Lenin, in “What The So Called Friends of the People Are” responds to the work of the Narodnik theorists, and Legal Marxists. In responding to Mikhailovsky's claim that nowhere in Capital does Marx set out his theory of Historical Materialism, in the way that Darwin had done in setting out his materialist theory of the evolution of species by natural selection, Lenin points out that Marx's theory of Historical Materialism pervades Capital from start to finish. Marx had produced, in 1848, a hypothesis that the process of social development was just as much a natural process, driven by natural laws as was the process of evolution, set out by Darwin.
Fundamental to that was the natural law represented by The Law of Value. It says that the value of all products, and subsequently, therefore, of commodities, is determined by the labour required for their reproduction. Man must produce in order to consume, at least beyond a very minimum level when Man can simply consume the free gifts of Nature. But, the amount of labour available for such production is constrained, so that Man always has to make choices about how to allocate this available labour-time, in order to produce the greatest use value with the available labour.
At the heart of The Law of Value is the fact that labour-time allocated for one purpose means giving up a quantity of some other use value, and in commodity production this takes the form that the exchange value of any commodity is measured, not directly by the labour-time required for its production, but indirectly by the quantity of some other use value that could be exchanged for it, and ultimately that takes the form of a money price. In every society, this means that humans will seek to maximise the use value they can obtain for the labour they expend. It means that, in cold climates, more labour-time will need to be expended on producing shelter, clothing etc. Everywhere, humans will seek to utilise the division of labour, so as to increase productivity so as to be able to produce more use values per unit of labour, thereby reducing the unit value of each product. Material conditions, and the need to produce by the most efficient means, to maximise the amount of use value produced, will determine the way human societies go about the way they organise production and society. In turn, as they develop new tools, and means of producing this will shape the way production is organised, and this will, in turn, shape the social organisation, and superstructure that arises from it.
In Capital, Marx had set out to test that hypothesis not by examining all social development, but examining one piece of it, in detail, i.e. the development of capitalism as a particular mode of production.
As Lenin points out, if Marx could show that the development of capitalism could be explained purely on the basis of an application of these natural laws, without any appeal to subjective explanations based upon Man's psychology, Human Nature, let alone God, then he would have validated his hypothesis. It could then be left to others to apply that same method to analyse and explain the development of other modes of production, such as feudalism etc. Moreover, if the hypothesis was validated, then, rather than appealing to subjective factors, such as psychology, and so on, to explain social development, the same material factors could explain the development of human psychology, human nature, religion and so on.
That is what Marx achieves in Capital. He shows that capitalism evolves out of feudal production as a consequence of these purely natural laws. Individual peasant producers, need money, not for itself, but because they must pay money taxes, and they must buy some commodities in the market with money. The peasant household engages in the division of labour to use its labour-time most effectively. Some of its labour-time must be devoted to producing commodities to sell to obtain money, even if this money is only to be used to buy the other commodities the household needs to consume. This creates a social division of labour. Some products are produced by specialist artisans based in towns, which is where markets develop. As these markets grow larger, it becomes possible to produce these commodities using machines, and production on a larger scale enables a greater division of labour. The sale of the commodities leads to money accumulating, which can be used as capital, to employ wage labour, from which surplus value is extracted, which leads to a further accumulation of capital.
The non-capitalist producers of these commodities cannot compete. They go out of business, their means of production are bought up by the capitalist producers, who grow larger. The former independent producer, also, therefore, has to become a wage labourer. The former independent producer, who becomes a wage labourer, also has no time left to produce those things they previously produced for their own direct consumption, and must now also buy them in the market place. That means other specialist producers of those commodities arise, and a further social division of labour, and expansion of the market arises. Marx also demonstrates, by this method, the way a continuation of this process of concentration and centralisation of capital itself leads to its own transformation into socialised capital, as the transitional form of property to Socialism.
Lenin applies Marx's method to Russia, which was undergoing this process of transformation from feudalism to capitalism. The Narodniks saw this development as unnatural, and contrary to the natural path of development in Russia, based upon the production of the village commune. The Narodnik approach, which was that of Sismondism, was based upon subjectivism, and a moral repugnance at the horrors that capitalist development brought with it, as opposed to seeing it as an inevitable process, and one which was historically progressive, as a result of the development of the productive forces, and potential to move forward to Socialism that it brought with it.
As a result, the Narodniks were led to continually downplay the progressive role that capitalist development was playing in Russia; they continually forecast that its development was limited and would lead to a catastrophe, and so on. There are modern day equivalents of the Narodniks and their petit-bourgeois moralism, and subjective approach. It can be seen in the various “anti-capitalist”, and “anti-imperialist” groups and ideas that focus on opposing capitalist development, and particularly capitalist development in less developed economies, brought about by foreign investment. The Narodniks themselves, in arguing that capitalism in Russia was something unnatural, emphasised that it was something that was being imposed by outside forces, or by “the authorities”, rather than growing as a result of natural internal dynamics. Another example of this petite-bourgeois moralism is the so called Third Camp, which displayed a similar subjectivism and moralism, in relation to its disdain for the development of the productive forces in Russia by a deformed workers' state.
