ascertaining what is, and why it is so, and not otherwise?
The Narodniks consider capitalism in this country to be an artificial, hothouse plant, because they cannot understand the connection between it and the entire commodity organisation of our social economy, and fail to see its roots in our "people's production." Show them these connections and roots, show them that capitalism also dominates in its least developed and therefore worst form in people's production, and you will prove the "inevitability" of Russian capitalism. Show them that this capitalism, by raising labour productivity and socialising labour, develops and renders clear the class, social contradiction that has come into being everywhere in "people's production" -- and you will prove the "legitimacy" of Russian large-scale capitalism. As to the practical aspect of this argument, which touches on the problem of commercial policy, the following may be noted. Although they stress primarily and most emphatically that the problem of free trade and protection is a capitalist problem, one of bourgeois policy, the Russian Marxists must stand for free trade, since the reactionary character of protection, which retards the country's economic development, and serves the interests not of the entire bourgeois class, but merely of a handful of all-powerful magnates, is very strongly evident in Russia, and since free trade means accelerating the process that yields the means of deliverance from capitalism.
The last section (XI) of the third chapter is devoted to an examination of the concept "capitalism." The author very rightly remarks that this word is used "very loosely" and cites examples of a "very narrow" and "very broad"
way of understanding it, but lays down no precise attributes of it; the concept "capitalism," despite the author's analysis, has not been analysed. Yet, one would have thought it should present no particular difficulty, since the concept was introduced into science by Marx, who substantiated it by facts. But here, too, Mr. Struve would not let himself be infected with "orthodoxy." "Marx himself," says he, "viewed the process of the transformation of commodity production into commodity-capitalist production as perhaps more precipitate and straightforward than it is in actual fact" (p. 127, footnote). Perhaps. But since it is the only view substantiated scientifically and supported by the history of capital, and since we are unacquainted with other views, which "perhaps" are less "precipitate" and "straightforward," we turn to Marx. The essential features of capitalism, according to his theory, are (1) commodity production, as the general form of production. The product assumes the form of a commodity in the most diverse social production organisms, but only in capitalist production is that form of the product of labour general, and not exceptional, isolated, accidental. The second feature of capitalism (2) -- not only the product of labour, but also labour itself, i.e., human labour-power, assumes the form of a commodity. The degree to which the commodity form of labour-power is developed is an indication of the degree to which capitalism is developed.* With the aid of this definition we shall easily see our way among the examples of incorrect understanding of this term cited by Mr. Struve. Undoubtedly, the contrasting of the Russian system to capitalism, a contrast based on the technical backwardness of our national economy, on the predominance of hand production, etc., and so often resorted to by the Narodniks, is quite absurd, since capitalism exists both where technical development is low and where it is high; in Capital Marx repeatedly stresses the point that capital first subordinates production as it finds it, and only subsequently
transforms it technically. Undoubtedly, the German Hausindustrie and the Russian "domestic system of large-scale production" are capitalist-organised industry, for not only does commodity production dominate, but the owner of money also dominates the producers and appropriates surplus-value. Undoubtedly, when the Russian "land-holding" peasantry is contrasted to West-European capitalism -- something the Narodniks are so fond of doing -- that, too, merely shows a lack of understanding of what capitalism is. As the author quite rightly remarks, "peasant semi-natural economy" (124) is also to be found in some places in the West, but neither in the West nor in Russia does this do away with either the predominance of commodity production, or the subordination of the overwhelming majority of the producers to capital: before this subordination reaches the highest, peak level of development, it passes through many stages that are usually ignored by the Narodniks despite the very precise explanation given by Marx. The subordination begins with merchant's and usury capital, then grows into industrial capitalism, which in its turn is at first technically quite primitive, and does not differ in any way from the old systems of production, then organises manufacture -- which is still based on hand labour, and on the dominant handicraft industries, without breaking the tie between the wage-worker and the land -- and completes its development with large-scale machine industry. It is this last, highest stage that constitutes the culminating point of the development of capitalism, it alone creates the fully expropriated worker* who is as free as a bird, it alone gives rise (both materially and socially) to the "unifying significance" of capitalism that the Narodniks are accustomed to connect with capitalism in general, it alone opposes capitalism to its "own child."
The fourth chapter of the book, "Economic Progress and Social Progress," is a direct continuation of the third chapter, and covers that part of the book which advances data of "human experience" against the Narodniks. We shall
have to deal here in detail, firstly, with the author's wrong view [or clumsy expression?] concerning Marx's followers and, secondly, with the way the tasks of the economic criticism of Narodism are formulated.
Mr. Struve says that Marx conceived the transition from capitalism to the new social system as the sudden downfall, the collapse of capitalism. (He thinks that "certain passages" in Marx give grounds for this view; as a matter of fact, it runs through all the works of Marx.) The followers of Marx fight for reforms. An "important correction has been made" to the viewpoint that Marx held in the forties: instead of the "chasm" separating capitalism from the new system, a "number of transitional stages" have been admitted.
We cannot under any circumstances admit this to be right. No "correction" whatever, either important or unimportant, has been made to Marx's viewpoint by the "followers of Marx." The fight for reforms does not in the least imply a "correction," does not in the least correct the doctrine of the chasm and sudden downfall, because this struggle is waged with a frankly and definitely admitted aim, that of reaching the "fall"; and the fact that this requires a "number of transitional stages" -- from one phase of the struggle to another, from one stage to the next -- was admitted by Marx himself in the forties when he said in the Manifesto that the movement towards the new system cannot be separated from the working-class movement (and, hence, from the struggle for reforms), and when he himself, in conclusion, proposed a number of practical measures.[129]
If Mr. Struve wanted to indicate the development of Marx's viewpoint, he was, of course, right. But then, this is not a "correction" to his views, but the very opposite -- their application, their realisation.
Nor can we agree with the author's attitude towards Narodism.
"Our Narodnik literature," he says, "seized upon the contrast between national wealth and the well-being of the people, social progress and progress in distribution" (131).
Narodism did not "seize upon" this contrast, but merely stated the fact that in post-Reform Russia the same contradiction was to be observed between progress, culture,
wealth and -- the separation of the producer from the means of production, the diminution of the producer's share in the product of the people's labour, and the growth of poverty and unemployment -- as that which had led to this contrast being made in the West, too.
". . . Owing to its humanity and its love for the people, this literature immediately settled the problem in favour of the well-being of the people, and as certain forms of people's economy (village community, artel) apparently embodied the ideal of economic equality and thus guaranteed the well-being of the people, and as the progress of production under the influence of increased exchange held out no promise for these forms, whose economic and psychological foundations it abolished, the Narodniks, pointing to the sad experience of the West in regard to industrial progress based on private property and economic liberty, countered commodity production -- capitalism, with a so-called 'people's industry' that guarantees the well-being of the people, as a social and economic ideal for the preservation and further development of which the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian people should fight."
This argument clearly reveals the flaws in Mr. Struve's thesis. Narodism is depicted as a "humane" theory which "seized upon" the contrast between national wealth and the poverty of the people and "settled the problem" in favour of distribution, because the "experience of the West" "held out no promise" for the well-being of the people. And the author begins to argue against this "settlement" of the problem, forgetting that he is only arguing against the idealist and, moreover, naïve daydreams that are the cloak of Narodism, and not against its content, forgetting that he is committing a serious error by presenting the question in the professorial manner usually adopted by the Narodniks. As we have already stated, the content of Narodism reflects the viewpoint and the interests of the Russian small producer. The "humanity and love for the people" expressed in the theory derive from the downtrodden condition of our small producer, who has suffered severely both from the "old-nobility" system and traditions, and from the oppression of big capital. The attitude of Narodism towards the "West" and towards its influence
upon Russia was determined, of course, not by the fact that it "seized upon" this or that idea coming from the West, but by the small producer's conditions of life: he saw that he was up against large-scale capitalism which was borrowing West-European technique,[*] and, oppressed by it, built up naïve theories which explained capitalism by politics instead of capitalist politics by capitalist economy, and which declared large-scale capitalism to be something alien to Russia, introduced from outside. The fact that he was tied to his separate, small enterprise prevented him from understanding the true character of the state, and he appealed to it to help develop small ("people's") production. Owing to the undeveloped condition of class antagonisms characteristic of Russian capitalist society, the theory of these petty-bourgeois ideologists was put forward as representing the interests of labour in general.
Instead of showing the absurdity of Narodniks' presentation of the problem and explaining their "settlement" of it by the material conditions of the small producer's life, the author himself, in his own presentation of the problem, betrays a dogmatism which reminds one of the Narodniks' "choice " between economic and social progress.
"The task of criticising the economic principles of Narodism . . . is . . . to prove the following:
"1) Economic progress is a necessary condition for social progress: the latter emerges historically from the former, and, at a certain stage of development, organic interaction between, interdependence of, these two processes should, and in fact does, manifest itself" (133).
Speaking generally, this is, of course, a perfectly true statement. But it indicates the tasks of criticising the sociological rather than the economic principles of Narodism: in essence, it is a different way of formulating the doctrine that the development of society is determined by the development of the productive forces which we discussed in chapters I and II. It is, however, inadequate for the criticism of the "economic principles of Narodism." The problem must be formulated more concretely, it must be reduced from progress in general to the "progress" of
capitalist society in Russia, to those errors in understanding this progress which gave rise to the ridiculous Narodnik fables about the tabula rasa, about "people's production," about Russian capitalism having no basis, etc. Instead of talk about interaction manifesting itself between economic and social progress, the definite symptoms of social progress in Russia of which the Narodniks fail to see such and such economic roots, must be shown (or at least indicated).[*]
"2) For that reason, the question of the organisation of production and of the level of labour productivity is one that takes precedence over the question of distribution; under certain historical conditions, when the productivity of the people's labour is extremely low, both absolutely and relatively, the predominant importance of the factor of production makes itself felt very acutely."
The author here bases himself on Marx's doctrine of the subordinate importance of distribution. As an epigraph to Chapter IV a passage is taken from Marx's criticism of the Gotha Programme[130] where he contrasts vulgar socialism to scientific socialism, which attaches no great importance to distribution, explains the social system by the way the relations of production are organised and considers that such organisation already includes a definite system of distribution. This idea, as the author quite justly remarks, runs through the whole of Marx's theory, and is extremely important for an understanding of the petty-bourgeois content of Narodism. But the second part of Mr. Struve's sentence greatly obscures this idea, particularly because of the vague term he uses, "the factor of production." Some confusion may arise as to the sense in which this term is to be understood. The Narodnik adopts the viewpoint of the small producer, whose explanations of the misfortunes he suffers are very superficial; for example, he is "poor," while his neighbour, the buyer-up, is "rich";
the "authorities" only help big capital, etc.; in a word, his misfortunes are due to the specific features of distribution, to mistakes in policy, etc. What viewpoint does the author oppose to that of the Narodnik? The viewpoint of big capital, who looks down with contempt upon the miserable little enterprise of the peasant-handicraftsman and who is proud of the high degree of development of his own industry, proud of the "service" he has rendered by raising the absolute and relative low productivity of the people's labour? Or the viewpoint of its antipode, who is now living in relationships which are so far developed that he is no longer satisfied with references to policy and distribution, and who is beginning to understand that the causes lie much deeper, in the very organisation (social) of production, in the very system of social economy based on individual property and controlled and guided by the market? This question might quite naturally arise in the reader's mind, especially since the author sometimes uses the term "factor of production" side by side with the word "economy" (see p. 171: the Narodniks "ignore the factor of production to a degree that is tantamount to denying the existence of any system of economy"), and especially since, by comparing "irrational" with "rational" production, the author sometimes obscures the relationship between the small producer and the producer who has lost the means of production altogether. It is perfectly true that from the objective point of view the author's exposition is no less correct on account of this and that it is easy for anyone who understands the antagonism inherent in the capitalist system to picture the situation from the angle of the latter relationship. But, as it is well known that the Russian Narodnik gentlemen do not understand this, it is desirable in controversy with them to be more definite and thorough and to resort to the fewest possible general and abstract postulates.
As we tried to show by a concrete example in Chapter I, the difference between Narodism and Marxism lies wholly in the character of their criticism of Russian capitalism. The Narodnik thinks that to criticise capitalism it is sufficient to indicate the existence of exploitation, the interaction between exploitation and politics, etc. The Marxist thinks it necessary to explain and also to link together
the phenomena of exploitation as a system of certain relations in production, as a special social-economic formation, the laws of the functioning and development of which have to be studied objectively. The Narodnik thinks it sufficient, in criticising capitalism, to condemn it from the angle of his ideals, from the angle of "modern science and modern moral ideas." The Marxist thinks it necessary to trace in detail the classes that are formed in capitalist society, he considers valid only criticism made from the viewpoint of a definite class, criticism that is based on the precise formulation of the social process actually taking place and not on the ethical judgement of the "individual."
If, with this as our starting-point, we tried to formulate the tasks of criticising the economic principles of Narodism, they would be defined approximately as follows:
It must be shown that the relation between large-scale capitalism in Russia and "people's production" is the relation between a completely developed and an undeveloped phenomenon, between a higher stage of development of the capitalist social formation and a lower stage;* that the separation of the producer from the means of production and the appropriation of the product of his labour by the owner of money are to be explained, both in the factory and even in the village community, not by politics, not by distribution, but by the production relations that necessarily take shape under commodity economy, by the formation of classes with antagonistic interests which is characteristic of capitalist society;** that the reality (small production) which
the Narodniks want to raise to a higher level, bypassing capitalism, already contains capitalism with its antagonism of classes and clashes between them -- only the antagonism is in its worst form, a form which hampers the independent activity of the producer; and that by ignoring the social antagonisms which have already arisen and by dreaming about "different paths for the father land," the Narodniks become utopian reactionaries, because large-scale capitalism only develops, purges and clarifies the content of these antagonisms, which exist all over Russia.
Directly connected with the over-abstract formulation of the tasks of the economic criticism of Narodism is the author's further exposition, in which he seeks to prove the "inevitability" and "progressive character," not of Russian capitalism, but of West European. Without directly touching on the economic content of the Narodnik doctrine, this exposition contains much that is interesting and instructive. In Narodnik literature voices have been heard time and again expressing distrust towards the West-European labour movement. This was most strikingly expressed during the recent polemics of Messrs. Mikhailovsky and Co. (Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1893-1894) against the Marxists. We have seen no good from capitalism yet, Mr. Mikhailovsky wrote at that time.* The absurdity of these petty-bourgeois views is excellently proved by Mr. Struve's data, especially since they are drawn from the latest bour-
geois literature, which can on no account be accused of exaggeration. The passages quoted by the author show that in the West everybody, even the bourgeois, realises that the transition of capitalism to a new social-economic formation is inevitable.
The socialisation of labour by capital has advanced so far that even bourgeois literature loudly proclaims the necessity of the "planned organisation of the national economy." The author is quite right when he says that this is a "sign of the times," a sign of the complete break-up of the capitalist system. He quotes extremely interesting statements by bourgeois professors and even by conservatives who are compelled to admit that which Russian radicals to this very day like to deny -- the fact that the working-class movement was created by the material conditions brought into existence by capitalism and not "simply" by culture or other political conditions.
After all that has been said, it is hardly necessary for us to deal with the author's argument that distribution can make progress only if based on rational production. Clearly, the meaning of this postulate is that only large scale capitalism based on rational production creates conditions that enable the producer to raise his head, to give thought and show concern both for himself and for those who, owing to the backward state of production, do not live in such conditions.
Just a word or two about the following sentence which occurs in Mr. Struve's book: "The extreme inequality of distribution, which retards economic progress, was hot created by capitalism: capitalism inherited it" from the epoch which romantics picture as flowing with milk and honey (p, 159). That is true if all the author wanted to say was that unequal distribution existed even before capitalism, something Narodnik gentlemen are inclined to for get. But it is not true if it includes a denial that capitalism has increased this inequality. Under serfdom there was not, nor could there be, that sharp inequality between the absolutely impoverished peasant or tramp, and the bank, railway, or industrial magnate, which has been created by post-Reform capitalist Russia.
