The Narodniks founded their opposition to the Marxists on the question of the installation of the bourgeois order. They attempted to brand the Marxists with a claim that they desired to deprive the peasants of their land, and to destroy the village community, so as to bring about the installation of the bourgeois order. The Narodnik writer, therefore, claims that the failure of the effort to destroy the village community was, then, a defeat for those that sought the installation of that bourgeois order. But, this was a fantasy, because the bourgeois order was already installed, and continued to develop with or without the existence of the village community.
The Narodnik writer continues with a description of the “petty efforts” that the liberals, in 1879, put forward, concluding,
“All these petty efforts go to make up a considerable force that has a degenerating effect on the countryside and increasingly splits the peasantry into two.” (p 369)
The description is a good one, Lenin says, but is equally applicable to the same “petty efforts” of the liberal Narodniks of the 1890's.
“This is precisely the reason for the Marxists’ negative attitude to such efforts. And the fact that these “efforts” are undoubtedly the immediate desiderata of the small producers—proves, in their view, that their main thesis is correct that the representative of the idea of labour is not to be seen in the peasant, since he, being a petty bourgeois under the capitalist organisation of economy, takes, accordingly, the side of this system, adheres in certain aspects of his life (and of his ideas) to the bourgeoisie.” (p 369)
The rejection of such petty efforts, of course, does not mean that Marxists reject, absolutely, all partial reforms. Marxists do not, in an ultimatist, and millennialist fashion proclaim that Socialism is the answer to every problem, or, at every point, proclaim that the only solution is “Revolution Now”, and nothing else will do. That was precisely the basis of Marx's disagreement with Guesde that led Marx to proclaim that if what the Guesdists were promoting was Marxism then he for one was no Marxist! Marx described Guesde's position as mere revolutionary phrasemongering.
But, its necessary, then, to look at what Marx was saying about the kinds of reforms that Marxists do support. In essence, those reforms are ones that liberate the workers from the constraints imposed upon them by the state, and so promote the self-organisation and self-government of the working-class in opposition to that state. So, for example, they support political reforms that enable workers to organise trades unions, friendly societies, cooperatives, and a Workers Party; they support reforms that guarantee freedom of expression and so on; they also support reforms that simply enforce, at a state level, things that workers would have to negotiate, separately, with each employer. So, for example, they negotiate, for all workers, a Ten Hour Day, and this particular reform is seen as significant by Marx, precisely because, without it, the right to organise etc., becomes meaningless, as workers would have no free-time to engage in such activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment