The Accumulation Of Capital Part 22

[274] Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 136.

[275] Ibid., p. 225.

[276] A memorial of the worst kind, by the way, was that of the editors who published his works after his death. These learned gentlemen, Messrs. Wagner, Kozak, Moritz Wuertz & Co., quarrelled in the prefaces to his posthumous writings like a rough crowd of ill-mannered servants in an antechamber, fighting out publicly their petty personal feuds and jealousies, and slanging one another. They did not even bother in common decency to establish the dates for the individual ma.n.u.scripts they had found. To take an instance, it needed Mehring to observe that the oldest ma.n.u.script of Rodbertus that had been found was not published in 1837, as laid down autocratically by Prof. Wagner, but in 1839 at the earliest, since it refers in its opening paragraphs to historical events connected with the Chartist movement belonging, as a professor of economics really ought to know, in the year 1839. In Professor Wagner's introduction to Rodbertus we are constantly bored by his pomposity, his harping on the 'excessive demands on his time'; in any case Wagner addresses himself solely to his learned colleagues and talks above the heads of the common crowd; he pa.s.ses over in silence, as befits a great man, Mehring's elegant correction before the a.s.sembled experts. Just as silently, Professor Diehl altered the date of 1837 to 1839 in the _Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften_, without a word to say when and by whom he had been thus enlightened.

But the final touch is provided by the 'popular', 'new and inexpensive'

edition of Puttkamer and Muehlbrecht (1899). Some of the quarrelling editors collaborated on it but still continue their disputes in the introductions. Wagner's former vol. ii has become vol. i in this edition, yet Wagner still refers to vol. ii in the introduction to vol.

i. The first _Letter on Social Problems_ is placed in vol. iii, the second and third in vol. ii and the fourth in vol. i. The order of the _Letters on Social Problems_, of the _Controversies_, of the parts of _Towards the Understanding_ ..., chronological and logical sequence, the dates of publication and of writing are hopelessly mixed up, making a chaos more impenetrable than the stratification of the soil after repeated volcanic eruptions. 1837 is maintained as the date of Rodbertus' earliest MS., probably out of respect to Professor Wagner--and this in 1899, although Mehring's rectification had been made in 1894. If we compare this with Marx's literary heritage in Mehring's and Kautsky's edition, published by Dietz, we see how such apparently superficial matters but reflect deeper connections: one kind of care for the scientific heritage of the authority of the cla.s.s-conscious proletariat, and quite another in which the official experts of the bourgeoisie squander the heritage of a man who, in their own self-interested legends, had been a first-rate genius. _Suum cuique_--had this not been the motto of Rodbertus?

_SECTION TWO_

HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM

THIRD ROUND

STRUVE-BULGAKOV-TUGAN BARANOVSKI _v._ VORONTSOV-NIKOLAYON

_CHAPTER XVIII_

A NEW VERSION OF THE PROBLEM

The third controversy about capitalist acc.u.mulation takes place in an historical setting quite different from that of the two earlier ones.

The time now is the period from the beginning of the eighties to the middle of the nineties, the scene Russia. In Western Europe, capitalism had already attained maturity. The rose-coloured cla.s.sical view of Smith and Ricardo in a budding bourgeois economy had long since vanished ...

the self-interested optimism of the vulgarian Manchester doctrine of harmony had been silenced by the devastating impact of the world collapse in the seventies, and under the heavy blows of a violent cla.s.s struggle that blazed up in all capitalist countries after the sixties.

Even that harmony patched up with social reformism which had its hey-day after the early eighties, especially in Germany, soon ended in a hangover. The trial of twelve years' special legislation against the Social Democratic Party had brought about bitter disillusionment, and ultimately destroyed all the veils of harmony, revealing the cruel capitalist contradictions in their naked reality. Since then, optimism had only been possible in the camp of the rising working cla.s.s and its theorists. This was admittedly not optimism about a natural, or artificially established equilibrium of capitalist economy, or about the eternal duration of capitalism, but rather the conviction that capitalism, by mightily furthering the development of the productive forces, and in virtue of its inherent contradictions, would provide an excellent soil for the historical progress of society towards new economic and social forms. The negative, depressing tendency of the first stage of capitalism, at one time realised by Sismondi alone and still observed by Rodbertus as late as the forties and fifties, is compensated by a tendency towards elation: the hopeful and victorious striving of the workers for ascendancy in their trade-union movement and by political action.

