In addition to these conclusions, Lenin makes two further remarks. Firstly, that this analysis, which shows that capital accumulation itself provides the means by which the market expands, does not negate Marx's analysis of a basic contradiction, inherent in capitalism, that whilst the workers are important for the market, and more so as the working class increases, the capitalists attempt to keep the workers wages to a minimum.
“It, has been shown above that in capitalist society that part of social production which produces articles of consumption must also grow. The development of the production of means of production merely sets the above-mentioned contradiction aside, but does not abolish it. It can only be eliminated with the elimination of the capitalist mode of production itself. It goes without saying, however, that it is utterly absurd to regard that contradiction as an obstacle to the full development of capitalism in Russia (as the Narodniks are fond of doing); incidentally, that is sufficiently explained by the table.” (p 106)
The second remark made by Lenin is that the development of capitalism involves a significant rise in the standard of living for all members of society, including the working class, and this rise in the standard of living is synonymous not just with a huge rise in the quantity of existing use values produced, but in the introduction of an ever expanding range of use values that become part of normal consumption. This is the comment that Marx makes in The Grundrisse, in relation to the Civilising Mission of Capital.
Again, Lenin echoes the other comment of Marx, and repeated in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, that immiseration does not at all mean a reduction in the affluence or standard of living of workers, which, in fact, rises massively, as a result of capitalism, but refers to the reduction in their wealth, i.e. that they no longer own their own means of production, and the more the minimum scale of production increases, as massive amounts of fixed capital are employed, the more impossible does it become for them , individually, to do so. Indeed, as Marx sets out in Capital I, Chapter 25, and in Capital III, Chapter 27, it becomes impossible even for the largest private capitalists to do so either. At that point, the private monopoly of capital becomes a fetter on its further accumulation. That fetter must be burst asunder, as the expropriators are themselves expropriated, and their private monopoly of capital is replaced by socialised capital, in the form of the joint stock company and the cooperative. Capital itself is socialised as the collective property of the associated producers, just as production itself has been socialised, as a consequence of the social division of labour, and production based upon cooperative rather than individual labour.
“This law of increasing requirements has manifested itself with full force in the history of Europe—compare, for example, the French proletariat of the end of the eighteenth and of the end of the nineteenth centuries, or the British worker of the 1840’s and of today. This same law operates in Russia, too: the rapid development of commodity economy and capitalism in the post-Reform epoch has caused a rise in the level of requirements of the “peasantry,” too: the peasants have begun to live a “cleaner” life (as regards clothing, housing, and so forth). That this undoubtedly progressive phenomenon must be placed to the credit of Russian capitalism and of nothing else is proved if only by the generally known fact (noted by all the investigators of our village handicrafts and of peasant economy in general) that the peasants of the industrial localities live a far “cleaner” life than the peasants engaged exclusively in agriculture and hardly touched by capitalism.” (p 106-7)
This progressive development and significant improvement in the condition of the masses brought about by capitalism, was, of course denied by the Nardoniks, for whom capitalism, in Russia, was a divergence from the normal path of development. The same attempts to deny the progressive role of capitalism was to be found in the Moral Socialism of Sismondi, attacked by Marx in The Communist Manifesto, and elsewhere. As Marx points out, there, the attempts by the Sismondists and Moral Socialists to hold back capitalist development, in order to avoid its negative aspects, inevitably led them into reactionary positions, despite the fact that they were motivated by the best of intentions as regards the workers. The same approach is taken by modern day “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”. They are led to effectively oppose such development only seeing the negative aspects of it, and thereby led to deny any progressive role for capitalism, and particularly its most mature forms. Particularly after WWII, it was promoted by Stalinism, which combined with Third Worldist groups to oppose such development and investment by “imperialism”, by describing it as variously a “development of underdevelopment”, “super-exploitation”, “unequal exchange”, designed on the basis of centre-periphery relations, to drain such surplus value from the periphery into the imperialist centres.
The economic foundations of such theories are to be found in the ideas of the mercantilists, predating Adam Smith, let alone Marx. They see the basis of capitalist accumulation, in the imperialist centres, as deriving from this “profit on alienation”, or unequal exchange, rather than, as even Adam Smith recognised, the accumulation of industrial capital. The political foundations of the theories was the political/geostrategic interests of the soviet bureaucracy, which sought to oppose the spread of imperialist influence across the globe, on the back of the economic development that necessarily flowed from such investment. It involves denying any such development occurred, as well as denying that the dissolution of the old mercantilist colonial empires, in the 1950's. 60's, and 70's, actually meant that former colonies had become politically independent, as to it amounting only to neo-colonialism, and the continued subordination of the colonies. It also involves a denial that capitalism in the imperialist centres was capable of any further progressive role, as symbolised by Varga's law. At a time, in the 1950's, and 1960's, when workers living standards were rising by phenomenal amounts, the Stalinists had to perform ridiculous feats of statistical acrobatics to try to prove that the workers were being “immiserated”, which they defined, not as Marx had done, but in terms of falling living standards, which they claimed were only being prevented from declining further by an even greater super-exploitation of less developed economies via neo-colonialism.
If anyone was taken in by this nonsense, which western workers could see was palpably false with their own eyes, it was exposed by the fact that a number of these “super-exploited” former colonies themselves became developed economies, surpassing, in size, some former colonial powers, and themselves becoming exporters of capital. Yet, even now, there are some that claim that even China is still some form of neo-colony.
It is simply a modern version of the Moral Socialism of Sismondi, and of the Narodniks, derided by Lenin. As he puts it, talking about the progressive role played by capitalism in raising living standards and culture,
“Of course, that phenomenon is manifested primarily and most readily in the adoption of the purely outward, ostentatious aspect of “civilisation,” but only arrant reactionaries like Mr. V. V. are capable of bewailing it and seeing nothing in it but “decline.”” (p 107)
No comments:
Post a Comment