Struve's analysis remained at the level of abstraction, to which he tacks on his Malthusian doctrine about overpopulation arising due to population rising more than proportionally to the means of subsistence. But, there is nothing, even in his own presentation, that confirms such a thesis, and that cannot be explained by Marxism. If we start with a more or less equal and uniform peasantry, the introduction of commodity production means that, even initial minor variations become exaggerated, in the manner described by chaos theory.
Market fluctuations, the small initial advantages of of some producers compared to others, results in money accumulating with some, with which they buy additional animals, more and better implements etc. As a result, their initial advantages are magnified. They accrue more money, they buy more animals, more implements and rent additional land. They employ additional labour. Even if they buy this labour as a labour-service (rather than as wage labour, i.e. labour-power) it produces, for them, surplus value, because, employed on their land, with their superior implements, and animals, it acts like complex labour. But, as the rich farmers accumulate more money, and some peasants are ruined, and must sell not a labour-service, but their labour-power itself, so the money in the hands of the rich peasants becomes capital. They now employ labour as wage labour. They pay the labourer only wages, equal to the value of their labour-power, appropriating surplus value as the difference between those wages and the new value their labour creates.
Lenin, again, sets out, here, the stages this passes through as capital in different forms exploits the peasant, who at first retains their own means of production, and engages in extensive agriculture, on an inefficient and irrational basis.
“Capital can exploit peasants in the grip of ruin as long as they retain their farms, and, letting them carry on as before, on the old, technically irrational basis, can exploit them by purchasing the product of their labour. But the peasant’s ruin finally develops to such a degree that he is compelled to give up his farm altogether: he can no longer sell the product of his labour; all he can do is to sell his labour. Capital then takes charge of the farm, and is now compelled, by virtue of competition, to organise it on rational lines; it is enabled to do so thanks to the free monetary resources previously “saved”; capital no longer exploits the peasant farmer but a farm labourer or a day labourer.” (p 483)
Marx made clear – Theories of Surplus Value, Ch. 9 – that Sismondi was only right in pointing out the evils of capitalist production, as against those economists who denied that contradiction. He was wrong in not recognising that, despite those evils, capital carries out a progressive historic role.
No comments:
Post a Comment