Such was the setting in Western Europe. In the Russia of that time, however, the picture was different indeed. Here, the seventies and eighties represent in every respect a period of transition, a period of internal crises with all its agonies. Big industry only now staged its real entry, fostered by the period of high protective tariffs. In particular, the introduction of a tariff on gold at the Western frontier in 1877 was a special landmark in the absolutist government's new policy of forcing the growth of capitalism. 'Primitive acc.u.mulation' of capital flourished splendidly in Russia, encouraged by all kinds of state subsidies, guarantees, premiums and government orders. It earned profits which would already seem legendary to the West. Yet the picture of internal conditions in contemporary Russia was anything but attractive and auspicious. On the plains, the decline and disintegration of rural economy under the pressure of exploitation by the Exchequer and the monetary system caused terrible conditions, periodical famines and peasant risings. In the towns, again, the factory proletariat had not yet been consolidated, either socially or mentally, into a modern working cla.s.s. For the greater part, it was still closely connected with agriculture, and remained semi-rural, particularly in the large industrial parts of Moscow-Vladimir, the most important centre of the Russian textile industry. Accordingly, primitive forms of exploitation were countered by primitive measures of defence. Not until the early eighties did the spontaneous factory revolts in the Moscow district with their smashing up of machines provide the impetus for the first rudiments of factory legislation in the Czarist Empire.

If the economic aspect of Russian public life showed at every step the harsh discords of a period of transition, there was a corresponding crisis in intellectual life. 'Populism', the indigenous brand of Russian socialism, theoretically grounded in the peculiarities of the Russian agrarian const.i.tution, was politically finished with the failure of the terrorist party of 'Narodnaya Volya', its extreme revolutionary exponent. The first writings of George Plekhanov, on the other hand, which were to pave the way in Russia for Marxist trains of thought, had only been published in 1883 and 1885, and for about a decade they seemed to have little influence. During the eighties and up to the nineties the mental life of the Russian, and in particular of the socialist intelligentsia with their tendency towards opposition, was dominated by a peculiar mixture of 'indigenous' 'populist' remnants and random elements of theoretical Marxism. The most remarkable feature of this mixture was scepticism as to the possibility of capitalist development in Russia.

At an early date, the Russian intelligentsia had been preoccupied with the question whether Russia should follow the example of Western Europe and embark on capitalist development. At first, they noticed only the bleak aspects of capitalism in the West, its disintegrating effects upon the traditional patriarchal forms of production and upon the prosperity and a.s.sured livelihood for the broad ma.s.ses of the population. As against that, the Russian rural communal ownership in land, the famous _obshchina_, seemed to offer a short-cut to the blessed land of socialism, a lead direct to a higher social development of Russia, without the capitalist phase and its attendant misery as experienced in Western Europe. Would it be right to fling away this fortunate and exceptional position, this unique historical opportunity, and forcibly transplant capitalist production to Russia with the help of the state?

Would it be right to destroy the system of rural holdings and production, and open the doors wide to proletarisation, to misery and insecurity of existence for the toiling ma.s.ses?

The Russian intelligentsia was preoccupied with this fundamental problem ever since the Agrarian Reform, and even earlier, since Hertzen, and especially since Chernishevski. This was the wholly unique world view of 'populism' in a nutsh.e.l.l. An enormous literature was created in Russia by this intellectual tendency ranging from the avowedly reactionary doctrines of the Slavophiles to the revolutionary theory of the terrorist party. On the one hand, it encouraged the collection of vast material by separate inquiries into the economic forms of Russian life, into 'national production' and its singular aspects, into agriculture as practised by the peasant communes, into the domestic industries of the peasants, the _artel_, and also into the mental life of the peasants, the sects and similar phenomena. On the other hand, a peculiar type of _belles lettres_ sprang up as the artistic reflection of the contradictory social conditions, the struggle between old and new ways which beset the mind at every step with difficult problems. Finally, in the seventies and eighties, a peculiarly stuffy philosophy of history sprang up from the same root and found its champions in Peter Lavrov, Nicolai Mikhailovski, Professor Kareyev and V. Vorontsov. It was the 'subjective method in sociology' which declared 'critical thought' to be the decisive factor in social development, or which, more precisely, sought to make a down-at-heel intelligentsia the agent of historical progress.

