Back in the 1950's, the economist Colin Clark demonstrated that if all of global agriculture was undertaken on the same basis as that in Denmark (which was from being the most advanced), then, without any additional land being cultivated, it was possible to feed a global population several times larger than that which existed, and to feed it to the same standard as that of the people of Denmark. (See: Food, Population and Development)
In fact, even in Brazil, the more developed capitalist farms are moving in that direction. For example, new types of crop, and the use of new techniques mean that where one crop was previously only possible per year, today two or even three crops can be harvested during the year. The FT reported a while ago,
“Using new varieties of seeds that have allowed them to shorten soya and corn crop cycles, Brazilian farmers in the country’s centre-west savannah areas have moved from planting one crop to incorporating the second, the safrinha. In some areas where irrigation is available they are even contemplating a third harvest.
The corn crop has benefited most from the safrinha. In the 2012-13 year, corn output is expected to total nearly 80m tonnes, up from about 56mt in 2011. Soyabeans, meanwhile, are estimated at more than 80mt compared with about 75mt in 2011.”
The actions of burning the rainforest, are in fact, the actions of farmers who do not have access to the same amounts of capital, so as to be able to farm capital-intensively, and so who must try to compete by farming more extensively, and more aggressively and less efficiently.
For the Narodniks, who saw large-scale capitalist production, they could easily identify it with the exploitation of workers, in the same way that, today, the “anti-imperialists” identify “imperialism”, and the “anti-capitalists” identify the monopolies and oligopolies, but are rarely to be found protesting against the small capitalists, who are the worst exploiters of workers. It is these small capitalists who, because their businesses are small and under capitalised, are, thereby, less efficient, and unable to compete that leads them to more aggressively exploit their workers, via poorer wages and lower conditions, in the same way that inefficient small farmers are led to do the same with their attitude to the land. Even when they pay lower wages, and provide worse conditions to their workers, than large companies, their lower productivity means that they obtain a lower rate of surplus value. Even if their lower capitalisation means that they obtain a higher rate of profit, their mass of profit is tiny, compared to that of a large company, and so the largest part of it is absorbed in the unproductive consumption of the private capitalist owner, rather than being available as profit of enterprise for accumulation. And, as Marx explains this is true also for backward economies where productivity levels are low.
The Narodniks could not explain how large scale capitalist enterprises appeared, therefore, other than by them somehow being something unnatural, imposed on the country by the state, and via the operation of foreign capital. The latter view was encouraged by the fact that many of the large enterprises were, indeed, foreign owned, but this was no different, in Russia, to the situation in Britain, France, Germany or the USA, where large companies in one country, when they expanded, did so into other developed capitalist economies. For example, Engels' family textile business, in Germany, also operated in Manchester.
“The result was an irreconcilable contradiction, an incongruity; where this large-scale capitalism could have come from, since there was nothing capitalist in the production relations of the handicraft industries (which had not been studied!)—passed comprehension. The conclusion follows naturally: failing to understand the connection between handicraft and capitalist industry they contrasted the former to the latter, as “people’s” to “artificial” industry. The idea appears that capitalism contradicts our “people’s system”—an idea that is very widespread and was quite recently presented to the Russian public in a revised and improved edition by Mr. Nikolai-on. (Danielson)” (p 214)
But, the facts relating to the capitalist nature of the so called “people's industry” were clear, as the data collated by Lenin demonstrates. The view presented by the Narodnik socialists, however, persisted, Lenin says, because of inertia.
“... factory capitalism is judged on the basis of what it actually is in reality, whereas handicraft industry is judged on the basis of what it “might be”; the former on the basis of an analysis of production relations, the latter without even an attempt to examine the production relations separately, the matter being directly transferred to the sphere of politics.” (p 214)
The only difference is that the “people's industry” was a more embryonic form of capitalism, and consequently, as Marx had set out, more onerous, because, whilst it brings all of the ills of capitalism, it brings few, or none, of the benefits of the more developed capitalism, whilst continuing to impose all of the evils carried over from previous modes of production.
"Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! [The dead holds the living in his grasp. – formula of French common law]"
If the “people's industry” was actually analysed in detail, Lenin says, it would be found that there was less difference between the factory capitalist owner and larger handicraft producer than between the latter and smaller handicraft producers.
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