Tuesday 1 December 2020

The Economic Content of Narodism, Chapter 1 - Part 16

The ability of these forces, be they conservative/reactionary on the one hand, or progressive social democratic/socialist on the other to actually move the dial is highly constrained, because the dial can only be moved by first moving the balance of class forces in society, by replacing the dominance of one social class by that of another, and that requires far more than simply a change of government or political regime. It requires a social revolution, a revolution in the relations of production and social relations established upon them. It implies a fundamental change in the ownership and control of the means of production from one class to another. That is why workers must obtain control over socialised capital, in order to move forward from the current transitional phase of social democracy to Socialism. But, it is also why the reactionary agenda of the Brexiteers, who want to move backwards from that current transitional phase of social-democracy, based upon large-scale socialised capital, is also Utopian. There can be no move backwards to an economy based upon small-capitalist production, and rampant free competition, because it would destroy the economy, and the power of the British state. Still less could such an economy survive for long on the basis of Brexit, and an isolated, increasingly powerless British state. 

Is the state like a wheel or a top, the Narodnik asks, that simply moves forward driven by inevitable fate? 

“Oh no, we might answer him—it is not a top, nor a wheel, nor the law of fate, nor the will of providence: it is moved by “living individuals,” “through a lane of obstacles” (such, for example, as the resistance of the direct producers, or the representatives of the stratum of the old nobility), by precisely those “living individuals” who belong to the preponderant social force. And so, in order to compel the wheel of history to turn in the other direction, one must appeal to “living individuals” against “living individuals” (i.e., against social elements who do not belong to the liberal professions, but who directly reflect vital economic interests), appeal to a class against a class.” (p 355-6) 

And, this class could not be the peasantry or the small producers, who were themselves not fully differentiated from the bourgeoisie, but could only be the industrial proletariat. 

“This is the only and hence the nearest “road to human happiness,” a road along which one can not only soften the negative aspects of the existing state of things, not only cut its existence short by speeding up its development, but put an end to it altogether, by compelling the “wheel” (not of state, but of social forces) to turn in quite another direction.” (p 356) 

Lenin cites a long passage from the Narodnik writer in which he sets out the important social function that the bourgeoisie performs. This function Lenin summarises as the subordination of social labour to themselves, and the direction of it, thereby, raising the level of social productivity. 

“The author cannot but see that economic “progress” is really “bound up” with these elements, i.e., that our bourgeoisie really are the vehicle of economic, or more exactly, technical progress.” (p 356-7) 

Marxists also recognise this progressive role played by the bourgeoisie. However, there is a distinction. The Narodnik, as representative of the small producer, sees this function played by the bourgeoisie and puts it down simply to the actions of shrewd individuals, who use opportunities to their own advantage. 

“... in other words, he considers this accidental and for that reason draws the following naïvely bold conclusion: “undoubtedly these people can always (!) be replaced by others” who will also provide progress, but not bourgeois progress.” (p 357) 

In other words, it is a purely subjectivist assessment. “Shrewd individuals” undoubtedly do take advantage of the situation that presents itself to them, but the Narodnik fails to ask the question of what determines the specific character of the situation presented to them. What are the specific material conditions that constitute the situation they take advantage from? 

“The Marxist explains this fact by those social relations of people in the production of material values that take form in commodity economy, that convert labour into a commodity, subordinate it to capital and raise its productivity. He does not regard it as an accident, but a necessary product of the capitalist system of our social economy. He therefore sees a way out not in fairy-tales about what “undoubtedly can” be done by individuals who replace the bourgeois (the latter, bear in mind, have still to be “replaced”—and mere words or appeals to society and the state are not enough), but in the development of the class contradictions of the present economic order.” (p 557) 

And, indeed, the whole point of he historical materialist method is the identification of the fact that, in each mode of production, it is the coincidence of these material conditions with the interests of “shrewd individuals” that enables them to prosper, just as it is changed conditions in nature that enables the members of different species that have particular characteristics to flourish, so that those characteristics become genetically preponderant, leading eventually to a differentiation of species, as the process of evolution by natural selection. As Marx puts it in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, in relation to Ricardo's scientific method. 

“the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.”


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