The economic nationalism of programs like the Mosely Memorandum, or the AES, as with the philosophy behind Brexit and Lexit, includes restrictions on the free movement of labour, just as did the proposals of the Narodniks, which leaves workers tied and, thereby, weakened. But, similar paternalism, and the reduction of workers to a state of serf-like dependency exists in relation to that other great plank of the petty-bourgeois socialists – welfarism.
“Hence, in Russia as well, inasmuch as labour service still survives, a necessary complement to it is the peasant’s inferiority in respect of civic rights—the fact of his being tied to the land, corporal punishment, and the right to assign him to compulsory labour. Mr. Yuzhakov does not understand this connection between labour service and inferiority of rights, but the shrewd sense of a “practical” man suggested to him that, since the gymnasium students will have to perform labour service, it will not be amiss to introduce corrective gymnasia for those who dare try to avoid education; and that adult “student” workers should be kept in the position of little schoolboys.” (p 482)
And, the same applies, today, with the deprivation of civic rights alongside the deprivation of the basic right of free movement, the criminalisation of anyone who simply moves across artificial lines drawn on a map. It is no coincidence that, alongside the carnival of reaction that followed the Brexit vote, there has been the greatest, systematic removal of basic bourgeois-democratic rights and freedoms in more than a century, under cover of anti-Covid regulations.
Lenin asks why Yuzhakov needed the first three storeys of his construct, because, given that he had described his plans as a “utopia” no complaint could have been raised against its socialist pretensions. Everyone can dream of a socialist nirvana, and set out descriptions of how it might look. The point is that such daydreams have no practical purpose if they are unconnected to existing material conditions. They offer no means of getting from here to there, and once the practicalities of that are addressed, then not only is that exposed, but all of the contradictions involved in the process are exposed along with it. Its for that reason that Yuzhakov required the other three storeys of his construct, but the result is that, as Lenin describes, indeed as Marx and Engels describe, in The Communist manifesto, The Poverty of Philosophy, and Anti-Duhring, such petty-bourgeois programs end up being less rational, and more reactionary, than the plans of the bourgeoisie itself for a rapid development of capitalism.
“On the one hand, a “utopia” is a good thing, hut, on the other, teachers’ salaries for our worthy intellectuals are not a bad thing either. On the one hand, we have “no expenditure for the people,” but, on the other—no, friend, just you pay the interest and return the debt in full, and do three years’ labour service in the bargain! On the one hand, we have grandiloquent declamations on the danger and harm of class division, while, on the other, a purely class “utopia.” Such perpetual vacillations between the old and the new, such curious claims to reach above one’s own stature, that is, to rise superior to all classes, are the essence of every Kleinbürger outlook.” (p 482)
Lenin then sets out a lengthy description of the way the Narodnik proposals worked out in practice. It is given by Sergei Sharapov, in “The Russian Farmer. Some Thoughts on the Organisation of Farming in Russia on New Lines”. Sharapov was a landlord, and, in this work, he sets out ideas very close to those of the Narodniks, and describes the actual relations between him and the peasants on his land – he repeatedly describes them as “my peasants”.
“And Mr., Sharapov declares with fervour (not inferior to that of Mr. Yuzhakov’s) that capitalism in our country is impossible. What is possible, and necessary, in our country is not capitalism, but an “alliance of lord and muzhik” (the title of chapter III of Mr. Sharapov’s book). “Economy should be based on a close solidarity between lord and muzhik” (25)” (p 483)
With capitalism well established, in Britain, the petty-bourgeois socialists, of course, do not declare it impossible – instead continually describing it as reactionary, in its death agony, in perpetual crisis, as they await the next recession and catastrophe – but aim to shackle it, contain it within defunct national borders, and dwarfish limits, as they aim, not for an alliance of landlord and muzhik, but worker and the domestically based small capitalists (petty-bourgeois). This same idea was common to all such trends, as exemplified in the various “National Roads To Socialism”, produced by Stalinist Parties across the globe, and their attempts to form Popular Fronts with the petty bourgeoisie on the basis of “anti-monopoly alliances”, and “anti-imperialist alliances” etc.
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