The Narodniks and Legal Marxists based themselves primarily on a letter sent by Marx to Vera Zasulich in 1881. Zasulich had asked Marx if it was possible that Russia could by-pass capitalism as a stage in its social development, and create socialism based upon the existing Mir, or peasant village commune. Consistent with his theory of historical materialism, Marx replied that, in theory, such a development was possible. However, such development, again consistent with his theory, requires that the relevant material conditions are in place. Marx's argument is quite simple. Socialism becomes possible, in general, because first capitalism has existed, and has revolutionised production. It has replaced scattered individual peasant production with collective socialised production, based upon co-operative labour, and a social division of labour. It has raised society's productive capacity so that living standards are raised, the Civilising Mission of Capital, as Marx describes it in The Grundrisse. This Civilising Mission, means that the workers have more time, during the day, to educate themselves, to become more cultured, and so on, all of which are required for them to become a new ruling class. And, indeed, the most important thing that capitalism does in this process, is to create an organised working-class, which is then able to become the active agent in social development that can take over the socialised capital that capitalism itself creates, and thereby transcend capitalism, and create socialism.
So, Marx's argument is simply that, provided capitalism has then developed the means of production sufficiently to make Socialism possible, then it is not necessary for every country on the planet to have to go through the stage of capitalist development, because those that have done so can then make these technologies available to any other country that wishes to adopt them as the basis of its own socialist development. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx explained that this process of collectivising the means of production could only be carried out, in Western Europe, by capital, because the village commune had already been dissolved. There was no basis upon which the individual peasant farmer could cooperate with others to bring about this collectivisation, and the collectivisation was necessary for capital to accumulate, which is the basis for the revolutionising of production. But, in Russia, the village commune still existed. It is theoretically possible for the village commune, therefore, to simply introduce these new technologies, created by capitalism, and to operate them, from the beginning on a collective basis by the commune.
Marx is then, here, setting out the argument against those bourgeois elements in Russia who insisted that Russia must pass through a capitalist stage of development. But, Marx is not saying, here, either, that Russia could simply pass straight to socialism based on the village commune, without the other required material conditions being in existence. In order for the members of the village commune to move directly to socialism they would have themselves to desire such a transition. And, the village commune did not exist in isolation. A process of capitalist development was already underway in Russia, and this created its own dynamic, its own set of material conditions. In his Preface to Capital, Marx wrote,
“Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.”
This process itself acts to dissolve the peasant commune, and to create a differentiation within the peasantry. This differentiation creating a small class of richer peasants, and a larger class of poor peasants, itself creates material conditions that generate a set of ideas, and social relations. And, consistent with this thesis it is not possible for the Russian peasant in the village commune to have in their head the required conception of socialism unless they have an example of it already in front of them. In a later letter, Engels, writing to Danielson, on precisely this matter, spells it out clearly, and explains what Marx meant in his letter to Zasulich.
“You yourself admit that "the social conditions in Russia after the Crimean War were not favourable to the development of the form of production inherited by us from our past history." I would go further, and say, that no more in Russia than anywhere else would it have been possible to develop a higher social form out of primitive agrarian communism unless – that higher form was already in existence in another country, so as to serve as a model.”
In other words, the working-class elsewhere, primarily, therefore, in Western Europe, would have to have already established socialism, and this would then act as a model for the Russian peasants to transform the village commune, utilising, at the same time, the technologies that western capitalism had developed, and that the workers had now taken over.
And, Engels is again explicit that this socialist development in Western Europe would only be possible because of that very capitalist development.
"That higher form being, wherever it is historically possible, the necessary consequence of the capitalistic form of production and of the social dualistic antagonism created by it"
Marx in his letter to Zasulich, however, had not just rested content with setting out this theoretical possibility of a transformation of the village commune, whilst bypassing capitalism, but had also examined the reality of social development in Russia. That reality included the social transformation that had already taken place as a result of the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, and also the consequence of the Crimean War. The Emancipation of the Serfs meant that millions of peasants were placed into debt slavery, because they now had to buy the land they farmed. It results in a rapid transformation of serfs and peasants into wage labourers, whilst transferring large amounts of land into the hands of capitalists. The Crimean War also highlights to Russia's rulers the need to rapidly industrialise in order to compete with its already industrialised rivals in France, Germany, Turkey and Britain. This process of industrialisation proceeds from the towns. As Danielson himself recognised, therefore, capitalism was already well established in Russia, in industry, by the latter part of the 19th century.
