The third controversy about capitalist accumulation 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 classical 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 class
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 class 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 accumulation' 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 class. 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 constitution, 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 assured livelihood for the broad masses 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 masses?
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 nutshell. 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 analysis 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
analysis 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 accumulation. Nor was the
analysis 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
Pleïad of Marxist optimists, with but a single exception, was to be
found in the camp of the proletariat.
_CHAPTER XIX_