It has previously been described that the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois, rather than describing reality, in terms of the interests of specific classes, instead talk abstractly about the interests of society, the people, or the nation. That was the case with the Narodniks, who tried “to formulate their ideas as abstractly as possible, to present them as the abstract demands of “pure” science or “pure” justice, and not as the real needs of real classes having definite interests. Credit—that vital need of every master, big and small, in capitalist society—is presented by the Narodnik as a sort of element in the system of the organisation of labour; masters’ associations and societies are depicted as the embryonic expression of the idea of co-operation in general, of the idea of “handicraft emancipation,” etc., whereas everybody knows that all such associations actually pursue aims which have nothing in common with such lofty matters, but are simply connected with the size of these masters’ incomes, with the growing strength of their position and with their increasing profits. To thus convert commonplace bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wishes into a sort of social panacea only emasculates them, robs them of their vitality, of the guarantee of their urgency and practicability.” (p 450)
And,
“Not realising that such practical measures as credits and artels, technical assistance, etc., reflect the needs of developing capitalism, the Narodnik is unable to voice the general and fundamental needs of this development, and instead proposes paltry, casually selected, half measures which in themselves are incapable of exerting any serious influence and are inevitably doomed to failure. Had the Narodnik openly and consistently adopted the standpoint of an exponent of the needs of social development along capitalist lines, he would have been able to note the general conditions, the general demands of this development, and he would have seen that, given these general conditions (the chief of them, in the present case, being freedom of industry), all his petty projects and measures would be achieved automatically, that is, by the activities of the interested parties themselves, whereas, by ignoring these general conditions and proposing nothing but practical measures of an utterly incidental character, he is only beating about the bush.” (p 450-1)
The Narodniks demanded “freedom of industry”, and quite rightly so, Lenin says. But, the Narodniks insisted that this demand, raised against the old feudal monopolies, was one raised in the interests of all forms of production, and not just in the interests of capital. However, for the reasons already elaborated, that could never be the case. That demand could never be separated from the demand of freedom for capitalism. As soon as commodity production and exchange is given free rein, competition inevitably results in the concentration and centralisation of the scattered means of production in the hands of a smaller number of producers who win out in that competition. As Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, this occurs even before any additional accumulation of means of production occurs. Those that lose out in this competition, become proletarianised. Their means of production is taken over by the winners, and now becomes capital, and is used to employ the losers as wage labourers. Competition drives further accumulation, because competitiveness is a function of scale of production.
“We welcome the defence of freedom of industry by the Narodniks. But we make this welcome contingent on its being conducted consistently.” (p 455)
And, to be consistent, the demand not only meant the freedom to set up new businesses, in any industry, it also meant the freedom of movement of labour, so that the labourers were no longer tied to the land or their locality, but should be free to move to wherever they could get the highest wages and best conditions.
“Does not the absence of freedom of movement, the fact that the law does not recognise the right of every citizen to choose any town or village community in the country as his place of domicile, constitute a restriction on freedom of industry? Does not the peasant community, with its social-estate exclusiveness—the fact that members of the trading and industrial class cannot enter it—constitute a restriction on freedom of industry?” (p 455)
And, the same applies today in a global economy to the right of workers to freedom of movement within that global economy, which requires the scrapping of all immigration controls.
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