The data showed, Lenin says, that there was no clear difference between capitalist production and handicraft production. The latter was not some separate mode of production that could provide Russia with a different, non-capitalist, path of development, as the Narodniks suggested.
“The Perm Narodniks assume that the “basic difference” between these two forms is that under handicraft production “labour owns both the instruments and materials of production and all the fruits of labour in the shape of the produce of production” (p. 3). We are now in a position to declare quite emphatically that this is false. Even if we include artisans among the handicraftsmen the majority of them do not fit this definition:” (p 366)
Wage workers comprised more than a quarter of the labourers included in handicraft production. They did not own their means of production. The family workers who worked for buyers-up may have owned their instruments of labour, but they did not own the materials processed, which were supplied to them, and nor did they own the product of their labour. It was taken from them by the buyer-up, in exchange for what only amounted to the value of their labour-power, i.e. wages. They constituted more than 20% of the labourers. Finally, if we take the family workers in the establishments that also employ wage workers, these accounted for about another 10%, but these not only owned the means of production, but also owned the products not just of their own labour, but also those of others labour, i.e. that of their wage workers. In total that is more than 56% of all labourers for whom the definition did not apply.
“In other words, even in a remote and economically backward gubernia like Perm, the “handicraftsmen” who either hire themselves out or hire others, who exploit or are exploited, are already preponderant today. But it would be far more correct for such a computation to exclude artisan production and to take commodity production alone. Artisan production is such an archaic form of industry that even among our native Narodniks, who have repeatedly proclaimed that backwardness is Russia’s good fortune (ä la Messrs. V. V., Yuzhakov and Co.), there has not been a single one who has frankly and openly risked defending it and proclaiming it a “pledge” of his ideals.” (p 366)
But, the data showed that artisan production was still widespread in Perm, and those employed in it, included in the figures for handicraft industry. Excluding artisans, who accounted for nearly 30% of labourers, 14,401 worked for the market, and of these, nearly 30% were wage workers and 30% family workers working for buyers-up. That was nearly 60% who were not independent producers, with around 8% being small capitalists employing wage workers.
“Thus, about 66%, or nearly two-thirds, of the “handicraftsmen” have two fundamental points of similarity, and not of difference, with capitalism: firstly, they are all commodity producers, and capitalism is nothing but commodity production developed to the full; secondly, the specifically capitalist relations of the purchase and sale of labour-power apply to a large number of them.” (p 367)
No comments:
Post a Comment