II - How Mr. Struve Explains Some Features of Russia’s Post-Reform Economy
Struve correctly notes that, in the 20 years following the Reform, the rise in agricultural prices was largely to the benefit of the landowners and prosperous peasants. He notes that differentiation of the peasantry had to increase, and, on the basis of the comments of local investigators, notes that the construction of railways raised the living standards of prosperous peasants who geared more production to the markets these railways opened up. The prosperous peasants, thereby, sought to rent additional land, bringing them into conflict with poorer peasants, with the former inevitably coming out on top. He cites Postnikov's work, showing that 40% of the sown area of the prosperous peasants was devoted to the market, whereas the poorer peasants increasingly lost their independence, and were reduced to selling their labour-power. Struve notes,
““The development of money economy and the growth of the population,” says the author, “lead to the peasantry splitting into two parts: one that is economically strong and consists of representatives of a new force, of capital in all its forms and stages, and the other, consisting of semi-independent peasants and real farm labourers” (239).” (p 481)
Struve, therefore, arrives at the correct conclusion that what we have, here, is not just an increase in quantitative inequality, but a qualitative change, the creation of a new social force, a new form of property. Its not just that prosperous farmers have become even more prosperous, but that they have acquired capital, and this capital also enables them to appropriate surplus value from which they can produce even more capital. They appropriate the surplus value from those that do not own capital. Where, previously, merchant capital and usurer's capital appropriated surplus value from the producer, in the form of commercial profit and interest – unequal exchange – the capitalist farmer now appropriates surplus value directly, in production, from their labour. The merchant and usurer appropriate surplus value by unequal exchange, but the capitalist farmer engages in a process of equal exchanges of values with the wage labourer. They pay the wage labourer the value of their labour-power, as wages, but appropriate the whole of the new value the labourer produces, by the exercise of their labour, and, thereby, appropriate the surplus value contained in it.
“The creation of this new force is accompanied by the creation of new types of peasant farms: firstly, of a prosperous, economically strong type that engages in developed commodity economy, crowds out the peasant poor in the renting of land, and resorts to the exploitation of the labour of others; secondly, of a “proletarian” peasantry, who sell their labour-power to capital.” (p 481)
Struve notes that this could not occur without commodity production, but as commodity production becomes dominant, these changes become inevitable. But, Struve, even here, cannot escape his Malthusianism.
“... in his view only one side of the matter finds expression in the process mentioned (“only the progressive side”), but in addition to it he sees another, the “technical irrationality of all peasant economy”: “in it expression is given, so to speak, to the retrogressive side of the whole process,” it “levels” the peasantry, smooths out inequality, operating “in connection with the growth of the population” (223-24).” (p 482)
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