Lenin then compares this material reality to how the Narodnik deals with it, by their subjectivist, sociological method. The Narodnik assures us that he is a realist who begins with the “feelings” of the handicraftsman that are hostile to the present system, and so draws up schemas of a better system. The Marxist, however, the Narodnik says, talks about “necessity” and "inevitability”, meaning that they are some kind of mystic or metaphysician. The Marxist responds that history is indeed made by living individuals, and in analysing why such individuals created the social relations existing in handicraft production, it was necessary to examine not individuals in the abstract, but the actual living individuals taking part in these events. Moreover, it was necessary to examine these events, and the individuals involved not on the basis of expressed or implied “feelings” but on the basis of “actions”. In other words, it is all very well to say that out of 1,000 peasants they express hostility to the existing system, and indicate their desire for some future Utopia, in which they could all continue to operate as prosperous, independent, small producers, but what do they do, rather than say? If, in fact, all of these peasant producers continue to produce commodities, and compete against each other – as they did – then the reality is that some will prosper, and some will be ruined. Some will become capitalist farmers, and some will become proletarians. And, once this situation arises, there is no reason why either group would want to pursue that old Utopia any longer. On the one hand, the capitalist farmers will want to become bigger, richer capitalist farmers. The proletarians will see that the old Utopia was a delusion, and that their real interest lies in their collective ownership of the large-scale, socialised capital that capitalism is creating.
“And I had a reliable criterion to show that I was dealing with real, “living” individuals, with real thoughts and feelings: this criterion was that their “thoughts and feelings” had already found expression in actions and had created definite social relations. True, I never say that “history is made by living individuals” (because it seems to me that this is an empty phrase), but when I investigate actual social relations and their actual development, I am in fact examining the product of the activities of living individuals. But though you talk of “living individuals,” you actually make your starting-point not the “living individual,” with the “thoughts and feelings” actually created by his conditions of life, by the given system of relations of production, but a marionette, and stuff its head with your own “thoughts and feelings.” Naturally, such a pursuit only leads to pious dreams; life passes you by, and you pass life by.” (p 408-9)
Lenin cites Mikhailovsky, as quoted by Struve, where he says that, as time passed, the possibility of an alternative path continually shrinks. However, what shrinks, Lenin says, is not the possibility of this alternative path that never existed, but the illusion that such an alternative path existed in the first place.
“And, a good thing too”. (Note *, p 409)
But, that is not all, Lenin says, because its also then necessary to look at what ideas the Narodnik stuffs into the head of the marionette. All of the proposals put forward by the Narodniks were for petty-bourgeois solutions that could act as nothing more than palliatives, given the nature of the economy as a capitalist economy. The proposals for artels, for example, are not at all the same as the proposals for cooperatives put forward by Marx and Engels. Marx and Engels proposals were based upon already existing, large-scale industrial capital, and the existence of an industrial proletariat already imbued with a collectivist mindset, and at least nascent socialist consciousness. Consequently, their proposals were for the development of such coops on the same scale as, and in competition with large-scale capital. As Engels says, in his Letter to Bebel.
“... as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale. It must only be so organised that society, initially the state, retains the ownership of the means of production so that the private interests of the cooperative vis-a-vis society as a whole cannot establish themselves.”
(Engels – Letter to Bebel, 20th January, 1886)
Moreover, Marx and Engels' proposals were to combine all of these cooperatives in a huge federation. Writing on behalf of the First International, Ernest Jones wrote to the Conference of Cooperators,
“Then what is the only salutary basis for co-operative industry? A NATIONAL one. All co-operation should be founded, not on isolated efforts, absorbing, if successful, vast riches to themselves, but on a national union which should distribute the national wealth. To make these associations secure and beneficial, you must make it their interest to assist each other, instead of competing with each other—you must give them UNITY OF ACTION, AND IDENTITY OF INTEREST.
To effect this, every local association should be the branch of a national one, and all profits, beyond a certain amount, should be paid into a national fund, for the purpose of opening fresh branches, and enabling the poorest to obtain land, establish stores, and otherwise apply their labour power, not only to their own advantage, but to that of the general body.
This is the vital point: are the profits to accumulate in the hands of isolated clubs, or are they to be devoted to the elevation of the entire people? Is the wealth to gather around local centres, or is it to be diffused by a distributive agency?”
Ernest Jones Letters
And, Marx's proposal was also to use credit, but not the kind of use of credit the Narodniks proposed. The Narodniks proposals for artels amounted to little more than the handicraft producers coming together on their existing basis of production, and using small scale credit to finance their operations, and improvement of their equipment. For Marx, the cooperative was the equivalent of the large joint stock company, a business bringing together hundreds of associated producers, using large-scale modern machinery, and the credit he envisages was the large-scale credit that was already being mobilised via the banks and stock exchanges to finance all of the joint stock companies. As he sets out in Capital III, Chapter 27,
“Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”
Finally, Marx recognised that even with all of this, changing the underlying social relations, the bourgeoisie would seek to frustrate it, if it threatened their power, and so it had to be combined with a struggle for political power by the workers, via the creation of a revolutionary Workers Party.
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