Let us pass to Chapter V. Here the author gives a general description of "Narodism as an economic philosophy." "The Narodniks," in Mr. Struve's opinion, are the "ideologists of natural economy and primitive equality" (167).
We cannot agree with this description. We shall not repeat here the arguments advanced in Chapter I, proving that the Narodniks are the ideologists of the small producer. In that chapter we showed exactly how the small producer's material conditions of life, his transitory, intermediate position between the "masters" and the "workers" lead to the Narodniks' failure to understand class antagonisms, and the queer mixture of progressive and reactionary points in their programme.
Here let us merely add that its former, i.e., progressive, side brings Narodism close to West-European democracy, and for that reason the brilliant description of democracy given over forty years ago in connection with events in French history can be applied to it in its entirety:
"The democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie, that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted, imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people. What they represent is the people's rights ; what interests them is the people's interests. Accordingly . . . they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to weigh their own resources too critically. . . .* If in the performance their interests prove to be uninteresting and their potency impotent, then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile
camps[*] . . . or the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an unforeseen accident has this time spoilt the game. In any case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went into it, with the newly won conviction that he is bound to win, not that he himself and his party have to give up the old stand point, but, on the contrary, that conditions have to ripen to suit him" (ihm entgegenzureifen haben. Der achtzehnte Brumaire, u.s.w., S. 39).[131]
The very examples which the author himself quotes prove that the description of the Narodniks as ideologists of natural economy and primitive equality is wrong. "As a curiosity it is worth mentioning," says Mr. Struve, "that to this day Mr.-on calls Vasilchikov a liberal economist" (169). If we examine the real essence of this designation we shall find that it is by no means curious. In his programme Vasilchikov has the demand for cheap and widespread credit. Mr. Nikolai-on cannot fail to see that in the capitalist society which Russian society is, credit will only strengthen the bourgeoisie, will lead to "the development and consolidation of capitalist relationships" (Sketches, p. 77). By the practical measures he proposes, Vasilchikov, like all the Narodniks, represents nothing but the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. The only thing that is curious about this is that Mr.-on, sitting as he does side by side with the Russkoye Bogatstvo publicists, has "to this day" not noticed that they are exactly the same type of little "liberal economists" as Prince Vasilchikov. Utopian theories easily reconcile themselves in practice with petty-bourgeois progress. This description of Narodism is still further confirmed by Golovachov, who admits that to distribute allotments to everybody is absurd and suggests that "cheap credits be provided for working folk." In criticising this "astonishing" theory, Mr. Struve calls attention to the absurdity
of the theory, but he appears not to have observed its petty-bourgeois content.
When speaking of Chapter V, we too cannot help dealing with Mr. Shcherbina's "law of average requirements." This is important in estimating Mr. Struve's Malthusianism, which stands out clearly in Chapter VI. The "law" is as follows: when you classify the peasants according to allotment you get very little fluctuation (from group to group) in the average magnitude of peasant family requirements (i.e., of expenditure on various needs); Mr. Shcherbina calculates this expenditure per head of the population.
Mr. Struve emphasises with satisfaction that this "law" is "tremendously important," since, he avers, it confirms the "well-known" law of Malthus that "the living standard and the reproduction of the population are determined by the means of subsistence they have at their disposal."
We cannot understand why Mr. Struve is so pleased with this law. We cannot understand how one can see a "law," and what is more, a "tremendously important" one, in Mr. Shcherbina's calculations. It is quite natural that where the manner of life of different peasant families does not differ very considerably we get averages that vary little if we divide the peasants into groups; particularly if, when making the division into groups, we take as the basis the size of the allotment, which is no direct index of a family's living standard (since the allotment may be leased out, or additional land may be rented) and is equally available to both the rich and the poor peasant possessing an equal number of taxable members in the family. Mr. Shcherbina's calculations merely prove that he chose a wrong method of classification. If Mr. Shcherbina thinks he has discovered some law here, it is very strange. It is equally strange to find confirmation of the law of Malthus here, as though one can judge of the "means of subsistence at the peasant's disposal" from the size of the allotment when one disregards the leasing out of land, "outside employments," the peasant's economic dependence on the landlord and the buyer-up. About this "law" of Mr. Shcherbina's (the way Mr. Shcherbina expounds this "law" indicates that the author attaches incredibly great importance to his average figures, which prove absolutely nothing) Mr. Struve says:
"'People's production' in the present case simply means production without the employment of wage-labour. It is undoubted that where production is organised in that way the 'surplus-value' remains in the hands of the producer" (176). And the author points out that where labour productivity is low, this does not prevent the representative of such "people's production" living worse than the worker. The author is carried away by the Malthusian theory, and this has led him to formulate inexactly the proposition cited. Merchant's and usury capital subordinates labour to itself in every Russian village and -- without turning the producer into a wage-worker -- deprives him of as much surplus-value as industrial capital takes from the working man. Mr. Struve rightly indicated earlier on that capitalist production sets in from the moment the capitalist steps between the producer and the consumer, even though he buys the ready-made ware from the independent (apparently independent) producer (p. 99 and note 2), and it would be no easy job to find among the Russian "independent" producers those that do not work for a capitalist (merchant, buyer-up, kulak, etc.). One of the biggest mistakes of the Narodniks is that they do not see the very close and indissoluble tie between the capitalist organisation of Russian social economy and the absolute dominion of merchant's capital in the countryside. The author therefore is perfectly correct when he says that the "very combination of the words 'people's production' in the sense they are used by the Narodnik gentlemen does not fit in with any actual historical order. Here in Russia 'people's production' before 1861 was closely connected with serfdom, and then after 1861 there was a rapid development of commodity economy, which could not but distort the purity of people's production" (177). When the Narodnik says that the ownership of the means of production by the producer is the age-old basis of the Russian way of life, he is simply distorting history to suit his utopia, and does so by playing tricks with words: under serfdom. means of production were supplied to the producer by the landlord in order that the producer could engage in corvée service for him; the allotment was a sort of wages in kind -- the "age-old" means of appropriating the surplus product.
The abolition or serfdom did not mean the "emancipation" of the producer at all; it only meant a change in the form of the surplus product. While in, say, England the fall of serfdom gave rise to really independent and free peasants, our Reform immediately effected the transition from the "shameful" feudal surplus product to "tree" bourgeois surplus-value.
The last (sixth) chapter of Mr. Struve's book is devoted to the most important problem, that of Russia's economic development. Its theoretical contents are divided up into the following sections: 1) over-population in agricultural Russia, its character and causes; 2) the differentiation of the peasantry, its significance and causes; 3) the part played by industrial capitalism in ruining the peasantry; 4) private-landowner farming; the character of its development, and 5) the problem of markets for Russian capitalism. Before proceeding to examine Mr. Struve's line of argument on each of these problems, let us examine what he says about the peasant Reform.
The author voices his protest against the "idealistic" understanding of the Reform and points to the requirements of the state, which needed greater labour productivity, to land redemption, and to the pressure "from below." It is a pity the author did not make his legitimate protest a thorough one. The Narodniks explain the Reform by the development in "society" of "humane" and "emancipatory" ideas. This is an undoubted fact, but thus to explain the Reform means to slip into empty tautology and to reduce "emancipation" to "emancipatory" ideas. The materialist requires a special examination of the content of the measures effected to put those ideas into practice. History has never known a single important "reform," even though it has been of a class character, which has not had lofty words and lofty ideas advanced in its support. This is equally true of the peasant Reform. If we pay attention to the
actual content of the changes it has effected, we shall see that their character is as follows: some of the peasants were deprived of the land, and -- this is the chief thing -- the rest of the peasants, who retained part of their land, had to redeem it from the landlords, as though it was something to which they had absolutely no right, and what is more, to redeem it at an artificially high price. Not only here in Russia, but also in the West, such reforms were invested with theories about "freedom" and "equality," and it has already been shown in Capital that it was commodity production that provided the basis for the ideas of freedom and equality. At any rate, however complicated the bureaucratic machine that put the Reform into effect in Russia, however apparently [*] distant it was from the bourgeoisie themselves, it remains an undoubted fact that only the bourgeois system could develop on the basis of such a reform. Mr. Struve is quite right in pointing out that the stock way of contrasting the peasant Reform in Russia to those in Western Europe is wrong: "it is quite wrong (in so general a form ) to assert that in Western Europe the peasants were emancipated without the land, or, in other words, were deprived of the land by legislation" (196). I underscore the words "in so general a form," because separation of the peasants from the land by legislation was an undoubted historical fact wherever a peasant Reform was carried through, but it is not a universal fact, for in the West part of the peasants, when emancipated from feudal dependence, redeemed the land from the landlords, and are doing so in Russia. Only the bourgeoisie are capable of hiding the fact of redemption and of asserting that the "emancipation of the peasants with land** made a tabula rasa of Russia" (the words of a Mr. Yakovlev, "heartily welcomed" by Mr. Mikhailovsky -- see p. 10 of P. Struve's work).
Let us proceed to Mr. Struve's theory about the"character of over-population in agrarian Russia." This is one of the most important points in which Mr. Struve departs from the "doctrine" of Marxism for that of Malthusianism. The essence of his views, developed by him in his controversy with Mr. N.-on, is that over-population in agricultural Russia is "not capitalist, but, so to speak, simple over-population, that goes with natural economy."[*]
Since Mr. Struve says that his objection to Mr. N.-on "fully conforms with F. A. Lange's general objection to Marx's theory of relative over-population" (p. 183, footnote), we shall first turn to this "general objection" of Lange's and examine it.
Lange discusses Marx's law of population in his Labour Problem, Chapter V (Russian trans., pp. 142-78). He begins with Marx's main proposition that "every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone. An abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only."[132] Lange's comment is:
"May we be permitted to note firstly that, strictly speaking, there is no abstract law of population for plants and animals, either, since abstraction is, on the whole, merely the extraction of the general from a whole number of similar phenomena" (143), and Lange explains in detail to Marx what abstraction is. Evidently, he simply did not understand the meaning of Marx's statement. In this respect Marx contrasts man to plants and animals on the grounds that the former lives in diverse historically successive social organisms which are determined by the system of social production, and, hence, distribution. The conditions for human reproduction are directly dependent on the structure of the different social organisms; that is why the law of population must be studied in relation to each organism separately, and not "abstractly," without
regard to the historically different forms of social structure. Lange's explanation that abstraction means to extract the general from similar phenomena turns right against him self: only the conditions of existence of animals and plants can be considered similar, but this is not so with regard to man, because we know that he has lived in organisationally different types of social association.
Having expounded Marx's theory of relative over-population in a capitalist country, Lange goes on to say: "At first sight it may seem that this theory breaks the lengthy thread that runs through the whole of organic nature up to man, that it explains the basis of the labour problem as though general investigations into the existence, reproduction and perfection of the human race were quite superfluous to our purpose, i.e., to an understanding of the labour problem" (154).[*]
The thread that runs through the whole of organic nature up to man is not at all-broken by Marx's theory, which merely requires that the "labour problem" -- since it only exists as such in capitalist society -- be solved not on the basis of "general investigations" into human reproduction, but on the basis of specific investigations of the laws of capitalist relations. Lange, however, is of a different opinion: "Actually, however," says he, "this is not so. Above all it is clear that factory labour from the very outset presumes poverty " (154). And Lange devotes a page and a half to proving this proposition, which is self-evident and does not advance us a single hair's breadth: firstly, we know that poverty is created by capitalism itself at a stage of its development prior to the factory form of production, prior to the stage at which the machines create surplus population; secondly, the form of social structure preceding capitalism -- the feudal, serf system -- itself created a poverty of its own, one that it handed down to capitalism.
"But even with such a powerful assistant [i.e., want], only in rare cases does the first employer succeed in winning over large numbers of workers to the new kind of activity. Usually what happens is the following. From the locality where factory industry has already won itself citizenship rights the employer brings with him a contingent of workers; to them he adds a few landless peasants,[*] who at the moment are workless, and the further supplementation of the existing factory contingent is done from among the rising generation" (156). Lange places the last two words in italics. Evidently, the "general investigations into the existence, reproduction and perfection of the human race" were expressed in precisely the postulate that the factory owner recruits new workers among the "rising generation," and not among decrepit old folk. The good Lange spends a whole page more (157) on these "general investigations" and tells the reader that parents try to give their children an assured existence, that the idle moralists are wrong in condemning those who try to work their way out of the condition into which they were born, that it is quite natural to try to arrange for children to earn their own living. Only after we have got over all these reflections, which may be in place in copybooks, do we get down to business:
"In an agrarian country where the soil belongs to small and big owners -- provided that the tendency of voluntary birth-control has not firmly gripped the people's morals -- there inevitably arises a constant surplus of hands and consumers who wish to exist on the products of the given territory" (157-58). This purely Malthusian proposition is put forward by Lange without offering any proof. He repeats it again and again and says: "In any case, even if such a country is thinly populated in the absolute sense, there are usually signs of relative over-population" and "on the market the supply of labour is constantly in excess and the demand insignificant" (158) -- but all these
assertions are totally unsupported. Whence does it follow that a "surplus of workers" was really "inevitable"? Whence does the connection arise between this surplus and the absence in the people's morals of a tendency to voluntary birth-control? Ought he not, before arguing about the "people's morals," to take a glance at the production relations in which the people live? Let us imagine, for example, that the small and big proprietors to whom Lange refers were connected in the production of material values as follows: the small proprietors received allotments from the big landowners on which they could exist, and in return engaged in corvée service for the big landowners, cultivating their fields. Let us imagine, further, that these relations have been shattered, that humane ideas have turned the heads of the big proprietors to such an extent that they have "emancipated their peasants with land," i.e., have cut off approximately 20% of the allotment land of the peasants, and compelled them to pay for the remaining 80% a purchase price that has been raised 100%. Naturally, with such a guarantee against the "ulcer of the proletariat" the peasants still have to continue working for the big proprietors in order to exist, although they do not now work on the instructions of the feudal steward, as formerly, but on the basis of free contract -- hence they snatch the work out of one another's hands, since they are no longer bound together, and each one farms on his own account. This way of snatching up work inevitably forces some peasants out: because their allotments have grown smaller and their payments bigger, they have become weaker in relation to the landlord, and so competition among them increases the rate of surplus product, and the landlord can manage with a smaller number of peasants. However much the tendency to voluntary birth-control becomes entrenched in the people's morals, the formation of a "surplus" is inevitable. Lange's line of argument, which ignores social economic relations, merely serves as striking proof that his methods are useless. And apart from such arguments he gives us nothing new. He says that the factory owners willingly transfer industry into the depths of the countryside, because there "the requisite amount of child labour is always ready to hand for any undertaking " (161), without inves-
tigating what history, what mode of social production has created this "readiness" on the part of parents to place their children in bondage. The methods he uses are most clearly seen from the following of his arguments: he quotes Marx, who says that machine industry, by enabling capital to buy female and child labour, makes the worker a "slave-dealer."
"So that's what he's getting at!" cries Lange triumphantly. "But is it to be expected that the worker, whom want forces to sell his own labour-power, would so lightly sell his wife and children, if he were not impelled to take this step by want, on the one hand, and by temptation, on the other?" (163).
The good Lange has carried his zeal to the point of defending the worker against Marx, to whom he proves that the worker is "prompted by want."
. . . "And what, indeed, is this ever-growing want but the metamorphosis of the struggle for existence?" (163).
