The Economic Content of Narodism, Chapter 3 - Part 7

These limits of Struve's objectivism derive from his inadequate application of the Marxist theory, and instead of validating it, via an analysis of reality, simply measures it against conformance with an abstract logical path of development. Struve needed to concretise his propositions by testing them against Russian reality, before positing them in opposition to the Narodniks. The Marxists, too, Lenin says, had much to do in utilising the materialist method to analyse all of the various forms and class contradictions that had arisen in post-Reform Russia. It was necessary to do this in conjunction with an analysis of how these different forms and contradictions have given rise to the different ideas current in society, and within the state. So, Lenin says, going beyond the objectivist analysis of Struve is worthwhile, because, 

“however bold the attempt to indicate the solution of these problems may seem, however numerous the changes and corrections that result from further, detailed study, it is none the less worth indicating specific problems, so as to evoke as general and broad a discussion of them as possible.” (p 435) 

In order to demonstrate the inevitability of capitalism, in any country, Lenin says, it can't be done on the basis of an abstract logical argument about the superiority of factory industry. It can only be done on that basis of what is in the particular instance. In Russia, that involved an analysis of the existence of widespread commodity production and exchange. And, this resulted in a differentiation of the small producers into bourgeois and proletarians. It is this division which makes capitalism inevitable, just as much in the case of the small-scale “people's industry” as in the case of the large-scale factory. 

“The Narodniks consider capitalism in this country to be an artificial, hothouse plant, because they cannot understand the connection between it and the entire commodity organisation of our social economy, and fail to see its roots in our “people’s production.” Show them these connections and roots, show them that capitalism also dominates in its least developed and therefore worst form in people’s production, and you will prove the “inevitability” of Russian capitalism.” (p 436) 

And, Lenin also spells out a practical application of this analysis in terms of policy. Like Marx, he describes why Marxists are in favour of free trade, because of its revolutionary role. 

“Although they stress primarily and most emphatically that the problem of free trade and protection is a capitalist problem, one of bourgeois policy, the Russian Marxists must stand for free trade, since the reactionary character of protection, which retards the country’s economic development, and serves the interests not of the entire bourgeois class, but merely of a handful of all-powerful magnates, is very strongly evident in Russia, and since free trade means accelerating the process that yields the means of deliverance from capitalism.” (p 436)

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