Section VII
Lenin turns to a discussion of education, as against the question solely of schools. Had Yuzhakov dealt with educational problems, Lenin says, he would have had to discuss the role that capitalist development, in Russia, played in the education of the labouring masses. That question had been taken up by Mikhailovsky in Russkoye Bogatsvo. He was responding to a statement by Struve that “Marx did not fear, and rightly so, to speak of the “idiocy of rural life,” and considered it one of the merits of capitalism and of the bourgeoisie that they had “rescued” a considerable part of the population from this “idiocy.”” (p 486)
Mikhailovsky, showing his lack of knowledge of Marx's writing, says that he did not know where Marx had “used this coarse expression”. He goes on to accuse Marx of being careless in his language, saying,
“And if the generation that worried so much, along with Mr. Zlatovratsky, over the intricate problems of rural life suffered much woe in vain, no less—though different—is the woe of the generation being educated in a spirit of contempt for the “idiocy of rural life’” (p. 139)....” (p 487)
Lenin responds,
“These words of Marx are no boutade, but an expression of one of the most cardinal and fundamental features of his whole outlook, both theoretical and practical. These words clearly express a recognition of the progressive nature of the diversion of the population from agriculture to industry, from country to town, one of the most characteristic features of capitalist development, that is to be observed both in the West and in Russia.” (p 487)
He refers to his article “A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism” in which he dealt with these ideas in more detail. This view of Marx about the progressive nature of capitalism, Lenin says, is one of the most important aspects of his writing, and one adopted by all his followers, “and how sharply contradictory it is to absolutely all romantic theories, ranging from those of old Sismondi to those of Mr. N. —on. There I pointed out (p. 39) that this view is also quite definitely expressed by Marx in Das Kapital (I. Band,2-te Aufl, S. 527-28), and by Engels in his Condition of the Working Class in England. To this might be added Marx’s Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (Hamb. 1885. Cf. S. 98).” (p 487)
The number of occasions that Marx and Engels set out this view of the progressive nature of capitalism meant that only those unfamiliar with their writing could be unaware of it, Lenin notes.
“Lastly, Mr. Mikhailovsky might also have recalled the fact that all these writers’ followers have expressed themselves on a large number of practical issues in the spirit of this doctrine, advocating, for example, complete freedom of movement, and protesting against plans to endow the worker with a plot of land or a house of his own, and the like.” (p 488)
As I have described previously, the modern equivalent of such proposals is the UBI, which is argued for on the basis of enabling citizens to turn themselves into individual, petty-bourgeois producers, as well as things like Brexit, which is a petty-bourgeois venture to hold back capitalist development within dwarfish limits, inside defunct national borders, in the interests of the same petty-bourgeois producers. Mikhailovsky accuses the Marxists of contempt for the rural inhabitants afflicted by such “idiocy”, but, Lenin says, the charge is without foundation. Rather than contempt for those rural inhabitants, the Marxists sympathise with them, and show the way out of their condition.
“While speaking of the “idiocy of rural life,” the disciples at the same time point the way out of this state of affairs opened up by the development of capitalism. Let us repeat what we said above in the article on economic romanticism: ’if the predominance of the town is necessarily so, only the attraction of the population to the towns can neutralise (and, as history shows, does in fact neutralise) the one-sided character of this predominance. If the town necessarily gains for itself a privileged position, only the influx of the village population into the towns, only this mingling and merging of the agricultural with the non-agricultural population can lift the rural population out of its helplessness. Therefore, in reply to the reactionary complaints and lamentations of the romanticists, the modern theory indicates exactly how this narrowing of the gap between the conditions of life of the agricultural and of the non-agricultural population creates the conditions for eliminating the distinction between town and country.”” (p 488)
The only contempt displayed, Lenin says, is that for the reactionaries and romantics “"who recommend “seeking paths for the fatherland,” instead of seeking a way out along the existing path and its further course."” (p 489)
The difference between the Marxists and the Narodniks, and other reactionaries is the recognition of the progressive nature of capitalism, and its further rational development.
“The “disciples” naturally insist on the need for abolishing all the antiquated restrictions on peasant travel and migration from the countryside to the towns, whereas the Narodniks either openly uphold these restrictions, or cautiously avoid the subject altogether (which in practice amounts to the same thing). This example, too, might have helped Mr. Manuilov to understand the, to him, astonishing fact that the “disciples” express their solidarity with spokesmen of the bourgeoisie. A consistent bourgeois will always stand for the abolition of these restrictions on movement—and as far as the worker is concerned, his most vital interests demand their abolition. Hence, solidarity between them is quite natural and inevitable. On the other hand, the agrarians (big and small, down to the enterprising muzhik inclusive) find this process of diversion of population to industry a disadvantage, and zealously try to retard it, having Narodnik theories to back them.” (p 489)
And the same division continues, today, with the reactionaries attempting to hold back the further rational development of capitalism with their proposals for “anti-monopoly alliances”, attempts to oppose the rational scrapping of outdated national borders, with their proposals for Brexit, for import and immigration controls, their opposition to the development of a global economy, their “anti-globalisation” and “anti-imperialist” movements, not to mention the reactionary nature of “anti-capitalism” itself.
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