Such are the discoveries resulting from "general investigations into the existence, reproduction and perfection of the human race"! Do we learn anything at all about the causes of "want," about its political-economic content and course of development if we are told that it is the metamorphosis of the struggle for existence? Why, that can be said about anything you like -- about the relation of the worker to the capitalist, the landowner to the factory owner and to the peasant serf, etc., etc. We get nothing but such vapid banalities or naïveties from Lange's attempt to correct Marx. Let us now see what Lange's follower, Mr. Struve, gives us in support of this correction, in discussing the specific problem of over-population in agrarian Russia.
Commodity production, begins Mr. Struve, increases the capacity of the home market. "Exchange exerts such an effect not only by the complete technical and economic reorganisation of production, but also in those cases where the technique of production remains at the former level, and natural economy retains its former dominant role in the general economy of the population. In that case, however, 'over-population' inevitably sets in after a brief revival; but if commodity production is to blame, it is only: 1) as the exciter, 2) as the complicating factor" (182). Over-pop-
ulation would set in without commodity economy: it is non-capitalist in character.
Such are the propositions advanced by the author. From the very outset one is struck with the fact that these propositions are just as unsubstantiated as those of Lange. The assertion is made that over-population is inevitable under natural economy, but no explanation is given of exactly what process gives rise to it. Let us turn to the facts in which the author finds confirmation of his views.
The data for 1762-1846 show that the population in general did not multiply so rapidly, the annual increase being from 1.07 to 1.5%. What is more, the increase was more rapid, according to Arsenyev, in the "grain-growing" gubernias. This "fact," concludes Mr. Struve, "is highly characteristic of the primitive forms of people's economy, where reproduction is directly dependent on natural fertility, a dependence which one can feel with one's hands, so to speak." This is the action of "the law of the correlation of the growth of the population with the means of subsistence" (185). "The wider the expanse of territory, and the higher the natural fertility of the soil, the greater is the natural growth of the population" (186). The quite unsubstantiated conclusion drawn is the following: the one fact that in the central gubernias of European Russia the growth of the population between 1790 and 1846 was smallest in Vladimir and Kaluga gubernias is made the basis for a whole law correlating the growth of the population with the means of subsistence. But can one judge of the population's means of subsistence from the "expanse of territory"? (Even if we were to admit that such few data enable us to draw general conclusions.) The "population," after all, did not divert to their own use the products of the "natural fertility" they had secured: they shared them with the landlords, with the state. Is it not clear that the different types of landlord farming -- quitrent or corvée, the size of tributes and the methods of exacting them, etc. -- exerted a far greater influence on the amount of "means of subsistence" available to the population than the expanse of territory, which was not in the exclusive and free possession of the producers? More than that. Irrespective of the social relations that were expressed in serfdom, the popu-
lation was bound together, even then, by exchange: "The separation of manufacturing industry from agriculture," rightly says the author, "i.e., the social, national division of labour, existed in the pre-Reform period, too" (189). The question, then, arises why should we presume that the marsh-dwelling Vladimir handicraftsman or cattle-dealer had a less abundant supply of "means of subsistence" than the rude tiller of Tambov with all his "natural fertility of the soil"?
Then Mr. Struve cites data about the decline in the serf population before the emancipation. The economists whose opinion he quotes attribute this to a "decline in living standards" (189). The author concludes:
"We have stopped to deal with the fact of the decline in the serf population before the emancipation, because, in our view, it throws clear light on the economic situation in Russia at that time. A considerable part of the country had . . . the maximum population for the given technical-economic and social-juridical conditions: the latter were very unfavourable for any rapid increase as far as almost 40% of the population was concerned" (189). What has the Malthusian "law" of the correlation of population increase and means of subsistence to do with the matter, when the feudal social order directed these means of subsistence into the possession of a handful of big landowners, and passed over the mass of the population, the growth of which is under investigation? Can any value be attached, for example, to the author's argument that the growth in population was smallest either in the less-fertile gubernias where industry was poorly developed, or in the thickly populated and purely agricultural gubernias? Mr. Struve wishes to see in this a manifestation of "non-capitalist over-population," which was bound to have set in even without commodity economy, and which "corresponds to natural economy." But one might say with equal, if not greater, justice that this over-population corresponded to feudal economy, that the slow increase in the population was due most of all to the increased exploitation of peasant labour that resulted from the growth of commodity production on the landlords' farms, when they began using corvée labour to produce grain for sale, and not merely for their own needs. The author's
examples tell against him: they tell of the impossibility of constructing an abstract law of population, according to the formula about correlation of growth and the means of subsistence, while ignoring historically specific systems of social relations and the stages of their development.
Passing to the post-Reform period, Mr. Struve says: "In the history of the population following the collapse of serfdom we see the same basic feature as before the emancipation. The dynamics of population increase are directly dependent on the expanse of territory and the land allotment" (198). This is proved by a small table, which groups the peasants according to size of allotment, and shows that the greater the size of the allotment, the greater the increase in population. "And it cannot be otherwise under natural, 'self-consumer' . . . economy that serves primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer himself" (199).
Truly, if this were so, if the allotments served primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer, if they were the only source of satisfying these needs, one could then, and only then, evolve a general law of population increase from these data. But we know that this is not the case. The allotments serve "primarily" to satisfy the needs of the landlords and the state: they are taken away from their owners, if these "needs" are not satisfied on time; payments are levied on the allotment in excess of the peasants' paying capacity. Further, they are not the peasants' only resources. A farming deficit -- says the author -- is bound to be reflected preventively and repressively on the population. Furthermore, outside employments, by diverting the adult male population, retard reproduction (199). But if the deficit from allotment farming is covered by renting land or by outside earnings, the peasant's means of subsistence may prove to be adequate enough for "energetic reproduction." Undoubtedly, such a favourable turn of events may be the lot of only a minority of the peasants, but, where no special examination is made of production relations existing within the peasantry, there is nothing to show that this growth proceeds evenly, that it is not called forth mainly by the prosperity of the minority. Finally, the author himself makes natural economy a condition of the demonstrability of his thesis, whereas after the Reform, on his own
admission, commodity production penetrated in a broad stream into the hitherto existing life. The author's data are obviously quite inadequate for establishing a general law of reproduction. More, the abstract "simplicity" of this law which presumes that the means of production in the society under review "serve primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer himself" gives absolutely wrong, and totally unsupported, treatment of highly complicated facts. For example, after the emancipation -- says Mr. Struve -- it was to the landlords' advantage to lease their land to the peasants. "Thus, the food area available to the peasantry, i.e., their means of subsistence, has increased" (200). To assign the whole of the rented land in this forthright way to the category of "food area" is quite unfounded and wrong. The author himself points out that the landlords appropriated the lion's share of the produce raised on their land (200), so that it is still a question whether such renting of land (on a labour-service basis, for example) has not worsened the conditions of the tenants, whether it has not placed obligations on them that have led, in the final analysis, to the food area declining. Further, the author himself points out that the renting of land is only within the capacity of the prosperous (216) peasants, in whose hands it serves as a means of expanding commodity farming rather than consolidating "self-consumer" farming. Even if it were proven that generally speaking the renting of land improved the position of the "peasantry," of what importance could that be when, to use the words of the author himself, the peasant poor have been ruined by renting land (216) -- i.e., improvement for some meant worsening for others? Evidently in the peasant renting of land the old, feudal and the new, capitalist relationships intertwine; the author's abstract reasoning, which takes no account of either the one or the other, confuses matters instead of helping to achieve clarity about these relationships.
There remains one more reference by the author to data supposedly confirming his views. It is where he says that "the old word land-poverty is merely the term commonly used to express what science calls over-population" (186). The author thus bases himself, as it were, on the whole of our Narodnik literature, which established the fact beyond doubt
that the peasant allotments were "inadequate," and which "fortified" thousands of times over their desire for the "expansion of peasant land tenure" with the "simple" argument: the population has increased; the allotments have been split up -- naturally, the peasants are being ruined. However, this hackneyed Narodnik argument about "land-poverty can hardly be of any scientific[*] value, it can hardly be of use for anything but "loyal speeches" in a commission dealing with the painless advance of the fatherland along the right road. In this argument the wood cannot be seen for the trees, the basic social-economic background of the picture cannot be seen for the outer contours of the object. The fact of a huge mass of land belonging to members of the "old-nobility" system, on the one hand, and the acquisition of land by purchase, on the other -- such is the basic background under which every "expansion of land tenure" will be a miserable palliative. Both the Narodnik arguments about land-poverty, and the Malthusian "laws" about population increase being correlated to the means of subsistence are at fault in their abstract "simplicity," which ignores the given, specific social-economic relations.
This review of Mr. Struve's arguments leads us to the conclusion that his thesis -- over-population in agrarian Russia is to be explained by reproduction not being correlated to the means of subsistence -- is absolutely unproved. He concludes his arguments as follows: "And so, we are faced with a picture of natural-economic over-population complicated by commodity-economic factors and other important features inherited from the social structure of the feudal epoch" (200). Of course, one can say that any economic phenomenon in a country undergoing a transition from "natural" to "commodity" economy is a "natural-economic" phenomenon complicated by "commodity-economic factors." The opposite can also be said: "a commodity-economic" phenomenon "complicated by natural-economic factors," -- but all this, far from giving a "picture," cannot give even
the slightest idea of exactly how over-population is created on the basis of the given social-economic relations. The author's final conclusion against Mr. N.-on and his theory of capitalist over-population in Russia reads: "Our peasants produce insufficient food" (237).
The peasants' agricultural work continues to this day to yield produce that goes to the landlords, who, through the medium of the state, receive redemption payments; peasant production serves as a constant object of merchant's and usury capital operations, depriving vast masses of the peasantry of a considerable part of their produce; finally, among the "peasantry" itself this production is distributed in so complicated a fashion that the general and average gain (renting) turns out to be a loss for the masses, and Mr. Struve cuts all this network of social relations, like a Gordian knot, with the abstract and totally unsupported solution: "production is insufficient." But no, this theory will not hold water at all: it merely encumbers that which is to be investigated, namely, production relations in peasant agricultural economy. The Malthusian theory pictures matters as though we are confronted by a tabula rasa, and not by feudal and bourgeois relations interwoven in the contemporary organisation of Russian peasant economy.
It goes without saying that we cannot be satisfied with merely criticising Mr. Struve's views. We must in addition ask ourselves the questions: what is the basis of his mistakes? And who of the contending parties (Mr. N.-on and Mr. Struve) is right in his explanation of over-population?
Mr. N.-on bases his explanation of over-population on the fact of masses of workers being "freed" because of the capitalisation of the peasant industries. And he merely cites data relating to the growth of large-scale factory industry, and disregards the parallel fact of the growth of handicraft industries, which expresses the deepening of the social division of labour.* He transfers his expla-
nation to agriculture, without even attempting to give an exact description of its social-economic organisation and the degree of its development.
Mr. Struve indicates in reply that "capitalist over-population in Marx's sense is closely connected with technical progress" (183), and since he, together with Mr.-on, finds that the "technique" of peasant "farming has made practically no progress" (200), he refuses to recognise the over-population in agricultural Russia to be capitalist, and seeks for other explanations.
Mr. Struve's remarks in reply to Mr. N.-on are correct. Capitalist over-population is due to capital taking possession of production; by reducing the number of necessary workers (necessary for the production of a given quantity of products) it creates a surplus population. Marx, speaking of capitalist over-population in agriculture, says the following:
"As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agriculture, and in proportion to the extent to which it does so, the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls absolutely, while the accumulation of the capital employed in agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in non-agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction. Part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over into an urban, or manufacturing proletariat. . . .* (Manufacture is used here in the sense of all non-agricultural industries.) This source of relative surplus population is thus constantly flowing. But the constant flow towards the towns presupposes, in the country itself, a constant latent surplus population, the extent of which becomes evident only when its channels of outlet open to exceptional width. The agricultural labourer is therefore reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with one foot already in the swamp of pauperism" (Das Kapital, 2 Aufl., S. 668).[134]
Mr. N.-on did not prove the capitalist character of over-population in agrarian Russia, because he did not connect it with capitalism in agriculture: confining himself to a cursory and incomplete reference to the capitalist evolution of private-landowner farming, he completely overlooked the bourgeois features of the organisation of peasant farming. Mr. Struve should have corrected this unsatisfactory feature of Mr. N.-on's exposition, which is of very great importance, for ignoring capitalism in agriculture, its domination, and at the same time its still weak development, naturally led to the theory of the absence or the contraction of the home market. Instead of reducing Mr. N.-on's theory to the concrete data of our agricultural capitalism, Mr. Struve fell into another error -- he denied the capitalist character of over-population completely.
The invasion of agriculture by capital is characteristic of the entire history of the post-Reform period. The landlords went over (whether slowly or quickly is another matter) to hired labour, which became very widespread and even determined the character of the major part of peasant earnings; they introduced technical improvements and brought machines into use. Even the dying feudal system of economy -- the provision of land to the peasants in return for labour service -- underwent a bourgeois transformation due to competition among the peasants; this led to a worsening of the position of tenants, to severer conditions,* and, consequently, to a decline in the number of workers. In peasant economy the splitting up of the peasantry into a village bourgeoisie and proletariat was quite clearly revealed. The "rich" extended their tillage, improved their farms [cf. V. V., Progressive Trends in Peasant Farming ] and were compelled to resort to wage-labour. All these are long established, generally recognised facts which (as we shall see in a moment) are referred to by Mr. Struve himself. Let us take as a further example the following
case, a usual one in the Russian village: a "kulak" has wrested the best slice of allotment land from the "village community," or more exactly, community members of the proletarian type, and is farming it with the labour and the implements of the very same "allotment-provided" peasants who have become enmeshed in debts and obligations and are tied to their benefactor -- for social mutual adaptation and common action -- by the strength of the community principles beloved of the Narodniks. His farm is better run, of course, than those of the ruined peasants, and far fewer workers are required than when this slice of land was held by several small peasant farmers. No Narodnik can deny that these are not isolated but common facts. Their theories are exceptionalist only in their refusal to call facts by their real name, in their refusal to see that these facts signify the domination of capital in agriculture. They forget that the initial form of capital has always and everywhere been merchant's, money capital, that capital always takes the technical process of production as it finds it, and only subsequently subjects it to technical transformation. They therefore do not see that by "upholding" (in words, of course -- no more than that) the contemporary agricultural order against "oncoming" (?!) capitalism, they are merely upholding medieval forms of capital against the onslaught of its latest, purely bourgeois forms.
Thus, one cannot deny the capitalist character of over population in Russia, just as one cannot deny the domination of capital in agriculture. But it is quite ridiculous, of course, to ignore the degree of the development of capital, as Mr. N.-on does; in his enthusiasm he presents it as almost completed and for that reason concocts a theory about the contraction or the absence of the home market, whereas actually, though capital is dominant, it is in a relatively very undeveloped form; there are still many intermediate phases before it reaches full development, before the producer is completely divorced from the means of production, and every step forward by agricultural capitalism means a growth of the home market, which, according to Marx's theory, is created precisely by agricultural capitalism -- and which in Russia is not contracting, but, on the contrary, is taking shape and developing.
Further, we see from this albeit very general description of our agricultural capitalism[*] that it does not embrace all social-economic relations in the countryside. Alongside of it we still see feudal relations -- in both the economic sphere (e.g., the leasing of cut-off lands in return for labour service and payments in kind -- here you have all the features of feudal economy: the natural "exchange of services" between the producer and the owner of the means of production, and the exploitation of the producer by tying him to the land, and not separating him from the means of production), and still more in the social and the juridical-political sphere (compulsory "provision of allotment," tying to the land, i.e., absence of freedom of movement, payment of redemption money, i.e., the same quitrent paid to the landlord, subordination to the privileged landowners in the courts and administration, etc.); these relations also undoubtedly lead to the ruin of the peasants and to unemployment, an "over-population" of farm labourers tied to the land. The capitalist basis of contemporary relations should not hide these still powerful relics of the "old-nobility" stratum which have not yet been destroyed by capitalism precisely because it is undeveloped. The undeveloped condition of capitalism, "Russia's backwardness," considered by the Narodniks to be "good fortune,"** is only "good fortune" for the titled exploiters. Contemporary "over-population," consequently, contains feudal in addition to its basic capitalist features.
