After finishing with sociology, the author proceeds to deal with more "concrete economic problems" (73). He considers it "natural and legitimate" to start from "general propositions and historical references," from "indisputable premises established by human experience," as he says in the preface.

    One cannot but note that this method suffers from the same abstractness noted at the beginning as being the main defect of the book under review. In the chapters we are now coming to (the third, fourth, and fifth), this defect has resulted in undesirable consequences of a twofold nature. On the one hand, it has weakened the definite theoretical propositions advanced by the author against the Narodniks. Mr. Struve argues in general, describes the transition from natural to commodity economy, points out that, as a rule, such and such happened on earth, and with a few cursory remarks proceeds to deal with Russia, applying

 
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to it, too, the general process of the "historical development of economic life." There can be no doubt that it is quite legitimate to apply the process in this way, and that the author's "historical references" are absolutely necessary for a criticism of Narodism, which falsely presents history, and not only Russian history. These propositions should, however, have been expressed more concretely, and been more definitely set against the arguments of the Narodniks, who say that it is wrong to apply the general process to Russia; the Narodniks' particular way of understanding Russian reality should have been compared with the Marxists' other way of understanding that same reality. On the other hand, the abstract character of the author's arguments leads to his propositions being stated incompletely, to a situation where, though he correctly indicates the existence of a process, he does not examine what classes arose while it was going on, what classes were the vehicles of the process, overshadowing other strata of the population subordinate to them; in a word, the author's objectivism does not rise to the level of materialism -- in the above-mentioned significance of these terms.*

    Proof of this appraisal of the above-mentioned chapters of Mr. Struve's work will be adduced as we examine some of its most important propositions.

 
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it has to be carried out as widely as possible, but before production is technically reorganised, the influence of the new conditions of exchange (marketing) will be felt in the fact of the producer becoming economically dependent on the merchant (the buyer-up), and socially this point is of decisive significance. This is lost sight of by our 'true Marxists' like Mr. V. V., who are blinded by the significance of purely technical progress" (98). The reference to the decisive significance of the appearance of the buyer-up is profoundly true. It is decisive in that it proves beyond doubt that we have here the capitalist organisation of production, it proves the applicability to Russia, too, of the proposition that "commodity economy is money economy, is capitalist economy," and creates that subordination of the producer to capital from which there can be no other way out than through the independent activity of the producer. "From the moment that the capitalist entrepreneur comes between the consumer and the producer -- and this is inevitable when production is carried on for an extensive and indefinite market -- we have before us one of the forms of capitalist production." And the author rightly adds that "if handicraft production is understood as the kind under which the producer, who works for an indefinite and distant market, enjoys complete economic independence, it will, I think, be found that in Russian reality there is none of this true handicraft production." It is only a pity that use is made here of the expression "I think," along with the future tense: the predominance of the domestic system of large-scale production and of the utter enslavement of the handicraftsmen by buyers-up is the all-prevailing fact of the actual organisation of our handicraft industries. This organisation is not only capitalist, but as the author rightly says, is also one that is "highly profitable to the capitalists," ensuring them enormous profits, abominably low wages and hindering in the highest degree the organisation and development of the workers (pp. 99-101). One cannot help noting that the fact of the predominance of capitalist exploitation in our handicraft industries has long been known, but the Narodniks ignore it in the most shameless fashion. In almost every issue of their magazines and newspapers dealing with this subject, you

 
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views on the matter and on what grounds it is considered necessary to correct those views?

    "Small-scale agricultural production," continues the author, "must increasingly assume a commodity character, and the small agricultural undertakings, if they are to be viable enterprises, must satisfy the general requirements of economic and technical rationality" (111). "It is not at all a matter of whether the small agricultural enterprises are absorbed by the big ones -- one can hardly anticipate such an outcome to economic evolution -- but of the met amorphosis to which the entire national economy is subjected under the influence of exchange. The Narodniks over look the fact that the ousting of natural economy by exchange economy in connection with the above-noted 'dispersal of industry' completely alters the entire structure of society. The former ratio between the agricultural (rural) and non-agricultural (urban) population is changed in favour of the latter. The very economic type and mental make-up of the agricultural producers is radically changed under the influence of the new conditions of economic life" (114).

    The passage cited shows us what the author wished to say by his passage about Marx, and at the same time clearly illustrates the statement made above that the dogmatic method of exposition, not supported by a description of the concrete process, obscures the author's thoughts and leaves them incompletely expressed. His thesis about the Narodniks' views being wrong is quite correct, but incomplete, because it is not accompanied by a reference to the new forms of class antagonism that develop when irrational production is replaced by rational. The author, for example, confines himself to a cursory reference to "economic rationality" meaning the "highest rent" (110), but forgets to add that rent presupposes the bourgeois organisation of agriculture, i.e., firstly, its complete subordination to the market, and, secondly, the formation in agriculture of the same classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, as are peculiar to capitalist industry.

    When the Narodniks argue about the non-capitalist, as they believe, organisation of our agriculture, they pose the problem in an abominably narrow and wrong way, reducing everything to the ousting of the small farms by the

 
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the market. That is why the line of argument (in which, by the way, Mr. V. V. also exercised himself) that the decline of the nobles' farms after the Reform and the renting of privately-owned land by the peasants refute the view of the capitalist evolution of our agriculture, merely proves that those who resort to it have absolutely no understanding of things. Of course, the destruction of feudal relations, under which cultivation had been in the hands of the peasants, caused a crisis among the landlords. But, apart from the fact that this crisis merely led to the increasing employment of farm labourers and day labourers, which replaced the obsolescent forms of semi-feudal labour (labour service); apart from this, the peasant farm itself began to change fundamentally in character: it was compelled to work for the market, a situation that was not long in leading to the peasantry splitting into a rural petty bourgeoisie and a proletariat. This split settles once and for all the issue of capitalism in Russia. Mr. Struve explains the process in Chapter V, where he remarks: "There is differentiation among the small farmers: there develops, on the one hand, an 'economically strong'" [he should have said: bourgeois] "peasantry, and, on the other -- a proletarian type of peasantry. Features of people's production are combined with capitalist features to form a single picture, above which is clearly visible the inscription: here comes Grimy" (p. 177).

    Now it is to this aspect of the matter, to the bourgeois organisation of the new, "rational" agriculture that attention should have been directed. The Narodniks should have been shown that by ignoring the process mentioned they change from ideologists of the peasantry into ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie. "The improvement of people's production," for which they thirst, can only mean, under such an organisation of peasant economy, the "improvement" of the petty bourgeoisie. On the other hand, those who point to the producer who lives under the most highly developed capitalist relations, correctly express the interests not only of this producer, but also of the vast mass of the "proletarian" peasantry.

    Mr. Struve's exposition is unsatisfactory in character, is incomplete and sketchy; on account of this, when dealing

 
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with rational agriculture, he does not describe its social and economic organisation, and, when he shows that steam transport replaces irrational by rational production, natural by commodity production, he does not describe the new form of class antagonism that then takes shape.

    This same defect in the presentation of problems is to be observed in most of the arguments in the chapters under examination. Here are some more examples to illustrate this. Commodity economy -- says the author -- and extensive social division of labour "develop on the basis of the institution of private property, the principles of economic freedom, and the sense of individualism" (91). The progress of national production is bound up with the "extent to which the institution of private property dominates society." "Maybe it is regrettable, but that is how things happen in actual life, it is empirically, historically established coexistence. At the present time, when the ideas and principles of the eighteenth century are treated so light-heartedly -- the mistake it made being in fact repeated -- this cultural-historical tie between economic progress and the institution of private property, the principles of economic freedom, and the sense of individualism is too often forgotten. Only by ignoring this tie can one expect economic progress to be possible in an economically and culturally undeveloped society, without the principles mentioned being put into effect. We feel no particular sympathy for these principles and perfectly well understand their historically transient character, but at the same time we cannot help seeing in them a tremendous cultural force, of not only a negative, but also a positive character. Only idealism which, in its hypotheses, imagines it has no ties with any historical succession, can fail to see it" (91).

    The author is quite right in his "objective" statement of "historical coexistences"; all the more pity that his argument is incompletely stated. One would like to say to him: complete the argument! reduce all these general propositions and historical notes to a definite period of our Russian history, formulate them in such a way as to show why and in precisely what way your conception differs from that of the Narodniks, contrast them with the reality that has to serve as the criterion for the Russian Marxist,

 
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geoisdom to those who in fact were their vehicles and exponents. All you can say of them is: "they came unto their own, and their own received them not."

