Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
The Economic Basis of The State (2/2)
As Lenin describes in “On The So Called Market Question”, echoing Marx's narrative in Theories of Surplus Value, the way this develops is that some of the merchant capitalists, or usurers, now, rather than simply destroying the handicraft producers, become buyers up of their products. This is the basis of the Putting Out System. They essentially buy up these products at a price that only pays the producer the equivalent of the value of their labour-power, in the same way that Marx describes happened with the Scottish pebble collectors, who sold pebbles to stone masons. At first, the despoiled handicraft producers still appear as independent producers, but, in reality, they have already been turned into wage labourers. Their labour has been formally subordinated to capital. This is the point that Lenin makes in relation to the Narodniks claims about the extent of capitalist penetration of the Russian economy in the 19th century, which failed to take account of the domination of capital beyond the realms of purely factory based wage labour.
These buyers up are able to sell commodities, not just in local markets, but also in larger, more distant markets, where prices are also higher, and where local producers cannot obtain access. As transport and communications improve, so these buyers up can produce themselves, and buy-up, commodities on a larger scale for sale into them. When markets reach a certain size, it becomes possible to bring these handicraft producers into a single manufactory. As Marx describes, in Capital I, the handicraft producers, in these workshops, still appear as independent producers. They continue to produce using the same handicraft tools and methods. Each producer, at first, negotiates a price for the sale of their output to the factory owner, which, given that the factory owner provides the materials, amounts to a price for their labour, but this price is only equal to the value of the worker's labour-power, not to the new value added by their labour. The capitalist factory owner, appropriates the surplus value produced by each worker (new value created minus value of labour-power/wages), and also, because they now benefit from economies of scale, the individual value of their commodities increasingly undercuts the production of remaining independent handicraft producers. They benefit from the additional surplus value created by cooperative labour in the context of an increasing division of labour.
More of these independent producers are then destroyed, and must join the ranks of the proletariat, their means of production being taken over by the capitalist producers, and, thereby, converted into capital. As Marx describes, a part of domestic rural labour always comprised industrial production, because the agricultural labourers needed employment during the Winter, and also needed money to pay for taxes and money rents. A large proportion of the peasants could not survive without such additional revenues. As Lenin sets out in, On The So Called Market Question, and other writings, this could be seen in Russia too. As capitalist production of industrial products expands in the towns, so too it undercuts the production of the peasant producers of things like yarn and cloth. These peasant producers, are, thereby, also ruined. They must obtain money incomes, now, by selling their labour-power, either as agricultural day labourers, or else by moving to the towns to become factory workers themselves. As Lenin says, in the same proportion as the independent producers are ruined, so the market itself increases, because they all must now meet their needs from the market rather than from their own production.
Now, with increasing numbers of peasants leaving the land to become industrial workers, the market for agricultural products expands, because these industrial workers can only meet their need for food from the market. The better placed peasant farmers, as well as the landlords, expand their production, taking over the farms of their ruined countrymen. Now, this agricultural production, on this larger scale, makes capitalist production in agriculture possible too, and gives rise to demands for agricultural reforms such as the enclosure of larger farms, and so on. As industrial production in the towns expands, along with rapidly expanding markets, so the demands for agricultural raw materials, such as wool, increases, and so large expanses of land are given over to sheep grazing, by capitalist farmers, and landlords. In this way, as Marx and Lenin describe, capitalism, which starts in the towns, migrates into the countryside.
In this way, capital expands in proportion with the expansion of the market, but for capital, this requires that some common rules exist within this market, and the economy that arises upon it, and the only body that can create and enforce such rules is the state. Some conditions for the creation of a market of a sufficient size, arise naturally. The existence of a common language and customs, for example, facilitate trade within it, as does the development of a common currency. The nation state acts to develop these conditions. It suppresses the use of languages of minority nationalities within its borders, it acts to protect the national market, on behalf of the producers within its remit, as against the attempts of foreign producers to enter it, and so on.
As Lenin puts it,
“Throughout the world, the period of the final victory of capitalism over feudalism has been linked up with national movements. For the complete victory of commodity production, the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, and there must be politically united territories whose population speak a single language, with all obstacles to the development of that language and to its consolidation in literature eliminated. Therein is the economic foundation of national movements. Language is the most important means of human intercourse. Unity and unimpeded development of language are the most important conditions for genuinely free and extensive commerce on a scale commensurate with modern capitalism, for a free and broad grouping of the population in all its various classes and, lastly, for the establishment of a close connection between the market and each and every proprietor, big or little, and between seller and buyer.
Therefore, the tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. The most profound economic factors drive towards this goal, and, therefore, for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world, the national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period.”
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