If we compare this latter thesis with Mr. Struve's thesis that "over-population" contains natural-economic features and commodity-economic features, we shall see that the former do not rule out the latter, but, on the contrary, are included in them: serfdom relates to "natural-economic," and capitalism to "commodity-economic" phenomena. Mr. Struve's thesis, on the one hand, does not exactly indicate precisely which relations are natural-economic and which commodity-economic, and, on the other hand, leads us back to the unfounded and meaningless "laws" of Malthus.
These defects naturally gave rise to the unsatisfactory character of the following passage. "In what way," asks the author, "on what basis can our national economy be reorganised?" (202) A strange question, formulated again in a very professorial style, precisely as Messrs. the Narodniks are accustomed to put questions when they proclaim the unsatisfactory character of the present situation and select the best paths for the fatherland. "Our national economy" is a capitalist economy, the organisation and "reorganisation" of which is determined by the bourgeoisie, who "manage" this economy. Instead of the question of possible reorganisation, what should have been put is the question of the successive stages of the development of this bourgeois economy; and it should have been put from the viewpoint of precisely that theory in whose name the author so splendidly replies to Mr. V. V., who describes Mr. N.-on as an "undoubted Marxist," that this "undoubted Marxist" has no idea of the class struggle and of the class origin of the state. Had the author altered the manner of posing the question in the sense indicated it would have saved him from the confused arguments about the "peasantry" that we read on pages 202-04.
The author begins with the statement that the peasantry have insufficient allotment land, that even if they cover this insufficiency by renting land, "a considerable part of them" nevertheless always have a deficit; one cannot talk of the peasantry as a whole, for that means to talk of a fiction* (p. 203). And the conclusion directly drawn from this is:
"In any case, insufficient production is the basic and dominating fact of our national economy" (p. 204). This is quite unfounded and totally unconnected with what was said earlier: why is not the fact that the peasantry as one whole is a fiction, because antagonistic, classes are taking shape within it, made the "basic and dominating fact"? The author draws his conclusion without any data, without any analysis of the facts relating to "insufficient production" [which, however, does not prevent a minority from becoming affluent at the expense of the majority], or to the splitting up
of the peasantry -- simply due to some prejudice in favour of Malthusianism. "Therefore," he continues, "an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour is a plain benefit and blessing to the Russian peasantry" (204). We are at a loss: the author has only just advanced against the Narodniks the serious (and to the highest degree legitimate) accusation of arguing about a "fiction" -- the "peasantry" in general -- and now he himself introduces this fiction into his analysis! If the relations within the ranks of this "peasantry" are such that a minority become "economically strong," while the majority become proletarians, if a minority expand their landownership and wax rich, while the majority always have a deficit and become ruined, how can one speak of the process in general being a "benefit and blessing"? Very likely the author wanted to say that the process is of benefit to both the one and the other section of the peasantry. But then, firstly, he should have examined the position of each group and have investigated it separately, and, secondly, in view of the antagonism existing between the groups he should have definitely established from which group's viewpoint reference is made to the "benefit and blessing." This example goes to confirm over and over again the unsatisfactory and incomplete character of Mr. Struve's objectivism.
Since Mr. N.-on holds an opposite view on this subject and asserts that an "increase in the productivity of agricultural labour* cannot serve to raise the national well-being if the goods are produced as commodities" (Sketches, p. 266), Mr. Struve now proceeds to refute this opinion.
Firstly, he says, the peasant who has been hit by the full weight of the contemporary crisis, produces grain for his own consumption; he does not sell grain, but buys extra supplies of it. For such peasants -- and they constitute as much as 50% (one-horse and horseless) and certainly not less than 25% (horseless) -- increased labour productivity is at any rate beneficial, despite the drop in the price of grain.
Yes, of course, an increase in productivity would be beneficial to such a peasant, if he could retain his farm and
raise it to a higher level. But the trouble is that the one-horse and horseless peasants do not enjoy these conditions. They are not able to retain their present farms, with their primitive implements, careless cultivation of the soil, etc., let alone improve their farming technique. Technical improvement is the result of the growth of commodity economy. And if, at the present stage of the development of commodity economy, even those peasants who have to buy extra supplies for themselves find it necessary to sell grain, then, at the following stage, such sales will be still more essential (the author himself recognises the need for a transition from natural to commodity economy), and the competition of peasants who have improved their farming methods will inevitably and immediately expropriate proletarians who are tied to the land and turn them into proletarians who are as free as birds. I have no wish to say that such a change will be of no benefit to them. On the contrary, once the producer has fallen into the clutches of capital -- and this is an undoubtedly accomplished fact as regards the group of the peasantry under examination -- complete freedom, which enables him to change masters, and gives him a free hand, is very much of "a benefit and a blessing" to him. But the controversy between Messrs. Struve and N.-on is not at all conducted around such considerations.
Secondly, continues Mr. Struve, Mr. N.-on "forgets that an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour is only possible by effecting changes in the technique and in the system of farming or crop growing" (206). Certainly, Mr. N.-on forgets that, but this consideration merely strengthens the thesis of the inevitability of the total expropriation of the economically weak peasants, the "proletarian type" of peasants. To effect technical improvements money resources must be available, but these peasants do not even possess enough food resources.
Thirdly, concludes the author, Mr. N.-on is wrong in asserting that a rise in the productivity of agricultural labour will compel competitors to lower prices. For such a price reduction -- Mr. Struve rightly remarks -- it is necessary that the productivity of our agricultural labour should not only catch up with that of Western Europe
[in that case we shall sell produce at the level of socially necessary labour], but even outstrip it. That objection is quite a sound one, but it tells us nothing whatever about which particular section of the "peasantry" will benefit from this technical improvement and why.
"In general, Mr. N.-on has no reason to fear an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour" (207). He does so, in Mr. Struve's view, because he cannot imagine agricultural progress except as the progress of extensive agriculture, accompanied by the ever-increasing elimination of workers by machines.
The author very aptly describes Mr. N.-on's attitude to the growth of agricultural technique with the word "fear"; he is quite right in saying that this fear is absurd. But his line of argument does not, we think, touch the basic error of Mr. N.-on.
While Mr. N.-on apparently adheres to the strict letter of the doctrine of Marxism, he none the less draws a sharp distinction between the capitalist evolution of agriculture and the evolution of manufacturing industry in capitalist society, the distinction being that he recognises the progressive work of capitalism with regard to the latter -- the socialisation of labour -- and does not do so with regard to the former. That is why he "does not fear" an increase in the productivity of labour with regard to manufacturing industry, but "does fear" it as regards agriculture, although the social-economic aspect of the matter and the reflection of this process on the different classes of society are exactly the same in both cases. . . . Marx expressed this point very strikingly in the following remark: "Philanthropic English economists, like Mill, Rogers, Goldwin Smith, Fawcett, etc., and liberal manufacturers like John Bright and Co., ask the English landed proprietors, as God asked Cain after Abel, where are our thousands of freeholders gone? But where do you come from, then? From the destruction of those freeholders. Why don't you ask further, where are the independent weavers, spinners, and artisans gone?" (Das Kapital, I, S. 780, Anm. 237.)[136] The last sentence clearly identifies the fate of the small producers in agriculture with the fate of those in manufacturing industry, and emphasises the formation of the classes of bourgeois society
in both cases.[*] Mr. N.-on's chief error lies precisely in the fact that he ignores these classes, their formation among our peasantry, and does not set himself the aim of following, with the utmost precision, every successive stage in the development of the antithesis between these classes.
But Mr. Struve deals with the problem quite differently. Far from correcting the error of Mr. N.-on that we have mentioned, he himself repeats it, arguing from the viewpoint of a professor standing above classes about the "benefit" of progress to the "peasantry." This attempt to rise above classes leads the author to extreme haziness in stating his points, a haziness so great that the following bourgeois conclusions may be drawn from them: in opposition to the undoubtedly correct thesis that capitalism in agriculture (as capitalism in industry) worsens the conditions of the producer, he advances the thesis of the "benefit" of these changes in general. This is the same as if someone were to argue about machines in bourgeois society and refute the romantic economist's theory that they worsen the conditions of the working people by proofs of the "benefit and blessing" of progress in general.
In reply to Mr. Struve's view the Narodnik will very likely say: what Mr. N.-on fears is not increased productivity of labour, but bourgeoisdom.
There is no doubt that technical progress in agriculture under our capitalist system is connected with bourgeoisdom, but the "fear" displayed by the Narodniks is, of course, quite absurd. Bourgeoisdom is a fact of actual life, labour is subordinated to capital in agriculture too, and what is to be "feared" is not bourgeoisdom, but the producer's lack of consciousness of this bourgeoisdom, his inability to defend his interests against it. That is why it is not the retardation of the development of capitalism that is to be desired, but on the contrary, its full development, its thorough development. To show with as great detail and precision as possible the basis of the error committed by Mr. Struve in treating agriculture in capitalist society, let us try to depict (in
the most general outline) the process of the formation of classes together with the technical changes that gave grounds for the argument. In this connection Mr. Struve distinguishes strictly extensive agriculture and intensive, seeing the root of Mr. N.-on's misapprehensions in his refusal to recognise anything but extensive agriculture. We shall endeavour to prove that Mr. N.-on's chief error lies not in this, and that as agriculture becomes intensive the formation of the classes of bourgeois society is essentially identical with that taking place as extensive agriculture develops.
There is no need to say much about extensive agriculture, because Mr. Struve also admits that here the "peasantry" are ousted by the bourgeoisie. Let us merely note two points. Firstly, technical progress is evoked by commodity economy; to bring it about the proprietor must have free, surplus monetary resources [surplus in relation to his consumption and the reproduction of his means of production]. Where can these resources be got? Obviously from no other source than the conversion of the cycle: commodity - money - commodity into the cycle: money - commodity - money with a surplus. In other words, these resources can be got exclusively from capital, from merchant's and usury capital, from the same "welshers, kulaks, merchants," etc., whom the naïve Russian Narodniks assign not to capitalism but to "rapacity" (as though capitalism is not rapacity! as though Russian reality does not show us the interconnection of all possible varieties of this "rapacity" -- from the most primitive and primeval kulakdom to the very latest, rational enterprise!)* Secondly, let us note Mr. N.-on's strange
attitude to this question. In the second note to page 233 he refutes V. Y. Postnikov, author of Peasant Farming in South Russia, who points out that machines have exactly doubled the working area of the peasant household, from 10 to 20 dessiatines per worker, and that for that reason the cause of "Russia's poverty" is "the small size of the peasant farm." In other words, technical progress in bourgeois society leads to the expropriation of the small and backward farms. Mr. N.-on objects: tomorrow technique may raise the working area three times over. Then the 60-dessiatine farms will have to be turned into 200- and 300-dessiatine farms. Such an argument against the thesis of our agriculture being bourgeois is as ridiculous as somebody setting out to prove the weakness and impotence of factory capitalism on the grounds that the steam-engine of today will have to be replaced "tomorrow" by the electric motor. "Nor is it known where the millions of released labourers get to" -- adds Mr. N.-on, who sets himself up as judge of the bourgeoisie and forgets that the producer himself is the only one to judge them. The formation of a reserve army of unemployed is just as necessary a result of the use of machinery in bourgeois agriculture as in bourgeois industry.
And so, with regard to the development of extensive agriculture there is no doubt that technical progress under commodity economy leads to the transformation of the "peasant" into a capitalist farmer, on the one hand (understanding by farmer the entrepreneur, the capitalist in agriculture), and a farm labourer or day labourer, on the other. Let us now examine the case where extensive agriculture becomes intensive. It is from this process that Mr. Struve expects "benefit" for the "peasant." To prevent any argument about the suitability of the material we are using to describe this transition, let us make use of Mr. A. I Skvortsov's* The Influence of Steam Transport on
Agriculture, who has earned such boundless praise from Mr. Struve.
In Chapter 3 of the fourth section of his book, Mr. A. Skvortsov examines the "change in agricultural technique under the influence of steam transport" in countries employing extensive and intensive farming. Let us take his description of this change in the thickly-populated extensive countries. One might think that central European Russia would fit into that category. Mr. Skvortsov foresees for such a country the changes that, in Mr. Struve's opinion, will inevitably take place in Russia too, namely, transformation into a country of intensive agriculture with developed factory production.
Let us follow Mr. A. Skvortsov (§§ 4-7, pp. 440-51).
A country of extensive[*] agriculture. A very considerable part of the population is engaged in agriculture. Uniformity of occupation leads to the absence of a market. The population is poor, firstly, because of the small size of the farms and, secondly, because of the absence of exchange: "requirements other than food, which is raised by the agriculturist himself, are satisfied exclusively, it can be said, by the products of primitive artisan establishments, known as handicraft industry in Russia."
The building of a railway raises the price of agricultural produce and, consequently, increases the purchasing power of the population. "Together with the railway the country is flooded with the cheap products of the manufactories and mills," which ruin the local handicraftsmen. This is the first cause of the "collapse of many farms."
The second cause of the collapse is crop failures. "Agriculture has also been conducted hitherto in a primitive
fashion, i.e., always in an irrational way and, collsequently, harvest failures are no rare occurrence, but with the building of the railway line the rise in the price of the product, that formerly resulted from crop failure, either does not take place at all or in any case is considerably smaller. That is why the natural consequence of the very first crop failure is usually the collapse of many farms. The smaller the surpluses left from normal harvests and the more the population have had to count on earnings from handicraft industries, the more rapidly the collapse occurs."
In order to manage without handicraft industries and to guarantee oneself against crop failures by going over to intensive (rational) agriculture, the following are necessary: firstly, big monetary surpluses (from the sale of agricultural produce at higher prices), and, secondly, the intellectual force of the population, without which no increased rationality and intensity is possible. The mass of the population do not, of course, enjoy these conditions: they apply to a minority only.[*]
"The surplus population thus formed" [i.e., as a result of the "liquidation" of many farms ruined by the failure of handicraft industries and by the greater demands on agriculture] "will partly be swallowed up by the farms that emerge from this situation more happily and that are able to increase the intensity of production" (i.e., of course they will be "swallowed up" as wage-workers, farm labourers and day labourers. Mr. A. Skvortsov does not say that, maybe because he considers it too obvious). A great expenditure of human energy will be required, since the proximity of the market brought about by improved communications makes it possible to raise perishable produce, and "the latter, in most cases, entails a considerable expenditure of manpower." "Usually, however," continues Mr. Skvortsov, "the process of destruction proceeds much more rapidly than the process of improving the surviving farms, and part of the ruined peasants have to move, at least to the towns, it not right out of the country. It is this part that has con-
stituted the main contingent added to the population of European cities since the railways were built."
Further. "Surplus population means cheap hands." "The soil being fertile (and the climate favourable . . .) all the conditions are created for the cultivation of plants and in general of raising agricultural produce that requires a large expenditure of labour-power per land unit" (443), especially since the small size of the farms ("although they will perhaps increase as compared with their former size") makes the introduction of machines difficult. "In addition to this, fixed capital will not remain unchanged, and first and foremost it is farm implements that will change their character." And apart from machines "the need for better cultivation of the soil will lead to the replacement of the former primitive implements by more up-to-date ones, and of wood by iron and steel. This transformation will lead of necessity to the establishment here of factories engaged in the production of such implements, for they cannot be produced even tolerably well by handicraft methods." The development of this branch of industry is favoured by the following conditions: 1) the need to get a machine or part of it rapidly; 2) "hands are here in abundance, and they are cheap"; 3) fuel, buildings and land are cheap; 4) "the small size of the economic units leads to an increased demand for implements, for it is well known that small farms require relatively more equipment." Other kinds of industries also develop. "In general there is a development of urban life." There is a development, out of necessity, of mining industries, "since, on the one hand, a mass of free hands is available and, on the other, thanks to the railways and the development of the mechanised manufacturing and other industries there is an increased demand for the products of the mining industry.
