In Russia, the Narodniks had dreamt of the idea that the country could skip over the stage of capitalism. Basing themselves on Marx's response to Zasulich, they thought that the Russian Mir, the village communal production, could simply import the technologies that western capitalism had already produced, so as to develop Russian society on the basis of this cooperative and communal production.
There were, in practice, several problems with this view. Firstly, Marx himself, in Theories of Surplus Value, sets out the progressive historic role that capital plays in primary accumulation, by bringing together the scattered means of production. And, he makes clear that it is, in reality, only capital that can do this, because there is no basis upon which the the individual peasant producer, spread across the countryside, could either have had the motive or wherewithal to have done it on a voluntary collective basis. Secondly, as Kautsky had analysed, such cooperative production had only been successful where it had been done essentially by agricultural workers, who were both more advanced and more class conscious than were the individually minded peasants. Thirdly, the process of differentiation of the peasantry was already taking place in Russia, and had been so since The Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. Capitalist production was already growing rapidly.
It should be remarked here that Lenin's critique of the reactionary nature of Narodism should not be confused with Lenin believing that the Narodniks were themselves reactionaries. Not at all, and Lenin himself remarks on this point. The Narodniks individually comprised determined revolutionaries, and militant opponents of Tsarism. The point that Lenin makes, however, as with Marx's critique of Sismondi, is that it is possible to be a militant opponent of the status quo, but on the basis of a set of ideas, no matter how genuinely held, that lead in the wrong direction. Instead of leading towards a more progressive solution, they lead backwards to reactionary solutions.
In this pamphlet, Lenin examines the work of V.Y. Postnikov, a government official who collected economic data. Lenin sets out a number of minor issues with the way the data is collected, but he argues that Postnikov's data and analysis shows that the process of differentiation was already taking place, in accordance with the process described by Marx in Capital. Lenin describes Postnikov's work, published in 1891 as,
“... one of the most outstanding in our economic literature of recent years, has passed almost unnoticed. This may partly be explained by the fact that although the author recognises the great importance of economic problems, he treats them too fragmentarily and encumbers his exposition with details relating to other problems.” (Note 3, p 15) [All quotes are from Lenin Collected Works, Volume I, Lawrence & Wishart 1972 Ed.]
Postnikov, in his Preface, refers to,
“The considerable employment of machines that has recently become evident in peasant farming and the marked increase in the size of farms belonging to the well-to-do section of the peasantry, constitute a new phase in our agrarian life, the development of which will undoubtedly receive a new stimulus from the severe economic conditions of the present year. The productivity of peasant labour and the working capacity of the family rise considerably with the increase in the size of the farm and the employment of machines, a point hitherto overlooked in defining the area that a peasant family can cultivate....” (p 15-16)
Postnikov notes that the use of machines meant that the demand for agricultural labour was reduced, adding to the relative surplus population, which depresses wages, and further accelerates the number of labourers who are, thereby, made landless. At the same time, for those peasants able to utilise large machines, even on the basis of extensive agriculture, it meant a large rise in their incomes, which facilitates capital accumulation by them.
Part of the problem with the way the Narodniks presented their argument was that they framed it in terms of averages, which obscured the existing differentiation of the peasantry that already existed in the village communities.
Postnikov says,
““a South Russian village of any size (and the same can probably be said of most localities in Russia) presents such a variegated picture as regards the economic status of the various groups of its inhabitants, that it is very difficult to speak of the living standard of separate villages as single units, or to depict this standard in average figures. Such average figures indicate certain general conditions that determine the economic life of the peasantry, but they do not give any idea of the great diversity of economic phenomena that actually exists” (p. 106).” (p 17)
Further, he notes,
“But can a village be called prosperous when half its peasants are rich, while the other half live in permanent poverty? And by what criteria is the relatively greater or lesser prosperity of a particular village to be determined? Obviously, average figures characterising the condition of the population of a whole village or district are here insufficient to draw conclusions as to the prosperity of the peasants. This latter may be judged only from the sum-total of many facts, by dividing the population into groups” (p. 154).” (p 18)
Lenin refers to Postnikov's comment describing the ““tremendous diversity in the economic status of the various households within the village community” (p. 323), and takes up arms against “the tendency to regard the peasant mir as something integral and homogeneous, such as our urban intelligentsia still imagine it to be” (p. 351)” (p 18)
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