    To agree with that description of post-Reform Russia and "society" will be beyond the capacity of the contemporary Narodnik. And to challenge it, he would have to deny the bourgeois character of post-Reform Russia, to deny the a very thing for which his distant forefather, the Narodnik of the seventies, rose up and "went among the people" to seek "guarantees for the future" among the direct producers themselves. Of course, the contemporary Narodnik will possibly not only deny it, but will perhaps seek to prove that a change for the better has taken place in the relation under review; by doing so, however, he would merely show all who have not yet seen it, that he is absolutely nothing more than the most ordinary little bourgeois individual.

    As the reader sees, I have only to round off Mr. Struve's propositions, to formulate them in another way, "to say the same thing, only differently." The question arises: is there any need for it? Is it worth while dealing in such detail with these additions and conclusions? Do they not follow automatically?

    It seems to me that it is worth while, for two reasons. Firstly, the author's narrow objectivism is extremely dangerous, since it extends to the point of forgetting the line of demarcation between the old professorial arguments about the paths and destiny of the fatherland, so rooted in our literature, and a precise characterisation of the actual process impelled by such and such classes. This narrow objectivism, this inconsistency in relation to Marxism, is the main defect of Mr. Struve's book, and it will be necessary to dwell on it in particularly great detail, so as to show that it originates not from Marxism but from its inadequate application; not from the author seeing criteria of his theory other than reality, from his drawing other practical conclusions from the doctrine (they are impossible, I repeat, unthinkable unless you mutilate all its main tenets), but from the fact that the author has limited himself to one, the most general aspect of the theory, and has not applied it quite consistently. Secondly, one cannot but agree with the idea which the author ex-

 
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pressed in his preface that before criticising Narodism on secondary issues, it was necessary "to disclose the very fundamentals of the disagreement" (VII) by way of a "principled polemic." But in order to ensure that the author's aim should not remain unachieved a more concrete meaning must be given to almost all his propositions, all his rather general remarks must be applied to the concrete problems of Russian history and present-day reality. On all these problems the Russian Marxists still have much to do to "reconsider the facts" from the materialist standpoint -- to disclose the class contradictions in the activities of "society" and the "state" that lay behind the theories of the "intelligentsia," and, finally, to establish the tie between all the separate, endlessly varied forms of appropriating the surplus product in Russia's "people's" enterprises, and the advanced, most developed, capitalist form of this appropriation, which contains the "guarantees for the future" and now puts in the forefront the idea and the historical task of the "producer." Consequently, however bold the attempt to indicate the solution of these problems may seem, however numerous the changes and corrections that result from further, detailed study, it is none the less worth indicating specific problems, so as to evoke as general and broad a discussion of them as possible.

    The culminating point of Mr. Struve's narrow objectivism, which gives rise to his wrong presentation of problems, is the way he argues about List, about his "splendid doctrine" concerning a "confederation of national productive forces," about the importance for agriculture of developing factory industry, and about the superiority of the manufacturing and agricultural state over the purely agricultural, etc. The author finds that this "doctrine" very "convincingly speaks of the historical inevitability and legitimacy of capitalism in the broad sense of the term" (123), and about the "cultural-historical might of triumphant commodity production" (124).

    The professorial character of the arguments of the author, who rises, as it were, above all definite countries, definite historical periods, and definite classes, stands out here in particular relief. However you look at this argument -- whether from the purely theoretical or from the practi-

 
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cal aspect, such an assessment will be equally correct. Let us begin from the former. Is it not strange to think of being able to "convince" anybody at all of the "historical inevitability and legitimacy of capitalism" in a particular country by advancing abstract, dogmatic propositions about the significance of factory industry? Is it not a mistake to raise the problem in this way, so beloved of the liberal professors of Russkoye Bogatstvo ? Is it not obligatory for a Marxist to reduce everything to ascertaining what is, and why it is so, and not otherwise?

    The Narodniks consider capitalism in this country to be an artificial, hothouse plant, because they cannot understand the connection between it and the entire commodity organisation of our social economy, and fail to see its roots in our "people's production." Show them these connections and roots, show them that capitalism also dominates in its least developed and therefore worst form in people's production, and you will prove the "inevitability" of Russian capitalism. Show them that this capitalism, by raising labour productivity and socialising labour, develops and renders clear the class, social contradiction that has come into being everywhere in "people's production" -- and you will prove the "legitimacy" of Russian large-scale capitalism. As to the practical aspect of this argument, which touches on the problem of commercial policy, the following may be noted. Although they stress primarily and most emphatically that the problem of free trade and protection is a capitalist problem, one of bourgeois policy, the Russian Marxists must stand for free trade, since the reactionary character of protection, which retards the country's economic development, and serves the interests not of the entire bourgeois class, but merely of a handful of all-powerful magnates, is very strongly evident in Russia, and since free trade means accelerating the process that yields the means of deliverance from capitalism.

    The last section (XI) of the third chapter is devoted to an examination of the concept "capitalism." The author very rightly remarks that this word is used "very loosely" and cites examples of a "very narrow" and "very broad"

 
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the "authorities" only help big capital, etc.; in a word, his misfortunes are due to the specific features of distribution, to mistakes in policy, etc. What viewpoint does the author oppose to that of the Narodnik? The viewpoint of big capital, who looks down with contempt upon the miserable little enterprise of the peasant-handicraftsman and who is proud of the high degree of development of his own industry, proud of the "service" he has rendered by raising the absolute and relative low productivity of the people's labour? Or the viewpoint of its antipode, who is now living in relationships which are so far developed that he is no longer satisfied with references to policy and distribution, and who is beginning to understand that the causes lie much deeper, in the very organisation (social) of production, in the very system of social economy based on individual property and controlled and guided by the market? This question might quite naturally arise in the reader's mind, especially since the author sometimes uses the term "factor of production" side by side with the word "economy" (see p. 171: the Narodniks "ignore the factor of production to a degree that is tantamount to denying the existence of any system of economy"), and especially since, by comparing "irrational" with "rational" production, the author sometimes obscures the relationship between the small producer and the producer who has lost the means of production altogether. It is perfectly true that from the objective point of view the author's exposition is no less correct on account of this and that it is easy for anyone who understands the antagonism inherent in the capitalist system to picture the situation from the angle of the latter relationship. But, as it is well known that the Russian Narodnik gentlemen do not understand this, it is desirable in controversy with them to be more definite and thorough and to resort to the fewest possible general and abstract postulates.

    As we tried to show by a concrete example in Chapter I, the difference between Narodism and Marxism lies wholly in the character of their criticism of Russian capitalism. The Narodnik thinks that to criticise capitalism it is sufficient to indicate the existence of exploitation, the interaction between exploitation and politics, etc. The Marxist thinks it necessary to explain and also to link together

 
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the phenomena of exploitation as a system of certain relations in production, as a special social-economic formation, the laws of the functioning and development of which have to be studied objectively. The Narodnik thinks it sufficient, in criticising capitalism, to condemn it from the angle of his ideals, from the angle of "modern science and modern moral ideas." The Marxist thinks it necessary to trace in detail the classes that are formed in capitalist society, he considers valid only criticism made from the viewpoint of a definite class, criticism that is based on the precise formulation of the social process actually taking place and not on the ethical judgement of the "individual."

    If, with this as our starting-point, we tried to formulate the tasks of criticising the economic principles of Narodism, they would be defined approximately as follows:

    It must be shown that the relation between large-scale capitalism in Russia and "people's production" is the relation between a completely developed and an undeveloped phenomenon, between a higher stage of development of the capitalist social formation and a lower stage;* that the separation of the producer from the means of production and the appropriation of the product of his labour by the owner of money are to be explained, both in the factory and even in the village community, not by politics, not by distribution, but by the production relations that necessarily take shape under commodity economy, by the formation of classes with antagonistic interests which is characteristic of capitalist society;** that the reality (small production) which

 
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the Narodniks want to raise to a higher level, bypassing capitalism, already contains capitalism with its antagonism of classes and clashes between them -- only the antagonism is in its worst form, a form which hampers the independent activity of the producer; and that by ignoring the social antagonisms which have already arisen and by dreaming about "different paths for the father land," the Narodniks become utopian reactionaries, because large-scale capitalism only develops, purges and clarifies the content of these antagonisms, which exist all over Russia.

    Directly connected with the over-abstract formulation of the tasks of the economic criticism of Narodism is the author's further exposition, in which he seeks to prove the "inevitability" and "progressive character," not of Russian capitalism, but of West European. Without directly touching on the economic content of the Narodnik doctrine, this exposition contains much that is interesting and instructive. In Narodnik literature voices have been heard time and again expressing distrust towards the West-European labour movement. This was most strikingly expressed during the recent polemics of Messrs. Mikhailovsky and Co. (Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1893-1894) against the Marxists. We have seen no good from capitalism yet, Mr. Mikhailovsky wrote at that time.* The absurdity of these petty-bourgeois views is excellently proved by Mr. Struve's data, especially since they are drawn from the latest bour-

 
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geois literature, which can on no account be accused of exaggeration. The passages quoted by the author show that in the West everybody, even the bourgeois, realises that the transition of capitalism to a new social-economic formation is inevitable.

