Letter to Nikolai Danielson, June 18, 1892

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To Nikolai Danielson in St Petersburg

London, June 18, 1892

My dear Sir,

I have to thank you for your very interesting letters of 24 March, 30 April and 18 May,494 and to ask your pardon for not replying to them sooner. But I have been extremely busy, so much so that I have not been able to devote one moment to III volume—next week however I hope to return to it.

I believe that in reality we both agree perfectly as to the facts, and the bearing of these facts, which constitute the present economic condition of your country. Only you seem to have taken sundry ironical expressions of my last letter as if they were seriously meant— especially what I said about sundry things serving in the end the cause of human progress. There is in reality no fact within history which does not serve human progress in one way or another, but it is after all an awfully round-about way. And so it may be with the present economic transformation of your country.

The fact I especially wanted to lay stress upon, is that the crop failure, to use the official expression, of last year, is not an isolated and accidental occurrence, but a necessary consequence of the whole development since the close of the Crimean War, that it is a result of the passage from communal agriculture and domestic patriarchal industry to modern industry; and that it seems to me that this transformation must in the long run endanger the existence of the agricultural commune and introduce the capitalist system in agriculture too.

I conclude from your letters that, as to these facts themselves, you are agreed with me; as to the question whether we like them or not, that is another thing, and whether we do like them or not, the facts will continue to exist all the same. The more we leave our likings and dislikings out of the question, the better we shall be able to judge of the facts themselves and of their consequences.

There can be no doubt, but that the present sudden growth of modern ‘grosse Industrie’ in Russia has been caused by artificial means, prohibitive duties, state subventions etc. The same has taken place in France, where the prohibitive system has existed ever since Colbert, in Spain, in Italy and, since 1878, even in Germany; although that country had almost completed its industrial transformation when, in 1878, the protective duties were introduced in order to enable the capitalists to compel their inland customers to pay them such high prices as would enable them to sell, abroad, for less than cost price. And America has done exactly the same, in order to shorten the period during which American manufacturers would not be in a position to compete on equal terms with England. That America, France, Germany and even Austria will be enabled to arrive at conditions where they can successfully fight English competition in the open market of the world at least in a number of important articles, of that I have no doubt. Already now France, America and Germany have broken the industrial monopoly of England to a certain extent, which is felt here very much. Will Russia be able to attain the same position? Ofthat I have my doubts, as Russia, like Italy, suffers from the absence of coal in industrially favourable localities, and moreover, as you develop so well in yours of 12 (24) March, has quite different historical conditions to contend with. But then we have the other question to answer: Could Russia, in the year 1890, have existed and held its own in the world, as a purely agricultural country, living upon the export of her corn and buying foreign industrial products with it? And there I believe we can safely reply: no. A nation of 100 million that plays an important part in the history of the world, could not, under the present economic and industrial conditions, continue in the state in which Russia was up to the Crimean war. The introduction of steam engines and working machinery, the attempt to manufacture textile and metal products by modern means of production, at least for home consumption, must have been made sooner or later, but at all events at some period between 1856 and 1880. Had it not been made, your domestic patriarchal industry would have been destroyed all the same by English machine competition, and the end would have been — India, a country economically subject to the great Central Workshop, England. And even India has reacted by protective duties against English cotton-goods; and all the rest of the British colonies, no sooner had they obtained self-government, than they protected their home manufactures against the overwhelming competition of the mother country. English interested writers cannot make it out that their own Free Trade example should be repudiated everywhere, and protective duties set up in return. Of course, they dare not see that this, now almost universal, protective system is a — more or less intelligent and in some cases absolutely stupid — means of self-defence against this very English Free Trade, which brought the English manufacturing monopoly to its greatest height. (Stupid for instance in the case of Germany, which had become a great industrial country under Free Trade and where protection is extended to agricultural produce and raw materials, thus raising cost of industrial production!) I do not consider this universal recurrence to protection as a mere accident, but as a reaction against the unbearable industrial monopoly of England; the form of this reaction as I said, may be inadequate and even worse, but the historical necessity of such a reaction seems to me clear and evident.

