Chapter 3
Struve, moves next, in his book from a consideration of sociology to a consideration of economics. His analysis suffers from the same problems of its objectivism as opposed to materialism. So, Struve begins by saying that it is ““natural and legitimate” to start from “general propositions and historical references,” from “indisputable premises established by human experience,”” (p 424) This leads to the analysis being abstract, which is a particular problem, given that Struve aimed his book at the Narodniks and their specific analysis of Russian history, and the development of its economy.
There is nothing wrong with setting out a broad framework, in which the specific analysis can be framed, but by remaining significantly at this level means that Struve cannot develop his arguments fully on the basis of the concrete analysis of Russian economic history and development. As Lenin was fond of saying, the truth is always concrete. It is precisely because the Narodniks argued that it was wrong to apply these general principles to Russia that Struve needed to do so by demonstrating their applicability in relation to the facts. Struve's objection instead leads to fatalism, and the idea that what is described in the general principles must play out in reality.
“the Narodniks’ particular way of understanding Russian reality should have been compared with the Marxists’ other way of understanding that same reality. On the other hand, the abstract character of the author’s arguments leads to his propositions being stated incompletely, to a situation where, though he correctly indicates the existence of a process, he does not examine what classes arose while it was going on, what classes were the vehicles of the process, overshadowing other strata of the population subordinate to them; in a word, the author’s objectivism does not rise to the level of materialism—in the above-mentioned significance of these terms.” (p 425)
To illustrate this relation between objectivism, Lenin quotes Marx from The Eighteenth Brumaire, in which he contrasts his materialist method with the objectivist method of Proudhon.
““Proudhon, for his part, seeks to represent the coup d’état [of Dec. 21 as the result of an antecedent historical development. Unnoticeably, however, his historical construction of the coup d’état becomes a historical apologia for its hero. Thus he falls into the error of our so-called objective historians. I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part”” (Note *, p 425)
The Narodniks presented a romanticised version of Russian “people's history”, in which, under natural economy, the direct producers were owners of their means of production, but this rural idyll was a fantasy that only existed in their heads. Struve is quite right, Lenin says, to point to the fact that, throughout Russian history, “people's industry” had been inseparable from a dependency on the lords.
“In the period of natural economy the peasant was enslaved to the landowner, he worked for the boyar, the monastery, the landlord, but not for himself...” (p 425)
The Narodniks set out this fairytale about the peasant's ownership of the means of production, because, on this basis, instead of analysing the expropriation of the peasantry, in the context of the replacement of the appropriation of the peasant's surplus labour/product, via rent, with the extraction of surplus value by profit, the Narodniks could explain it solely in terms of the accidental development of capitalism, as the country diverged on to an unnatural path.
“And they were not ashamed to tell these absurd stories about a country which had but recently seen the end of the feudal exploitation of the peasantry in the grossest, Asiatic forms, when not only did the means of production not belong to the producer but the producers themselves differed very little from “means of production.” Mr. Struve very pointedly sets against this “sugary optimism” Saltykov’s sharp rejoinder about the connection between “people’s production” and serfdom, and about how the “plenty” of the period of the “age-old basis” “fell only” [note that!] “to the lot of the descendants of the leibkampantsi and other retainers” (83).” (p 426)
No comments:
Post a Comment