The second theorist of populist criticism, Nikolayon, brings quite a
different economic training and knowledge to his work. One of the
best-informed experts on Russian economic relations, he had already in
1880 attracted attention by his treatise on the capitalisation of
agricultural incomes, which was published in the review _Slovo_.
Thirteen years later, spurred on by the great Russian famine of 1891, he
pursued his inquiries further in a book entitled _Outlines of Our Social
Economy Since the Reform_. Here he gives a detailed exposition, fully
documented by facts and figures, of how capitalism developed in Russia,
and on this evidence proceeds to show that this development is the
source of all evil, and so of the famine, also, so far as the Russian
people are concerned. His views about the destiny of capitalism in
Russia are grounded in a definite theory about the conditions of the
development of capitalist production in general, and it is this with
which we must now deal.
Since the market is of decisive importance for the capitalist mode of
economy, every capitalist nation tries to make sure of as large a market
as possible. In the first place, of course, it relies on its home
market. But at a certain level of development, the home market is no
longer sufficient for a capitalist nation, and this for the following
reasons: all that social labour newly produces in one year can be
divided into two parts--the share received by the workers in the form of
wages, and that which is appropriated by the capitalists. Of the first
part, only so many means of subsistence as correspond, in value, to the
sum total of the wages paid within the country can be withdrawn from
circulation. Yet capitalist economy decidedly tends to depress this part
more and more. Its methods are a longer working day, stepping up the
intensity of labour, and increasing output by technical improvements
which enable the substitution of female and juvenile for male labour and
in some cases displace adult labour altogether. Even if the wages of
the workers still employed are rising, such increase can never equal the
savings of the capitalists resulting from these changes. The result of
all this is that the working class must play an ever smaller part as
buyers on the home market. At the same time, there is a further change:
capitalist production gradually takes over even the trades which
provided additional employment to an agricultural people; thus it
deprives the peasants of their resources by degrees, so that the rural
population can afford to buy fewer and fewer industrial products. This
is a further reason for the continual contraction of the home market. As
for the capitalist class, we see that this latter is also unable to
realise the entire newly created product, though for the opposite
reason. However large the requirements of this class, the capitalists
will not be able to consume the entire surplus product in person. First,
because part of it is needed to enlarge production, for technical
improvements which, to the individual entrepreneur, will be a necessary
condition of existence in a competitive society. Secondly, because an
expanding capitalist production implies an expansion in those branches
of industry which produce means of production (e.g. the mining industry,
the machine industry and so forth) and whose products from the very
beginning take a use-form that is incapable of personal consumption and
can only function as capital. Thirdly and lastly, the higher labour
productivity and capital savings that can be achieved by mass production
of cheap commodities increasingly impel society towards mass production
of commodities which cannot all be consumed by a mere handful of
capitalists.
Although one capitalist can realise his surplus value in the surplus
product of another capitalist and _vice versa_, this is only true for
products of a certain branch, for consumer goods. However, the incentive
of capitalist production is not the satisfaction of personal wants, and
this is further shown by the progressive decline in the production of
consumer as compared to that of producer goods.
'Thus we see that the aggregate product of a capitalist nation must
greatly exceed the requirements of the whole industrial population
employed, in the same way as each individual factory produces vastly in
excess of the requirements of both its workers and the entrepreneur, and
this is entirely due to the fact that the nation is a capitalist
nation, because the distribution of resources within the society does
not aim to satisfy the real wants of the population but only the
effective demand. Just as an individual factory-owner could not maintain
himself as a capitalist even for a day if his market were confined to
the requirements of his workers and his own, so the home market of a
developed capitalist nation must also be insufficient.'
At a certain level, capitalist development thus has the tendency to
impede its own progress. These obstacles are ultimately due to the fact
that progressive labour productivity, involving the severance of the
immediate producer from the means of production, does not benefit
society as a whole, but only the individual entrepreneur; and the mass
of labour power and men-hours which has been 'set free' by this process
becomes redundant and thus is not only lost to society but will become a
burden to it. The real wants of the masses can only be satisfied more
fully in so far as there can be an ascendancy of a 'populist' mode of
production based upon the union between the producer and his means of
production. It is the aim of capitalism, however, to gain possession of
just these spheres of production, and to destroy in the process the main
factor which makes for its own prosperity. The periodical famines in
India, for instance, recurring at intervals of ten or eleven years, were
thus among the causes of periodical industrial crises in England. Any
nation that sets out on capitalist development will sooner or later come
up against these contradictions inherent in this mode of production. And
the later a nation embarks on the capitalist venture, the more strongly
will these contradictions make themselves felt, since, once the home
market has been saturated, no substitute can be found, the outside
market having already been conquered by the older competing countries.
The upshot of it all is that the limits of capitalism are set by the
increasing poverty born of its own development, by the increasing number
of redundant workers deficient in all purchasing power. Increasing
labour productivity which can rapidly satisfy every effective demand of
society corresponds to the increasing incapacity of ever broader masses
of the population to satisfy their most vital needs; on the one hand, a
glut of goods that cannot be sold--and on the other, large masses who
lack the bare necessities.