"Thus, such a district, which before the railway was built was thickly populated and whose agriculture was extensive, turns more or less quickly into a district of very intensive agriculture with more or less developed factory production." Increased intensity is manifested by the change in the system of crop raising. The three-field system is impossible because of harvest fluctuations. A transition has to be made to a "crop rotation system," which does away
with harvest fluctuations. Of course, the complete crop rotation system,[*] which requires a very high level of intensity, cannot be introduced immediately. At first, therefore, grain crop rotation [proper succession of crops] is introduced; cattle-raising, and the planting of fodder crops are developed.
"Finally, therefore, our thickly-populated extensive farming district turns more or less rapidly, as railways develop, into one of highly intensive farming, and its intensity, as has been said, will grow primarily on account of an increase in variable capital."
This detailed description of the process of development of intensive farming shows clearly that in this case, too, technical progress under commodity production leads to bourgeois economy, splits the direct producers into the farmer, who enjoys all the advantages of intensive farming, improvement of implements, etc., and the worker, who with his "freedom" and his "cheapness" provides the most "favourable conditions" for the "progressive development of the entire national economy."
Mr. N.-on's chief error is not that he ignores intensive agriculture and confines himself to extensive agriculture, but his vapid lamentations about "us" going the wrong way to which he treats the reader, instead of analysing the class contradictions in the sphere of Russian agricultural production. Mr. Struve repeats this error by obscuring the class contradictions with "objective" arguments, and only corrects Mr. N.-on's secondary errors. It is all the more strange since he himself quite rightly chides this "undoubted Marxist" with failing to understand the theory of the class struggle. It is all the more regrettable since Mr. Struve, by that error, weakens the force of his quite correct idea that "fear" of technical progress in agriculture is absurd.
To finish with this problem of capitalism in agriculture, let us sum up what has been said. How does Mr. Struve pose the problem? He starts out from the a priori, unfounded explanation of over-population being the result of population increases not conforming to the means of subsistence;
then he points out that the production of food by our peasant is "inadequate," and settles the problem by arguing that technical progress is beneficial to the "peasantry," and that "agricultural productivity must be raised" (211). How should he have presented the problem had he been "bound by the doctrine" of Marxism? He should have begun with an analysis of the given production relations in Russian agriculture, and, after showing that the oppression of the producer is to be explained not by chance or by politics but by the domination of capital, which necessarily comes into being on the basis of commodity economy -- he should then have shown how this capital destroys small production and what forms class contradictions assume in the process. He should then have shown how further development leads to capital growing from merchant's into industrial (assuming such and such forms under extensive farming, and such and such under intensive), developing and accentuating the class contradiction whose basis was firmly laid under its old form, and once and for all opposing "free" labour to "rational" production. It would then have been sufficient simply to contrast these two successive forms of bourgeois production and bourgeois exploitation, in order that the "progressive" character of the change, its "advantage" to the producer should be quite evident: in the first case the subordination of labour to capital is covered up by thousands of the remnants of medieval relations, which prevent the producer from seeing the essence of the matter and arouse in his ideologist's mind absurd and reactionary ideas about the possibility of expecting aid from "society," etc.; in the second case this subordination is quite free of medieval fetters, and the producer is enabled to engage in and understands the necessity for independent, conscious activity against his "antipode." Instead of arguments about a "difficult and painful transition" to capitalism we would have had a theory that not only spoke of class contradictions but also really disclosed them in each form of "irrational" and "rational" production, and of "extensive" and "intensive" farming.
The results we reach from our examination of the first part of Chapter VI of Mr. Struve's book, which is devoted to the "character of over-population in agrarian Russia," can be formulated as follows: 1) Mr. Struve's Malthusianism is
not supported by any factual data and is based on methodologically incorrect and dogmatic postulates. 2) Over-population in agrarian Russia is explained by the domination of capital and not by a lack of conformity between the increase in the population and the means of subsistence. 3) Mr. Struve's thesis about the natural-economic character of over-population is only true in the sense that the survival of feudal relations holds back agricultural capital in forms that are undeveloped and are therefore particularly hard for the producer. 4) Mr. N.-on did not prove the capitalist character of over-population in Russia because he did not investigate the domination of capital in agriculture. 5) Mr. N.-on's main error, repeated by Mr. Struve, is that he did not analyse the classes that come into being where bourgeois agriculture develops. 6) This ignoring of class contradictions by Mr. Struve naturally led to the fact that the quite correct thesis of the progressiveness and desirability of technical improvements was expressed in an extremely vague and unsatisfactory form.
Let us now pass to the second part of Chapter VI, which is devoted to the problem of the break-up of the peasantry. This part is directly and immediately connected with the previous part, and serves as additional material on the problem of capitalism in agriculture.
Indicating the rise in the prices of agricultural produce during the first 20 years following the Reform, and to the extension of commodity production in agriculture, Mr. Struve quite rightly says that "in the main it was the landowners and prosperous peasants who benefited" from it (214). "Differentiation among the peasant population had to increase, and its first successes relate to this epoch." The author cites the remarks of local investigators to the effect that the building of railway lines merely raised the living standard of the prosperous part of the peasantry, that the renting of land gives rise to a "regular battle" among the peasants, which always leads to the victory of the economically strong elements (216-17). He cites V. Postnikov's research, according to which the farms of the prosperous peasants are
already so far subordinated to the market that 40% of the sown area yields produce for sale, and, adding that at the opposite pole the peasants "lose their economic independence and, by selling their labour-power, are on the verge of becoming farm labourers," rightly concludes: "Only the penetration of exchange economy explains the fact that the economically strong peasant farms can derive benefit from the ruin of the weak households" (223). "The development of money economy and the growth of the population," says the author, "lead to the peasantry splitting into two parts: one that is economically strong and consists of representatives of a new force, of capital in all its forms and stages, and the other, consisting of semi-independent peasants and real farm labourers" (239).
Brief as they are, the author's remarks on this "differentiation" nevertheless enable us to note the following important features of the process under examination: 1) It is not confined just to the creation of property inequality: a "new force" is created -- capital. 2) The creation of this new force is accompanied by the creation of new types of peasant farms: firstly, of a prosperous, economically strong type that engages in developed commodity economy, crowds out the peasant poor in the renting of land, and resorts to the exploitation of the labour of others;* secondly, of a "proletarian" peasantry, who sell their labour-power to capital. 3) All these phenomena have grown directly and immediately on the basis of commodity production. Mr. Struve himself has pointed out that without commodity production they were impossible, but with its penetration into the countryside they became necessary. 4) These phenomena (the "new force," the new types of peasantry) relate to the sphere of production, and are not confined to the sphere of exchange, commodity circulation: capital is manifested in agricultural production; the same is true of the sale of labour-power.
It would seem that these features of the process are a direct indication that we have to do with a purely capitalist phenomenon, that the classes typical of capitalist society, bourgeoisie and proletariat, are taking shape within the peasantry. Moreover, these facts bear witness not only to the domination of capital in agriculture, but also to capital having already taken a second step, if one may put it that way. From merchant's it turns into industrial capital, from a dominant force on the market into a dominant force in production; the class antithesis between the rich buyer-up and the poor peasant turns into the antithesis between the rational bourgeois employer and the free seller of free hands.
Even here Mr. Struve cannot get along without his Malthusianism; in his view only one side of the matter finds expression in the process mentioned ("only the progressive side"), but in addition to it he sees another, the "technical irrationality of all peasant economy": "in it expression is given, so to speak, to the retrogressive side of the whole process," it "levels" the peasantry, smooths out inequality, operating "in connection with the growth of the population" (223-24).
The only thing that is clear in this rather hazy argument is that the author prefers extremely abstract propositions to concrete statements, that he tacks on to everything the "law" that increases in population conform to the means of subsistence. I say "tacks on" because, even if we confine ourselves
strictly to the facts cited by the author himself, we can a find no indication of any concrete features of the process that do not fit in with the "doctrine" of Marxism and that require the recognition of Malthusianism. Let us go over this process once again: we start with natural producers, peasants more or less of one type.* The penetration of commodity production into the countryside makes the wealth of the individual peasant household dependent on the market, thus
creating inequality by means of market fluctuations and accentuating it by concentrating free money in the hands of some, and ruining others. This money naturally serves for the exploitation of the propertyless, turns into capital. Capital can exploit peasants in the grip of ruin as long as they retain their farms, and, letting them carry on as before, on the old, technically irrational basis, can exploit them by purchasing the product of their labour. But the peasant's ruin finally develops to such a degree that he is compelled to give up his farm altogether: he can no longer sell the product of his labour; all he can do is to sell his labour. Capital then takes charge of the farm, and is now compelled, by virtue of competition, to organise it on rational lines; it is enabled to do so thanks to the free monetary resources previously "saved"; capital no longer exploits the peasant farmer but a farm labourer or a day labourer One can well ask: what are the two sides the author finds in this process? How does he find it possible to draw the monstrous Malthusian conclusion that "the technical irrationality of the farm, and not capitalism" [note the "and not"] "is the enemy that deprives our peasantry of their daily bread" (224). As though this daily bread ever went in its entirety to the producer, and was not divided into the necessary product and the surplus, the latter being acquired by the landlord, the kulak, the "strong" peasant, the capitalist!
One must, however, add that on the question of "levelling" the author gives some further explanation. He says that the "result of the levelling referred to above" is the "decline or even the disappearance of the middle section of the peasant population noted in many places" (225). Citing a passage from a Zemstvo publication which notes "a still greater increase in the distance separating the rural rich from the landless and horseless proletariat," he concludes: "The levelling in the present case is, of course, at the same time differentiation, but on the basis of such differentiation only bondage develops, which can be nothing more than a brake on economic progress" (226). And so it now turns out that the differentiation created by commodity economy should not be contrasted to "levelling," but to differentiation as well, only differentiation of another kind, namely,
bondage. But since bondage is a "brake" on "economic progress," the author calls this "side" "regressive."
The argument is based on extremely strange methods that are not Marxist at all. A comparison is made between "bondage" and "differentiation" as between two independent, special "systems"; one is praised for assisting "progress"; the other is condemned for being a brake on progress. What has become of Mr. Struve's demand for an analysis of class contradictions, for lack of which he so rightly attacked Mr. N.-on; of the theory of the "spontaneous process" of which he spoke so well? Why, this bondage which he has now demolished as retrogressive is nothing but the initial manifestation of capitalism in agriculture, of that very same capitalism which leads later to sweeping technical progress. And what, indeed, is bondage? It is the dependence of the peasant who owns his means of production, and is compelled to work for the market, on the owner of money -- a dependence that, however differently it may express itself (whether in the form of usury capital or of the capital of the buyer up, who monopolises marketing) -- always leads to an enormous part of the product of labour falling into the hands of the owner of money and not of the producer. Hence, it is purely capitalist in essence,* and the entire peculiarity consists in the fact that this initial, embryonic form of capitalist relations is totally enmeshed in the feudal relations of former times: here there is no free contract, but a forced deal (sometimes by order of "those at the top," sometimes by the desire to keep their undertakings, sometimes by old debts, etc.); the producer is here tied to a definite place and to a definite exploiter: as against the impersonal charac-
ter of the commodity deal that is peculiar to purely capitalist relations, here the deal always has the personal character of "aid," "benefaction," -- and this character of the deal inevitably places the producer in a position of personal, semi-feudal dependence. Such of the author's expressions as "levelling," "brake on progress," "regression," mean nothing but that capital first takes hold of production on the old basis, and subordinates the technically backward producer. The author's remark that the presence of capitalism does not entitle us "to blame it for all misfortunes" is true in the sense that our peasant who works for others suffers not only from capitalism, but also from the insufficient development of capitalism. In other words, among the huge mass of the peasantry there are now practically none who produce independently for themselves; in addition to work for "rational" bourgeois farmers we only see work for the owners of money capital, i.e., also capitalist exploitation, but exploitation which is undeveloped and primitive, and because of this it, firstly, worsens the conditions of the labouring peasant tenfold, involving him in a network of specific and additional encumbrances, and, secondly, prevents him (and his ideologist, the Narodnik) from understanding the class character of the "annoyances" inflicted on him and from regulating his activities in accordance with this character of the annoyances. Consequently, the "progressive side" of "differentiation" to use the language of Mr. Struve), is that it brings into the light of day the contradiction hidden behind the bondage and deprives the former of its "old-nobility" features. Narodism, which stands for levelling out the peasants (before . . . the kulak), is "regressive" because it desires to keep capital within those medieval forms that combine exploitation with scattered, technically backward production and with personal pressure on the producer. In both cases (in the case of "bondage" and of "differentiation") the cause of oppression is capitalism and the author's statements to the contrary, that it is "not capitalism" but "technical irrationality," that "it is not capitalism that is to blame for the poverty of the peasants," etc., merely show that Mr. Struve has been carried too far in his support of the correct idea that developed capitalism is to be preferred to undeveloped, and as a result of the abstractness of his propositions he has
contrasted the former to the latter not as two successive stages of the development of the given phenomenon, but as two separate cases.[*]
The author also lets himself get carried away in the following argument, when he says that it is not large-scale capitalism which causes the ruin of the peasantry. He enters here into a controversy with Mr. N.-on.
The cheap production of manufactured goods, says Mr. N.-on, speaking of factory-made clothing, has caused a reduction in their domestic production (p. 227 of Mr. Struve's book).
"Here the cart is put before the horse," exclaims Mr. Struve, "as can be proved without difficulty. The reduction in the peasant output of spinning materials led to an increase in the production and consumption of the goods of the capitalist cotton industry, and not the other way round" (227).
The author hardly puts the issue properly, hiding the essence of the matter under details of secondary importance. If we start from the fact of the development of factory industry (and Mr. N.-on makes precisely the observation of that fact his starting-point), we cannot deny that the cheapness of factory goods also speeds up the growth of commodity economy, speeds up the ousting of home-made goods. By objecting to this statement of Mr. N.-on's, Mr. Struve merely weakens his argument against that author, whose main error is that he tries to present the "factory" as something isolated from the "peasantry," as something that has come down upon them accidentally, from outside, whereas, in fact, the "factory" (both according to the theory that Mr. N.-on desires loyally to support, and according to
the data of Russian history) is merely the final stage of the development of the commodity organisation of the entire social and, consequently, peasant economy. Large-scale bourgeois production in the "factory" is the direct and immediate continuation of petty-bourgeois production in the village, in the notorious "village community" or in handicraft industry. "In order that the 'factory form' should become 'cheaper,'" Mr. Struve quite rightly says, "the peasant has to adopt the viewpoint of economic rationality, on condition that money economy exists." "If the peasantry had adhered to . . . natural economy . . . no textile fabrics . . . would have tempted them."
In other words, the "factory form" is nothing more than developed commodity production, and it developed from the undeveloped commodity production of peasant and handicraft economy. The author wishes to prove to Mr. N.-on that the "factory" and the "peasantry" are interconnected, that the economic "principles" of their organisation are not contradictory,[*] but identical. To do that he should have reduced the problem to that of peasant economic organisation, and opposed Mr. N.-on by the thesis that our small producer (the peasant-agriculturist and the handicraftsman) is a petty bourgeois. By posing the problem that way he would have transferred it from the sphere of arguments on what "should" be, what "may" be, etc., into the sphere of explaining what is, and why it is that way, and not otherwise. To refute this thesis the Narodniks would have either to deny generally-known and undoubted facts about the growth of commodity economy and the splitting-up of the peasantry [and these facts prove the petty-bourgeois character of the peasantry], or else to deny the elementary truths of political economy. To accept this thesis would mean to admit the absurdity of contrasting "capitalism" to the "people's system," to admit the reactionary character of schemes to "seek different paths for the fatherland" and address requests for "socialisation" to bourgeois "society" or to a "state" that is still half "old-nobility" in character.
