Although the debate regarding non-capitalist forms of agriculture and the transition from feudalism to capitalism has resurfaced in the recent years, this debate perhaps has never been as consequential as it was in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the capitalist mode of production spread across Europe and beyond in late 19th century, the relationship between pre-capitalist economic forms and the capitalist mode of production became one of the most important political and economic questions of the time.
For Marxists, this question became central to how they related politically to farmers and peasants, as these groups still outnumbered proletarians across most of Europe at the time. Yet, since Marx himself had multiple contradictory accounts of how the transition took place, the most prominent Marxists of the time – and many others since then, produced inconsistent and incompatible theories about the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the relationship between capitalist and non-capitalist forms. These accounts emphasized a variety of different processes and dynamics as the cause of the transition, despite oftentimes being informed by the same literature.
These inconsistencies often stemmed from the attempts at reconciling the incompatible accounts of the transition to capitalism in Marx’s early writings in the German Ideology, the Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto, and in his mature works Grundrisse and Capital. In his early works, Marx followed closely some of the assumptions and conclusions from what is often referred to as the commercialization model – a model of transition from feudalism from capitalism that originated from the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. [1] In his later writings, Marx instead developed his own materialist account of the historical processes that led to the establishment of the capitalist mode of production and its rules of reproduction. I will refer to the latter as the social property relations model.
Following in the footsteps of early Marx, Kautsky replicated many of the assumptions of the of the commercialization model in The Agrarian Question. Although Kautsky attempted to incorporate the account of the transition in later Marx, his central assumptions that capitalism originated “in towns, in industry, leaving agriculture largely undisturbed initially” and that the first step for the transformation of peasant agriculture was “the dissolution of peasant handicrafts through urban industry and commerce” could be traced back to the Smithian commercialization model.
Lenin, alternatively, equated the abolishment of serfdom and “the growth of the home market” to the transition to capitalism in Russia in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. As evidence to the transition, Lenin provided significant data that confirmed sizeable inequalities among the peasantry in terms of landholdings, output, income and various other indicators. While Lenin described the separation of the direct producers from the land as the creation of the home market for capitalism, he insisted this process itself resulted from the differentiation of the peasantry. In other words, the dynamic that resulted from the creation of the home market, was also defined as a cause of its own creation. As I will later discuss, this teleological view of the transition was also inspired by the commercialization model.
While elements of the commercialization model crept into the works of many Marxists and non-Marxists as they grappled with the question of transition, other political economists provided unique contributions to this debate. Rosa Luxemburg provided a more dynamic account of the relationship between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production in the later chapters of the Accumulation of Capital. A.V. Chayanov described the dynamics of the peasant economy much more accurately than Lenin and Kautsky in The Theory of the Peasant Economy. While these accounts had their own limitations, they also provided some important breaks from the commercialization model.
In this paper, I first introduce the two models of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Then, I elaborate on the elements of these two competing accounts in the works Lenin and Kautsky. In the last section, I briefly describe the contributions by Luxemburg and Chayanov and contrast them with Lenin and Kautsky’s work.
Models of the Transition
Before we analyze the elements of the commercialization model and the social property relations model in the works Lenin and Kautsky, it is important to summarize the central claims and arguments of these two models. The two models do not only differ in their readings of the causes and effects of certain historical phenomena. They simply differ in what they identify as the driving force of history itself.
On one hand, the commercialization model described capitalism as a near inevitability, which existed in embryonic form throughout all of history, and once freed from its feudal tethers, and chains capitalism transformed human life through its continuous development of productive forces and the expansion of a capitalist division of labor through market growth.[2] At the heart of this model lay the belief that the spread of the capitalist division of labor is the consequence of the inherent “propensity in human nature … to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.”[3] It is also assumed that these exchange relations are continuously reproduced by overly rational actors who are exclusively driven by economic self-interest.
By equating “commerce and trade” with capitalism and presuming its existence throughout all of history based on this equation, the proponents of the commercialization model describe the transition from feudalism to capitalism as a quantitative growth in exchange, rather than a qualitative change in productive relations. As a result, those influenced by the commercialization model emphasized a variety of transformations as the cause of this quantitative change in trade in an ad-hoc manner. Some examples to these causes included the crisis of feudalism leading to the creation of a world market[4], the development of productive forces allowing for the expansion of capitalist division of labor[5], growth of production for exchange in medieval towns[6], and the most influential of all, the removal of capitalism’s feudal tethers and chains by the bourgeoisie through political revoution.[7]
On the other hand, the social property relations model focused on the set of historical processes that led to the specific set of social relations, which resulted in the continuous reproduction market competition and the development of productive forces. These competitive market relations created the tendency for their own expanded reproduction. Marx put it in Capital, the process “that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production; a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage labourers”[8] As a result of this separation of the laborers from their means of subsistence, both capitalists and workers must continuously compete in the market in order to reproduce themselves as classes. We can refer to this condition as market dependence.
