Struve objects to the subjectivists making individuality a primary factor in sociological theory. He refers to Simmel's “Social Differentiation” to show that individuality is conditioned by social group, and social groups are a product of differentiation. However, Lenin says Struve falls into the same error as Mikhailovsky, by making this argument in abstract terms, rather than on the basis of a concrete analysis. So, for example, Lenin says, the replacement of capitalist manufacture, based on the detail worker, by machine industry, results in an homogenisation of labour. But, rather than leading to a corresponding homogenisation of the individuality of these workers it leads to the possibility of them developing far greater individuality.
“Why could not the whole argument have been transferred to the concrete process of evolution of Russia? The author has made an attempt to formulate the question in this way, and had he adhered to it consistently his argument would have gained a great deal.” (p 413)
Mikhailovsky saw the division of labour as equivalent of Man's fall from grace, because he fetishised the old peasant production, whereby the peasant household undertook all forms of labour required for its own reproduction. This homogenised existence he sees as creating a social group sharing the same individual characteristics as also the foundation of their social solidarity. Rather than division of labour, Mikhailovsky should really have said capitalism, and even Russian capitalism.
“Capitalism is progressive in its significance precisely because it has destroyed the old cramped conditions of human life that created mental stultification and prevented the producers from taking their destinies into their own hands. The tremendous development of trade relations and world exchange and the constant migrations of vast masses of the population have shattered the age-old fetters of the tribe, family and territorial community, and created that variety of development, that “variety of talents and wealth of social relationships,” which plays so great a part in the modern history of the West. In Russia this process has been fully manifested in the post-Reform era, when the ancient forms of labour very rapidly collapsed and prime place was assumed by the purchase and sale of labour-power, which tore the peasant from the patriarchal, semi-feudal family, from the stupefying conditions of village life and replaced the semi-feudal forms of appropriation of surplus-value by purely capitalist forms. This economic process has been reflected in the social sphere by a “general heightening of the sense of individuality,” by the middle-class intellectuals squeezing the landlord class out of “society,” by a heated literary war against senseless medieval restrictions on the individual, and so on.” (p 414)
The Narodniks would admit that the Emancipation led to a heightened sense of individuality, but they do not examine what material conditions led to the Emancipation. In Russia, just as Marx describes in The Eighteenth Brumaire, in relation to France, the peasants are freed from feudal bonds, only to be bound by bourgeois bonds forged from the extension of credit.
“If the Narodnik gentlemen are filled with pharisaic horror when they hear talk of the progressive character of Russian capitalism, it is only because they do not reflect on the material conditions which make for those “benefits of progress” that mark post-Reform Russia.” (p 415)
Mikhailovsky's individualistic subjective sociology begins with the protests against the accidental nature of capitalism, in Russia, that is taking it down an unnatural path. But, Lenin says he fails to recognise that it is only capitalism that has created this individualism, along with the conditions that enable such individual protest. Here again there is seen the weakness of Struve's approach because he should have made his attack along the line of the concrete reality of conditions in Russia. The Narodniks had based their arguments on what might be for the simple reason that the facts of what was were daily destroying the foundations of the Narodnik position.
The materialist starts from facts and then determines how ideas are developed on the basis of those facts.
“The Narodnik subjectivists do exactly the opposite: they base their arguments on “ideals,” without bothering about the fact that these ideals can only be a certain reflection of reality, and, consequently, must be verified by facts, must be based on facts.” (p 416)
The same applies today to the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”. They start with an ideal “anti-capitalism” or “anti-imperialism” but do not address the facts of what, in any concrete situation, this involves. In the absence of any credible socialist alternative to capitalism or imperialism, the only other alternative is a step backwards, and is, thereby, reactionary. Simply declaring on the grounds purely of a set of ideas that the alternative to capitalism/imperialism is socialism, is simply the same kind of positing of pious wishes that the Narodniks engaged in. Unless, here and now, Socialism is on the agenda, simply declaring that your “anti-capitalism” is expressed in a demand for a non-existent socialist alternative is sheer revolutionary phrasemongering. What is more, because this socialist alternative only exists as a pious wish, a pipe-dream, of “what might be”, rather than what is, continuing with this “anti-capitalism/imperialism”, in real terms, can only mean a demand to turn the clock backwards, to some condition prior to this capitalism/imperialism, and so, consequently, is both Utopian and reactionary.
For the “anti-capitalists/Imperialists”, as much as for the Narodniks, this seems incomprehensible, because they believe that their ideals trump facts. They believe that facts are to be shaped according to their ideals.
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