Instead, however, of beginning at the beginning,[*] Mr. Struve begins at the end: "We reject," says he, "one of the most fundamental postulates of the Narodnik theory of Russia's economic development, the postulate that the development of large-scale manufacturing industry ruins the peasant agriculturist" (246). Now that means, as the Germans say, to throw out the baby with the bath water! "The development of large-scale manufacturing industry" means and expresses the development of capitalism. And that it is capitalism which ruins the peasant is by no means a corner-stone of Narodism, but of Marxism. The Narodniks saw and continue to see the causes of the separation of the producer from the means of production in the policy of the government, which, according to them, was a failure ("we" went the wrong way, etc.), in the stagnancy of society which rallied insufficiently against the vultures and tricksters, etc., and not in that specific organisation of the Russian social economy which bears the name of capitalism. That is why their "measures" amounted to action to be taken by "society" and the "state." On the contrary, when it is shown that the existence of the capitalist organisation of social economy is the cause of expropriation this leads inevitably to the theory of the class struggle (cf. Struve's book, pp. 101, 288 and many other pages). The author expresses himself inexactly in speaking of the "agriculturist " in general, and not of the opposing classes in bourgeois agriculture. The Narodniks say that capitalism ruins agriculture and for that reason is incapable of embracing the country's entire production and leads this production the wrong way; the Marxists say that capitalism, both in manufacturing industry and in agriculture, oppresses the producer, but by raising production to a higher level creates the conditions and the forces for "socialisation."**
Mr. Struve's conclusion on this point is as follows: "One of Mr. N.-on's cardinal errors is that he has completely transferred notions and categories from the established capitalist system to the contemporary economy of the peasant, which to this day is more natural than money economy" (237).
We have seen above that only Mr. N.-on's complete ignoring of the concrete data of Russian agricultural capitalism led to the ridiculous mistake of talking about a "contraction" of the home market. He did not, however, make that mistake because he applied all the categories of capitalism to the peasantry, but because he did not apply any categories of capitalism to the data on agriculture. The classes of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are, of course, a most important "category" of capitalism. Mr. N.-on not only did not "transfer" them to the "peasantry" (i.e., did not give an analysis of exactly to what groups or sections of the peasantry these categories apply and how far they are developed), but, on the contrary, he argued in purely Narodnik fashion, ignoring the opposite elements within the "village community," and arguing about the "peasantry" in general. It was this that led to his thesis on the capitalist character of over-population, on capitalism as the cause of the expropriation of the agriculturist, remaining unproven and merely serving to build a reactionary utopia.
In § VIII of the sixth chapter, Mr. Struve sets forth his ideas about private-landowner farming. He quite rightly shows how closely and directly the forms assumed by this sort of farming depend on the ruin of the peasants. The ruined peasant no longer "tempts" the landlord with "fabulous rental prices," and the landlord goes over to the employment of farm labourers. Extracts in proof of this are cited from an article by Raspopin, who analysed Zemstvo statistical data on landlord economy, and from a Zemstvo publication on current statistics which notes the "enforced" character of the increase in the cultivation of landlord estates on capitalist lines. In reply to Messrs. the Narodniks, who so willingly hide the fact of capitalism's present domi-
nation in agriculture beneath arguments about its "future" and its "possibility," the author makes a precise reference to the actual situation.
We must stop here just to deal with the author's estimation of this phenomenon, who calls it the "progressive trends in private-landowner farming" (244) and says that these trends are created by the "inexorable logic of economic evolution" (240). We fear that these quite correct propositions, by reason of their abstractness, will be unintelligible to the reader who is not acquainted with Marxism; that the reader will not understand -- unless definite reference is made to the succession of such and such systems of economy, such and such forms of class antagonism -- why the given trend is "progressive" (from the only viewpoint, of course, from which the Marxist can pose the problem, from the viewpoint of a definite class), why, exactly, is the evolution that is taking place "inexorable." Let us therefore try to depict this succession (at least in the most general outline) parallel to the Narodnik representation of the matter.
The Narodnik presents the process of the development of the economy of farm labourers as a transition from "independent" peasant farming to dependent farming, and, naturally, considers this to be regression, decline, etc. Such a picture of the process is quite untrue in fact, does not correspond to reality at all, and hence the conclusions drawn from it are also absurd. By presenting things in this optimistic way (optimistic in relation to the past and the present), the Narodnik simply turns his back on the facts established by Narodnik literature itself, and turns his face towards utopias and possibilities.
Let us start from pre-Reform feudal economy.
The main content of the production relations at that time was as follows: the landlord supplied the peasant with land, timber for building, the means of production in general (sometimes even the means of livelihood) for each separate household and, while letting the peasant gain his own livelihood, compelled him to work all the surplus time doing corvée service for him, the landlord. I underscore the words "all the surplus time" in order to note that there can be no question, under this system, of the peasant's
"independence."[*] The "allotment" with which the landlord "supplied" the peasant was nothing more than wages in kind, served wholly and exclusively for the exploitation of the peasant by the landlord, to "supply" the landlord with hands and actually never to provide for the peasant himself.[**]
Then, however, came the invasion of commodity economy. The landlord began to produce grain for sale and not for himself. This gave rise to intensified exploitation of peasant labour and then to difficulties with the allotment system, since it had become unprofitable for the landlord to supply members of the rising generation of peasants with allotments, and it was possible to settle accounts in money. It became more convenient to separate the peasants' land once and for all from that of the landlord (particularly if in the process part of the allotments were cut off and if they were redeemed at a "fair" price) and to use the labour of the very same peasants, placed in materially worse conditions and forced to compete with former manor serfs, "gift-landers,"[139] the more prosperous former state, appanage peasants, etc.
Serfdom collapses.
The system of economy -- now serving the market (and this is very important) -- changed, but did not do so at once. New features and "principles" were added to the old. These new features consisted of the following: the supplying of the peasant with means of production was no longer made the basis of Plusmacherei, but, on the contrary, it was his "separation" from the means of production, his need of money; the basis was no longer natural economy, natural exchange of "services" (the landlord gives the peasant land, while the peasant provides the products of his surplus labour, grain, linen, etc.), but commodity, "free" money contract. It was this form of economy, which combined old and new features, that has been predominant in Russia since the Reform. The old-time methods of lending out land in return for work (farming in return for cut-off lands, for
example) were supplemented by "winter hire" -- the lending of money in return for work when the peasant is in particular need of money and sells his labour for a song, the lending of grain in return for labour service, etc. The social-economic relations in the former "patriarchal estate" were reduced, as you see, to the most ordinary usurer's deal: they consisted of operations quite analogous to the operations of the buyer-up in relation to the handicraftsmen.
There can be no doubt that this form of economy has become typical since the Reform, and our Narodnik literature has supplied superb descriptions of this particularly unattractive form of Plusmacherei combined with feudal traditions and relations, and with the utter helplessness of the peasant tied to his "allotment."
But the Narodniks refused, and still refuse, to see the precise economic basis of these relations.
The basis of domination is now not only the possession of the land, as in the old days, but also the possession of money, which the peasant is in need of (and money is a product of the social labour organised by commodity economy), and the "separation" of the peasant from the means of livelihood. Obviously, this is a capitalist, bourgeois relationship. The "new" features are nothing but the initial form of the domination of capital in agriculture, a form not yet freed of the "old-nobility" fetters, a form that has created the class contradiction peculiar to capitalist society, but has not yet finally established it.
With the development of commodity economy, however, the ground slips from under this initial form of the domination of capital: the impoverishment of the peasantry has now developed to the point of utter ruin, the point when the peasants have lost their implements, by which the feudal and the bonded forms of labour were maintained -- and the landlord is thus compelled to go over to the use of his own implements, and the peasant to become a farm labourer.
That this transition has begun in post-Reform Russia is again an undoubted fact. This fact shows the line of development of the bonded form, which the Narodniks view in a purely metaphysical way -- disregarding connections with the past, disregarding the urge to develop; this same fact shows the further development of capitalism, the further
development of the class contradiction that is peculiar to our capitalist society and that in the preceding epoch was expressed in the relation between the "kulak" and the peasant, and is now beginning to find expression in the relation between the rational farmer and the farm labourer and day labourer.
Now it is this latter change that evokes the despair and horror of the Narodnik, who begins to howl about "deprivation of the land," "loss of independence," "installation of capitalism" and the ills "threatening" as a result, etc., etc.
Look at these arguments impartially and you will see, firstly, that they contain a falsehood, even though a well-intentioned one, since the economy of farm labourers is not preceded by peasant "independence" but by other ways of handing the surplus product over to some one who takes no part in its production. Secondly, you will see the superficiality and the pettiness of the Narodnik protest, which make it vulgar socialism, as Mr. Struve aptly puts it. Why is this "installation" merely seen in its second form, and not in both forms? Why is the protest not directed against the basic historical fact that concentrated the means of production in the hands of "private landowners," instead of merely against one of the methods of utilising this monopoly? Why is the root of the evil not seen in production relations that subordinate labour far and wide to the owner of money, instead of merely in the inequality of distribution that stands out in such relief in the latest form of these relations? It is this basic circumstance -- a protest against capitalism based on those same capitalist relations -- that makes the Narodniks the ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie, who do not fear bourgeois reality, but merely its accentuation, which alone leads to a fundamental change.
Let us pass to the last point in Mr. Struve's theoretical arguments, namely, to the "problem of markets for Russian capitalism" (245).
The author begins his examination of the Narodnik-devised theory about there being no markets in this country, with the question: "What does Mr. V. V. understand by capi-
talism?" That question is a very relevant one, since Mr. V. V. (and all Narodniks in general) have always compared the Russian order of things with some "English form" (247) of capitalism and not with its basic features, which have a different appearance in each country. It is only a pity that Mr. Struve does not give a complete definition of capitalism, but points in general to the "domination of exchange economy" [that is one feature; the second is the appropriation of surplus-value by the owner of money, his domination over labour], to "the system we see in Western Europe" (247), "with all its consequences," with the "concentration of industrial production, capitalism in the narrow sense of the word" (247).
"Mr. V. V.," says the author, "did not go into an analysis of the concept 'capitalism,' but took it from Marx, who mainly had in view capitalism in the narrow sense, as the already fully established product of relations developing on the basis of the subordination of production to exchange" (247). One cannot agree with that. Firstly, had Mr. V. V. really taken his idea of capitalism from Marx, he would have had a correct idea of it, and could not have confused the "English form" with capitalism. Secondly, it is quite unfair to assert that Marx mainly had in view the "centralisation or concentration of industrial production" [that is what Mr. Struve understands by capitalism in the narrow sense!. On the contrary, he followed up the development of commodity economy from its initial steps, he analysed capitalism in its primitive forms of simple co-operation and manufacture -- forms centuries apart from the concentration of production by machines -- and he showed the connection between capitalism in industry and in agriculture. Mr. Struve himself narrows down the concept of capitalism when he says: "The object of Mr. V. V.'s study was the first steps of the national economy on the path from natural to commodity organisation." He should have said: the last steps. Mr. V. V., as far as we know, only studied Russia's post Reform economy. The beginning of commodity production relates to the pre-Reform era, as Mr. Struve himself indicates (189-90), and even the capitalist organisation of the cotton industry took shape before the emancipation of the peasants. The Reform gave an impulse to the final development in this sense; it pushed the commodity form of labour
power and not the commodity form of the product of labour to the forefront; it sanctioned the domination of capitalist and not of commodity production. The hazy distinction between capitalism in the broad and in the narrow sense[*] leads Mr. Struve apparently to regard Russian capitalism as something of the future and not of the present, not as something already and definitely established. He says, for example:
"Before posing the question: is it inevitable for Russia to have capitalism in the English form, Mr. V. V. should have posed and settled a different one, a more general and hence more important question: is it inevitable for Russia to pass from natural to money economy, and what is the relation between capitalist production sensu stricto and commodity production in general?" (247). That is hardly a convenient way of posing the question. If the present, existing system of production relations in Russia is clearly explained, then the problem of whether this or that line of development is "inevitable" will be settled eo ipso. If, however, it is not explained, then it will be insoluble. Instead of arguments about the future (arguments beloved of Messrs. the Narodniks) an explanation of the present should be given. An outstanding fact in post-Reform Russia has been the outward, if one may so call it, manifestation of capitalism, i.e., manifestation of its "heights" (factory production, railways, banks, etc.), and theoretical thought was immediately faced with the problem of capitalism in Russia. The Narodniks have tried to prove that these heights are something accidental, unconnected with the entire economic system, without basis and therefore impotent; and they have used the term "capitalism" in too narrow a sense, forgetting that the enslavement of labour to capital covers very long and diverse stages from merchant's capital to the "English form." It is the job of Marxists to prove that these heights are nothing more than the last step in the development of the commodity economy that took shape
long ago in Russia and everywhere, in all branches of production, gives rise to the subordination of labour to capital.
Mr. Struve's view of Russian capitalism as something of the future and not of the present was expressed with particular clarity in the following argument: "So long as the contemporary village community exists, registered and consolidated by law, relations will develop on the basis of it that have nothing in common with the 'people's well-being.'" [Surely not just "will develop"; did they not develop so long ago that the whole of Narodnik literature, from its very outset, over a quarter of a century ago, described them and protested against them?] "In the West we have several examples of the existence of individual farmsteads alongside of large-scale capitalist farming. Our Poland and our south west territory belong to the same order of things. lt may be said that in Russia, both the community villages and those consisting of individual farms approach this type, inasmuch as the impoverished peasantry remain on the land and levelling influences among them are proving stronger than differentiating influences" (280). Is it merely a matter of approaching, and not of already being that type at this very moment? To determine "type," one has, of course, to take the basic economic features of the system, and not legal forms. If we look at these basic features of the economy of the Russian countryside, we shall see the isolated economy of the peasant households on small plots of land, we shall see growing commodity economy that already plays a dominant role. It is these features that give content to the concept "small individual farming." We shall see further the same peasant indebtedness to usurers, the same expropriation to which the data of the West testify. The whole difference lies in the specific character of our juridical system (the peasants' civic inequality; forms of land tenure), which retains stronger traces of the "old regime" as a result of the weaker development of our capitalism. But these specific features do not in the least disturb the uniformity of type of our peasant system and that of the West.
Proceeding to deal with the theory of markets itself, Mr. Struve notes that Messrs. V. V. and N.-on are caught in a vicious circle; while the development of capitalism re-
quires the growth of the market, capitalism ruins the population. The author very unsuccessfully corrects this vicious circle with his Malthusianism, placing the blame for the ruin of the peasantry on the "growth of the population" and not on capitalism!! The mistake of the authors mentioned is quite a different one: capitalism not only ruins, but splits the peasantry into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat. This process does not cut down the home market, but creates it: commodity economy grows at both poles of the differentiating peasantry, both among the "proletarian" peasantry, who are compelled to sell "free labour," and among the bourgeois peasantry, who raise the technical level of their farms (machinery, equipment, fertilisers, etc. Cf. Mr. V. V.'s Progressive Trends in Peasant Farming ) and develop their requirements. Despite the fact that this conception of the process is directly based on Marx's theory of the relation between capitalism in industry and in agriculture, Mr. Struve ignores it -- possibly because he has been led astray by Mr. V. V.'s "theory of markets." This latter person, supposedly basing himself on Marx, has presented the Russian public with a "theory" claiming that in developed capitalist society a "surplus of goods" is inevitable; the home market cannot be sufficient, a foreign one is necessary. "This theory is a true one" (?!), declares Mr. Struve, "inasmuch as it states the fact that surplus-value cannot be realised from consumption either by the capitalists or by the workers, but presumes consumption by third persons" (251). We cannot agree with this statement at all. Mr. V. V.'s "theory" (if one may speak of a theory here) is simply that of ignoring the distinction between personal and productive consumption, the distinction between the means of production and articles of consumption, a distinction without which it is impossible to understand the reproduction of the aggregate social capital in capitalist society. Marx showed this in the greatest detail in Volume II of Capital (Part III: "The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital") and dealt with it vividly in Volume I as well, when criticising the thesis of classical political economy according to which the accumulation of capital consists only of the transformation of surplus-value into wages, and not into constant capital (means of production)
plus wages. To confirm this description of Mr. V. V.'s theory let us confine ourselves to two quotations from the articles mentioned by Mr. Struve.