    The socialisation of labour by capital has advanced so far that even bourgeois literature loudly proclaims the necessity of the "planned organisation of the national economy." The author is quite right when he says that this is a "sign of the times," a sign of the complete break-up of the capitalist system. He quotes extremely interesting statements by bourgeois professors and even by conservatives who are compelled to admit that which Russian radicals to this very day like to deny -- the fact that the working-class movement was created by the material conditions brought into existence by capitalism and not "simply" by culture or other political conditions.

    After all that has been said, it is hardly necessary for us to deal with the author's argument that distribution can make progress only if based on rational production. Clearly, the meaning of this postulate is that only large scale capitalism based on rational production creates conditions that enable the producer to raise his head, to give thought and show concern both for himself and for those who, owing to the backward state of production, do not live in such conditions.

    Just a word or two about the following sentence which occurs in Mr. Struve's book: "The extreme inequality of distribution, which retards economic progress, was hot created by capitalism: capitalism inherited it" from the epoch which romantics picture as flowing with milk and honey (p, 159). That is true if all the author wanted to say was that unequal distribution existed even before capitalism, something Narodnik gentlemen are inclined to for get. But it is not true if it includes a denial that capitalism has increased this inequality. Under serfdom there was not, nor could there be, that sharp inequality between the absolutely impoverished peasant or tramp, and the bank, railway, or industrial magnate, which has been created by post-Reform capitalist Russia.

 
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    Let us pass to Chapter V. Here the author gives a general description of "Narodism as an economic philosophy." "The Narodniks," in Mr. Struve's opinion, are the "ideologists of natural economy and primitive equality" (167).

    We cannot agree with this description. We shall not repeat here the arguments advanced in Chapter I, proving that the Narodniks are the ideologists of the small producer. In that chapter we showed exactly how the small producer's material conditions of life, his transitory, intermediate position between the "masters" and the "workers" lead to the Narodniks' failure to understand class antagonisms, and the queer mixture of progressive and reactionary points in their programme.

    Here let us merely add that its former, i.e., progressive, side brings Narodism close to West-European democracy, and for that reason the brilliant description of democracy given over forty years ago in connection with events in French history can be applied to it in its entirety:

    "The democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie, that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted, imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people. What they represent is the people's rights ; what interests them is the people's interests. Accordingly . . . they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to weigh their own resources too critically. . . .* If in the performance their interests prove to be uninteresting and their potency impotent, then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile

 
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of the theory, but he appears not to have observed its petty-bourgeois content.

    When speaking of Chapter V, we too cannot help dealing with Mr. Shcherbina's "law of average requirements." This is important in estimating Mr. Struve's Malthusianism, which stands out clearly in Chapter VI. The "law" is as follows: when you classify the peasants according to allotment you get very little fluctuation (from group to group) in the average magnitude of peasant family requirements (i.e., of expenditure on various needs); Mr. Shcherbina calculates this expenditure per head of the population.

    Mr. Struve emphasises with satisfaction that this "law" is "tremendously important," since, he avers, it confirms the "well-known" law of Malthus that "the living standard and the reproduction of the population are determined by the means of subsistence they have at their disposal."

    We cannot understand why Mr. Struve is so pleased with this law. We cannot understand how one can see a "law," and what is more, a "tremendously important" one, in Mr. Shcherbina's calculations. It is quite natural that where the manner of life of different peasant families does not differ very considerably we get averages that vary little if we divide the peasants into groups; particularly if, when making the division into groups, we take as the basis the size of the allotment, which is no direct index of a family's living standard (since the allotment may be leased out, or additional land may be rented) and is equally available to both the rich and the poor peasant possessing an equal number of taxable members in the family. Mr. Shcherbina's calculations merely prove that he chose a wrong method of classification. If Mr. Shcherbina thinks he has discovered some law here, it is very strange. It is equally strange to find confirmation of the law of Malthus here, as though one can judge of the "means of subsistence at the peasant's disposal" from the size of the allotment when one disregards the leasing out of land, "outside employments," the peasant's economic dependence on the landlord and the buyer-up. About this "law" of Mr. Shcherbina's (the way Mr. Shcherbina expounds this "law" indicates that the author attaches incredibly great importance to his average figures, which prove absolutely nothing) Mr. Struve says:

 
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"'People's production' in the present case simply means production without the employment of wage-labour. It is undoubted that where production is organised in that way the 'surplus-value' remains in the hands of the producer" (176). And the author points out that where labour productivity is low, this does not prevent the representative of such "people's production" living worse than the worker. The author is carried away by the Malthusian theory, and this has led him to formulate inexactly the proposition cited. Merchant's and usury capital subordinates labour to itself in every Russian village and -- without turning the producer into a wage-worker -- deprives him of as much surplus-value as industrial capital takes from the working man. Mr. Struve rightly indicated earlier on that capitalist production sets in from the moment the capitalist steps between the producer and the consumer, even though he buys the ready-made ware from the independent (apparently independent) producer (p. 99 and note 2), and it would be no easy job to find among the Russian "independent" producers those that do not work for a capitalist (merchant, buyer-up, kulak, etc.). One of the biggest mistakes of the Narodniks is that they do not see the very close and indissoluble tie between the capitalist organisation of Russian social economy and the absolute dominion of merchant's capital in the countryside. The author therefore is perfectly correct when he says that the "very combination of the words 'people's production' in the sense they are used by the Narodnik gentlemen does not fit in with any actual historical order. Here in Russia 'people's production' before 1861 was closely connected with serfdom, and then after 1861 there was a rapid development of commodity economy, which could not but distort the purity of people's production" (177). When the Narodnik says that the ownership of the means of production by the producer is the age-old basis of the Russian way of life, he is simply distorting history to suit his utopia, and does so by playing tricks with words: under serfdom. means of production were supplied to the producer by the landlord in order that the producer could engage in corvée service for him; the allotment was a sort of wages in kind -- the "age-old" means of appropriating the surplus product.

 
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The abolition or serfdom did not mean the "emancipation" of the producer at all; it only meant a change in the form of the surplus product. While in, say, England the fall of serfdom gave rise to really independent and free peasants, our Reform immediately effected the transition from the "shameful" feudal surplus product to "tree" bourgeois surplus-value.

    The last (sixth) chapter of Mr. Struve's book is devoted to the most important problem, that of Russia's economic development. Its theoretical contents are divided up into the following sections: 1) over-population in agricultural Russia, its character and causes; 2) the differentiation of the peasantry, its significance and causes; 3) the part played by industrial capitalism in ruining the peasantry; 4) private-landowner farming; the character of its development, and 5) the problem of markets for Russian capitalism. Before proceeding to examine Mr. Struve's line of argument on each of these problems, let us examine what he says about the peasant Reform.

    The author voices his protest against the "idealistic" understanding of the Reform and points to the requirements of the state, which needed greater labour productivity, to land redemption, and to the pressure "from below." It is a pity the author did not make his legitimate protest a thorough one. The Narodniks explain the Reform by the development in "society" of "humane" and "emancipatory" ideas. This is an undoubted fact, but thus to explain the Reform means to slip into empty tautology and to reduce "emancipation" to "emancipatory" ideas. The materialist requires a special examination of the content of the measures effected to put those ideas into practice. History has never known a single important "reform," even though it has been of a class character, which has not had lofty words and lofty ideas advanced in its support. This is equally true of the peasant Reform. If we pay attention to the

 
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regard to the historically different forms of social structure. Lange's explanation that abstraction means to extract the general from similar phenomena turns right against him self: only the conditions of existence of animals and plants can be considered similar, but this is not so with regard to man, because we know that he has lived in organisationally different types of social association.

 
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assertions are totally unsupported. Whence does it follow that a "surplus of workers" was really "inevitable"? Whence does the connection arise between this surplus and the absence in the people's morals of a tendency to voluntary birth-control? Ought he not, before arguing about the "people's morals," to take a glance at the production relations in which the people live? Let us imagine, for example, that the small and big proprietors to whom Lange refers were connected in the production of material values as follows: the small proprietors received allotments from the big landowners on which they could exist, and in return engaged in corvée service for the big landowners, cultivating their fields. Let us imagine, further, that these relations have been shattered, that humane ideas have turned the heads of the big proprietors to such an extent that they have "emancipated their peasants with land," i.e., have cut off approximately 20% of the allotment land of the peasants, and compelled them to pay for the remaining 80% a purchase price that has been raised 100%. Naturally, with such a guarantee against the "ulcer of the proletariat" the peasants still have to continue working for the big proprietors in order to exist, although they do not now work on the instructions of the feudal steward, as formerly, but on the basis of free contract -- hence they snatch the work out of one another's hands, since they are no longer bound together, and each one farms on his own account. This way of snatching up work inevitably forces some peasants out: because their allotments have grown smaller and their payments bigger, they have become weaker in relation to the landlord, and so competition among them increases the rate of surplus product, and the landlord can manage with a smaller number of peasants. However much the tendency to voluntary birth-control becomes entrenched in the people's morals, the formation of a "surplus" is inevitable. Lange's line of argument, which ignores social economic relations, merely serves as striking proof that his methods are useless. And apart from such arguments he gives us nothing new. He says that the factory owners willingly transfer industry into the depths of the countryside, because there "the requisite amount of child labour is always ready to hand for any undertaking " (161), without inves-

 
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tigating what history, what mode of social production has created this "readiness" on the part of parents to place their children in bondage. The methods he uses are most clearly seen from the following of his arguments: he quotes Marx, who says that machine industry, by enabling capital to buy female and child labour, makes the worker a "slave-dealer."

