The Economic Content of Narodism, Chapter 4 - Part 24

Part III 

  

Struve quotes Danielson's remark that the production of cheap manufactured goods had led to a reduction in domestic production, i.e. production by independent small producers. Struve claims that Danielson puts the cart before the horse. 

““Here the cart is put before the horse,” exclaims Mr. Struve, “as can be proved without difficulty. The reduction in the peasant output of spinning materials led to an increase in the production and consumption of the goods of the capitalist cotton industry, and not the other way round” (227).” (p 486) 

This is further evidence of Struve getting carried away in trying to defend the progressive role of capital, Lenin says. It can't be denied that, in a commodity based economy, cheaper commodities drive out more expensive commodities, as the producers of the latter cannot compete, lose market share and leave production. Nor can it be denied that the large-scale factory produced commodities were cheaper than domestically produced equivalents. By trying to deny the reality, Struve simply weakened his overall case against Danielson.

Danielson's actual failure was that he tries to present the factory as something that has simply appeared on the scene from nowhere, and that it is, somehow, completely separate from the small producer. On this basis is developed the argument of people's production, as against capitalist production, and never the twain shall meet. But, of course, whilst it was true that some large factories in Russia were developed by direct foreign investment, the factory system itself simply developed out of the normal process of the accumulation, concentration and centralisation of capital, described by Marx. The so called “people's production” was itself capitalist production, but at a less mature stage. As some of those producers accumulated more capital, so they simply progressed from the existing forms of handicraft production to factory production. 

“... in fact, the “factory” (both according to the theory that Mr. N. —on desires loyally to support, and according to the data of Russian history) is merely the final stage of the development of the commodity organisation of the entire social and, consequently, peasant economy. Large-scale bourgeois production in the “factory” is the direct and immediate continuation of petty-bourgeois production in the village, in the notorious “village community” or in handicraft industry.” (p 486-7)

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