We now turn to the criticism of the above opinions as given by the
Russian Marxists.
In 1894, Peter v. Struve who had already given a detailed appraisal of
Nikolayon's book in an essay 'On Capitalist Development in Russia',[292]
published a book in Russian,[293] criticising the theories of 'populism'
from various aspects. In respect of our present problem, however, he
mainly confines himself to proving, against both Vorontsov and
Nikolayon, that capitalism does not cause a contraction of the home
market but, on the contrary, an expansion. There can be no doubt that
Nikolayon has made a blunder--the same that Sismondi had made. They each
describe only a single aspect of the destructive process, performed by
capitalism on the traditional forms of production by small enterprise.
They saw only the resulting depression of general welfare, the
impoverishment of broad strata of the population, and failed to notice
that economic aspect of the process which entails the abolition of
natural economy and the substitution of a commodity economy in rural
districts. And this is as much as to say that, by absorbing further and
further sections of formerly independent and self-sufficient producers
into its own sphere, capitalism continuously transforms into commodity
buyers ever new strata of people who had not before bought its
commodities. In fact, the course of capitalist development is just the
opposite of that pictured by the 'populists' on the model of Sismondi.
Capitalism, far from ruining the home market, really sets about creating
it, precisely by means of a spreading money economy.
Struve in particular refutes the theory that the surplus value cannot
possibly be realised on the home market. He argues as follows: The
conviction that a mature capitalist society consists exclusively of
entrepreneurs and workers forms the basis of Vorontsov's theory, and
Nikolayon himself operates with this concept throughout. From this point
of view, of course, the realisation of the capitalist aggregate product
seems incomprehensible. And Vorontsov's theory is correct in so far as
it states the fact that neither the capitalists' nor the workers'
consumption can realise the surplus value, so that the existence of
'third persons' must be presumed.[294] But then, is it not beyond any
doubt that some such 'third persons' exist in every capitalist society?
The idea of Vorontsov and Nikolayon is pure fiction 'which cannot
advance our understanding of any historical process whatever by a hair's
breadth'.[295] There is no actual capitalist society, however highly
developed, composed exclusively of capitalists and workers.
'Even in England and Wales, out of a thousand self-supporting
inhabitants, 543 are engaged in industry, 172 in commerce, 140 in
agriculture, 81 in casual wage labour, and 62 in the Civil Service, the
liberal professions and the like.'
Even in England, then, there are large numbers of 'third persons', and
it is they who, by their consumption, help to realise the surplus value
in so far as it is not consumed by the capitalists. Struve leaves it
open whether these 'third persons' consume enough to realise all surplus
value--however that may be, 'the contrary would have to be proved'.[296]
This cannot be done, he claims, for Russia, that vast country with an
immense population. She, in fact, is in the fortunate position to be
able to dispense with foreign markets. In this--and here Struve dips
into the intellectual treasures of Professors Wagner, Schaeffle, and
Schmoller--she enjoys the same privileges as the United States of
America. 'If the example of the N. American Union stands for anything,
it is proof of the fact that under certain circumstances capitalist
industry can attain a very high level of development almost entirely on
the basis of the home market.'[297]
The negligible amount of industrial exports from the U.S.A. in 1882 is
mentioned in support of this statement which Struve formulates as a
general doctrine: 'The vaster the territory, and the larger the
population of a country, the less does that country require foreign
markets for its capitalist development.' He infers from this, in direct
opposition to the 'populists', 'a more brilliant future (for Russia)
than for the other countries'.
On the basis of commodity production, the progressive development of
agriculture is bound to create a market wide enough to support the
development of Russian industrial capitalism. This market would be
capable of unlimited expansion, in step with the economic and cultural
progress of the country, and together with the substitution of a
monetary for a natural economy. 'In this respect, capitalism enjoys more
favourable conditions in Russia than in other countries.'[298]
Struve paints a detailed and highly coloured picture of the new markets
which, thanks to the Trans-Siberian Railway, are opening up in Siberia,
Central Asia, Asia Minor, Persia and the Balkans. But his prophetic zeal
blinds him to the fact that he is no longer talking about the
'indefinitely expanding' home market but about specific foreign markets.
In later years, he was to throw in his lot, in politics too, with this
optimistic Russian capitalism and its liberal programme of imperialist
expansion, for which he had laid the theoretical foundations when still
a 'Marxist'.
