In Part II, Lenin examined the economic objections of Yuzhakov to materialism and Marxism, in a similar way to his examination of Mikhailovsky's philosophical and sociological objections in Part I. Although Part II has never been discovered, we know this, because Lenin makes reference to it, at the start of Part III. Having tackled the general objections of Narodism, to Marxism, on the theoretical/ideological grounds of philosophy, sociology, economics and politics, Lenin now turns to an examination of the Narodnik's own programme and tactics. He does so by examining a series of articles by the Narodnik, Krivenko.
One of the features of Narodism, discussed earlier, was the way it treated data superficially, and by taking average and aggregated data, denied both the differentiation of the peasantry, and the extent to which capitalist production had already taken hold of the economy. Lenin refers to the way Yuzhakov had done this in relation to land renting, and handicraft industry. In the previous economic articles, by Lenin, which I have examined in this series, he showed how a closer examination of that economic data indicated that the vast majority of land renting was done by rich peasants, whose commodity production for the market gave them money to be able to rent additional land, as well as to buy additional animals and machinery, and to hire wage labour. In other words, this was already capitalist production. But, the same was true in handicraft production. Capitalism begins first in the towns, in industrial production, which first assumes the form of handicraft production, before becoming manufacture, and then machine industry.
The Narodniks wanted to present capitalism, and capitalist production, only as that undertaken by very rich capitalists, and by large-scale machine production. Something similar is seen today. Stalinists, for example, have a peculiar objection to the more mature forms of capitalism, such as monopoly, whilst seeking to form “anti-monopoly alliances” with the reactionary small capitalists against it. Third Worldists, and crude “anti-imperialists” have an objection to large-scale, foreign, “imperialist” capital being invested in developing economies, which would be a much faster route to their development, and instead seek to make alliances with the domestic, nationalist bourgeoisie, which is invariably reactionary, and represents those same elements of the domestic small capitalists.
“Now Mr. Krivenko repeats exactly the same sort of phrases about handicraft industries. He flatly contrasts “our people’s industry,” i.e., handicraft industries, to capitalist industry (No. 12, pp. 180-81). “People’s production” (sic!), says he, “in the majority of cases arises naturally,” whereas capitalist industry “is very often created artificially.”” (p 205-6)
These kinds of phrases about “artificial” capitalist development are again to be found in the works of Stalinists and Third Worldists, alongside phrases about the development of underdevelopment, super-exploitation, and other such nonsense. The first assumes that there is some “normal” path of development that has been diverged from, a concept which itself is wholly antithetical to materialism and Marxist analysis, which starts from what is, and not what ought to be. The second has been disproved by the rapid development of a whole series of previously less developed economies, the truth of which is only denied by the Stalinists and Third Worldists, by engaging in the kind of logical and statistical contortions that they engaged in in the postwar period to try to claim that Varga's Law was still intact, and capitalism was close to collapse. The latter relies on an economic analysis and explanation of profit, and the wealth of nations that is attributable to the mercantilists, and so before even Adam Smith, let alone Marx. It explains profit as profit on alienation, or unequal exchange, rather than from the production and appropriation of surplus value.
In fact, as Marx demonstrates, on the basis of his analysis of the source of profit and growth, and the wealth of nations, it is not the labourers in the less developed economy that are super-exploited, but those in the advanced economies, where the amassing of fixed capital has massively raised labour productivity and brought about a consequent rise in relative surplus value, and rate of exploitation.
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