Marx had discerned that the existing form of property, feudal landed property, which gave rise to a landed aristocracy as ruling class, had been supplanted by new forms of property, capital, which gives rise to a new ruling class, the bourgeoisie. It is this new form of property that is then progressive, it drives society and social development forward. This bourgeoisie had itself arisen out of one of the old classes of feudal society, the peasantry and petty commodity producers, as it differentiated into two groups, the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Now, as capital develops, it too creates new material conditions, and new social relations. The process of capital accumulation it engenders leads to a concentration and centralisation of capital, and the end result of this process is to destroy capital itself as private property. Capital as private property is destroyed and becomes socialised capital, as cooperatives and joint stock companies, a process that Marx describes as “the expropriation of the expropriators”. The capitalists themselves are then removed from any social function, their place in production is taken by workers, who become professional managers, “functioning capitalists” who do not individually own, but borrow, capital to utilise in production. The only role of the private capitalist is then as money-lending capitalists. The socialised capital is itself then the collective property of the associated producers, the workers and managers within the firm, and it is this form of property that now becomes progressive, and to which all forward movement should be directed.
The Narodniks attacked the Marxists because the latter saw large-scale capitalist production as progressive. As Lenin puts it, in opposition to the Narodniks who saw capitalism as a backward step compared to the independence of the peasant producer,
“Yes, the Marxists do consider large-scale capitalism progressive—not, of course, because it replaces “independence” by dependence, but because it creates conditions for abolishing dependence.”
(ibid)
As Lenin was to put it a decade later,
“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.”
As soon as society goes past its current stage of development, and creates Socialism, capitalism will become reactionary. But until such time as that happens, capitalism remains progressive, and its more mature form as socialised capital, as multinational capital, i.e. as imperialism, is its most progressive form. The route to socialism, as Lenin sets out above, continues to run through the continued development of capitalism/imperialism, so that the antagonistic contradiction inherent within it is raised to ever higher levels, so that the progressive element within that forward movement, represented by the role of the proletariat is enhanced.
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