"Each worker," says Mr. V. V. in his article "The Excess in the Market Supply of Commodities," "produces more than he consumes himself, and all these surpluses accumulate in few hands; the owners of these surpluses consume them themselves, for which purpose they exchange them within the country and abroad for the most varied objects of necessity and comforts; but however much they eat, drink or dance (sic !!) they cannot dispose of the whole of the surplus-value" (Otechestvenniye Zapiski, 1883, No. 5, p. 14), and "to be more convincing" the author "examines the chief expenditures" of the capitalist, such as dinners, travelling, etc. We get it still more vividly in the article "Militarism and Capitalism": "The Achilles' heel of the capitalist organisation of industry is the impossibility of the employers consuming the whole of their income" (Russkaya Mysl,1889, No. 9, p. 80). "Rothschild could not consume the entire increment to his income . . . for the simple reason that this . . . increment constitutes such a considerable mass of articles of consumption that Rothschild, whose every whim is satisfied as it is, would find himself in very great difficulties," etc.
All these arguments, as you see, are based on the naïve view that the capitalist's purpose is only personal consumption and not the accumulation of surplus-value, on the mistaken idea that the social product splits up into v+s (variable capital + surplus-value) as was taught by Adam Smith and all the political economists before Marx, and not into c+v+s (constant capital, means of production, and then into wages and surplus-value), as was shown by Marx. Once these errors are corrected and attention is paid to the circumstance that in capitalist society an enormous and ever-growing part is played by the means of production (the part of the social products that is used for productive and not personal consumption, not for consumption by people but by capital) the whole of the notorious "theory" collapses completely. Marx proved in Volume II that capitalist production is quite conceivable without foreign markets, with the growing accumulation of wealth and without any "third
persons," whose introduction by Mr. Struve is extremely unfortunate. Mr. Struve's reasoning on this subject evokes amazement, especially as he himself points to the overwhelming significance of the home market for Russia and catches Mr. V. V. tripping on the "programme of development of Russian capitalism" based on a "strong peasantry." The process of the formation of this "strong" (that is, bourgeois) peasantry that is now taking place in our countryside clearly shows us the rise of capital, the proletarianisation of the producer and the growth of the home market the "spread of improved implements," for example, signifies precisely the accumulation of capital as means of production. On this problem it was particularly necessary, instead of dealing with "possibilities," to outline and explain the actual process expressed in the creation of a home market for Russian capitalism.[*]
With this we conclude our examination of the theoretical part of Mr. Struve's book, and can now try to give a general, comprehensive, so to speak, description of the main methods used in his arguments, and thus approach the solution of the problems raised at the outset: "Exactly what in this book may be assigned to Marxism?" "Which of the doctrine's (Marxism's) tenets does the author reject, supplement or correct, and with what results?"
The main feature of the author's arguments, as we noted from the start, is his narrow objectivism, which is confined to proving the inevitability and necessity of the process and makes no effort to reveal at each specific stage of this process the form of class contradiction inherent in it -- an objectivism that describes the process in general, and not each of the antagonistic classes whose conflict makes up the process.
We understand perfectly well that the author had his grounds for confining his "notes" to just the "objective" and, what is more, the most general side; his grounds were, firstly, that in his desire to confront the Narodniks with the principles of hostile views, he set forth principia and
nothing more, leaving their development and more concrete examination to the further development of the controversy, and, secondly, we tried in Chapter I to show that all that distinguishes Narodism from Marxism is the character of the criticism of Russian capitalism, the different explanation of it -- from which it naturally follows that the Marxists sometimes confine themselves just to general "objective" propositions, and lay emphasis exclusively on what distinguishes our understanding (of generally-known facts ) from that of the Narodniks.
Mr. Struve, however, it seems to us, went too far in this respect. Abstractness of exposition frequently yielded propositions that could not but cause misunderstanding; the way the problem was posed did not differ from the methods current and dominant in our literature, the method of arguing in professorial style, from on high, about the paths and destiny of the fatherland and not about specific classes pursuing such and such a path; the more concrete the author's arguments, the more impossible did it become to explain the principia of Marxism and remain on the heights of general abstract propositions, the more necessary it was to make definite reference to such and such a condition of such and such classes of Russian society, to such and such a relation between the various forms of Plusmacherei and the interests of the producers.
That is why we thought that an attempt to supplement and explain the author's thesis, to follow his exposition step by step, so as to show the need for a different way of posing the problem, the need for a more consistent way of applying the theory of class contradictions, would not be out of place.
As to Mr. Struve's direct deviations from Marxism -- on problems of the state, over-population, and the home market -- sufficient has already been said about them.
In addition to a criticism of the theoretical content of Narodism, Mr. Struve's book contains, among other things, several remarks relating to Narodnik economic policy. Although these remarks are given cursorily and are not devel-
oped by the author, we nevertheless must touch on them in order to leave no room for any misunderstanding.
These remarks contain references to the "rationality," progressiveness, "intelligence," etc., of the liberal, i.e., bourgeois policy as compared to the policy of the Narodniks.[*]
The author evidently wanted to contrast two policies that keep to the existing relations -- and in this sense he quite rightly pointed out that a policy is "intelligent" if it develops and does not retard capitalism, and it is "intelligent" not because it serves the bourgeoisie by increasingly subordinating the producer to them [the way in which various "simpletons" and "acrobats" try to explain it], but because, by accentuating and refining capitalist relations, it brings clarity to the mind of the one on whom alone change depends, and gives him a free hand.
It must, however, be said that this quite true proposition is badly expressed by Mr. Struve, that owing to the abstractness peculiar to him he voices it in such a way that one sometimes wishes to say to him: let the dead bury the dead. In Russia there has never yet been a shortage of people who have devoted themselves, heart and soul, to creating theories and programmes that express the interests of our bourgeoisie, that express all these "urgent needs" of strong and big capital to crush small capital and to destroy its primitive and patriarchal methods of exploitation.
If the author had here also adhered strictly to the requirements of the Marxist "doctrine," demanding that exposition be reduced to the formulation of the actual process, and that the class contradictions behind each "intelligent," "rational"
and progressive policy be disclosed, he would have expressed the same thought differently, would have posed the question in another way. He would have drawn a parallel between those theories and programmes of liberalism, i.e., of the bourgeoisie, which have sprung up like mushrooms since the great Reform, and factual data on the development of capitalism in Russia. In this way he would have used the Russian example to show the connection between social ideas and economic development, something he tried to prove in the first chapters and that can only be fully established by a materialist analysis of Russian data. In this way he would have shown, secondly, how naive the Narodniks are when they combat bourgeois theories in their publications, and do so as though these theories are merely mistaken reasoning, and do not represent the interests of a powerful class which it is foolish to admonish, and which can only be "convinced" by the imposing force of another class. In this way he would have shown, thirdly, which class actually determines "urgent needs" and "progress" in this country, and how ridiculous the Narodniks are when they argue about which "path" "to choose."
Messrs. the Narodniks have seized on these expressions of Mr. Struve's with particular delight, gloating over the fact that the unhappy way they have been formulated has enabled various bourgeois economists (like Mr. Yanzhul) and champions of serfdom (like Mr. Golovin) to seize upon some phrases torn out of the general context. We have seen in what way Mr. Struve's position, that has placed such a weapon into the hands of his opponents, is unsatisfactory.
The author's attempts to criticise Narodism merely as a theory that wrongly indicates the path for the fatherland,* led to the hazy formulation of his attitude to the "economic policy" of Narodism. This may be regarded as a wholesale denial of the policy, and not only of a half of it. It is, therefore, necessary to dwell on this point.
Philosophising about the possibility of "different paths for the fatherland" is merely the outer vestment of Naro-
dism. But its content is representation of the interests and viewpoint of the Russian small producer, the petty bourgeois. That is why the Narodnik, in matters of theory, is just as much a Janus, looking with one face to the past and the other to the future, as in real life the small producer is, who looks with one face to the past, wishing to strengthen his small farm without knowing or wishing to know any thing about the general economic system and about the need to reckon with the class that controls it -- and with the other face to the future, adopting a hostile attitude to the capitalism that is ruining him.
It is clear from this that it would be absolutely wrong to reject the whole of the Narodnik programme indiscriminately and in its entirety. One must clearly distinguish its reactionary and progressive sides. Narodism is reactionary insofar as it proposes measures that tie the peasant to the soil and to the old modes of production, such as the inalienability of allotments, etc.,[*] insofar as it wants to retard the development of money economy, and insofar as it expects not partial improvements, but a change of the path to be brought about by "society" and by the influence of representatives of the bureaucracy (example: Mr. Yuzhakov, who argued in Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1894, No. 7, about common tillage as projected by a Zemsky Nachalnik and engaged in introducing amendments to these projects). Unconditional warfare must, of course, be waged against such points in the Narodnik programme. But there are also other points, relating to self-government, to the "people's" free and broad access to knowledge, to the "raising" of the "people's" (that is to say, small) economy by means of cheap credits, technical improvements, better regulation of marketing, etc., etc. That such general democratic measures are progressive is fully admitted, of course, by Mr. Struve, too. They will not regard, but accelerate Russia's economic development along the capitalist path, accelerate the establishment of a home market, accelerate the growth of technique and machine industry by improving the conditions of the
working man and raising the level of his requirements, accelerate and facilitate his independent thinking and action.
The only question that might here arise is: who indicates such undoubtedly desirable measures with greater accuracy and ability -- the Narodniks or publicists like Skvortsov who has so much to say in favour of technical progress and to whom Mr. Struve is so extremely well disposed? It seems to me that from the Marxist viewpoint there can be no doubt that Narodism is absolutely to be preferred in this respect. The measures proposed by the Messrs. Skvortsov relate to the interests of the entire class of small producers, the petty bourgeoisie, in the same measure as the programme of Moskovskiye Vedomosti relates to those of the big bourgeoisie. They are designed not for all,[*] but only for certain of the elect, who are vouchsafed the attention of the authorities. They are, lastly, abominably crude because they presume police interference in the economy of the peasants. Taken all in all, these measures provide no serious guarantees and chances of the "productive progress of peasant economy."
The Narodniks in this respect understand and represent the interests of the small producers far more correctly, and the Marxists, while rejecting all the reactionary features of their programme, must not only accept the general democratic points, but carry them through more exactly, deeply and further. The more resolute such reforms are in Russia, the higher they raise the living standard of the working masses -- the more sharply and clearly will the most important and fundamental (already today) social antagonism in Russian life stand out. The Marxists, far from "breaking the democratic thread" or trend, as Mr. V. V. slanderously asserts they do, want to develop and strengthen this trend, they want to bring it closer to life, they want to take up the "thread" that "society" and the "intelligentsia" are letting slip out of their hands.**
This demand -- not to discard the "thread," but, on the contrary, to strengthen it -- is not the accidental result of the personal mood of some "Marxists" or other, but is necessarily determined by the position and interests of the class they wish to serve, is necessarily and unconditionally dictated by the fundamental requirements of their "doctrine." I cannot, for reasons that are easily understandable, pause here to examine the first part of this proposition, to characterise the "position" and "interests"; here, I think, matters speak for themselves. I shall only touch on the second part, namely, the relation of the Marxist doctrine to problems that express the "breaking thread."
The Marxists must raise these problems differently than Messrs. the Narodniks do. The latter pose the problem from the viewpoint of "modern science, modern moral ideas"; the matter is presented as though there are no profound causes of the failure to implement such reforms, causes contained within production relations themselves, as though the obstacle lies only in grossness of feelings, in the feeble "ray of reason," etc.; as though Russia is a tabula rasa on which nothing has to be done except properly outline the right paths. That way of presenting the problem, of course, guaranteed it the "purity" of which Mr. V. V. boasts, and which is merely the "purity" of ladies' college daydreams, of the kind that makes Narodnik reasoning so fit for armchair conversations.
The way these same problems are posed by the Marxists must necessarily be quite different.* Obliged to seek for the roots of social phenomena in production relations obliged to reduce them to the interests of definite classes, they must formulate these desiderata as being the "desires" of
such and such social elements and meeting the opposition of such and such elements and classes. Such a way of posing the problem will absolutely eliminate the possibility of their "theories" being utilised for professorial arguments that rise above classes, for projects and reports that promise "splendid success."[*] That, of course, is just an indirect merit of the change of viewpoint referred to, but it is also a very great one, if we bear in mind how steep is the slope down which contemporary Narodism is slipping into the bog of opportunism. But the matter is not limited to mere indirect merit. If the same problems are posed in their application to the theory of class antagonism [and this, of course, requires a "reconsideration of the facts" of Russian history and reality], then the replies to them will provide a formulation of the vital interests of certain classes; these replies will be intended for practical utilisation[**] by those interested classes and by them alone -- these replies will, to use the splendid expression of a certain Marxist, break out of the "cramped chamber of the intelligentsia" towards those who themselves participate in production relations in their most highly developed and pure form, towards those who are most strongly affected by the "breaking of the thread," and who "need" "ideals" because they are badly off without them. Such a way of raising issues will instil a new stream of life into all these old problems -- taxes, passports, migration, Volost boards of administration, etc. -- problems that our "society" has discussed and interpreted, chewed over again and again, solved and re-solved, and for which it has now begun to lose all taste.
So then, no matter how we approach the problem, whether we examine the content of the system of economic relations prevalent in Russia and the various forms of this system in
their historical connection and in their relation to the interests of the working people, or whether we examine the problem of the "breaking of the thread" and the reasons for its "breaking," we arrive, in either case, at one conclusion, that of the great significance of the historical task of "labour differentiated from life," a task advanced by the epoch in which we live, that of the universal significance of the idea of this class.
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BY THE NARODNIKS AND BY MR. STRUVE
page 425
* This relation between objectivism and materialism was indicated, incidentally, by Marx in his preface to his Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte. Marx, after mentioning that Proudhon wrote of the same historical event (in his Coup d'état ), says the following of how the latter's viewpoint is opposed to his own:
"Proudhon, for his part, seeks to represent the coup d'état [of Dec. 2] as the result of an antecedent historical development. Unnoticeably, however his historical construction of the coup d'etat becomes a historical apologia for its hero. Thus he falls into the error of our so-called objective historians. I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part" (Vorwort).[126]
page 426
* Even today it cannot be said to have ended altogether. On the one hand, we have the land-redemption payments (and it is well known that they include not only the price of the land, but also the redemption from serfdom); on the other hand, labour service by the peasants in return for the use of "cut-off lands," for example, are a direct survival of the feudal mode of production.
page 427
page 428
* "The entire process is expressed in the fact of petty production (handicraft) approximating to 'capitalism' in some respects, and in others to wage-labour separated from the means of production" (p. 104).
page 429
page 430
* This, of course, refers to their being isolated economically. Community landownership does not eliminate this in the least. Even where the land re-allotments are "equalitarian" in the highest degree the peasant farms single-handed on his own strip of land; hence he is an isolated producer working on his own.
page 431
page 432
page 433
* Contra principia negantem disputari non potest (you cannot argue against one who denies principles. --Ed.) -- says the author about an argument with the Narodniks. That depends on how these principia are formulated -- as general propositions and notes, or as a different understanding of the facts of Russian history and present-day reality.
page 434
page 435
page 436
page 437
* Das Kapital, II Band (1885), S. 93. The reservation must be made that in the passage referred to Marx gives no definition of capitalism. In general, he did not offer definitions. Here he only refers to the relation between commodity and capitalist production, the point dealt with in the text.[128]
page 438
* The Narodniks always describe things as though the worker separated from the land is a necessary condition of capitalism in general, and not of machine industry alone.
page 439
page 440
page 441
* Cf. above-mentioned article in Otechestvenniye Zapiski.
page 442
* It may be argued that I am running too far ahead, for did not the author say that he intended to proceed gradually from general problems to concrete ones, which he examines in Chapter VI? The point is however, that the abstractness of Mr. Struve's criticism to which I refer, is a distinguishing feature of the whole of his book -- of Chapter VI and even of the concluding part. What most of all requires correcting is his way of presenting problems.
page 443
page 444
* An analysis of the economic side should, of course be supplemented by an analysis of the social, juridical, political, and ideological superstructures. The failure to understand the connection between capitalism and "people's production" gave rise among the Narodniks to the idea that the peasant Reform, state power the intelligentsia, etc., were non-class in character. A materialist analysis, which reduces all these phenomena to the class struggle, must show concretely that our Russian post-Reform "social progress" has only been the result of capitalist "economic progress."
