Similarly, across the globe, there were those nations whose national rights had been denied, as a result of annexation and colonialism. The bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, in these nations, sought to be able to exploit their own workers, on the same basis as the bourgeoisie of other nation states. As Lenin noted, when the proletariat of these nations begins to engage in class struggle, for its own interests, the diversion of its struggle into one against the foreign oppressor, into a struggle for national independence and national self-determination is useful for the bourgeoisie, even as it continues to do deals with that same foreign oppressor.
“The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so in categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, you cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois-democratic revolution will end in a given nation seceding from another nation, or in its equality with the latter; in either case, the important thing for the proletariat is to ensure the development of its class. For the bourgeoisie it is important to hamper this development by pushing the aims of its “own” nation before those of the proletariat. That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation, and without undertaking to give anything at the expense of another nation.”
At the moment that imperialism turns the nation state into a reactionary, historical relic, and a fetter on the further and free development of capital, thereby opening the era in which capital and labour become global, and the interests of the two are posed against each other, on a global scale, the proletariat is instead diverted into a struggle not for its own interests, but those of a reactionary, nationalist bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. As Lenin noted, we are for the self-determination of the working-class, not of nations.
“As people were no longer living in a world empire such as the Roman Empire had been, but in a system of independent states dealing with each other on an equal footing and at approximately the same level of bourgeois development, it was a matter of course that the demand should assume a general character reaching out beyond the individual state, that freedom and equality should be proclaimed human rights. It is significant of the specifically bourgeois character of these human rights that the American constitution, the first to recognise the rights of man, in the same breath confirms the slavery of the coloured races existing in America: class privileges are proscribed, race privileges sanctioned.” (p 134)
The serfs who moved to the towns and cities, and set up as independent, petty-commodity producers, thus bring about a significant rise in the size of the market for industrial commodities. The reason that capitalist production begins in the towns and cities, rather than in rural areas/agriculture is precisely for this reason, as Lenin explained. Capitalist production is premised upon the existence of generalised commodity production, and a sizeable market. Its only that, as Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, that makes production on a large-scale, by individual industrial producers, worthwhile. In the rural areas/agriculture, peasant households not only were self-sufficient in food production, but they also engaged in their own cottage industry to produce the various other products required, such as cloth and clothing etc. If everyone meets their own needs from their own production, there is no basis for exchange, i.e. for a market.
Commodities had always been produced, but only on a very small scale, compared to this direct production. As Marx described, commodity production and exchange took place at the periphery, as it was, for a long time, communities that exchanged commodities, not individuals. Individual peasant households, once the era of Labour Rent, or Corvee Labour, declined, produced commodities in order to obtain money to pay feudal rents and taxes. But, this remained small scale compared to the extent of direct production and consumption.
Its only in the towns and cities, as this influx of former serfs arises, that the basis of a sizeable expansion of commodity production and exchange occurs. As Marx describes, in Theories of Surplus Value, individual producers had always failed, throughout history, but, before the conditions of capitalist production arose, those individuals simply became debt slaves, servants or paupers. The significant rise in commodity production, in the towns and cities, means necessarily, competition not only with the feudal guild production, but between these new, independent producers. Competition means winners and losers. The winners increase their share of the market, the losers fail, but, now, instead of becoming slaves or paupers, their successful neighbours employ them as wage workers, and take over their means of production, so as to produce more, in accordance with their greater share of the market.
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