Lenin gives a long quote from the Narodnik writer, who sets out the way that the peasantry had been dispossessed of their land, not by external elements, but by other peasants. In Britain, a feature described by a number of writers at the time was how the urban bourgeoisie, some again who had arisen on this same basis of a differentiation within the petty-bourgeoisie, bought land and established capitalist farms. Often, they did not do so by becoming active farmer themselves, but by employing professional farm managers to act on their behalf.
“But the Narodnik understands this fact unsatisfactorily. He does not distinguish two antagonistic classes, the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie, the representatives of the “old nobility” and of the “new middle-class” systems, does not distinguish between different systems of economic organisation, does not see the progressive significance of the second class as compared with the first.” (p 359)
The Narodnik also fails to understand that, whilst they see the development of the bourgeoisie as somehow accidental, as being merely people who are shrewd, tricksters and so on, the reality of peasant farming, in the context of an expanding market and commodity production and exchange, necessarily converts the peasant into a petty-bourgeois.
“he accumulates “savings” and by virtue of environmental relations they turn into capital.” (p 359)
Lenin gives a long quotation from the Narodnik writer, who details the way, in Britain, the landlords had been supplanted by the capitalist farmers, and by a large petty-bourgeois social layer of shopkeepers, foremen and office workers in subordinating the mass of the people. In France, when the mass of the people had overturned the rule of the old landed aristocracy, it was the bourgeoisie that had benefited, whilst the mass of the people had gained little from land reform. All of this is set out in supposed contrast to the situation in Russia.
But, Lenin writes,
“... who in our country “took advantage of the victory over serfdom,” over the “old-nobility stratum”? Not the bourgeoisie, of course?” (p 360-1)
And, he continues in this same ironic manner to describe the way the Narodniks and others had similarly sung hymns to the people, and so on, whilst all the time the peasants were dispossessed on a mass scale, and the bourgeoisie took advantage from this defeat of the landed aristocracy. In other words, the developments in Russia followed the same course they had done in Britain and France. The method of the Narodnik was only to look at the end results, in the case of Britain and France, but did not do so in the case of Russia.
“Surely, the method should be universal. If in France you seek for interests behind the activity of the government and the intelligentsia, why do you not seek them in holy Russia? If there your criterion raises the question of what the character of people’s land tenure “turned out” to be, why is what it “may” turn out to be made the criterion here? If there, phrases about the people and its magnanimity, while the “chicken was being eaten,” fill you with legitimate disgust, why do you not here turn your backs, as you would on bourgeois philosophers, on those who, while the “eating” undoubtedly exists and is recognised by you, can talk of “social mutual adaptation,” the “community spirit of the people,” the “needs of people’s industry” and such like things?” (p 362)
The reason is, Lenin says, because the ideas promoted by the Narodniks are the ideas of the small producer, of the petty-bourgeoisie. And, the same is seen today in the positions of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”, as well as amongst assorted reformists and social-democrats. That those that promote these ideas are themselves not petty-bourgeois producers, shopkeepers, and so on does not matter. Many of them are, however, drawn from a petty-bourgeois milieu, be they students, academics, intellectuals, trades union or other bureaucrats, and so on. Rather, what matters, as Marx sets out, is that the ideas they arrive at do not rise above the ideas that the petty-bourgeoisie itself develops as a consequence of its own experiences in life.
“Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.”
(Marx – The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
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