The enlighteners, in Russia, did not pose questions about capitalist development, and nor did their predecessors like Smith, Mill and Ricardo in relation to its development in Western Europe. Their revolutionary optimism was characterised by the fact that they argued for an unrestricted development of the productive forces, of production for the sake of production, and because they, therefore, aimed their fire at all of the vestiges of the old society that stood in its way. As Lenin continued, in a vein entirely relevant to today, and Brexit,
“Narodism posed the question of capitalism in Russia, but answered it in the sense that capitalism is reactionary, and therefore could not wholly accept the heritage of the enlighteners: the Narodniks always warred against people who in general strove to Europeanise Russia from the standpoint of a “single civilisation”; warred against them not only because they, the Narodniks, could not confine themselves to these people’s ideals (such a war would have been just), but because they did not want to go so far in the development of this, i.e., capitalist, civilisation. The ‘disciples” answer the question of capitalism in Russia in the sense that it is progressive, and they therefore not only can, but must, accept the heritage of the enlighteners in its entirety, supplementing it with an analysis of the contradictions of capitalism from the standpoint of the property-less producers.”
And, this sums up the difference between the Marxist, the liberal and the “left” Brexiters, today. The liberals, conservative social-democrats, sought to advance the idea of the EU uncritically, the Lexiters to oppose the EU, simply on the basis of it being a bigger, more developed capitalist club, just as they oppose bigger, more developed capitalist enterprises, whereas the Marxist sees precisely the fact that the EU is more developed, bigger, and so closer to socialism, as the reason to welcome it, just as we welcome the more developed forms of capital, as against the limitations of small capital, just as we welcome free trade as against protectionism, but not uncritically, not on the basis of the liberal, or conservative social-democrat, but on the basis, of arguing the need to go beyond the aspirations of the latter.
Lenin continued,
“By the nature of their aims, the first and last trends correspond to the interests of the classes which are created and developed by capitalism; Narodism, by its nature, corresponds to the interests of the class of small producers, the petty bourgeoisie, which occupies an intermediate position among the classes of contemporary society. Consequently, Narodism’s contradictory attitude to the “heritage” is not accidental, but is a necessary result of the very nature of the Narodnik views: we have seen that one of the basic features of the enlighteners’ views was the ardent desire to Europeanise Russia, but the Narodniks cannot possibly share this desire fully without ceasing to be Narodniks.”
The Stalinists represent a petty-bourgeois ideology, and the whole basis of their world view, summed up in the Popular Front, has been the need to subordinate the working-class to the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie. The same is true of all those other sections of the “Left”, which adopted the principles of the Popular Front, as their political activity collapsed into the routinism of party building, via immersion in one single issue campaign after another. The Anarchists are the epitome of those ideas of the peasant and petty-bourgeois, as first set out by Proudhon, and exposed by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy. They begin by proclaiming their opposition to the bourgeoisie, and to the idea of the state, or structures, and, yet, always, end up both operating through bourgeois structures, and supporting the bourgeoisie and relying on its state. So, as we see in the letter from Comrade Douglass, he ends up, in supporting Brexit, thereby, being allied not only with the most reactionary sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, but also relying on the state – the bourgeois state – to defend those sections of the bourgeoisie! He not only supports Brexit, and, thereby, the existing British state as some kind of “lesser-evil”, but also supports the imposition of import controls, to protect “British” capital, as well as supporting nationalisation by the “British” capitalist state.
Proudhon drew the conclusion from his anarchism that trades unions were reactionary organisations, and, also, subsequently, opposed strikes by workers, and their demands for higher wages. Comrade Douglass may appear to be more advanced, in that regard to Proudhon, given his own illustrious record as an NUM militant, which we applaud, but, in reality, all that it shows is that, in practice, Comrade Douglass's proletarian class position, forced him to abandon the logic of his anarchist ideology, to recognise the need for organisation, for structure, and for, even a struggle for reforms, be they in the form of higher wages, or of other kinds, as a stepping stone to further progress. Unfortunately, those structures, and those reforms are, themselves bourgeois!
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