In 1877, Marx himself had to write to the Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky complaining about the way Mikhailovsky had misrepresented him. Marx wrote,
“In order that I might be qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia to-day, I learnt Russian and then for many years studied the official publications and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclusion: If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime...
If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all.”
And, in his letter to Zasulich, he expands upon this, describing not only the proletarianisation of the peasantry, but also the active role of the Russian state in dismantling the village commune and promoting capitalist development. The former arises necessarily from the economic conditions, whilst the latter is not simply some whim by the state, but itself is a reflection of material conditions.
“Since so many different interests, particularly the new ‘pillars of society’ constructed under Alexander Il’s benevolent empire, find an advantage in the present situation of the rural commune, why should they knowingly conspire to bring about its death? Why do their spokesmen denounce the evils weighing upon it as irrefutable proof of its natural decay? Why do they wish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Quite simply, the economic facts, which it would take me too long to analyse, have uncovered the secret that the present situation of the commune is no longer tenable, and that, through mere force of circumstances, the present mode of exploiting the popular masses will go out of fashion. Thus, something new is required; and this something new, insinuated in the most diverse forms, always comes clown to the abolition of communal property, the formation of the more or less well-off minority of peasants into a rural middle class, and the straightforward conversion of the majority into proletarians.”
And, this is an important point that is also taken up by Lenin in relation to the nature of the Tsarist state as a capitalist state, and more than twenty years later by Trotsky in his analysis of the Stalinist state as a degenerated workers' state. That is the distinction between the political regime, and the class nature of the state. In the first instance, the Tsarist political regime is feudal in nature, but objectively, the Tsarist state is forced by the material conditions to promote the development of capitalism, because the productive relations in the country already dictate that the fate of the state itself depends on such development. In the second instance, the political regime of Stalinism is one which represents the interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and yet the soviet state is forced by the nature of the underlying productive relations, based upon statised property, and the position of the working class as ruling social class, to promote the development of those productive relations.
Ultimately, whatever the superficial appearance given by the nature of the political regime, it is the dominant productive relations which determine the nature of the state. The state is led to foster those relations, or else see the society itself wither, and with it then the position of the state is undermined. Subjective will can never override this reality. In order for Russia to avoid the path of capitalism it would have required a revolution, but a revolution was only possible, if the Russian peasants had a model in front of them of the socialist society to be created, and if they had access to advanced technologies which could only have been made available to them by workers in the West, having undertaken their own revolutions. But, as Engels sets out in his letter to Danielson, no such development had occurred in Western Europe, and so the potential for Russia to avoid capitalism did not, in reality exist. Engels says,
“But the West remained stagnant, no such transformation was attempted, and capitalism was more and more rapidly developed. And as Russia had no choice but this: either to develop the commune into a form of production from which it was separated by a number of historical stages, and for which not even in the West the conditions were then ripe – evidently an impossible task – or else to develop into capitalism; what remained to her but the latter choice?”
Engels, however, presages Lenin's view on this, and is not at all downbeat about the fact that Russia will have to then undergo this capitalist phase of its development. In Two Tactics of Social Democracy, Lenin writes,
“And from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class.”
This sentiment, which is a million miles from that of today's Sismondists amongst the ranks of “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists” simply echoes the views of Marx and Engels. So, Engels writes to Danielson, that the commune is doomed,
“But on the other hand, capitalism opens out new views and new hopes. Look at what it has done and is doing in the West.”
And, the reason that the commune was doomed was not just because, the Tsarist state was being forced to seek its dissolution as a means of developing capitalism so as to save Russia, but also because the very process of economic development leads in that direction. In The Origin of The Family, Private Property and the State, Engels describes how the primitive commune is dissolved, and gives way to the rise of slave society. It arises, because slight variations, initially, in the fortunes of certain individuals leads eventually into larger variations. These larger variations create even greater advantages for some than others, which in turn creates even larger variations. An incentive towards inheritance, which implies a development of private property is established. And, this leads to families being established as separate institutions from the gens.
Engels makes the same point, here, in his letter to Danielson. The Russian village commune could only survive so long as all of the peasants within it were more or less equal.
“As to the commune, it is only possible so long as the differences of wealth among its members are but trifling. As soon as these differences become great, as soon as some of its members become the debt-slaves of the richer members, it can no longer live. The kulaki and miroyedy (kulaks and parasites) of Athens, before Solon, have destroyed the Athenian gens with the same implacability with which those of your country destroy the commune. I am afraid that institution is doomed.”
The Narodniks tried to argue that there were no wide divergences, and they attempted to do that by presenting data based on averages for the village, which, by their nature, ignored the very real differences that existed within the village. Lenin destroys that argument by a systematic analysis of the data in relation to the economic and social relations within the village. In the coming weeks, therefore, I will be setting out the application of Marx's method utilised in Capital, by Lenin in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, and his critique of subjectivism, and moral socialism.
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