The Narodnik writer continues with their detailed critique of Russian bourgeoisdom, of the way the tax system oppressed the poor, of the way usury imposed itself on them, especially in terms of the cost of buying their allotments, whilst state credits found their way into the hands of the richer peasants. All fine, Lenin says, and from which you might have thought that the Narodnik would conclude the need to turn away from solutions rooted in this bourgeoisdom, and instead in the realm of the Russian proletariat. Instead, the Narodniks sought to deal with these issues, created by bourgeoisdom, by the use of bourgeois solutions of their own. For example, having noted the problems emanating from credit, the Narodniks could only put forward as their own solution the extending of credit to the poor peasants.
In Capital III, Chapter 27, Marx notes that, with the development of socialised capital, in the form of the worker cooperatives, credit provided the means of gradually extending them on a national scale. But, Marx, is discussing this, in the context of the extension of socialised capital, of capital that is no longer private property, but is property collectively owned by the “associated producers”. However, the Russian peasants, despite the Narodnik delusions, were imbued with a petty-bourgeois, individualist spirit. The extension of credits to poor peasants was not going to be part of a project to create large, industrial scale, collectivised farming, by those peasants, it was simply part of a petty-bourgeois fantasy based on the separate development of those independent peasant households.
As soon as socialised capital arises, the old situation, in which the individual producer could no longer mobilise the required capital to compete, disappears, because, now, all production takes place on the basis that the functioning-capitalist, the capitalist who sets all of this productive-capital in motion, does so by first borrowing the required money-capital. The functioning-capitalist is characterised, Marx says, by the fact that they do not own capital themselves. So, it does not matter whether this functioning capitalist is some clever young entrepreneur, with a bright new idea, a collection of such individuals, or a large collection of workers, who seek to engage in production. They all have the same theoretical capacity to go into the money market and simply borrow the money-capital required to engage in production on at least the minimum efficient scale. So long as the rate of profit is higher than the rate of interest they incur, they can repay the borrowed capital, and accumulate additional capital.
In their further description of the plight of the peasants, the Narodnik writer talks of “spontaneous forces” being at work, and the “wheel of history turning”. These spontaneous forces were, of course, the continued development of the bourgeoisie, an expansion of capitalist production. Yet, when the Marxists described such developments, the Narodniks derided them for doing so, calling them “mystics” and “metaphysicians”.
“The difference—and a very substantial one—between the above-cited admission of the Narodnik and the ordinary proposition of the Marxists is only this—for the Narodnik these “spontaneous forces” boil down to “tricksters” who “insinuate themselves into life,” whereas for the Marxist the spontaneous forces are embodied in the bourgeois class, which is a product and expression of social “life,” which in its turn constitutes the capitalist social formation, and do not “insinuate themselves into life” by accident or from somewhere outside.” (p 349-50)
This Narodnik view, characterising the capitalists as tricksters is similar to the way, today, social-democrats attack the rich and corporations for avoiding tax, or other sharp practice, thereby, completely missing the main point that even if they paid all the tax they owed and more, even if they were the very model of the enlightened employer, it would not change one bit the fact that these businesses operate on the basis of the exploitation of workers' labour. In fact, in terms of model employer behaviour those larger businesses are usually superior to the behaviour of the small employers. As Engels puts it,
“Though not expressly stated in our recognised treatises, it is still a law of modern Political Economy that the larger the scale on which capitalistic production is carried on, the less can it support the petty devices of swindling and pilfering which characterise its early stages. The pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative in Europe of commerce in its lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so well in his own country, and are generally practised there, he finds to be out of date and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and, again, the commission agent who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months, finds out that in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native country. The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and trouble. And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer and his “hands.”...
And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages. And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself.”
By focusing on the nature of capitalists as tricksters, the Narodniks similarly avoided the content of class antagonism and class struggle.
“And, naturally, from this point of view it really will be absolutely incomprehensible where the class struggle comes in, when it is all a matter of merely eliminating “tricksters.” Naturally, Messrs. the Narodniks answer the Marxists’ emphatic and repeated references to this struggle with the totally incomprehending silence of one who sees only the “trickster” and not the class.
A class can only be fought by another class, and only by one that is already totally “differentiated” from its enemy, totally opposite to it, whereas the police alone, and in an extreme case “society” and the “state,” are, of course, enough to fight the “tricksters.”” (p 350)
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