And, as with today's proponents of restrictions on free movement, the consequence is never to raise workers living standards or conditions. On the one hand, the restrictions simply result in higher costs, and so higher costs of living. Where capital cannot find labour in the domestic economy, it relocates to other economies, where the required labour is available. The ending of free movement is always only an ending of that right for labour, not for capital, and, where capital cannot relocate, it either liquidates and transfers to some other sphere of production, or else it responds to the shortage of labour by introducing labour-saving technologies, which results in workers being made redundant, and their wages being slashed.
“Are there, we ask, any reasonable grounds for perpetuating the police laws which reinforce the “tie with the land,” and forbid the breaking of a tie that appeals so strongly to the Narodniks? The data of the 1894-95 “handicraft census” in Perm Gubernia are clear proof of the utter absurdity of artificial measures to tie the peasants to the land. All these measures do is reduce their earnings, which, wherever the “tie with the land” exists, are less than half those of the non-agriculturists; they lower the standard of living, increase the isolation and disunity of producers scattered throughout the villages and render them more defenceless than ever against the buyer-up and subcontractor. At the same time, the fact that the peasants are tied to the land hinders the development of agriculture, without, however, being able to prevent the rise of a rural petty-bourgeois class.” (p 449)
The Narodniks, of course, did not openly proclaim a desire to retard the development of capitalism. Instead, they spoke of ““the possibility of different paths for the fatherland.”” Similarly, today, the liberals and conservative social-democrats do not speak of a desire to retard the development of capitalism, but their policies that seek to tax the large-scale capitals more heavily, so as to subsidise, for example, the higher-cost, bricks and mortar retailers, simply in the name of protecting a dying, previous economic landscape, inevitably has that consequence. But, it can never actually change the emerging economic relations, because, to the extent they slow the development of large-scale capital in one region or country they simply place it at an economic disadvantage with other regions/countries where such development has proceeded. That is the fundamental role of competition as described by Marx, in encouraging the accumulation, concentration and centralisation of capital. Such, indeed, is the fate of Britain, as a result of the self-inflicted wounds of Brexit. As Marx again describes,
“In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.”
(The Poverty of Philosophy p 140)
And, the reality is that, in merely proposing immediate practical measures, rather than discussing the need to completely uproot the existing relations, both the Narodniks and, today, the social-democrats accept the existing path of capitalist development. They do not choose a different path, but simply the same path, but at a slower pace, a pace hindered by a series of constrictions laid along the path.
“Do whatever you like “to drag” the fatherland on to a different path! Such efforts will arouse no criticism (except-the criticism of laughter). But do not defend that which artificially retards present-day development, do not drown the problem of removing the obstacles from the existing path in talk about a “different path.”” (p 449-50)
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