Here we are interested only in one aspect of this wide field with its many ramifications, _viz_: the struggle of opinions regarding the chances of capitalist development, and even then only in so far as these were based upon general reflections on the social conditions of the capitalist mode of production, since these latter were also to play a big part in the Russian controversial literature of the eighties and nineties.

The point at issue was to begin with Russian capitalism and its prospects, but this, of course, led further afield to the whole problem of capitalist development. The example and the experiences of the West were adduced as vital evidence in this debate.

One fact was of decisive importance for the theoretical content of the discussion that followed: not only was Marx's a.n.a.lysis of capitalist production as laid down in the first volume of _Capital_ already common property of educated Russia, but the second volume, too, with its a.n.a.lysis of the reproduction of capital as a whole had already been published in 1885. This gave a fundamentally new twist to the discussion. No more did the problem of crises obscure the real crux of the problem: for the first time, the argument centred purely in the reproduction of capital as a whole, in acc.u.mulation. Nor was the a.n.a.lysis bogged any longer by an aimless fumbling for the concepts of income and of individual and aggregate capital. Marx's diagram of social reproduction had provided a firm foothold. Finally, the issue was no longer between _laissez-faire_ and social reform, but between two varieties of socialism. The petty-bourgeois and somewhat muddled 'populist' brand of Russian socialists stood for scepticism regarding the possibility of capitalist development, much in the spirit of Sismondi and, in part, of Rodbertus, though they themselves frequently cited Marx as their authority. Optimism, on the other hand, was represented by the Marxist school in Russia. Thus the setting of the stage had been shifted completely.

One of the two champions of the 'populist' movement, Vorontsov, known in Russia mainly under the _nom de plume_ V. V., (his initials), was an odd customer. His economics were completely muddled, and as an expert on theory he cannot be taken seriously at all. The other, Nikolayon (Danielson), however, was a man of wide education, and thoroughly conversant with Marxism. He had edited the Russian translation of the first volume of _Capital_ and was a personal friend of Marx and Engels, with both of whom he kept up a lively correspondence (published in the Russian language in 1908). Nevertheless it was Vorontsov who influenced public opinion among the Russian intelligentsia in the eighties, and Marxists in Russia had to fight him above all. As for our problem: the general prospects of capitalist development, a new generation of Russian Marxists, who had learned from the historical experience and knowledge of Western Europe, joined forces with George Plekhanov in opposition to the above-mentioned two representatives of scepticism in the nineties.

They were amongst others Professor Kablukov, Professor Manuilov, Professor Issayev, Professor Skvortsov, Vladimir Ilyin, Peter v. Struve, Bulgakov, and Professor Tugan Baranovski. In the further course of our investigation we shall, however, confine ourselves to the last three of these, since every one of them furnished a more or less finished critique of this theory on the point with which we are here concerned.

This battle of wits, brilliant in parts, which kept the socialist intelligentsia spellbound in the nineties and was only brought to an end by the walkover of the Marxist school, officially inaugurated the infiltration into Russian thought of Marxism as an economico-historical theory. 'Legalist' Marxism at that time publicly took possession of the Universities, the Reviews and the economic book market in Russia--with all the disadvantages of such a position. Ten years later, when the revolutionary risings of the proletariat demonstrated in the streets the darker side of this optimism about capitalist development, none of this Plead of Marxist optimists, with but a single exception, was to be found in the camp of the proletariat.

_CHAPTER XIX_

VORONTSOV AND HIS 'SURPLUS'

The representatives of Russian 'populism' were convinced that capitalism had no future in Russia, and this conviction brought them to the problem of capitalist reproduction. V. V. laid down his theories on this point in a series of articles in the review _Patriotic Memoirs_ and in other periodicals which were collected and published in 1882 under the t.i.tle _The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia_. He further dealt with the problem in 'The Commodity Surplus in the Supply of the Market',[277] 'Militarism and Capitalism',[278] _Our Trends_,[279] and finally in _Outlines of Economic Theory_.[280] It is not easy to determine Vorontsov's att.i.tude towards capitalist development in Russia. He sided neither with the purely slavophil theory which deduced the perversity and perniciousness of capitalism for Russia from the 'peculiarities' of the Russian economic structure and a specifically Russian 'national character', nor with the Marxists who saw in capitalist development an unavoidable historical stage which is needed to clear the way towards social progress for Russian society, too. Vorontsov for his part simply a.s.serts that denunciation and acclamation of capitalism are equally futile because, having no roots in Russia, capitalism is just impossible there and can have no future. The essential conditions of capitalist development are lacking in Russia, and love's labour's lost if the state tries to promote it artificially--one might as well spare these efforts together with the heavy sacrifices they entail. But if we look into the matter more closely, Vorontsov's thesis is not nearly so uncompromising.