    "So that's what he's getting at!" cries Lange triumphantly. "But is it to be expected that the worker, whom want forces to sell his own labour-power, would so lightly sell his wife and children, if he were not impelled to take this step by want, on the one hand, and by temptation, on the other?" (163).

    The good Lange has carried his zeal to the point of defending the worker against Marx, to whom he proves that the worker is "prompted by want."

    . . . "And what, indeed, is this ever-growing want but the metamorphosis of the struggle for existence?" (163).

    Such are the discoveries resulting from "general investigations into the existence, reproduction and perfection of the human race"! Do we learn anything at all about the causes of "want," about its political-economic content and course of development if we are told that it is the metamorphosis of the struggle for existence? Why, that can be said about anything you like -- about the relation of the worker to the capitalist, the landowner to the factory owner and to the peasant serf, etc., etc. We get nothing but such vapid banalities or naïveties from Lange's attempt to correct Marx. Let us now see what Lange's follower, Mr. Struve, gives us in support of this correction, in discussing the specific problem of over-population in agrarian Russia.

    Commodity production, begins Mr. Struve, increases the capacity of the home market. "Exchange exerts such an effect not only by the complete technical and economic reorganisation of production, but also in those cases where the technique of production remains at the former level, and natural economy retains its former dominant role in the general economy of the population. In that case, however, 'over-population' inevitably sets in after a brief revival; but if commodity production is to blame, it is only: 1) as the exciter, 2) as the complicating factor" (182). Over-pop-

 
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ulation would set in without commodity economy: it is non-capitalist in character.

    Such are the propositions advanced by the author. From the very outset one is struck with the fact that these propositions are just as unsubstantiated as those of Lange. The assertion is made that over-population is inevitable under natural economy, but no explanation is given of exactly what process gives rise to it. Let us turn to the facts in which the author finds confirmation of his views.

    The data for 1762-1846 show that the population in general did not multiply so rapidly, the annual increase being from 1.07 to 1.5%. What is more, the increase was more rapid, according to Arsenyev, in the "grain-growing" gubernias. This "fact," concludes Mr. Struve, "is highly characteristic of the primitive forms of people's economy, where reproduction is directly dependent on natural fertility, a dependence which one can feel with one's hands, so to speak." This is the action of "the law of the correlation of the growth of the population with the means of subsistence" (185). "The wider the expanse of territory, and the higher the natural fertility of the soil, the greater is the natural growth of the population" (186). The quite unsubstantiated conclusion drawn is the following: the one fact that in the central gubernias of European Russia the growth of the population between 1790 and 1846 was smallest in Vladimir and Kaluga gubernias is made the basis for a whole law correlating the growth of the population with the means of subsistence. But can one judge of the population's means of subsistence from the "expanse of territory"? (Even if we were to admit that such few data enable us to draw general conclusions.) The "population," after all, did not divert to their own use the products of the "natural fertility" they had secured: they shared them with the landlords, with the state. Is it not clear that the different types of landlord farming -- quitrent or corvée, the size of tributes and the methods of exacting them, etc. -- exerted a far greater influence on the amount of "means of subsistence" available to the population than the expanse of territory, which was not in the exclusive and free possession of the producers? More than that. Irrespective of the social relations that were expressed in serfdom, the popu-

 
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lation was bound together, even then, by exchange: "The separation of manufacturing industry from agriculture," rightly says the author, "i.e., the social, national division of labour, existed in the pre-Reform period, too" (189). The question, then, arises why should we presume that the marsh-dwelling Vladimir handicraftsman or cattle-dealer had a less abundant supply of "means of subsistence" than the rude tiller of Tambov with all his "natural fertility of the soil"?

    Then Mr. Struve cites data about the decline in the serf population before the emancipation. The economists whose opinion he quotes attribute this to a "decline in living standards" (189). The author concludes:

    "We have stopped to deal with the fact of the decline in the serf population before the emancipation, because, in our view, it throws clear light on the economic situation in Russia at that time. A considerable part of the country had . . . the maximum population for the given technical-economic and social-juridical conditions: the latter were very unfavourable for any rapid increase as far as almost 40% of the population was concerned" (189). What has the Malthusian "law" of the correlation of population increase and means of subsistence to do with the matter, when the feudal social order directed these means of subsistence into the possession of a handful of big landowners, and passed over the mass of the population, the growth of which is under investigation? Can any value be attached, for example, to the author's argument that the growth in population was smallest either in the less-fertile gubernias where industry was poorly developed, or in the thickly populated and purely agricultural gubernias? Mr. Struve wishes to see in this a manifestation of "non-capitalist over-population," which was bound to have set in even without commodity economy, and which "corresponds to natural economy." But one might say with equal, if not greater, justice that this over-population corresponded to feudal economy, that the slow increase in the population was due most of all to the increased exploitation of peasant labour that resulted from the growth of commodity production on the landlords' farms, when they began using corvée labour to produce grain for sale, and not merely for their own needs. The author's

 
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examples tell against him: they tell of the impossibility of constructing an abstract law of population, according to the formula about correlation of growth and the means of subsistence, while ignoring historically specific systems of social relations and the stages of their development.

    Passing to the post-Reform period, Mr. Struve says: "In the history of the population following the collapse of serfdom we see the same basic feature as before the emancipation. The dynamics of population increase are directly dependent on the expanse of territory and the land allotment" (198). This is proved by a small table, which groups the peasants according to size of allotment, and shows that the greater the size of the allotment, the greater the increase in population. "And it cannot be otherwise under natural, 'self-consumer' . . . economy that serves primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer himself" (199).

    Truly, if this were so, if the allotments served primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer, if they were the only source of satisfying these needs, one could then, and only then, evolve a general law of population increase from these data. But we know that this is not the case. The allotments serve "primarily" to satisfy the needs of the landlords and the state: they are taken away from their owners, if these "needs" are not satisfied on time; payments are levied on the allotment in excess of the peasants' paying capacity. Further, they are not the peasants' only resources. A farming deficit -- says the author -- is bound to be reflected preventively and repressively on the population. Furthermore, outside employments, by diverting the adult male population, retard reproduction (199). But if the deficit from allotment farming is covered by renting land or by outside earnings, the peasant's means of subsistence may prove to be adequate enough for "energetic reproduction." Undoubtedly, such a favourable turn of events may be the lot of only a minority of the peasants, but, where no special examination is made of production relations existing within the peasantry, there is nothing to show that this growth proceeds evenly, that it is not called forth mainly by the prosperity of the minority. Finally, the author himself makes natural economy a condition of the demonstrability of his thesis, whereas after the Reform, on his own

 
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admission, commodity production penetrated in a broad stream into the hitherto existing life. The author's data are obviously quite inadequate for establishing a general law of reproduction. More, the abstract "simplicity" of this law which presumes that the means of production in the society under review "serve primarily to satisfy the direct needs of the producer himself" gives absolutely wrong, and totally unsupported, treatment of highly complicated facts. For example, after the emancipation -- says Mr. Struve -- it was to the landlords' advantage to lease their land to the peasants. "Thus, the food area available to the peasantry, i.e., their means of subsistence, has increased" (200). To assign the whole of the rented land in this forthright way to the category of "food area" is quite unfounded and wrong. The author himself points out that the landlords appropriated the lion's share of the produce raised on their land (200), so that it is still a question whether such renting of land (on a labour-service basis, for example) has not worsened the conditions of the tenants, whether it has not placed obligations on them that have led, in the final analysis, to the food area declining. Further, the author himself points out that the renting of land is only within the capacity of the prosperous (216) peasants, in whose hands it serves as a means of expanding commodity farming rather than consolidating "self-consumer" farming. Even if it were proven that generally speaking the renting of land improved the position of the "peasantry," of what importance could that be when, to use the words of the author himself, the peasant poor have been ruined by renting land (216) -- i.e., improvement for some meant worsening for others? Evidently in the peasant renting of land the old, feudal and the new, capitalist relationships intertwine; the author's abstract reasoning, which takes no account of either the one or the other, confuses matters instead of helping to achieve clarity about these relationships.

