Lenin notes that subjective sociology and economics says “only the production of values is subject to solely economic laws, whereas distribution, they declare, depends on politics, on the nature of the influence exercised on society by the government, the intelligentsia and so forth. In what sense, then, does Marx speak of the economic law of motion of society, even referring to this law as a Naturgesetz—a law of nature? How are we to understand this, when so many of our native sociologists have covered reams of paper to show that social phenomena are particularly distinct from the phenomena of natural history, and that therefore the investigation of the former requires the employment of an absolutely distinct “subjective method in sociology.” (p 136)
In The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx himself points out that this view of distribution separated from production, was one adopted by Vulgar Socialism. But, it forms the basis of reformism, syndicalism, and Economism. The basis of Fabian style reformism is that capitalism can be left free to create new value and surplus value, and then, having done, so it can simply be redistributed in the direction of workers. Similarly, Economism and syndicalism eschew any understanding that distribution is determined by objective economic laws, and sees it in purely subjectivist terms of a battle of wills between workers and capitalists. They mistake superficial appearances, in relation to the distributional struggle, for the underlying material reality, which determines the eventual outcome of such struggles.
In order to further emphasise this point, that the Law of Value, as Marx describes in his Letter to Kugelmann, is a natural law, applicable to all modes of production, and from which derives the materialist conception of history, Lenin quotes Marx's comment from the Preface of Capital.
““[From] my standpoint,” says Marx, “the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history.”” (p 136)
Lenin says that the ideas of the old political economists referred to by Mikhailovsky, did not make this distinction of “modern society” made by Marx, precisely because they did not analyse society in the same way. This is not true of all of them. Smith and Ricardo honestly analysed capitalism, and recognised something different in it from feudal society. They were advocates for the industrial bourgeoisie. Ricardo becomes concerned precisely because he sees in his own law of falling profits inevitable catastrophe, and, thereby, the prospect that capitalism may not be eternal. But, they reconcile these contradictions by retrospectively applying capitalist categories to previous modes of production, so that all means of production become capital, all the differences between wage-labour, slave labour and independent peasant labour are subsumed under the generic heading of labour, and so on. As Marx says, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 24, Richard Jones is demarcated from the earlier economists in that he does see the existence of different modes of production, and capitalism as only more transient form of such.
“... they talk of society in general, they argue with the Spencers about the nature of society in general, about the aim and essence of society in general, and so forth. In their reasonings, these subjective sociologists rely on arguments such as—the aim of society is to benefit all its members, that justice, therefore, demands such and such an organisation, and that a system that is out of harmony with this ideal organisation (“Sociology must start with some utopia”—these words of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s, one of the authors of the subjective method, splendidly typify the essence of their methods) is abnormal and should be set aside.” (p 137)
Another aspect of this, as Marx elaborates in The Poverty of Philosophy, is the use of the term human nature, as though there is some constant and eternal human nature, rather than a nature that is continually changing as a result of different material conditions existing in society.
““The essential task of sociology,” Mr. Mikhailovsky, for instance, argues, “is to ascertain the social conditions under which any particular requirement of human nature is satisfied.” As you see, what interests this sociologist is only a society that satisfies human nature, and not at all some strange formations of society, which, moreover, may be based on a phenomenon so out of harmony with “human nature” as the enslavement of the majority by the minority. You also see that from the standpoint of this sociologist there can be no question of regarding the development of society as a process of natural history.” (p 137)
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