All governments, be they ever so absolute, are en dernier lieu but the executors of the economic necessities of the national situation. They may do this in various ways, good, bad and indifferent; they may accelerate or retard the economic development and its political and juridical consequences, but in the long run they must follow it. Whether the means by which the industrial revolution has been carried out in Russia have been the best for the purpose, is a question by itself which it would lead too far to discuss. For my purpose it is sufficient if I can prove that this industrial revolution, in itself, was unavoidable.

What you say about the necessary accompaniments of such tremendous economic changes, is quite correct, but it applies more or less to all countries that have gone or are going through the same process. Exhaustion of the soil—vide America; deforestation—vide England, France, and at the present moment Germany and America; change of climate, drying-up of rivers is probably greater in Russia than anywhere else on account of the level nature of the country that supplies these enormous rivers with water, and the absence of an Alpine snow-reservoir such as feeds the Rhine, Danube, Rhône and Po.

The destruction of the old conditions of agriculture, the gradual transition to capitalistic farming on large farms, are processes which are completed in England and East Germany and now proceeding everywhere else. And it seems to me evident that la grande industrie en Russie tuera la commune agricole unless other great changes occur which may preserve the commune. The question is, will there be time for such a change in public opinion in Russia, as will make it possible, to graft modern industry and modern agriculture upon the commune and at the same time to modify the latter in such a way that it may become a fit and proper instrument for the organization of this modern production and for the transformation of such production from a capitalistic to a socialised form? You will admit that to even think of carrying out such a change, a tremendous progress has first to be made by the public opinion of your country. Will there be time to effect this, before capitalistic production, aided by the effects of the present crisis, undermines the commune too deeply? I have no doubt whatever that in a good many districts the commune has recovered from the blow it received in 1861 (as described by V. V.). But will it be able to resist the incessant blows dealt to it by the industrial transformation, by rampant capitalism, by the destruction of domestic industry, by the absence of communal rights of pasture and woods, by the transformation of the peasants’ Naturalwirtschaft into Geldwirtschaft, by the growing wealth and power of kulaks and bloodsuckers?

I have to thank you too for the books you were kind enough to send me, especially Kablukov and Karyshev. At the present moment I am so overworked that I have not been able, for 6 months, to read through one single book in any language; I keep your books for my time of rest in August. What you say about Kablukov seems to me perfectly correct, as far as I can follow it without reading the book itself. The agricultural labourer who has no land of his own, no hired land, finds employment for only a portion of the year, and if he is paid for this work only, must starve the whole unemployed time, unless he has other kinds of work to do during that time, but modern capitalist production takes every chance of such work from him. This difficulty is got over, as far as possible, in the following way in Western and Central Europe: 1) the farming capitalist or landowner keeps a portion of the labourers, all the year round, on his farm and feeds them as much as possible with its products, so as to spend but little actual money. This is done to a great extent in North East Germany, in a lesser degree here in England, where however the climate admits of a good deal of agricultural work being carried on in winter. Moreover, in capitalist farming, there is a good deal of work to be done on a farm even in winter.— 2) Everything necessary to keep farm labourers just alive during the winter is frequently earned by women and children working in some new branch of domestic industry (see Capital, Vol. I, Chapter XV, Section 8, d). This is the case in southern and western England and among the small farmers of Ireland and Germany. The devastating consequences of the separation of agriculture from domestic industry carried on in the patriarchal manner are particularly marked during the transition period, and this is happening just now in your country.

This letter is already getting too long for me to enter into the details of yours of 18th May, but it seems to me that there too your facts prove the ruin of the peasantry and with that, also, at least for a time, the exhaustion of the soil. I quite agree with you that both these things are now proceeding with increasing rapidity. If the present system continues the end must be the ruin of both landowners and peasants and the rise of a new class of bourgeois landed proprietors. But there is another side to the question which I am afraid Financial Courier does not engross upon. That is the state of the public finances. The last loan in Paris (1891) was to bring 20 millions £ st. They were oversubscribed several times, but the report goes here that in reality only 12 millions were paid up, and 8 millions never reached the Petersburg exchequer. If that happened in France after Cronstadt, what is to happen when the next loan has to be negotiated? And can that new loan be long delayed after the tremendous sacrifices that were forced on the treasury by the crop failure? Vyshnegradsky serait-il Calonne, et y aurait-il un Necker après lui?

Very sincerely yours,

P.W. Rosherg