On the So Called Market Question | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1906 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 154 eBook size: 233Kb Review by Dr. Bojan Tunguz, January 2005 Rating: (***) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'On the So Called Market Question':
The perspective which Lenin arrived at in 1917 coincided with Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution worked out following the experience of the 1905 revolution. This resolved the long debate within the Russian labor movement which revolved around three different conceptions of the coming revolution.
All the Russian Marxists were agreed that the tasks of social transformation facing them were those of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. These were: the breaking up of the big estates and the distribution of the land to the peasants. The abolition of the Tsarist monarchy and the establishment of a democratic republic. The separation of the church and state. The introduction of social reforms urgently demanded by the workers and the peasants but also necessary to clear the way for the development of capitalism.
Given this which political forces would provide the leadership?
Would it be (a) the liberal capitalist representatives? If so would the workers parties including the Bolsheviks limit themselves to conditional support for the liberals accepting that the struggle for socialism would come later under more favorable conditions which would develop under a capitalist regime?
Would it be (b) the working class in alliance with the representatives of the peasantry who would take the power - limiting themselves however at this stage to bourgeois-democratic tasks?
Or would it be (c) the working class leading the exploited peasantry behind them who would take power carry through the bourgeois-democratic tasks - but at the same time implementing radical changes in their own interest which would begin the transition to socialism?
Position (a) was adopted by the Mensheviks who formed the right wing of the Social-Democratic party. From Marx they drew highly schematic conclusions: that feudalism capitalism and socialism followed in succession and one historical stage had to be complete before another could commence.
There was no question according to this view of the working class initiating a socialist revolution until the bourgeois revolution was complete.
Excerpts from the Book 'On the So Called Market Question':
... of value - millions of rubles, for example Roman numerals indicate the above-mentioned departments of social production. The rate of surplus-value ...
... The condition for simple reproduction is that the sum of the variable capital and surplus value in department I must be equal to the constant capital ...
... exchanges with department II, i.e., every year a certain quantity of, say, coal is produced in society for the purpose of producing coal. It goes ...
... concerning the growth of the various parts of the social product:[19] Means of pro- duction as means of Means of pro- duction as means of Means ...
... is that in A the producers are capitalists who consume their surplus-value productively, whereas in W they are direct producers, who consume their ...
... table[*] has been drawn up on these lines: all extraneous circumstances have been abstracted, i.e., taken as constants (for example, size of population, ...
... of consumption to the same amount. As regards the capitalist producers, I and IV, each of them produces products to the extent of 21 of this, ...
... is impossible in capitalist society, the appropriate correction will be made later. ? ? 5th period. The differentiation of the commodity ...
... The second conclusion is that the impoverishment of the masses of the people (that indispensable point in all the Narodnik arguments about the market) ...
... economy affects the market. That is why accumulation was disregarded in the table. Actually, however, capitalist society cannot exist without accumulating, ...
... the contradiction in the capitalist mode of production which Marx spoke of in the following words: The labourers as buyers of commodities are important ...
... the technical development of capitalism, and we see that precisely this development is lacking. For that capitalism must embrace the whole country, ...
... some examples from the material in my possession in order to show concretely on what data this proposition is based. ? ? To illustrate the differentiation ...
... bourgeoisie and a proletariat. A vast mass of peasants (the poor group) - about a half on the average - are losing economic independence. They ? [ ...
... dess. ?8 16.4 34.5 75 Totals .? .? .? .? .? 6? 42? 1,439,267? 608,869? 17-18dess. Note to Table ? ...
... ? ? In confirmation of this the author borrows from the Moscow Zemstvo statistics the following data, which I give in the form of a table.[*] ...
... make her husband a red calico shirt and herself a smarter dress, and so the custom ? of weaving various sorts of linen and kerchiefs at home for peasants' ...
... rented allotment, but sends it to the market. We get the impoverishment of the people, the growth of capitalism and the expansion of the market. But ...
... 87] ? [20] See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Moscow, 1957, p. 438. ? ?[p. 89] ? [21] See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, p. 106. ? ...
... EconomismThe Russian Revolution was the greatest step forward in history. The working class, though a minority, led all oppressed and exploited ...