Without an acceptance of all this, it, in fact, becomes impossible to understand how this commodity production, enables the accumulation of this surplus value as commercial capital, and financial capital, and consequently, the historical process of the development of a bourgeoisie, the primary accumulation of capital, and, thereby, the development of capitalism itself.
But, then, Roberts also appears to reject Marx, Engels and Lenin's analysis of the development of capitalism first as industrial capital in the towns, and instead puts forward a subjectivist concept in which capitalism somehow first appears in agriculture as a result of peasants being ejected from their land, by ruthless capitalist landlords, which itself is entirely contrary to the theory of historical materialism, and without material or logical foundation. How would landlords become “capitalist landlords” without first capital and capitalism having come into existence, so as to produce capitalist ideology?
The material basis of capitalist production in agriculture, or industry, is the existence of large markets for commodities, which enables capitalist production to be undertaken on the required minimum scale to be able to undercut existing independent commodity producers. Where were these large markets to come from, unless capitalism had already developed in the towns, thereby, creating a large number of consumers for these agricultural products be they as food or raw materials? The whole thing in Robert's presentation is upside down. As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, and Lenin describes in “On The So Called Market Question”, it is only logically and historically possible for capitalism to develop first as industrial capital, in the towns, for a range of industrial commodities, and then to spread later to agriculture.
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| Lenin demonstrates, here, that capitalism begins in the towns, as the result of an increasing social division of labour, with independent commodity producers specialising in the production of different commodities, thereby creating a market for these commodities. Some of these independent commodity producers prosper, whilst others fail. The former take over the latter's means of production (or they may be taken over by commercial or financial capitalists), and the failed producers become wage workers, either via the Putting Out System, or employed in workshops. They also undermine the domestic industrial production of peasant households, who also then begin to fail. By this means capital ultimately enters agriculture too, with some peasants prospering and taking over the land of their failed neighbours, and becoming capitalist farmers. |
In fact, Robert's presentation is closer to the objectivist theory of Struve than the materialist theory of Marx, Engels and Lenin. It is a combination of that objectivism combined with the subjectivism of the Narodniks. Roberts starts from an hypothesis that capitalism evolves due to some objective logical process, and then links it back to an assumption about it developing in agriculture due to evil capitalist landlords evicting peasants. But, as Lenin asks, what is the process by which these landlords suddenly become capitalists rather than feudal lords? The feudal system is based upon the ability of the landlord to extract rent, as a result of their ownership of land, and social rank.
On the one hand, they have serfs employed on their own land, who provide corvee labour, or Labour Rent. That is the serf is allowed to work a plot on the landlord's land, a part of their working-week (necessary labour) being required for their own reproduction, the other part of the week, spent working on the Lord's land (surplus labour, or rent) producing a surplus product consumed by the Lord, and their retainers. On the other hand, the free holding peasants, own their own land, upon which they can produce to meet their own needs (necessary labour), as well as to produce a surplus (surplus labour) part of which is handed over as feudal rent (Rent In Kind), or is sold as commodities, and paid as Money Rent, with any additional surplus accumulated as additional means of production, horses, oxen etc.
The feudal lord, under such conditions, has no material or logical reason to eject peasants from their land, because it is from such that they derive rent. The more peasants on their land, the more rent. The landlord would only have a logical and material basis for ejecting peasants, and so reducing their ability to collect rent, if either a) the landlord could become a capitalist producer, supplying large quantities of commodities to market, which justified a conversion from existing forms of production to capitalist production, or b) the landlord could eject existing peasant producers, and replace them with capitalist farmers, who would now pay a capitalist rent to the landlord. Its true that after 1400 some common land was enclosed, and turned over to sheep, but a) this mostly did not involve evicting peasants from that land on any large-scale, and b) the motivation for it, was an increased demand for wool, subsequent to an increase in woollen cloth production, resulting from capital starting to enter textile production in the towns.
But, its quite clear that the required market for these agricultural commodities cannot come from the displaced peasants themselves. Firstly, even the serfs can produce enough agricultural products to meet their own requirements, and that is more so the case with the free holding peasant. So, they could not form the basis of any large market for agricultural products. That they are put into such a position can only arise, if they are first dispossessed of their land. But, for the landlord to decide to dispossess the peasants of their lands, so that they can exploit them, by paying them wages, rather than extracting surplus value in the form of feudal rent, first requires that those landlords themselves develop, in their heads, the ideas upon which capitalism itself is based. In other words, it is the very opposite of the theory of historical materialism, and an explanation of this historical change on the basis of subjectivism not materialism. It requires the landlord to acquire capitalist class consciousness, as the precondition of becoming a capitalist, rather than vice versa!
The large markets for agricultural products can only first come from the towns, and the existence there of industrial capital, which requires those commodities, a) to provide the means of subsistence of its wage workers (and indeed of the capitalists themselves), and b) the increased volumes of raw materials required for processing, such as wool. Its this process that Lenin describes, in detail, in relation to Russia, which sees, particularly after the Reform, the large expansion of commodity production, as the peasants produce commodities to supply to the industrial capital of the towns, which, in turn creates the conditions for a differentiation of the peasantry, and then the invasion of agriculture itself by capital.
As Lenin puts it,
"As capitalism develops, agriculture always and everywhere, lags behind commerce and industry, it is always subordinate to them and is exploited by them and it is always drawn by them, only later on, onto the path of capitalist production."
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