Lenin quotes Marx's comment on the difference between agriculture and industry, in this regard, whereby increased productivity in industry brings about an absolute increase in employment, whereas in agriculture it does not, unless large new areas of land are also brought into cultivation. Even that, however, Marx notes, would require a much larger increase in the industrial population, to create the demand for this agricultural output. Kautsky saw in this passage the basis of colonialism. (See: Kautsky & Colonialism)
“On this point modern theory takes a view diametrically opposite to that of romanticism with its sentimental complaints. When we understand that something is inevitable, we naturally adopt a totally different attitude towards it and are able to appraise its different aspects. The phenomenon we are now discussing is one of the most profound and most general of the contradictions of the capitalist system.” (p 228-9)
Everywhere, capitalist development sees this separation of the towns from the countryside and the dominance of the former, economically, politically, socially and culturally. It is, as Marx sets out in The Communist Manifesto, the basis of the power of the bourgeoisie, and its social dictatorship, the material basis of the formation of the capitalist nation state. We see a similar thing today with the development of the cities and metropolitan areas, as the centres of the modern economy, and the concentration within them of all the progressive elements of society, along with their dominance economically, politically, socially and culturally, whereas the old decaying urban areas perform the same function that the countryside once did, as bastions of reaction.
“... only sentimental romanticists can bewail this. Scientific theory, on the contrary, points to the progressive aspect given to this contradiction by large-scale industrial capital.” (p 229)
As capitalism developed, the one-sidedness of this preponderance of the towns, and their progressive nature, as against the subordination of the countryside, and its sinking into the mire of reaction, is countered by the movement of the rural population into the towns. There they learn all of the ideas and culture of the industrial proletariat, and this feeds back into the countryside, which is dragged along behind it. The same can be seen, today, with the advanced nature of the younger elements of the proletariat, concentrated in the cities and metropolitan areas, generally, employed in the growing service industries. But, the ideas and culture is replicated amongst their counterparts still living in the old decaying urban areas. It indicates exactly the reactionary nature of the ideas of Blue Labour and all those who would abandon the younger, progressive elements of the working-class, simply in search of some sentimental attachment to an idea of the 20th century working-class, which has disappeared, along with the material foundations on which it rested, simply for short-term electoral support.
“If the predominance of the town is inevitable, only the attraction of the population to the towns can neutralise (and, as history shows, does in fact neutralise) the one-sided character of this predominance. If the town necessarily gains itself a privileged position, leaving the village subordinate, undeveloped, helpless and downtrodden, only the influx of the village population into the towns, only this mingling and merging of the agricultural with the non-agricultural population, can lift the rural population out of its helplessness. Therefore, in reply to the reactionary complaints and lamentations of the romanticists, modern theory indicates exactly how this narrowing of the gap between the conditions of life of the agricultural and of the non-agricultural population creates the conditions for eliminating the antithesis between town and country.” (p 229-30)
The Narodniks, however, as with today's Blue Labour populists, adopted the sentimental, romanticist position of Sismondi, seeking to hold back development, and attach themselves to a social force, and its ideas that had ceased to exist, or, at least, to the extent it did exist, had become reactionary.
“Far from understanding that the growth of the industrial population is necessary under the present system of social economy, they even try to close their eyes to the phenomenon itself, like the bird which hides its head under its wing.” (p 230)
Today's Blue Labour populists and similar trends act in the same way, in relation to the development of the modern proletariat, concentrated in the cities and metropolitan areas, educated, and employed in the service industries that account for around 80% of the economy.
Struve had challenged Danielson on his comments about there being an absolute diminution of variable-capital, as a consequence of rising productivity, but Danielson had failed to respond. A similar error is made by those, today, who see this as the basis of The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and their similarly catastrophist views about the unsustainability of capitalism, and causes of crises.
“Actually, however, when the Narodniks, untrammelled by theoretical doubts, discuss the conditions of the peasants in the post-Reform countryside, they admit that the peasants who are ousted from agriculture migrate to the towns and to factory areas, but they confine themselves to bewailing this state of affairs, just as Sismondi bewailed it. They do not notice at all either the economic or (what is perhaps more important) the moral and educational significance of the profound change that has taken place in the conditions of life of the masses of the population in post-Reform Russia—a process which, for the first time, has disturbed the peasantry’s settled life, their position of being tied to their localities, given them mobility, and narrowed the gap between the agricultural and non-agricultural labourers, the rural and the urban workers. All they have derived from it is an occasion for sentimental-romanticist lamentations.” (p 230-1)
The same could be said of today's ideologues of Blue Labour. They seek ways of holding back the progressive development, be it by measures to subsidise and prop up dead High Streets, in decayed former industrial towns, or measures to try to stop the migration of younger people from those areas to the centres of progress and development. Having made matters even worse by their support for Brexit, and the economic damage it has inflicted, they seek to offset it by other reactionary measures such as free ports, enterprise zones and so on that release petty-bourgeois producers even from having to conform to basic minimum standards.
Even Sismondi had to acknowledge that the industrial workers of his day were superior in “intelligence, education and morals to the agricultural workers.” (Note ***, p 230) And the same applies today, in relation to the generally better educated and cultured younger workers, as against the poorly educated, older industrial workers. It is upon the latter that the forces of reaction, concentrated within the petty-bourgeoisie, rely for support, just as, in the past, they relied upon the more backward layers of society in the rural areas.
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