** A "reconsideration of the facts" of Russian economic realities especially those from which the Narodniks obtain the material for their schoolgirl dreams, i.e., peasant and handicraft economy should show that the cause of the producer's oppressed condition does not lie in distribution ("the muzhik is poor, the buyer-up is rich"), but [cont. onto p. 445. -- DJR] in the very production relations, in the very social organisation of present-day peasant and handicraft economy. This will show that in "people's" production, too, "the problem of the organisation of production takes precedence over the problem of distribution."
page 445
* We must mention that in Mr. Struve's reply Mr. Mikhailovsky finds that Engels betrays "self-admiration" when he says that the dominating, overwhelming fact of modern times, which makes these times better than any other epoch and justifies the history of their origin, is the working-class movement in the West.
This positively atrocious reproach hurled at Engels is extremely typical of contemporary Russian Narodism.
These people can talk a lot about "people's truth," they know how to talk to our "society" and to reprove it for making a wrong selection of the path for the fatherland, they can sing sweetly about "now or never," and sing it for "ten, twenty, thirty years and more," but they are absolutely incapable of understanding the all-embracing significance of independent action by those in whose name these sweet songs have been sung.
page 446
page 447
* The Russian Narodniks are exactly the same. They do not deny that there are classes in Russia which are antagonistic to the producer, but they lull themselves with the argument that these "pirates" are insignificant compared with the "people" and refuse to make a careful study of the position and interests of the respective classes, to examine whether the interests of a certain category of producers are interwoven with the interests of the "pirates," thus weakening the former's power of resistance against the latter.
page 448
* In the opinion of the Russian Narodniks the pernicious Marxists are to blame for artificially implanting capitalism and its class antagonisms in the soil in which the flowers of "social mutual adaptation" and "harmonious activity" bloom so beautifully (Mr. V. V., quoted by Struve, p. 161).
page 449
page 450
page 451
OF RUSSIA'S POST-REFORM ECONOMY
page 452
* Actually, as has already been indicated, this machine could only serve the bourgeoisie by virtue both of its composition and of its historical origin.
** To speak the truth one should say: make it possible for part of the peasants to redeem part of their allotment land from the landlords at double the proper price. And even the words "make it possible" are no good, because the peasant who refused such "provision of an allotment" was faced with the threat of a flogging at the Volost Administration offices.
page 453
* That is how it is formulated by Mr. Struve in his article in Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt (1893, No. 1 of October 2). He adds that he does not consider this view to be "Malthusian."
page 454
* And what can these "general investigations" consist of? If they ignore the specific economic formations of human society, they will be mere banalities. And if they are to embrace several formations, it is obvious that they must be preceded by specific investigations of each separate formation.
page 455
* By the way, where have these "landless peasants" come from? Very likely, Lange imagines, they are not the left-overs of the serf system, or the product of the rule of capital, but the result of the fact that "the tendency towards voluntary birth-control has not firmly gripped the people's morals" (p.157)?
page 456
page 457
page 458
page 459
page 460
page 461
page 462
* That is to say, this argument is of no use whatever as an explanation of the ruin of the peasantry and of over-population, though the very fact of "insufficiency" is beyond argument, just as is its accentuation as a result of the growth of the population. What is needed is not a statement of the fact, but an explanation of its origin.
page 463
* It is a known fact that our handicraft industries have grown and that a mass or new ones have appeared since the Reform. The theoretical explanation of this fact and of the capitalisation or other peasant industries is also known; it was given by Marx to explain the "creation or the home market for industrial capital" [Das Kapital, 2. Aufl., S. 776 u. ff.].[133]
page 464
* Incidentally. Observation of this fact very likely gave Lange an excuse to concoct an amendment to Marx's theory, which he did not fully understand. When analysing this fact he should have made his starting-point the given (capitalist) mode of social production and followed its manifestation in agriculture; instead he took it into his head to invent all sorts of peculiarities in the "people's morals."
page 465
* See, for example, Karyshev (Results of Zemstvo Statistical Investigations, Vol. II, p. 266) -- reference in the Rostov-on-Don Uyezd Abstract to the gradual reduction in the peasant's share in skopshchina.[135] Ibid. Chapter V, § 9 -- additional payments made in the form of labour by peasants engaged in sharecropping.
page 466
page 467
* It will be dealt with in greater detail further on, taking the peasants and the landlords separately.
** Mr. Yuzhakov in Russkoye Bogatstvo.
page 468
* "The main defect of Mr. Golubev's arguments in his fine articles is that he cannot rid himself of this fiction" (203).
page 469
* "However desirable and necessary" it "may be," adds Mr. N.-on.
page 470
page 471
page 472
* See particularly § 4 of Chapter XXIV: "Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer." Pp. 773-76.[137]
page 473
* Messrs. the Narodniks have another, very profound, method of covering up the roots of our industrial capitalism in "people's production," i.e., in "people's" usury and kulakdom. The kulak takes his "savings" to the state bank; his deposits enable the bank, by basing itself on the growth of the people's wealth, people's savings, people's enterprise, people's solvency, to borrow money from the Englishman. The "state" directs the borrowed money to the aid of . . . -- what a short-sighted policy! what deplorable ignoring of "modern science" and "modern moral ideas"! -- . . . the capitalists. The question now arises: is it not clear that if the state directed this money (of the capitalists) not to capitalism but to "people's production " -- we here in Russia would have not capitalism but "people's production"!
page 474
* It is customary in our literature to regard him as a Marxist. There is juat as little grounds for that as there is for placing Mr. N.-on among the Marxists. Mr. A. Skvortsov is also unacquainted with the theory of the class struggle and the class character of the state. His practical proposals in his Economic Studies are no different from ordinary bourgeois proposals. He takes a far more sober view of Rus- [cont. onto p. 475. -- DJR] sian reality than Messrs. the Narodniks do, but then on those grounds alone B. Chicherin and many others should also be regarded as Marxists.
page 475
* Mr. A. Skvortsov points out that by a country employing extensive agriculture a thinly-populated one is usually understood (footnote to page 439). He considers this a wrong definition and gives the following as the features of extensive farming: 1) considerable harvest fluctuations; 2) homogeneity of crops and 3) absence of home markets, i.e., of big towns where manufacturing industry is concentrated.
page 476
* "For such a country (with a population dense for the given level of economic efficiency) we must assume that, on the one hand, small surpluses, and, on the other, the population's low educational level, force many farms into liquidation under the changed conditions" (442).
page 477
page 478
* Its distinctive features are: 1) all the land is put under the plough; 2) fallow is eliminated as far as possible; 3) there is a regular succession of crops in the rotation; 4) cultivation is as thorough as possible; 5) cattle are kept in stalls.
page 479
page 480
page 481
* Mr. Struve makes no mention of this feature. It is also expressed in the use of wage-labour, which plays no small part on the farms of the prosperous peasants, and in the operations or the usury and merchant's capital in their hands, which likewise deprives the producer of surplus-value. In the absence of this feature we cannot speak of "capital."
page 482
* Working for the landlord. This aspect is set aside, in order that the transition from natural to commodity economy may stand out in greater relief. It has already been said that the remnants of the "old-nobility" relations worsen the conditions of the producers and make their ruin particularly onerous.
page 483
page 484
* All the features are here present: commodity production as the basis; monopoly of the product of social labour in the form of money as the result; the turning of this money into capital. I do not in the least forget that in some cases these initial forms of capital were encountered even before the capitalist system came into being The point, however, is that in contemporary Russian peasant economy they are not isolated cases but the rule, the dominant system of relations. They have now linked up (through commercial deals and the banks) with large-scale factory machine capitalism and have thereby shown their tendency; they have shown that the representatives or this "bondage" are merely rank-and-file soldiers of the army of the bourgeoisie, one and indivisible.
page 485
page 486
* On what grounds, the reader will possibly ask, does this relate only to Mr. Struve's being carried away ? On the ground that the author quite definitely recognises capitalism to be the main background against which all the phenomena described take place. He quite clearly pointed to the rapid growth of commodity economy, to the splitting-up of the peasantry, and to the "spread of improved implements" (245), etc., on the one hand -- and to the "separation of the peasants from the land, the creation of a rural proletariat" (238), on the other. He himself, finally, characterised it as the creation of a new force -- capital, and noted the decisive importance of the appearance of the capitalist between the producer and the consumer.
page 487
* The Narodniks said this openly and directly, but the "undoubted Marxist," Mr. N.-on, presents this same nonsense in vague phrases about a "people's system" and "people's production" garnished with quotations from Marx.
page 488
* That is to say, beginning with the petty-bourgeois character of the peasant agriculturist" as proof of the "inevitability and legitimacy" of large-scale capitalism.
** The rationalising of agriculture, on the one hand, which makes it for the first time capable of operating on a social scale, and the reduction ad absurdum of property in land, on the other, are the great achievements of the capitalist mode of production. Like all of its other historical advances, it also attained these by first completely impoverishing the direct producers" (Das Kapital, III. B., 2. Th. p. 157).[138]
page 489
page 490
page 491
* I confine myself exclusively to the economic aspect of the matter.
* That is why reference to the feudal "allotment of land" as proof of the means of production belonging to the producer "from time immemorial" is false through and through.
page 492
page 493
page 494
page 495
* There is nothing to show what criterion the author uses to distinguish these concepts. If by capitalism in the narrow sense is meant only machine industry, then it is not clear why manufacture should not be singled out, too. If by capitalism in the broad sense is meant only commodity economy, then there is no capitalism in it.
page 496
page 497
page 498
page 499
* As this is a very important and complicated problem, we intend to devote a special article to it.[140]
page 500
page 501
* Let us indicate some examples of these remarks: "If the state . . . desires to strengthen small but not large landownership, then under the present economic conditions it cannot achieve this aim by chasing after unrealisable economic equality among the peasantry, but only by supporting its viable elements, by creating an economically strong peasantry out of them" (240). "I cannot fail to see that the policy which is aimed at creating such a peasantry (namely, "economically strong, adapted to commodity production") will be the only intelligent and progressive policy" (281). "Russia must be transformed from a poor capitalist country into a rich capitalist country" (250), etc., up to the concluding phrase: "Let us go and learn from capitalism."
page 502
* The author of Critical Remarks indicates the economic basis of Narodism (pp. 166-67), but in our view does so inadequately.
page 503
* Mr. Struve very rightly says that these measures might merely "bring to fruition the ardent dreams of certain West-European and Russian landowners about farm labourers who are strongly bound to the land" (279).
page 504
* That is to say, of course, for all to whom technical progress is accessible.
** In Nedelya, No. 47, 1894, Mr. V. V. writes: "In the post-Reform period of our history, social relations in some respects have approx- [cont. onto p. 505. -- DJR] imated to those of Western Europe, with active democracy in the epoch of political struggle and with social indifferentism in the subsequent period." We tried to show in Chapter I that this "indifferentism" is no accident, but an inevitable result of the position and the interests of the class from which the representatives of "society emerge and which in addition to disadvantages derives by no means unimportant advantages from contemporary relations.
page 505
* If they pursue their theory consistently. We have already said much about Mr. Struve's exposition being unsatisfactory precisely because of his failure to adhere to this theory with greatest strictness.
page 506
* Mr. Yuzhakov's expression.
** Of course for this "utilisation" to take place a tremendous amount of preparatory work is required, and what is more, work that by its very nature goes unseen. Before this utilisation takes place a more or less considerable period may pass during which we shall say outright that there is no force capable of providing better paths for the fatherland -- as against the "sugary optimism" of Messrs. the Narodniks who assert that such forces exist and that all that, remains to be done is to advise them to "leave the wrong path."
page 507
Notes on |
page 534
[126]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, p. 244.
[127]
Leibkampantsi, from Leibkompanie (personal bodyguard), the title of honour bestowed on the Grenadier Company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment in 1741 by Tsarina Yelizaveta Petrovna for having placed her on the Russian throne. They were given estates and all sorts of special privileges, while those of them who were not of noble origin were made hereditary nobles. The nickname Leibkampantsi was put in circulation by M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin in his Poshekhon Tales.
[p. 426]
[128]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II , Moscow, 1957, pp. 116-17.
[p. 437]
[129]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 53-54.
[p. 439]
[130]
Gotha Programme -- the programme of the German Social-Democratic Party adopted in 1875 at the Gotha congress, where unity was established between the two German socialist parties that had previously existed separately; they were the Eisenachers (who were led by Bebel and Liebknecht, and were under the ideological influence of Marx and Engels), and the Lassalleans. The programme suffered from eclecticism, and was opportunist, since the Eisenachers made
concessions to the Lassalleans and accepted their formulations on vitally important points. Marx and Engels subjected the Gotha draft programme to withering criticism, for they regarded it as a considerable step backwards even as compared with the Eisenach programme of 1869. (See K. Marx and F. Engels, Critique of the Gotha Programme," Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958. pp. 13-48.)
[p. 442]
[131]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 278-79.
[p. 448]
[132]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, p. 632.
[p. 453]
[133]
Lenin refers to Chapter XXX, Vol I, Capital (Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creation of the Home Market for Industrial Capital). (See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, p. 745.)
[p. 463]
[134]
K. Marx, Capital, Vol: I, Moscow, 1959, p. 642.
[p. 464]
[135]
Skopshchina -- the name given in the southern parts of Russia to a type of rent in kind, on terms of bondage, the tenant paying the landowner s kopny (from the corn-shock) a portion of the harvest (a half, and sometimes more), and usually fulfilling miscellaneous labour services in addition.
[p. 465]
[136]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, p. 749, Footnote 2.
[p. 471]
[137]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, pp. 742-44.
[p. 472]
[138]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, p. 604.
[p. 488]
[139]
Gift-landers or gift-land peasants, peasants who were formerly landlords' serfs and who, at the time of the Reform of 1861, by "agreement with their landlords received allotments gratis (without having to pay redemption money for them). The gift-lander received a miserable strip amounting in all to a quarter of the so-called "top" or "statutory" allotment established by law for the given locality. All the rest of the lands that had constituted the peasants' allotments before the Reform were seized by the landlord, who held his "gift-landers," forcibly dispossessed of their land, in a state of economic bondage even after serfdom was abolished. The "gift-land" allotment came to be known among the people as a "quarter," "orphan's," "cat's," or "gagarin" allotment (the last epithet being derived from the name of the initiator of the law on "gift-land" allotments, Prince P. P. Gagarin).
[p. 491]
[140]
Lenin deals with this problem in detail in his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). See present edition, Vol. 3.
[p. 499]
   
The book by Proudhon mentioned in the text is called The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'État.
[p. 425]
page 535