For if we pay attention to the fact that capitalism does not mean only the acc.u.mulation of capital wealth but also that the small producer is reduced to the proletarian level, that the labourer's livelihood is not a.s.sured and that there are periodical crises, then Vorontsov would by no means deny that all these phenomena exist in Russia. On the contrary, he explicitly says in his preface to _The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia_: 'Whilst I dispute the possibility of capitalism as a form of production in Russia, I do not intend to commit myself in any way as to its future as a form or degree of exploiting the national resources.'

Vorontsov consequently is of the opinion that capitalism in Russia merely cannot attain the same degree of maturity as in the West, whereas the severance of the immediate producer from the means of production might well be expected under Russian conditions. Vorontsov goes even further: he does not dispute at all that a development of the capitalist mode of production is quite possible in various branches of production, and even allows for capitalist exports from Russia to foreign markets.

Indeed he says in his essay on 'The Commodity Surplus in the Supply of the Market' that 'in several branches of industry, capitalist production develops very quickly'[281] [in the Russian meaning of the term, of course--R. L.].

'It is most probable that Russia, just like any other country, enjoys certain natural advantages which enable her to act as a supplier of certain kinds of commodities on foreign markets. It is extremely possible that capital can profit by this fact and lay hands upon the branches of production concerned--that is to say the (inter)national division of labour will make it easy for our capitalists to gain a foothold in certain branches. This, however, is not the point. We do not speak of a merely incidental partic.i.p.ation of capital in the industrial organisation of the country, but ask whether it is likely that the entire production of Russia can be put on a capitalist basis.'[282]

Put in this form, Vorontsov's scepticism looks quite different from what might have been expected at first. He doubts whether the capitalist mode of production could ever gain possession of the entire production in Russia; but then, capitalism has not so far accomplished this feat in any country of the world, not even in England. Such a brand of scepticism as to the future of capitalism appears at a glance quite international in outlook. And indeed, Vorontsov's theory here amounts to a quite general reflection on the nature and the essential conditions of capitalism; it is based upon a general theoretical approach to the reproductive process of social capital as a whole. Vorontsov gives the following very clear formulation of the specific relations between the capitalist mode of production and the problem of markets:

'The (inter)national division of labour, the distribution of all branches of industry among the countries taking part in international commerce, is quite independent of capitalism.

'The market which thus comes into being, the demand for the products of different countries resulting from such a division of labour among the nations, has intrinsically nothing in common with the market required by the capitalist mode of production.... The products of capitalist industry come on the market for another purpose; the question whether all the needs of the country are satisfied is irrelevant to them, and the entrepreneur does not necessarily receive in their stead another material product which may be consumed. Their main purpose is to realise the surplus value they contain. What, then, is this surplus value that it should interest the capitalist for its own sake? From our point of view, it is the surplus of production over consumption inside the country. Every worker produces more than he himself can consume, and all these surplus items acc.u.mulate in a few hands; their owners themselves consume them, exchanging them for the purpose against the most variegated kinds of necessities and luxuries. Yet eat, drink and dance as much as they like--they will not be able to squander the whole of the surplus value: a considerable remnant will be left over, of which they have to dispose somehow even though they cannot exchange it for other products. They must convert it into money, since it would otherwise just go bad. Since there is no one inside the country on whom the capitalists could foist this remnant, it must be exported abroad, and that is why foreign markets are indispensable to countries embarking on the capitalist venture.'[283]

The above is a literal translation, showing all the peculiarities of Vorontsov's diction, so that the reader may have a taste of this brilliant Russian theorist with whom one can spend moments of sheer delight.