    There remains one more reference by the author to data supposedly confirming his views. It is where he says that "the old word land-poverty is merely the term commonly used to express what science calls over-population" (186). The author thus bases himself, as it were, on the whole of our Narodnik literature, which established the fact beyond doubt

 
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the slightest idea of exactly how over-population is created on the basis of the given social-economic relations. The author's final conclusion against Mr. N.-on and his theory of capitalist over-population in Russia reads: "Our peasants produce insufficient food" (237).

    The peasants' agricultural work continues to this day to yield produce that goes to the landlords, who, through the medium of the state, receive redemption payments; peasant production serves as a constant object of merchant's and usury capital operations, depriving vast masses of the peasantry of a considerable part of their produce; finally, among the "peasantry" itself this production is distributed in so complicated a fashion that the general and average gain (renting) turns out to be a loss for the masses, and Mr. Struve cuts all this network of social relations, like a Gordian knot, with the abstract and totally unsupported solution: "production is insufficient." But no, this theory will not hold water at all: it merely encumbers that which is to be investigated, namely, production relations in peasant agricultural economy. The Malthusian theory pictures matters as though we are confronted by a tabula rasa, and not by feudal and bourgeois relations interwoven in the contemporary organisation of Russian peasant economy.

    It goes without saying that we cannot be satisfied with merely criticising Mr. Struve's views. We must in addition ask ourselves the questions: what is the basis of his mistakes? And who of the contending parties (Mr. N.-on and Mr. Struve) is right in his explanation of over-population?

 
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    These defects naturally gave rise to the unsatisfactory character of the following passage. "In what way," asks the author, "on what basis can our national economy be reorganised?" (202) A strange question, formulated again in a very professorial style, precisely as Messrs. the Narodniks are accustomed to put questions when they proclaim the unsatisfactory character of the present situation and select the best paths for the fatherland. "Our national economy" is a capitalist economy, the organisation and "reorganisation" of which is determined by the bourgeoisie, who "manage" this economy. Instead of the question of possible reorganisation, what should have been put is the question of the successive stages of the development of this bourgeois economy; and it should have been put from the viewpoint of precisely that theory in whose name the author so splendidly replies to Mr. V. V., who describes Mr. N.-on as an "undoubted Marxist," that this "undoubted Marxist" has no idea of the class struggle and of the class origin of the state. Had the author altered the manner of posing the question in the sense indicated it would have saved him from the confused arguments about the "peasantry" that we read on pages 202-04.

    The author begins with the statement that the peasantry have insufficient allotment land, that even if they cover this insufficiency by renting land, "a considerable part of them" nevertheless always have a deficit; one cannot talk of the peasantry as a whole, for that means to talk of a fiction* (p. 203). And the conclusion directly drawn from this is:

    "In any case, insufficient production is the basic and dominating fact of our national economy" (p. 204). This is quite unfounded and totally unconnected with what was said earlier: why is not the fact that the peasantry as one whole is a fiction, because antagonistic, classes are taking shape within it, made the "basic and dominating fact"? The author draws his conclusion without any data, without any analysis of the facts relating to "insufficient production" [which, however, does not prevent a minority from becoming affluent at the expense of the majority], or to the splitting up

 
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of the peasantry -- simply due to some prejudice in favour of Malthusianism. "Therefore," he continues, "an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour is a plain benefit and blessing to the Russian peasantry" (204). We are at a loss: the author has only just advanced against the Narodniks the serious (and to the highest degree legitimate) accusation of arguing about a "fiction" -- the "peasantry" in general -- and now he himself introduces this fiction into his analysis! If the relations within the ranks of this "peasantry" are such that a minority become "economically strong," while the majority become proletarians, if a minority expand their landownership and wax rich, while the majority always have a deficit and become ruined, how can one speak of the process in general being a "benefit and blessing"? Very likely the author wanted to say that the process is of benefit to both the one and the other section of the peasantry. But then, firstly, he should have examined the position of each group and have investigated it separately, and, secondly, in view of the antagonism existing between the groups he should have definitely established from which group's viewpoint reference is made to the "benefit and blessing." This example goes to confirm over and over again the unsatisfactory and incomplete character of Mr. Struve's objectivism.

    Since Mr. N.-on holds an opposite view on this subject and asserts that an "increase in the productivity of agricultural labour* cannot serve to raise the national well-being if the goods are produced as commodities" (Sketches, p. 266), Mr. Struve now proceeds to refute this opinion.

    Firstly, he says, the peasant who has been hit by the full weight of the contemporary crisis, produces grain for his own consumption; he does not sell grain, but buys extra supplies of it. For such peasants -- and they constitute as much as 50% (one-horse and horseless) and certainly not less than 25% (horseless) -- increased labour productivity is at any rate beneficial, despite the drop in the price of grain.

    Yes, of course, an increase in productivity would be beneficial to such a peasant, if he could retain his farm and

 
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raise it to a higher level. But the trouble is that the one-horse and horseless peasants do not enjoy these conditions. They are not able to retain their present farms, with their primitive implements, careless cultivation of the soil, etc., let alone improve their farming technique. Technical improvement is the result of the growth of commodity economy. And if, at the present stage of the development of commodity economy, even those peasants who have to buy extra supplies for themselves find it necessary to sell grain, then, at the following stage, such sales will be still more essential (the author himself recognises the need for a transition from natural to commodity economy), and the competition of peasants who have improved their farming methods will inevitably and immediately expropriate proletarians who are tied to the land and turn them into proletarians who are as free as birds. I have no wish to say that such a change will be of no benefit to them. On the contrary, once the producer has fallen into the clutches of capital -- and this is an undoubtedly accomplished fact as regards the group of the peasantry under examination -- complete freedom, which enables him to change masters, and gives him a free hand, is very much of "a benefit and a blessing" to him. But the controversy between Messrs. Struve and N.-on is not at all conducted around such considerations.

    Secondly, continues Mr. Struve, Mr. N.-on "forgets that an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour is only possible by effecting changes in the technique and in the system of farming or crop growing" (206). Certainly, Mr. N.-on forgets that, but this consideration merely strengthens the thesis of the inevitability of the total expropriation of the economically weak peasants, the "proletarian type" of peasants. To effect technical improvements money resources must be available, but these peasants do not even possess enough food resources.

    Thirdly, concludes the author, Mr. N.-on is wrong in asserting that a rise in the productivity of agricultural labour will compel competitors to lower prices. For such a price reduction -- Mr. Struve rightly remarks -- it is necessary that the productivity of our agricultural labour should not only catch up with that of Western Europe

 
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[in that case we shall sell produce at the level of socially necessary labour], but even outstrip it. That objection is quite a sound one, but it tells us nothing whatever about which particular section of the "peasantry" will benefit from this technical improvement and why.

    "In general, Mr. N.-on has no reason to fear an increase in the productivity of agricultural labour" (207). He does so, in Mr. Struve's view, because he cannot imagine agricultural progress except as the progress of extensive agriculture, accompanied by the ever-increasing elimination of workers by machines.

    The author very aptly describes Mr. N.-on's attitude to the growth of agricultural technique with the word "fear"; he is quite right in saying that this fear is absurd. But his line of argument does not, we think, touch the basic error of Mr. N.-on.

 
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fashion, i.e., always in an irrational way and, collsequently, harvest failures are no rare occurrence, but with the building of the railway line the rise in the price of the product, that formerly resulted from crop failure, either does not take place at all or in any case is considerably smaller. That is why the natural consequence of the very first crop failure is usually the collapse of many farms. The smaller the surpluses left from normal harvests and the more the population have had to count on earnings from handicraft industries, the more rapidly the collapse occurs."

 
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stituted the main contingent added to the population of European cities since the railways were built."

    Further. "Surplus population means cheap hands." "The soil being fertile (and the climate favourable . . .) all the conditions are created for the cultivation of plants and in general of raising agricultural produce that requires a large expenditure of labour-power per land unit" (443), especially since the small size of the farms ("although they will perhaps increase as compared with their former size") makes the introduction of machines difficult. "In addition to this, fixed capital will not remain unchanged, and first and foremost it is farm implements that will change their character." And apart from machines "the need for better cultivation of the soil will lead to the replacement of the former primitive implements by more up-to-date ones, and of wood by iron and steel. This transformation will lead of necessity to the establishment here of factories engaged in the production of such implements, for they cannot be produced even tolerably well by handicraft methods." The development of this branch of industry is favoured by the following conditions: 1) the need to get a machine or part of it rapidly; 2) "hands are here in abundance, and they are cheap"; 3) fuel, buildings and land are cheap; 4) "the small size of the economic units leads to an increased demand for implements, for it is well known that small farms require relatively more equipment." Other kinds of industries also develop. "In general there is a development of urban life." There is a development, out of necessity, of mining industries, "since, on the one hand, a mass of free hands is available and, on the other, thanks to the railways and the development of the mechanised manufacturing and other industries there is an increased demand for the products of the mining industry.

