The point about Marx's method and theory, derived from this, is that, until society reaches a level of social productivity whereby every member of it is enabled to enjoy a high standard of living, so that labour is undertaken not out of material necessity, but purely as an expression of humanity, and its creativity, then the material foundations of the division of society into classes will persist. But, this division of society itself, thereby, fulfils a progressive function, because it is only by these means that the development of the productive forces is driven forward. To raise the level of the productive forces to enable socialism, not only must technology be developed to a very high degree, but the productive forces must themselves be concentrated and centralised to a high degree, which requires production and labour to be socialised. It is this historic task that capitalism achieves. It is no accident that, in the age of capitalism, therefore, the “shrewd individuals” who prosper are capitalists, nor that the state that facilitates them is a capitalist state.
“The Narodnik, who considers the bourgeoisie an accident, sees no connection between them and the state, and with the credulity of a “simple-minded muzhik” appeals for aid precisely to the one who guards bourgeois interests. His activity boils down to the modest and precise, official liberal activity that is on a par with philanthropy, for it does not seriously affect the “interests” and holds no terror for them at all. The Marxist turns his back on this hotchpotch, and says that there can be no other “guarantees for the future” than the “stern struggle of economic classes.”” (p 357)
Given these different perspectives, the Marxist then abstains from pointless deliberations of what might have been, or what might be, and, instead focuses on explaining the necessity and inevitability, given the material conditions, of what is, of the development and dominance of the bourgeoisie and, thereby, of the capitalist state. The Narodniks, and other such romantics and subjectivists, on the other hand, simply illustrate their impotence.
And, this romanticism extends into the programme of the Narodniks, in relation to the development of the productive forces in Russia. Marx, in his Preface to Capital I, had written that those countries that developed capitalism later, could indeed enjoy benefits compared to those that developed earlier. They could go straight to the latest technologies, and so on. But, he also points out that, partly for this very reason, these countries endure evils that the countries that had developed capitalism earlier had already overcome.
“But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead”
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