Later, in 1895, Vorontsov summarised the same views in his book _Outlines of Economic Theory_ now claiming our attention. Here he takes a stand against the views of Say and Ricardo, and in particular also against John Stuart Mill who denied the possibility of general over-production. In the course of his argument he discovers something no one had known before: he has laid bare the source of all errors the cla.s.sical school made about the problem of crises. This mistake lies in a fallacious theory of the costs of production to which bourgeois economists are addicted. No doubt, from the aspect of the costs of production (which according to Vorontsov's equally unheard-of a.s.sumption do not comprise profits), both profit and crises are unthinkable and inexplicable. But we can only appreciate this original thought to the full in the author's own words:

'According to the doctrine of bourgeois economists, the value of a product is determined by the labour employed in its manufacture. Yet bourgeois economists, once they have given this determination of value, immediately forget it and base their subsequent explanation of the exchange phenomena upon a different theory which subst.i.tutes "costs of production" for labour. Thus two products are mutually exchanged in such quant.i.ties that the costs of production are equal on both sides. Such a view of the process of exchange indeed leaves no room for a commodity surplus inside the country. Any product of a worker's annual labour must, from this point of view, represent a certain quant.i.ty of material of which it is made, of tools which have been used in its manufacture, and of the products which served to maintain the workers during the period of production. It [presumably the product--R. L.] appears on the market in order to change its use-form, to reconvert itself into objects, into products for the workers and the value necessary for renewing the tools. As soon as it is split up into its component parts, the process of rea.s.sembling, the productive process, will begin, in the course of which all the values listed above will be consumed. In their stead, a new product will come into being which is the connecting link between past and future consumption.'

From this perfectly unique attempt to demonstrate social reproduction as a continuous process in the light of the costs of production, the following conclusion is promptly drawn: Considering thus the aggregate bulk of a country's products, we shall find no commodity surplus at all over and above the demand of society; an unmarketable surplus is therefore impossible from the point of view of a bourgeois economic theory of value.'

Yet, after having eliminated capitalist profit from the costs of production by an extremely autocratic manhandling of the bourgeois theory of value, Vorontsov immediately presents this deficiency as a great discovery: 'The above a.n.a.lysis, however, reveals yet another feature in the theory of value prevalent of late: it becomes evident that this theory leaves no room for capitalist profits.'

The argument that follows is striking in its brevity and simplicity: 'Indeed, if I exchange my own product, representing a cost of production of 5 roubles, for another product of equal value, I receive only so much as will be sufficient to cover my expense, but for my abstinence [literally so--R. L.] I shall get nothing.'

And now Vorontsov really comes to grips with the root of the problem:

'Thus it is proved on a strictly logical development of the ideas held by bourgeois economists that the destiny of the commodity surplus on the market and that of capitalist profit is identical. This circ.u.mstance justifies the conclusion that both phenomena are interdependent, that the existence of one is a condition of the other, and indeed, so long as there is no profit, there is no commodity surplus.... It is different if the profit comes into being inside the country. Such profit is not originally related to production; it is a phenomenon which is connected with the latter not by technical and natural conditions but by an extraneous social form. Production requires for its continuation ...

only material, tools, and means of subsistence for the workers, therefore as such it consumes only the corresponding part of the products: other consumers must be found for the surplus which makes up the profit, and for which there is no room in the permanent structure of industrial life, in production--consumers, namely, who are not organically connected with production, who are fortuitous to a certain extent. The necessary number of such consumers may or may not be forthcoming, and in the latter case there will be a commodity surplus on the market.'[284]

Well content with the 'simple' enlightenment, by which he has turned the surplus product into an invention of capital and the capitalist into a 'fortuitous' consumer who is 'not organically connected with capitalist production', Vorontsov now turns to the crises. On the basis of Marx's 'logical' theory of the value of labour which he claims to 'employ' in his later works, he expounds them as an immediate result of the surplus value, as follows:

'If the working part of the population consumes what enters into the costs of production in form of the wages for labour, the capitalists themselves must destroy [literally so--R. L.] the surplus value, excepting that part of it which the market requires for expansion. If the capitalists are in a position to do so and act accordingly, there can be no commodity surplus; if not, over-production, industrial crises, displacement of the workers from the factories and other evils will result.'

According to Vorontsov, however, it is '_the inadequate elasticity of the human organism_ which cannot enlarge its capacity to consume as rapidly as the surplus value is increasing', which is in the end responsible for these evils. He repeatedly expresses this ingenious thought as follows: 'The Achilles heel of capitalist industrial organisation thus lies in the incapacity of the entrepreneurs to consume the whole of their income.'