VIII - The Narodnik Programme Of Industrial Policy
The practical proposals of the Narodniks that were supposed to lead to an alternative path of development were always closely connected to their rose-tinted descriptions of small-scale production, and their exaggeration of its significance within the Russian economy.
“At the very beginning of the Sketch, in the introduction, before the census data are even dealt with, we meet with verbose statements about the “task of handicraft credit” being “to over come (sic!) the money shortage,” about the “co-operative organisation of exchange between production and consumption” (p. 8), about “spreading artel organisations,” establishing handicraft warehouses, technical advice bureaus, technical schools, and the like (p. 9). These statements recur in the book over and over again.” (p 445)
Lenin gives a series of similar citations from The Sketch illustrating this point. But, illustrating the reactionary nature of the Narodniks' ideology, Lenin points out that they did not also “fail to condemn money economy in general, and for the reader’s edification inform him that artisan production “performs a valuable service to the national economy, by affording it the opportunity to avoid the conversion of natural economy into money economy.” “The national economy is vitally interested in demanding that the raw materials it produces be worked up on the spot, as far as possible without the intervention of money in the exchange processes” (p. 360).” (p 446)
Now, of course, Marxists too wish to replace money economy, but the point is that such replacement can only occur after money economy has itself fulfilled its historic mission, a function that is inseparable from the extension of commodity production and exchange, the role of competition that is also inseparable from the development of the market in demolishing all of the old feudal monopolies, whilst bringing about the development of capital, followed by the concentration and centralisation of that capital. As Marx says in The Poverty of Philosophy,
“Socialists know well enough that present-day society is founded on competition. How could they accuse competition of overthrowing present-day society which they want to overthrow themselves?? And how could they accuse competition of overthrowing the society to come, in which they see, on the contrary, the overthrow of competition??..
In actual fact, society, association are denominations which can be given to every society, to feudal society as well as to bourgeois society which is association founded on competition. How then can there be Socialists, who, by the single word association, think they can refute competition?? And how can M. Proudhon himself wish to defend competition against socialism by describing competition by the single word association??..
It must be carefully noted that competition always becomes the more destructive for bourgeois relations in proportion as it urges on a feverish creation of new productive forces, that is, of the material conditions of a new society. In this respect at least, the bad side of competition would have its good points.”
(Chapter 2, p 137-8)
And, having smashed the old feudal monopolies, and necessitated the accumulation, concentration and centralisation of capital, the progressive role of competition then becomes the creation of new monopolies, which themselves form the basic units of the new socialist society.
“M. Proudhon talks of nothing but modern monopoly engendered by competition. But we all know that competition was engendered by feudal monopoly. Thus competition was originally the opposite of monopoly and not monopoly the opposite of competition. So that modern monopoly is not a simple antithesis, it is on the contrary the true synthesis.”
(ibid, p 139)
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