    "Thus, such a district, which before the railway was built was thickly populated and whose agriculture was extensive, turns more or less quickly into a district of very intensive agriculture with more or less developed factory production." Increased intensity is manifested by the change in the system of crop raising. The three-field system is impossible because of harvest fluctuations. A transition has to be made to a "crop rotation system," which does away

 
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then he points out that the production of food by our peasant is "inadequate," and settles the problem by arguing that technical progress is beneficial to the "peasantry," and that "agricultural productivity must be raised" (211). How should he have presented the problem had he been "bound by the doctrine" of Marxism? He should have begun with an analysis of the given production relations in Russian agriculture, and, after showing that the oppression of the producer is to be explained not by chance or by politics but by the domination of capital, which necessarily comes into being on the basis of commodity economy -- he should then have shown how this capital destroys small production and what forms class contradictions assume in the process. He should then have shown how further development leads to capital growing from merchant's into industrial (assuming such and such forms under extensive farming, and such and such under intensive), developing and accentuating the class contradiction whose basis was firmly laid under its old form, and once and for all opposing "free" labour to "rational" production. It would then have been sufficient simply to contrast these two successive forms of bourgeois production and bourgeois exploitation, in order that the "progressive" character of the change, its "advantage" to the producer should be quite evident: in the first case the subordination of labour to capital is covered up by thousands of the remnants of medieval relations, which prevent the producer from seeing the essence of the matter and arouse in his ideologist's mind absurd and reactionary ideas about the possibility of expecting aid from "society," etc.; in the second case this subordination is quite free of medieval fetters, and the producer is enabled to engage in and understands the necessity for independent, conscious activity against his "antipode." Instead of arguments about a "difficult and painful transition" to capitalism we would have had a theory that not only spoke of class contradictions but also really disclosed them in each form of "irrational" and "rational" production, and of "extensive" and "intensive" farming.

    The results we reach from our examination of the first part of Chapter VI of Mr. Struve's book, which is devoted to the "character of over-population in agrarian Russia," can be formulated as follows: 1) Mr. Struve's Malthusianism is

 
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not supported by any factual data and is based on methodologically incorrect and dogmatic postulates. 2) Over-population in agrarian Russia is explained by the domination of capital and not by a lack of conformity between the increase in the population and the means of subsistence. 3) Mr. Struve's thesis about the natural-economic character of over-population is only true in the sense that the survival of feudal relations holds back agricultural capital in forms that are undeveloped and are therefore particularly hard for the producer. 4) Mr. N.-on did not prove the capitalist character of over-population in Russia because he did not investigate the domination of capital in agriculture. 5) Mr. N.-on's main error, repeated by Mr. Struve, is that he did not analyse the classes that come into being where bourgeois agriculture develops. 6) This ignoring of class contradictions by Mr. Struve naturally led to the fact that the quite correct thesis of the progressiveness and desirability of technical improvements was expressed in an extremely vague and unsatisfactory form.

    Let us now pass to the second part of Chapter VI, which is devoted to the problem of the break-up of the peasantry. This part is directly and immediately connected with the previous part, and serves as additional material on the problem of capitalism in agriculture.

    Indicating the rise in the prices of agricultural produce during the first 20 years following the Reform, and to the extension of commodity production in agriculture, Mr. Struve quite rightly says that "in the main it was the landowners and prosperous peasants who benefited" from it (214). "Differentiation among the peasant population had to increase, and its first successes relate to this epoch." The author cites the remarks of local investigators to the effect that the building of railway lines merely raised the living standard of the prosperous part of the peasantry, that the renting of land gives rise to a "regular battle" among the peasants, which always leads to the victory of the economically strong elements (216-17). He cites V. Postnikov's research, according to which the farms of the prosperous peasants are

 
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already so far subordinated to the market that 40% of the sown area yields produce for sale, and, adding that at the opposite pole the peasants "lose their economic independence and, by selling their labour-power, are on the verge of becoming farm labourers," rightly concludes: "Only the penetration of exchange economy explains the fact that the economically strong peasant farms can derive benefit from the ruin of the weak households" (223). "The development of money economy and the growth of the population," says the author, "lead to the peasantry splitting into two parts: one that is economically strong and consists of representatives of a new force, of capital in all its forms and stages, and the other, consisting of semi-independent peasants and real farm labourers" (239).

    Brief as they are, the author's remarks on this "differentiation" nevertheless enable us to note the following important features of the process under examination: 1) It is not confined just to the creation of property inequality: a "new force" is created -- capital. 2) The creation of this new force is accompanied by the creation of new types of peasant farms: firstly, of a prosperous, economically strong type that engages in developed commodity economy, crowds out the peasant poor in the renting of land, and resorts to the exploitation of the labour of others;* secondly, of a "proletarian" peasantry, who sell their labour-power to capital. 3) All these phenomena have grown directly and immediately on the basis of commodity production. Mr. Struve himself has pointed out that without commodity production they were impossible, but with its penetration into the countryside they became necessary. 4) These phenomena (the "new force," the new types of peasantry) relate to the sphere of production, and are not confined to the sphere of exchange, commodity circulation: capital is manifested in agricultural production; the same is true of the sale of labour-power.

 
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    It would seem that these features of the process are a direct indication that we have to do with a purely capitalist phenomenon, that the classes typical of capitalist society, bourgeoisie and proletariat, are taking shape within the peasantry. Moreover, these facts bear witness not only to the domination of capital in agriculture, but also to capital having already taken a second step, if one may put it that way. From merchant's it turns into industrial capital, from a dominant force on the market into a dominant force in production; the class antithesis between the rich buyer-up and the poor peasant turns into the antithesis between the rational bourgeois employer and the free seller of free hands.

    Even here Mr. Struve cannot get along without his Malthusianism; in his view only one side of the matter finds expression in the process mentioned ("only the progressive side"), but in addition to it he sees another, the "technical irrationality of all peasant economy": "in it expression is given, so to speak, to the retrogressive side of the whole process," it "levels" the peasantry, smooths out inequality, operating "in connection with the growth of the population" (223-24).

    The only thing that is clear in this rather hazy argument is that the author prefers extremely abstract propositions to concrete statements, that he tacks on to everything the "law" that increases in population conform to the means of subsistence. I say "tacks on" because, even if we confine ourselves strictly to the facts cited by the author himself, we can a find no indication of any concrete features of the process that do not fit in with the "doctrine" of Marxism and that require the recognition of Malthusianism. Let us go over this process once again: we start with natural producers, peasants more or less of one type.* The penetration of commodity production into the countryside makes the wealth of the individual peasant household dependent on the market, thus

 
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creating inequality by means of market fluctuations and accentuating it by concentrating free money in the hands of some, and ruining others. This money naturally serves for the exploitation of the propertyless, turns into capital. Capital can exploit peasants in the grip of ruin as long as they retain their farms, and, letting them carry on as before, on the old, technically irrational basis, can exploit them by purchasing the product of their labour. But the peasant's ruin finally develops to such a degree that he is compelled to give up his farm altogether: he can no longer sell the product of his labour; all he can do is to sell his labour. Capital then takes charge of the farm, and is now compelled, by virtue of competition, to organise it on rational lines; it is enabled to do so thanks to the free monetary resources previously "saved"; capital no longer exploits the peasant farmer but a farm labourer or a day labourer One can well ask: what are the two sides the author finds in this process? How does he find it possible to draw the monstrous Malthusian conclusion that "the technical irrationality of the farm, and not capitalism" [note the "and not"] "is the enemy that deprives our peasantry of their daily bread" (224). As though this daily bread ever went in its entirety to the producer, and was not divided into the necessary product and the surplus, the latter being acquired by the landlord, the kulak, the "strong" peasant, the capitalist!

    One must, however, add that on the question of "levelling" the author gives some further explanation. He says that the "result of the levelling referred to above" is the "decline or even the disappearance of the middle section of the peasant population noted in many places" (225). Citing a passage from a Zemstvo publication which notes "a still greater increase in the distance separating the rural rich from the landless and horseless proletariat," he concludes: "The levelling in the present case is, of course, at the same time differentiation, but on the basis of such differentiation only bondage develops, which can be nothing more than a brake on economic progress" (226). And so it now turns out that the differentiation created by commodity economy should not be contrasted to "levelling," but to differentiation as well, only differentiation of another kind, namely,

 
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bondage. But since bondage is a "brake" on "economic progress," the author calls this "side" "regressive."

