And, it is this development of the productive forces, by capitalism, that is, as Marx had described, its historic mission. It is why, as Marx had set out, socialism becomes possible only on the basis of this most advanced development of capitalism. Marxists do not seek to retard such development, as the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists” do, but, on the contrary, to seek its most rapid and free development, its most rational development, according to the social laws uncovered by Marx. Only on that basis, do those contradictions, inherent within it, reach their most acute form, opening the door for the transition to socialism. If we take Lenin's comment above, for example, about the “expropriation of the expropriators”, then, as Marx describes in Capital I, Chapter 25, and in Capital III, Chapter 27, this happens itself, automatically, as a result of this rational free development of capital. The process of capital accumulation and concentration and centralisation of capital brings about the expropriation of the expropriators, because socialised capital, in the form of the joint stock company, and cooperative expropriates even the largest private capitalists. As Marx puts it,
“The capital, which in itself rests on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labour-power, is here directly endowed with the form of social capital (capital of directly associated individuals) as distinct from private capital, and its undertakings assume the form of social undertakings as distinct from private undertakings. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself...
This result of the ultimate development of capitalist production is a necessary transitional phase towards the reconversion of capital into the property of producers, although no longer as the private property of the individual producers, but rather as the property of associated producers, as outright social property. On the other hand, the stock company is a transition toward the conversion of all functions in the reproduction process which still remain linked with capitalist property, into mere functions of associated producers, into social functions...
Expropriation extends here from the direct producers to the smaller and the medium-sized capitalists themselves. It is the point of departure for the capitalist mode of production; its accomplishment is the goal of this production. In the last instance, it aims at the expropriation of the means of production from all individuals. With the development of social production the means of production cease to be means of private production and products of private production, and can thereafter be only means of production in the hands of associated producers, i.e., the latter's social property, much as they are their social products.”
(Capital III, Chapter 27)
And, as Marx and Engels set out, in Anti-Duhring, the logical conclusion of this development, when the private capitalists step away from their social function in production, and become purely “coupon clipping”, money-lending capitalists, is to expose this blatant exploitation even more. There can be no further reason for the workers not to exercise control over this socialised capital, and thereby to bring to an end their exploitation. Far from seeking to be petty-bourgeois “anti-capitalists” or “anti-imperialists”, Marxists are pro-capitalist, and pro-imperialist (in the sense of capitalism becoming a global rather than national system), and seek its most rapid development, as the means of facilitating the progress towards socialism.
“Everywhere else, where the forms of capitalist development are low, these material conditions are absent; production is scattered among thousands of tiny enterprises (and they do not cease to be scattered enterprises even under the most equalitarian forms of communal landownership), for the most part the exploited still possess tiny enterprises and are thus tied to the very bourgeois system they should be fighting: this retards and hinders the development of the social forces capable of overthrowing capitalism. Scattered, individual, petty exploitation ties the working people to one locality, divides them, prevents them from becoming conscious of class solidarity, prevents them from uniting once they have understood that oppression is not caused by some particular individual, but by the whole economic system. Large-scale capitalism, on the contrary, inevitably severs all the workers’ ties with the old society, with a particular locality and a particular exploiter; it unites them, compels them to think and places them in conditions which enable them to commence an organised struggle.” (p 300)
Lenin provides three appendices. The first details statistics mostly based on those outlined in previous works, and which I do not propose, therefore, to cover. They can be viewed here. The second deals with the Narodnik attack on Struve, for his analysis of economic romanticism, and its reflection in the work of Danielson and others. As I will be dealing with that in more detail in looking at the next work by Lenin, in The Economic Content of Narodism, I will examine this appendix only in summary. In the third appendix, Lenin deals with the actual Marxist method and position, as opposed to its description by “The Friends of the People”.
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