The Narodnik statisticians did not even analyse this data on when establishments were created, according to their own division into groups and sub-groups, so it was not possible, on that basis, to determine what size and type of establishment it was that was being created. But, even without that vital data, the Narodniks simply concluded that what was being seen was a growth of the small scale communal production – what they had termed “people's production”, and, here, refer to as “communal labour continuity”. By this they meant that, rather than with private capitalist production, where a private capitalist, a family or other collection of private capitalists owned the capital, what was being seen was that the means of production were owned by the community, or at least, that ownership passed to someone else within the community, if the existing owner died, retired and so on. This was, of course, nonsense. The property was private property, and was passed on as private property, and functioned as private property.
Back, in the 1980's, when I was a Stoke City Councillor, there was a similar system in place in respect of the allocation of stalls in the council's markets. It meant that stalls simply passed from one generation to another, with a consequent effect on the rents paid, and limitation on new types of business entering the markets. I successfully proposed that the markets be zoned to accommodate different types of business, and that when any stall became available, it should be subject to a competitive bidding process, to get the highest rent. The result was that it was found that potential stallholders were prepared to pay about 50% more than existing stallholders. The other aspect of the Narodnik proposals and ideas about communal production, today, finds an echo in the so called Preston Model.
The Narodniks argued that ““communal-labour continuity organically converts the wage-worker into an independent master” (sic!), which finds expression in the fact that when the owner of an establishment dies and there are no family workers among the heirs, the industry passes to another family, “perhaps to that of a wage-worker employed in the very same establishment,” and also in the fact that “community land tenure guarantees the labour industrial independence of both the owner of a handicraft industrial establishment and his wage-worker” (pp. 7, 68, et al.).” (p 383)
But, there was no communal law that transferred the property to the community. It didn't matter whether the property was bought by another family or by one of the wage workers of the enterprise. It was bought and sold as private property, not transferred as communal or social property. For example, if we take a cooperative, as a form of socialised capital, when any of the workers employed in it die, or move to some other job, they cannot sell a portion of the firm's capital, as though it were their own property. The workers can only exercise their ownership rights collectively. The same with the worker in the other main form of socialised capital, the joint stock company. But, the private capitalists who own businesses – as against shareholders who merely own share certificates as debt instruments, indicating they have loaned money to a company – can dispose of its capital as they see fit, including selling it to someone else. And, this was also the case with the businesses that the Narodniks wanted to present as “people's production” operating on the basis of “communal labour continuity”.
“Everybody knows that the establishments, materials, tools, etc., of the handicraftsmen are private property which is transmitted by inheritance, and not by some sort of communal law; that the village community in no way guarantees independence even in agriculture, let alone industry, and that the same economic struggle and exploitation goes on within the community as outside it. What has been turned into the special theory of the “communal-labour principle” is the simple fact that the small master, owning very little capital, has to work himself, and that the wage-worker may become a master (if he is thrifty and abstemious, of course); examples of this are cited in the Sketch on p. 69. . . . All the theoreticians of the petty bourgeoisie have always consoled themselves with the fact that in small production a worker may become a master, and none of their ideals have ever gone beyond the conversion of the workers into small masters.” (p 383-4)
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