The Russian 'legalist' Marxists, and Tugan Baranovski above all, can
claim the credit, in their struggle against the doubters of capitalist
accumulation, of having enriched economic theory by an application of
Marx's analysis of the social reproductive process and its schematic
representation in the second volume of _Capital_. But in view of the
fact that this same Tugan Baranovski quite wrongly regarded said diagram
as the solution to the problem instead of its formulation, his
conclusions were bound to reverse the basic order of Marx's doctrine.
Tugan Baranovski's approach, according to which capitalist production
can create unlimited markets and is independent of consumption, leads
him straight on to the thesis of Say-Ricardo, i.e. a natural balance
between production and consumption, between supply and demand. The
difference is simply that those two only thought in terms of simple
commodity circulation, whilst Tugan Baranovski applies the same doctrine
to the circulation of capital. His theory of crises being caused by a
'lack of proportion' is in effect just a paraphrase of Say's old trite
absurdity: the over-production of any one commodity only goes to show
under-production of another; and Tugan Baranovski simply translates this
nonsense into the terminology used in Marx's analysis of the
reproductive process. Even though he declares that, Say notwithstanding,
general over-production is quite possible in the light of the
circulation of money which the former had entirely neglected, yet it is
in fact this very same neglect, the besetting sin of Say and Ricardo in
their dealings with the problem of crises which is the condition for his
delightful manipulations with Marx's diagram. As soon as it is applied
to the circulation of money, 'diagram No. 2' begins to bristle with
spikes and barbs. Bulgakov was caught in these spikes when he attempted
to follow up Marx's interrupted analysis to a logical conclusion. This
compound of forms of thought borrowed from Marx with contents derived
from Say and Ricardo is what Tugan Baranovski modestly calls his
'attempt at a synthesis between Marx's theory and classical economics'.
After almost a century, the theory of optimism which holds, in the face
of petty-bourgeois doubts, that capitalist production is capable of
development, returns, by way of Marx's doctrine and its 'legalist'
champions, to its point of departure, to Say and Ricardo. The three
'Marxists' join forces with the bourgeois 'harmonists' of the Golden Age
shortly before the Fall when bourgeois economics was expelled from the
Garden of Innocence--the circle is closed.
There can be no doubt that the 'legalist' Russian Marxists achieved a
victory over their opponents, the 'populists', but that victory was
rather too thorough. In the heat of battle, all three--Struve, Bulgakov
and Tugan Baranovski--overstated their case. The question was whether
capitalism in general, and Russian capitalism in particular, is capable
of development; these Marxists, however, proved this capacity to the
extent of even offering theoretical proof that capitalism can go on for
ever. Assuming the accumulation of capital to be without limits, one has
obviously proved the unlimited capacity of capitalism to survive!
Accumulation is the specifically capitalist method of expanding
production, of furthering labour productivity, of developing the
productive forces, of economic progress. If the capitalist mode of
production can ensure boundless expansion of the productive forces, of
economic progress, it is invincible indeed. The most important objective
argument in support of socialist theory breaks down; socialist political
action and the ideological import of the proletarian class struggle
cease to reflect economic events, and socialism no longer appears an
historical necessity. Setting out to show that capitalism is possible,
this trend of reasoning ends up by showing that socialism is impossible.
The three Russian Marxists were fully aware that in the course of the
dispute they had made an about-turn, though Struve, in his enthusiasm
for the cultural mission of capitalism, does not worry about giving up a
useful warrant.[329] Bulgakov tried to stop the gaps now made in
socialist theory with another fragment of the same theory as best he
could: he hoped that capitalist society might yet perish, in spite of
the immanent balance between production and consumption, because of the
declining profit rate. But it was he himself who finally cut away the
ground from under this somewhat precarious comfort. Forgetting the straw
he had offered for the salvation of socialism, he turned on Tugan
Baranovski with the teaching that, in the case of large capitals, the
relative decline in the profit rate is compensated by the absolute
growth of capital.[330] More consistent than the others, Tugan
Baranovski finally with the crude joy of a barbarian destroys all
objective economic arguments in support of socialism, thus building in
his own spirit 'a more beautiful world' on an ethical foundation. 'The
individual protests against an economic order which transforms the end
(man) into a means (production) and the means (production) into an
end.'[331]
Our three Marxists demonstrated in person that the new foundations of
socialism had been frail and jerry-built. They had hardly laid down the
new basis for socialism before they turned their backs on it. When the
masses of Russia were staking their lives in the fight for the ideals of
a social order to come, which would put the end (man) before the means
(production), the 'individual' went into retreat, to find philosophical
and ethical solace with Kant. In actual fact, the 'legalist' bourgeois
Marxists ended up just where we should expect them to from their
theoretical position--in the camp of bourgeois harmonies.