Indeed, the tenor of Struve's argument is a fervent belief in the
unlimited capacity for expansion of capitalist production, but the
economic foundation of this optimism is rather weak. He is somewhat
reticent as to what he means by the 'third persons' whom he considers
the mainstay of accumulation, but his references to English
occupational statistics indicate that he has in mind the various private
and public servants, the liberal professions, in short the notorious
_grand public_ so dear to bourgeois economists when they are completely
at a loss. It is this 'great public' of which Marx said that it serves
as the explanation for things which the economist cannot explain. It is
obvious that, if we categorically refer to consumption by the
capitalists and the workers, we do not speak of the entrepreneur as an
individual, but of the capitalist class as a whole, including their
hangers-on--employees, Civil Servants, liberal professions, and the
like. All such 'third persons' who are certainly not lacking in any
capitalist society are, as far as economics is concerned, joint
consumers of the surplus value for the greater part, in so far, namely,
as they are not also joint consumers of the wages of labour. These
groups can only derive their purchasing power either from the wage of
the proletariat or from the surplus value, if not from both; but on the
whole, they are to be regarded as joint consumers of the surplus value.
It follows that their consumption is already included in the consumption
of the capitalist class, and if Struve tries to reintroduce them to the
capitalists by sleight-of-hand as 'third persons' to save the situation
and help to realise the surplus value, the shrewd profiteer will not be
taken in. He will see at once that this great public is nothing but his
old familiar retinue of parasites who buy his commodities with money of
his own providing. No, no, indeed! Struve's 'third persons' will not do
at all.
Struve's theory of foreign markets and their significance for capitalist
production is equally untenable. In this, he defers to the mechanist
approach of the 'populists' who, along with the professors' textbooks,
hold that a capitalist (European) country will first exploit the home
market to the limit, and will only look to foreign markets when this is
almost or completely exhausted. Then, following in the footsteps of
Wagner, Schaeffle and Schmoller, Struve arrives at the absurd conclusion
that a country with vast territories and a large population can make its
capitalist production a 'self-contained whole' and rely indefinitely on
the home market alone.[299] In actual fact, capitalist production is by
nature production on a universal scale. Quite contrary to the bookish
decrees issued by German scholars, it is producing for a world market
already from the word _go_. The various pioneering branches of
capitalist production in England, such as the textile, iron and coal
industries, cast about for markets in all countries and continents, long
before the process of destroying peasants' property, the decline of
handicraft and of the old domestic industries within the country had
come to an end. And again, is it likely that the German chemical or
electrotechnical industries would be grateful for the sober advice not
to work for five continents, as they have done from the beginning, but
to confine themselves to the German home market which, being largely
supplied from abroad, is evidently far from exhausted in respect of a
whole lot of other German industries? Or that one should explain to the
German machine industry, it should not venture yet upon foreign markets,
since German import statistics are visible proof that a good deal of
the demand in Germany for products of this branch is satisfied by
foreign supplies? No, this schematic conception of 'foreign trade' does
not help us at all to grasp the complexity of the world market with its
uncounted ramifications and different shades in the division of labour.
The industrial development of the U.S.A. who have already at the time of
writing become a dangerous rival to Britain both on the world market and
even in England herself, just as they have beaten German competition,
e.g. in the sphere of electrotechnics, both in the world market and in
Germany herself, has given the lie to Struve's inferences, already
out-of-date when they were put on paper.
Struve also shares the crude view of the Russian 'populists' who saw
hardly more than a merchant's sordid concern for his market in the
international connections of capitalist economy, and its historical
tendency to create a homogeneous living organism based on social
division of labour as well as the countless variety of natural wealth
and productive conditions of the globe. Moreover he accepts the Three
Empire fiction of Wagner and Schmoller (the self-contained Empires of
Great Britain, Russia and the U.S.A.) which completely ignores or
artificially minimises the vital part played by an unlimited supply of
means of subsistence, of raw and auxiliary materials and of labour power
which is just as necessary for a capitalist industry computed in terms
of a world market as the demand for finished products. Alone the history
of the English cotton industry, a reflection in miniature of the history
of capitalism in general, spreading over five continents throughout the
nineteenth century, makes a mockery of the professors' childish
pretensions which have only one real significance: to provide the
theoretical justification for the system of protective tariffs.