According to Danielson, capitalism was failing in its “historic mission”, in Russia, because, although it was destroying the economic basis of the Russian peasant village, it was failing to provide an alternative that unified society in the same way. This the view of the functionalist bureaucrat. It was the subjectivist view taken by Vorontsov.
“... if it is fulfilling its “mission,” let it in; if not, “keep it out!”” (p 310)
But, framed in this way, it is a very narrow view of the “historic mission” of capital that has nothing to do with the concept as advanced by Marx.
“As Marx saw it, the progressive and revolutionary work of capitalism consists in the fact that, in socialising labour, it at the same time “disciplines, unites and organises the working class” by the mechanism of that very process, it trains them for the struggle, organises their “revolt,” unites them to “expropriate the expropriators,” seize political power and wrest the means of production from the “few usurpers” and turn them over to society (Capital, p. 650).” (p 310)
In fact, Lenin's own interpretation, here, is also not accurate, nor consonant with his own earlier argument and elaboration of Marx's method. As Lenin said earlier, Marx does not make predictions about the future, only statements about the present. Marx's comments in Capital I, in relation to “the expropriation of the expropriators” does not refer to some future event, when workers seize control of the means of production. In Capital I, in this passage, Marx is describing the “fetter on accumulation” represented by the monopoly of private capital. In other words, he is describing the fact that the scale of production, and requirements for capital accumulation, had now gone beyond the bounds of the family owned private concerns, even in respect of the richest families. This fetter, represented by the monopoly of privately owned capital is burst asunder, not by a proletarian revolution, but by capital assuming the more mature form of socialised capital, in the shape of the cooperative and joint stock company. It is this which brings about the expropriation of the expropriators, as Marx sets out in Capital III, Chapter 27, and through which arises the “abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself.” (Capital III, Ch. 27)
The whole point about this process, described by Marx, in Capital III, Chapter 27, is that this “expropriation of the expropriators” had already happened, and was continuing to happen, as socialised capital became dominant. The small number of capitalists constituting the dominant section of the ruling class no longer owned means of production, which were now socialised, but owned fictitious capital, in the form of share and bonds, and their derivatives. The whole point, now, was for workers to bring the legal and political superstructure into alignment with this economic and social reality. They had to prevent the shareholders from exercising control over capital they did not own, and to do that, the workers had to change company law, which they could only do by taking political power.
But, the Narodniks and Legal Marxists interpreted the “historic mission” in terms only of whether it was leading to larger concentrations of factory workers under one roof. So, they sought to prove that capitalism was not fulfilling its historic mission, and so some other route to development had to be found. One of the arguments they advanced was that Russian capitalism had experienced crises in 1880 and 1893, as a result of which unemployment had risen. These examples of the evils of capitalism were no different to to those advanced earlier by Sismondi, and his followers. Not only do they fail to understand the contradictory nature of capitalist development, and so fail to identify the progressive role it also plays, but, as Lenin points out, they were wasted. They were wasted because they were addressed to society and to the state. But, the state was the state of the plutocracy, which had no interest in holding back this capitalist development from which it was making fabulous profits.
“The intelligentsia perceive all this and ceaselessly threaten that “we” are again heading for a crash.” (p 311)
The longing for an economic crash is characteristic of the catastrophists of today. Having failed to convince workers that their vision of socialism, or their practical means of delivering it, are better than the life capitalism currently provides them, their only thought of possible salvation is if capitalism itself suffers catastrophe, so that workers may eventually listen to their offer. The trouble is that all history shows that in all such periods of catastrophe, the masses turn to the forces of reaction no revolution. In Russia, for certain sections, an economic crisis was indeed unfolding. Small producers continued to go out of business, small peasants were forced out of agriculture, and so on. All of this was just the other side of an even more rapid concentration and centralisation of capital.
“The Russian bourgeoisie, however, “listens but goes on eating.” While the “intelligentsia” seek new paths, the bourgeoisie undertake gigantic projects for the construction of railways to their colonies, where they create a market for themselves, introducing the charms of the bourgeois system to the young countries and there, too, creating an industrial and agricultural bourgeoisie with exceptional rapidity, and casting the mass of the producers into the ranks of the chronically starving unemployed.” (p 312)
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