“1) because be ignores the “actual development of Russia,” and 2) because he does not understand the class character of our state and appeals to “society” and the “state:” What arguments does Mr. Krivenko bring against this? Does he deny that our development is really capitalist? Does he say that it is of some other kind? Does he say that ours is not a class state?” (Note *, p 274)
But Krivenko's response fails to bring forward any rational objections to these changes. He does not provide any evidence against the fact that capitalist development was occurring; he does not say that the state is not a class state.
Struve also says that Danielson made serious errors in theory, in relation to economic facts. Danielson had referred to the small size of the non-agricultural population, but Struve says he,
“fails to observe that the capitalist development of Russia will smooth out this difference between 80% (rural population of Russia) “and 44% (rural population of America): “that, one might say, is its historical mission.”” (Note **, p 274)
In his response, Krivenko garbles this statement about the “historic mission” of capital, turning it into a suggestion that it was the “historic mission” of the Marxists. Of course, in the given conditions of actual capitalist development and the absence of socialism anywhere, the Marxists recognised this “historic mission of capitalism” as progressive. It represented the upward curve of human social development, and created the conditions under which society could progress towards socialism. But that did not mean that this “historic mission of capitalism” was the programme of the Marxists themselves. They were not demanding that the peasants be dispossessed and so on, they simply pointed out that such a process was unfolding, and was doing so for wholly understandable reasons, in conformity with natural historical and social laws. But the programme of the Marxists was not to remain constrained within the limits of this historic mission of capitalism, progressive as it may be, but to push through it, to outline the limits of it, and to utilise the new opportunities and social forms it creates as the basis for socialism.
The Narodniks attacked the Marxists for pointing out the progressive nature of this historic mission of capitalism by trying to turn their acknowledgement of that fact into a claim that it was in fact also the programme of the Marxists. The claim was not just an indication of their failure as subjectivists, to understand the difference between ought and is, to fail to understand that society develops on the basis of objective natural laws, but was also a dishonest means of besmirching the Marxists as political opponents.
The same is true today. The petite-bourgeois moralists may not like the fact that large-scale industrial capital is progressive vis-a-vis small capital, but it is. It is on the basis of the former that a rational planning of production can be founded, first within each enterprise, then within each industry, and then within society as a whole. As Engels says,
“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists”
(Anti-Duhring p 358)
That does not mean that the creation of such monopolies is the programme of Marxists, which instead is based on driving through the limitations that such forms confront within the framework of capitalism to the rational extension of that process in the creation of socialism. It is for that reason that demands to break up monopolies to return to less mature forms of capitalism are reactionary and why Marxists oppose such demands.
Similarly, the “anti-imperialists” may wish that it was the case that the fastest route for countries to industrialise and modernise their economies was not to attract large-scale multinational capital from foreign companies based in the “imperialist” heartlands, but it is. In the absence of a large number of socialist countries, the reality is that the best hope for undeveloped countries is a rapid capitalist development, as Engels said in his letter to Danielson.
“... capitalism opens out new views and new hopes. Look at what it has done and is doing in the West.”
And the quicker route to such development is via large-scale foreign investment. As Trotsky put it in relation to Mexico's Second Six-Year Plan.
“Considerable international capital is seeking areas of investment at the present time, even where only a modest (but sure) return is possible. Turning one’s back on foreign capital and speaking of collectivisation and industrialisation is mere intoxication with words....
There has been no socialist revolution in Mexico. The international situation does not even allow for the cancellation of the public debt. The country we repeat is poor. Under such conditions it would be almost suicidal to close the doors to foreign capital. To construct state capitalism, capital is necessary.”
(On Mexico's Second Six Year Plan)
The “anti-imperialists” may wish that there was some third way to economic development of these countries that avoids the need for large-scale capital that instead they could grow their economies from the internal resources of domestic small capital and peasant farming, based upon economic nationalism, and national socialism, but there isn't. And, attempts at the latter always end in disaster.
No comments:
Post a Comment