Lenin, of course, as with Marx and Engels, all being much closer to this development of capitalism, had no truck with the idea that capitalist production begins first in agriculture, rather than industry, as Engels says, specifically in his Supplement to Capital III, on The Law of Value, and as Lenin demonstrated in “On The So Called Market Question”. You can only arrive at the conclusion that capitalist production begins in agriculture if you define industrial capitalism as only that large-scale machine industry, and discount all of the industrial production undertaken on a capitalist basis, in the towns, from the 15th century onwards.
Danielson, and the Narodniks, sought to ignore the capitalist nature of the “People's production”, and so the fact that what was going on was a struggle between two forms of capital, one more and one less developed, and so one progressive and the other reactionary. And, today, we see the same thing. The “anti-capitalists” fail to see a distinction between large-scale, socialised capital, and privately owned capital, and so also fail to see this similar struggle between two forms of capital, one more the other less developed, one progressive, the other reactionary. Indeed, their own moralistic approach sees the more developed, progressive form as the main target of their ire. Like the Narodniks, they also aim their fire, not at the reactionary form, but at the progressive form. Instead of analysing the objective reality of the large scale socialised capital, as the collective property of the workers in those companies, and the potential that presents, they only see the superficial appearance of these companies, and the control of them by shareholders, and so vent their moral outrage in that direction.
Similarly, there is a failure to distinguish between the real capital of these large socialised capitals, and the fictitious-capital of the shareholders that exercise control over them. In fact, this represents the two main forms of capitalist property in modern society, both of which are in antagonistic competition with each other. The former represents the progressive form of capital, and already prefigures the socialist property of the future. It is as Marx describes it, the transitional form of property between capitalism and socialism. The latter, however, is privately owned capital, and stands in antagonistic contradiction to the former. Being the means by which the private owners of capital hold their wealth, and the means by which they exercise control over real capital, which they do not own, it is reactionary, looking backwards, and is a fetter on further development. The revenue to the fictitious-capital is interest/dividends, which is a deduction from profit. The larger the deduction, the greater the inhibition of real capital accumulation. Yet, it is the shareholders that hold the power to make the determination of dividends, setting their own private interest directly against that of the company. In more recent times, the acquisition of capital gains through share price appreciation has taken the place of revenues from dividends, but the same contradictory interests between these two forms of capital exists.
“Mr. N.-on says not a word about this struggle; although this replacement of one form of capitalism by another took place, on his own showing, precisely in the textile industry, the sphere of his special study (p. 79), Mr. N.-on misrepresented it, calling it the replacement of “people’s production” by “capitalism.”... Secondly, if Mr. N.-on had raised the question of the historical development of Russian machine industry, could he have spoken of “implanting capitalism” (pp. 331, 283, 323 et al.), basing his case on facts of governmental support and assistance—facts which have also occurred in Europe? The question is: is he copying Sismondi who also talked in exactly the same way about “implanting,” or is he copying the representative of the modern theory who studied the replacement of manufacture by machine industry? Thirdly, if Mr. N.-on had raised the problem of the historical development of the forms of capitalism in Russia (in the textile industry), could he have ignored the existence of capitalist manufacture in the Russian “handicraft industries”.” (p 189)
Today, the same approach is taken by the “anti-imperialists” who see the investment by multinational corporations in developing economies in the same kinds of terms, of an unnatural planting of capitalism in those countries.
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