    The argument is based on extremely strange methods that are not Marxist at all. A comparison is made between "bondage" and "differentiation" as between two independent, special "systems"; one is praised for assisting "progress"; the other is condemned for being a brake on progress. What has become of Mr. Struve's demand for an analysis of class contradictions, for lack of which he so rightly attacked Mr. N.-on; of the theory of the "spontaneous process" of which he spoke so well? Why, this bondage which he has now demolished as retrogressive is nothing but the initial manifestation of capitalism in agriculture, of that very same capitalism which leads later to sweeping technical progress. And what, indeed, is bondage? It is the dependence of the peasant who owns his means of production, and is compelled to work for the market, on the owner of money -- a dependence that, however differently it may express itself (whether in the form of usury capital or of the capital of the buyer up, who monopolises marketing) -- always leads to an enormous part of the product of labour falling into the hands of the owner of money and not of the producer. Hence, it is purely capitalist in essence,* and the entire peculiarity consists in the fact that this initial, embryonic form of capitalist relations is totally enmeshed in the feudal relations of former times: here there is no free contract, but a forced deal (sometimes by order of "those at the top," sometimes by the desire to keep their undertakings, sometimes by old debts, etc.); the producer is here tied to a definite place and to a definite exploiter: as against the impersonal charac-

 
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ter of the commodity deal that is peculiar to purely capitalist relations, here the deal always has the personal character of "aid," "benefaction," -- and this character of the deal inevitably places the producer in a position of personal, semi-feudal dependence. Such of the author's expressions as "levelling," "brake on progress," "regression," mean nothing but that capital first takes hold of production on the old basis, and subordinates the technically backward producer. The author's remark that the presence of capitalism does not entitle us "to blame it for all misfortunes" is true in the sense that our peasant who works for others suffers not only from capitalism, but also from the insufficient development of capitalism. In other words, among the huge mass of the peasantry there are now practically none who produce independently for themselves; in addition to work for "rational" bourgeois farmers we only see work for the owners of money capital, i.e., also capitalist exploitation, but exploitation which is undeveloped and primitive, and because of this it, firstly, worsens the conditions of the labouring peasant tenfold, involving him in a network of specific and additional encumbrances, and, secondly, prevents him (and his ideologist, the Narodnik) from understanding the class character of the "annoyances" inflicted on him and from regulating his activities in accordance with this character of the annoyances. Consequently, the "progressive side" of "differentiation" to use the language of Mr. Struve), is that it brings into the light of day the contradiction hidden behind the bondage and deprives the former of its "old-nobility" features. Narodism, which stands for levelling out the peasants (before . . . the kulak), is "regressive" because it desires to keep capital within those medieval forms that combine exploitation with scattered, technically backward production and with personal pressure on the producer. In both cases (in the case of "bondage" and of "differentiation") the cause of oppression is capitalism and the author's statements to the contrary, that it is "not capitalism" but "technical irrationality," that "it is not capitalism that is to blame for the poverty of the peasants," etc., merely show that Mr. Struve has been carried too far in his support of the correct idea that developed capitalism is to be preferred to undeveloped, and as a result of the abstractness of his propositions he has

 
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    The author also lets himself get carried away in the following argument, when he says that it is not large-scale capitalism which causes the ruin of the peasantry. He enters here into a controversy with Mr. N.-on.

    The cheap production of manufactured goods, says Mr. N.-on, speaking of factory-made clothing, has caused a reduction in their domestic production (p. 227 of Mr. Struve's book).

    "Here the cart is put before the horse," exclaims Mr. Struve, "as can be proved without difficulty. The reduction in the peasant output of spinning materials led to an increase in the production and consumption of the goods of the capitalist cotton industry, and not the other way round" (227).

 
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the data of Russian history) is merely the final stage of the development of the commodity organisation of the entire social and, consequently, peasant economy. Large-scale bourgeois production in the "factory" is the direct and immediate continuation of petty-bourgeois production in the village, in the notorious "village community" or in handicraft industry. "In order that the 'factory form' should become 'cheaper,'" Mr. Struve quite rightly says, "the peasant has to adopt the viewpoint of economic rationality, on condition that money economy exists." "If the peasantry had adhered to . . . natural economy . . . no textile fabrics . . . would have tempted them."

 
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    In § VIII of the sixth chapter, Mr. Struve sets forth his ideas about private-landowner farming. He quite rightly shows how closely and directly the forms assumed by this sort of farming depend on the ruin of the peasants. The ruined peasant no longer "tempts" the landlord with "fabulous rental prices," and the landlord goes over to the employment of farm labourers. Extracts in proof of this are cited from an article by Raspopin, who analysed Zemstvo statistical data on landlord economy, and from a Zemstvo publication on current statistics which notes the "enforced" character of the increase in the cultivation of landlord estates on capitalist lines. In reply to Messrs. the Narodniks, who so willingly hide the fact of capitalism's present domi-

 
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nation in agriculture beneath arguments about its "future" and its "possibility," the author makes a precise reference to the actual situation.

    We must stop here just to deal with the author's estimation of this phenomenon, who calls it the "progressive trends in private-landowner farming" (244) and says that these trends are created by the "inexorable logic of economic evolution" (240). We fear that these quite correct propositions, by reason of their abstractness, will be unintelligible to the reader who is not acquainted with Marxism; that the reader will not understand -- unless definite reference is made to the succession of such and such systems of economy, such and such forms of class antagonism -- why the given trend is "progressive" (from the only viewpoint, of course, from which the Marxist can pose the problem, from the viewpoint of a definite class), why, exactly, is the evolution that is taking place "inexorable." Let us therefore try to depict this succession (at least in the most general outline) parallel to the Narodnik representation of the matter.

    The Narodnik presents the process of the development of the economy of farm labourers as a transition from "independent" peasant farming to dependent farming, and, naturally, considers this to be regression, decline, etc. Such a picture of the process is quite untrue in fact, does not correspond to reality at all, and hence the conclusions drawn from it are also absurd. By presenting things in this optimistic way (optimistic in relation to the past and the present), the Narodnik simply turns his back on the facts established by Narodnik literature itself, and turns his face towards utopias and possibilities.

    Let us start from pre-Reform feudal economy.

    The main content of the production relations at that time was as follows: the landlord supplied the peasant with land, timber for building, the means of production in general (sometimes even the means of livelihood) for each separate household and, while letting the peasant gain his own livelihood, compelled him to work all the surplus time doing corvée service for him, the landlord. I underscore the words "all the surplus time" in order to note that there can be no question, under this system, of the peasant's

 
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example) were supplemented by "winter hire" -- the lending of money in return for work when the peasant is in particular need of money and sells his labour for a song, the lending of grain in return for labour service, etc. The social-economic relations in the former "patriarchal estate" were reduced, as you see, to the most ordinary usurer's deal: they consisted of operations quite analogous to the operations of the buyer-up in relation to the handicraftsmen.

    There can be no doubt that this form of economy has become typical since the Reform, and our Narodnik literature has supplied superb descriptions of this particularly unattractive form of Plusmacherei combined with feudal traditions and relations, and with the utter helplessness of the peasant tied to his "allotment."

    But the Narodniks refused, and still refuse, to see the precise economic basis of these relations.

    The basis of domination is now not only the possession of the land, as in the old days, but also the possession of money, which the peasant is in need of (and money is a product of the social labour organised by commodity economy), and the "separation" of the peasant from the means of livelihood. Obviously, this is a capitalist, bourgeois relationship. The "new" features are nothing but the initial form of the domination of capital in agriculture, a form not yet freed of the "old-nobility" fetters, a form that has created the class contradiction peculiar to capitalist society, but has not yet finally established it.

    With the development of commodity economy, however, the ground slips from under this initial form of the domination of capital: the impoverishment of the peasantry has now developed to the point of utter ruin, the point when the peasants have lost their implements, by which the feudal and the bonded forms of labour were maintained -- and the landlord is thus compelled to go over to the use of his own implements, and the peasant to become a farm labourer.

    That this transition has begun in post-Reform Russia is again an undoubted fact. This fact shows the line of development of the bonded form, which the Narodniks view in a purely metaphysical way -- disregarding connections with the past, disregarding the urge to develop; this same fact shows the further development of capitalism, the further

 
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development of the class contradiction that is peculiar to our capitalist society and that in the preceding epoch was expressed in the relation between the "kulak" and the peasant, and is now beginning to find expression in the relation between the rational farmer and the farm labourer and day labourer.

    Now it is this latter change that evokes the despair and horror of the Narodnik, who begins to howl about "deprivation of the land," "loss of independence," "installation of capitalism" and the ills "threatening" as a result, etc., etc.

