Mikhailovsky, like all bourgeois ideologists, takes categories specific to capitalism and turns them into eternal categories. So, capital is reduced to things – means of production – thereby transforming all means of production, in every social formation, into capital. Wage labour is reduced to labour, so that labour in every social formation is treated as though it were wage labour, even if it means that the independent labourer must, therefore, pay themselves their own wages. And, here, Mikhailovsky assumes that inheritance, and the family are eternal categories.
“Actually, the institution of inheritance presumes the existence of private property, and the latter arises only with the appearance of exchange. Its basis is in the already incipient specialisation of social labour and the alienation of products on the market. So long, for instance, as all the members of the primitive American Indian community produced in common all the articles they required, private property was impossible. But when division of labour invaded the community and its members proceeded, individually, to engage in the production of some one article and to sell it on the market, this material isolation of the commodity producers found expression in the institution of private property. Both private property and inheritance are categories of a social order in which separate, small (monogamous) families have already been formed and exchange has begun to develop. Mr. Mikhailovskys example proves exactly the opposite of what he wanted to prove.” (p 153-4)
And, Mikhailovsky again adopts this same bourgeois perspective in deriving the institution of the nation. He reverses the actual development. So, for Mikhailovsky, first, we have the individual family; from there we have the development of the tribe, as a collection of families, and from there the nation, as a collection of tribes. But, this is the opposite of the real historical development, as demonstrated by Morgan, and many anthropologists since. Moreover, not only is it that the family arises out of gentile society, but nor is Mikhailovsky's account accurate for more modern times.
“Mr. Mikhailovsky, evidently, borrows his ideas on the history of society from the tales taught to school children. The history of society—this copybook maxim runs—is that first there was the family, that nucleus of every society, then—we are told—the family grew into the tribe, and the tribe grew into the state. If Mr. Mikhailovsky with a solemn air repeats this childish nonsense, it merely shows—apart from everything else— that he has not the slightest notion of the course taken even by Russian history. While one might speak of gentile life in ancient Rus, there can be no doubt that by the Middle Ages, the era of the Moscovite tsars, these gentile ties no longer existed, that is to say, the state was based on associations that were not gentile at all, but local: the landlords and the monasteries acquired peasants from various localities, and the communities thus formed were purely territorial associations.” (p 154)
Lenin describes the split in these regional and principality bases, each with their own administrative peculiarities, and armies, “the local boyars went to war at the head of their own companies”, had their own tariff frontiers and so on. This was not peculiar to Russia, but could be seen in England, for example, with the division into the Heptarchy .
“Only the modern period of Russian history (approximately from the seventeenth century) is characterised by the actual amalgamation of all such regions, lands and principalities into one whole. This amalgamation, most esteemed Mr. Mikhailovsky, was brought about not by gentile ties, nor even by their continuation and generalisation: it was brought about by the increasing exchange among regions, the gradually growing circulation of commodities, and the concentration of the small local markets into a single, all-Russian market. Since the leaders and masters of this process were the merchant capitalists, the creation of these national ties was nothing else than the creation of bourgeois ties.” (p 154-5)
And, of course, this has major significance also for understanding the material basis for the progressive reality expressed in the creation of the EU. It is a perfect example for demonstrating the thoroughly reactionary nature of Brexit, and of those promoting it, including those that cloak it in the colours of Lexit. The similarity in the idealist, subjectivist approach of those on the Left (so called Lexiters) promoting that position, and of the Narodniks and their Sismondist predecessors is plain to see.
Mikhailovsky moves on from this derivation of the nation, and the power of these natural ties, relative to class ties, and the class struggle as the driver of history, to point out that despite the First International, it did not prevent French and German workers from slaughtering each other in the Franco-Prussian War. Twenty years later, an even greater manifestation of that would be seen in WWI. For Mikhailovsky, this means that materialism has not settled accounts “with the demon of national vanity and national hatred.”
What this shows, however, is his failure to understand that the material basis of this national vanity and national hatred is precisely the economic interests of national capitals. Indeed, in just the same way that, in England, these economic developments meant that the Heptarchy became one United Kingdom, with one single market, one single currency, and the same process is described above by Lenin in relation to Russia, but can be seen also in France, Italy and across Europe, i.e. the process by which the nation state is created, what the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, and WWI and II (in Europe) are about is this same drive to create a large single market, single state, and single currency, adequate to the material conditions and requirements of multinational capital. This attempt, which failed by military means, in those previous conflicts, was eventually achieved peacefully, and by mutual consent, with the creation of the EU, perhaps the most progressive historical development in European if not world history.
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