These are Nikolayon's general views.[288] He knows his Marx, we see, and
has turned the two first volumes of _Capital_ to excellent use. And
still, the whole trend of his argument is genuinely Sismondian. It is
capitalism itself which brings about a shrinking home market since it
impoverishes the masses; every calamity of modern society is due to the
destruction of the 'populist' mode of production, that is to say the
destruction of small-scale enterprise. That is his main theme. More
openly even than Sismondi, Nikolayon sets the tenor of his critique by
an apotheosis of small-scale enterprise, this sole approach to
grace.[289] The aggregate capitalist product cannot, in the end, be
realised within the society, this can only be done with recourse to
outside markets. Nikolayon here comes to the same conclusion as
Vorontsov, in spite of a quite different theoretical point of departure.
Applied to Russia, it is the economic scientific ground for a sceptical
attitude towards capitalism. Capitalist development in Russia has been
without access to foreign markets from the first, it could only show its
worst aspects--it has impoverished the masses of the people. In
consequence, it was a 'fatal mistake' to promote capitalism in Russia.
On this point, Nikolayon fulminates like a prophet of the Old Testament:
'Instead of keeping to the tradition of centuries, instead of developing
our old inherited principle of a close connection between the immediate
producer and his means of production, instead of usefully applying the
scientific achievements of W. Europe to their forms of production based
on the peasants' ownership of their means of production, instead of
increasing their productivity by concentrating the means of production
in their hands, instead of benefiting, not by the forms of production in
W. Europe, but by its organisation, its powerful co-operation, its
division of labour, its machinery, etc., etc.--instead of developing the
fundamental principle of a landowning peasantry and applying it to the
cultivation of the land by the peasants, instead of making science and
its application widely accessible to the peasants--instead of all this,
we have taken the opposite turning. We have failed to prevent the
development of capitalist forms of production, although they are based
on the expropriation of the peasants; on the contrary, we have promoted
with all our might the upsetting of our entire economic life which
resulted in the famine of 1891.'
Though the evil is much advanced, it is not too late even now to retrace
our steps. On the contrary, a complete reform of economic policy is just
as urgently needed for Russia in view of the threatening proletarisation
and collapse, as Alexander's reforms after the Crimean war were
necessary in their time.
Now a social reform as advocated by Nikolayon is completely Utopian. His
attitude exhibits an even more blatant petty-bourgeois and reactionary
bias than Sismondi's ever did, considering that the Russian 'populist'
writes after a lapse of seventy years. For in his opinion, the old
_obshchina_, the rural community founded on the communal ownership of
the soil, is the raft to deliver Russia from the flood of capitalism. On
it, the discoveries of modern big industry and scientific technique are
to be grafted by measures which remain his own secret--so that it can
serve as the basis of a 'socialised' higher form of production. Russia
can choose no other alternative: either she turns her back upon
capitalist development, or she must resign herself to death and
decay.[290]
After a crushing criticism of capitalism Nikolayon thus ends up with the
same old 'populist' panacea which had as early as the fifties, though at
that time with greater justification, been hailed as the 'peculiarly
Russian' guarantee of a higher social development, although its
reactionary character as a lifeless relic of ancient institutions had
been exposed in Engels' _Fluechtlingsliteratur_ in _Volksstaat_ (1875).
Engels wrote at the time:
'A further development of Russia on bourgeois lines would gradually
destroy communal property there too, quite apart from any interference
of the Russian government "with the knout and with bayonets" (as the
revolutionary populists imagined). Under the pressure of taxes and
usury, communal landownership is no longer a privilege, it becomes an
irksome chain. The peasants frequently run away from it, either with or
without their families, to seek their living as itinerant labourers, and
leave the land behind. We see that communal ownership in Russia has long
since passed its flower and there is every indication that its decay is
approaching.'
With these words, Engels hits right on the target of the _obshchina_
problem--eighteen years before the publication of Nikolayon's principal
work. If Nikolayon subsequently with renewed courage again conjured up
the ghost of the _obshchina_, it was a bad historical anachronism
inasmuch as about a decade later the _obshchina_ was given an official
burial by the state. The absolutist government which had for financial
reasons tried during half a century artificially to keep the machinery
of the rural community going was compelled to give up this thankless
task on its own accord. The agrarian problem soon made it clear how far
the old 'populist' delusion was lagging behind the actual course of
economic events, and conversely, how powerfully capitalist development
in Russia, mourned and cursed as still-born, could demonstrate with
lightning and thunder its capacity to live and to multiply. Once again,
and for the last time, this turn of events demonstrates in quite a
different historical setting how a social critique of capitalism, which
begins by doubting its capacity for development, must by a deadly logic
lead to a reactionary Utopianism--both in the France of 1819 and in the
Russia of 1893.[291]