    Look at these arguments impartially and you will see, firstly, that they contain a falsehood, even though a well-intentioned one, since the economy of farm labourers is not preceded by peasant "independence" but by other ways of handing the surplus product over to some one who takes no part in its production. Secondly, you will see the superficiality and the pettiness of the Narodnik protest, which make it vulgar socialism, as Mr. Struve aptly puts it. Why is this "installation" merely seen in its second form, and not in both forms? Why is the protest not directed against the basic historical fact that concentrated the means of production in the hands of "private landowners," instead of merely against one of the methods of utilising this monopoly? Why is the root of the evil not seen in production relations that subordinate labour far and wide to the owner of money, instead of merely in the inequality of distribution that stands out in such relief in the latest form of these relations? It is this basic circumstance -- a protest against capitalism based on those same capitalist relations -- that makes the Narodniks the ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie, who do not fear bourgeois reality, but merely its accentuation, which alone leads to a fundamental change.

    Let us pass to the last point in Mr. Struve's theoretical arguments, namely, to the "problem of markets for Russian capitalism" (245).

    The author begins his examination of the Narodnik-devised theory about there being no markets in this country, with the question: "What does Mr. V. V. understand by capi-

 
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talism?" That question is a very relevant one, since Mr. V. V. (and all Narodniks in general) have always compared the Russian order of things with some "English form" (247) of capitalism and not with its basic features, which have a different appearance in each country. It is only a pity that Mr. Struve does not give a complete definition of capitalism, but points in general to the "domination of exchange economy" [that is one feature; the second is the appropriation of surplus-value by the owner of money, his domination over labour], to "the system we see in Western Europe" (247), "with all its consequences," with the "concentration of industrial production, capitalism in the narrow sense of the word" (247).

    "Mr. V. V.," says the author, "did not go into an analysis of the concept 'capitalism,' but took it from Marx, who mainly had in view capitalism in the narrow sense, as the already fully established product of relations developing on the basis of the subordination of production to exchange" (247). One cannot agree with that. Firstly, had Mr. V. V. really taken his idea of capitalism from Marx, he would have had a correct idea of it, and could not have confused the "English form" with capitalism. Secondly, it is quite unfair to assert that Marx mainly had in view the "centralisation or concentration of industrial production" [that is what Mr. Struve understands by capitalism in the narrow sense!. On the contrary, he followed up the development of commodity economy from its initial steps, he analysed capitalism in its primitive forms of simple co-operation and manufacture -- forms centuries apart from the concentration of production by machines -- and he showed the connection between capitalism in industry and in agriculture. Mr. Struve himself narrows down the concept of capitalism when he says: "The object of Mr. V. V.'s study was the first steps of the national economy on the path from natural to commodity organisation." He should have said: the last steps. Mr. V. V., as far as we know, only studied Russia's post Reform economy. The beginning of commodity production relates to the pre-Reform era, as Mr. Struve himself indicates (189-90), and even the capitalist organisation of the cotton industry took shape before the emancipation of the peasants. The Reform gave an impulse to the final development in this sense; it pushed the commodity form of labour

 
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long ago in Russia and everywhere, in all branches of production, gives rise to the subordination of labour to capital.

    Mr. Struve's view of Russian capitalism as something of the future and not of the present was expressed with particular clarity in the following argument: "So long as the contemporary village community exists, registered and consolidated by law, relations will develop on the basis of it that have nothing in common with the 'people's well-being.'" [Surely not just "will develop"; did they not develop so long ago that the whole of Narodnik literature, from its very outset, over a quarter of a century ago, described them and protested against them?] "In the West we have several examples of the existence of individual farmsteads alongside of large-scale capitalist farming. Our Poland and our south west territory belong to the same order of things. lt may be said that in Russia, both the community villages and those consisting of individual farms approach this type, inasmuch as the impoverished peasantry remain on the land and levelling influences among them are proving stronger than differentiating influences" (280). Is it merely a matter of approaching, and not of already being that type at this very moment? To determine "type," one has, of course, to take the basic economic features of the system, and not legal forms. If we look at these basic features of the economy of the Russian countryside, we shall see the isolated economy of the peasant households on small plots of land, we shall see growing commodity economy that already plays a dominant role. It is these features that give content to the concept "small individual farming." We shall see further the same peasant indebtedness to usurers, the same expropriation to which the data of the West testify. The whole difference lies in the specific character of our juridical system (the peasants' civic inequality; forms of land tenure), which retains stronger traces of the "old regime" as a result of the weaker development of our capitalism. But these specific features do not in the least disturb the uniformity of type of our peasant system and that of the West.

    Proceeding to deal with the theory of markets itself, Mr. Struve notes that Messrs. V. V. and N.-on are caught in a vicious circle; while the development of capitalism re-

 
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    In addition to a criticism of the theoretical content of Narodism, Mr. Struve's book contains, among other things, several remarks relating to Narodnik economic policy. Although these remarks are given cursorily and are not devel-

 
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oped by the author, we nevertheless must touch on them in order to leave no room for any misunderstanding.

 
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and progressive policy be disclosed, he would have expressed the same thought differently, would have posed the question in another way. He would have drawn a parallel between those theories and programmes of liberalism, i.e., of the bourgeoisie, which have sprung up like mushrooms since the great Reform, and factual data on the development of capitalism in Russia. In this way he would have used the Russian example to show the connection between social ideas and economic development, something he tried to prove in the first chapters and that can only be fully established by a materialist analysis of Russian data. In this way he would have shown, secondly, how naive the Narodniks are when they combat bourgeois theories in their publications, and do so as though these theories are merely mistaken reasoning, and do not represent the interests of a powerful class which it is foolish to admonish, and which can only be "convinced" by the imposing force of another class. In this way he would have shown, thirdly, which class actually determines "urgent needs" and "progress" in this country, and how ridiculous the Narodniks are when they argue about which "path" "to choose."

    Messrs. the Narodniks have seized on these expressions of Mr. Struve's with particular delight, gloating over the fact that the unhappy way they have been formulated has enabled various bourgeois economists (like Mr. Yanzhul) and champions of serfdom (like Mr. Golovin) to seize upon some phrases torn out of the general context. We have seen in what way Mr. Struve's position, that has placed such a weapon into the hands of his opponents, is unsatisfactory.

    The author's attempts to criticise Narodism merely as a theory that wrongly indicates the path for the fatherland,* led to the hazy formulation of his attitude to the "economic policy" of Narodism. This may be regarded as a wholesale denial of the policy, and not only of a half of it. It is, therefore, necessary to dwell on this point.

    Philosophising about the possibility of "different paths for the fatherland" is merely the outer vestment of Naro-

 
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dism. But its content is representation of the interests and viewpoint of the Russian small producer, the petty bourgeois. That is why the Narodnik, in matters of theory, is just as much a Janus, looking with one face to the past and the other to the future, as in real life the small producer is, who looks with one face to the past, wishing to strengthen his small farm without knowing or wishing to know any thing about the general economic system and about the need to reckon with the class that controls it -- and with the other face to the future, adopting a hostile attitude to the capitalism that is ruining him.

 
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working man and raising the level of his requirements, accelerate and facilitate his independent thinking and action.

 
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    This demand -- not to discard the "thread," but, on the contrary, to strengthen it -- is not the accidental result of the personal mood of some "Marxists" or other, but is necessarily determined by the position and interests of the class they wish to serve, is necessarily and unconditionally dictated by the fundamental requirements of their "doctrine." I cannot, for reasons that are easily understandable, pause here to examine the first part of this proposition, to characterise the "position" and "interests"; here, I think, matters speak for themselves. I shall only touch on the second part, namely, the relation of the Marxist doctrine to problems that express the "breaking thread."

    The Marxists must raise these problems differently than Messrs. the Narodniks do. The latter pose the problem from the viewpoint of "modern science, modern moral ideas"; the matter is presented as though there are no profound causes of the failure to implement such reforms, causes contained within production relations themselves, as though the obstacle lies only in grossness of feelings, in the feeble "ray of reason," etc.; as though Russia is a tabula rasa on which nothing has to be done except properly outline the right paths. That way of presenting the problem, of course, guaranteed it the "purity" of which Mr. V. V. boasts, and which is merely the "purity" of ladies' college daydreams, of the kind that makes Narodnik reasoning so fit for armchair conversations.

    The way these same problems are posed by the Marxists must necessarily be quite different.* Obliged to seek for the roots of social phenomena in production relations obliged to reduce them to the interests of definite classes, they must formulate these desiderata as being the "desires" of

 
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their historical connection and in their relation to the interests of the working people, or whether we examine the problem of the "breaking of the thread" and the reasons for its "breaking," we arrive, in either case, at one conclusion, that of the great significance of the historical task of "labour differentiated from life," a task advanced by the epoch in which we live, that of the universal significance of the idea of this class.

 
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