While the commercialization model circumvented the question of the transition through presuming capitalism’s transhistorical existence, the social property relations model aimed to emphasize the specificity of capitalism by pointing to the specific set of social relations necessary to maintain its expanded reproduction. This transhistorical nature of capitalism in the commercialization model has usually been attributed to the presence of markets throughout human history. Yet, markets functioned under different dynamics in pre-capitalist and capitalist societies. The commercialization model conceptualized markets as opportunities and defined the transition as a quantitative increase in these market opportunities. The social property relations model defined capitalist markets as imperatives and defined the transition as the establishment of “the imperatives of competition, accumulation, and profit-maximization, and hence a constant systemic need to develop the productive forces”. [9] These imperatives resulted from market dependence, “as workers depend on the market to sell their labour-power as a commodity, capitalists depend on it to buy labour-power, as well as the means of production, and to realize their profits by selling the goods or services produced.”[10]
To summarize, the analyses inspired by the commercialization model centered on a conception of markets as opportunities. These also often described capitalism as nearly synonymous with “commerce and trade.” This conception and the presence of markets throughout most of human history enabled these theorists to define capitalism as a nearly inevitable transhistorical phenomenon, once freed from a set of obstacles, grew exponentially and became the dominant socio-economic relationship. Alternatively, the social property relations model centered on commodification of land and labor as necessary preconditions for capitalist competition. Both capitalists and workers, alienated from other means of self-reproduction as classes, were compelled to compete in the market. Markets function as imperatives rather than opportunities under capitalism and the establishment of these imperatives define the transition.
The establishment of these social relations, took place “from below,” as unintended consequences of class struggle, as in the original transition in England.[11] Or “from above,” through the transformations carried out by the ruling classes in reaction to various external pressures imposed on them by capitalist nations, like the case of France.[12] According to this view, in both cases, the transformation in the relations of production took place as an unintended consequence of class struggle
As I previously mentioned, Marx was inspired by the Smithian commercialization model in his earlier works. Mature Marx developed the foundations of the social property relations model, which was later fully developed by Political Marxists. Marxists in the early 20th century incorporated elements of both models in their analyses of non-capitalist forms, primarily in relation to the agrarian question. In the next sections, I will attempt to breakdown some of these theories and their relationships to these two models.
Kautsky and The Agrarian Question
For Kautsky, the agrarian question arose from the persistence of small farm production even in the face of rapid capitalist development that was expected to replace them with large farms.[13] The continuous existence of a great number of small (presumably) capitalist farmers as a class posed an important question for social-democrats at the time, as their social bases primarily consisted of urban wage-laborers. Kautsky believed that Marx’s work in Capital, by focusing exclusively on industrial capitalism, did not provide an adequate framework for understanding the dynamics of agrarian development. Yet, this did not mean that “the development of agriculture and industry are opposed and irreconcilable.”[14] For Kautsky, so long as they were regarded as elements of a singular process, both could be shown to be advancing towards the same endpoint. Hence, Kautsky’s primary goal in The Agrarian Question was to develop a theory of agricultural production in relation to the developed capitalist industry in the cities.
For Kautsky, the initial step for the dissolution of peasant agriculture was the ruin of peasant craft industries, since capitalist industry in the towns produced agricultural tools much more efficiently than the peasants themselves.[15] As capitalist industry began to reach remote corners of the countryside with the development of communication and transportation technology, peasant industry began to dissolve as it became obsolete. At the same time, in order to purchase the tools produced by capitalist industry, the peasants had to produce goods as commodities for money. As Kautsky stated;
“The natural services rendered by the peasant were transformed into money payments, as is well known; but the process also prompted the desire for higher and higher payments. Not unnaturally, this further increased the peasant’s need for money. The only method by which peasants could acquire money was to turn their products into commodities, to take them to market and sell them.”[16]
As a result, peasants became more dependent on merchants and usurers. Peasants needed the former for access to markets and the latter to fund their investments in equipment, animals etc. These processes, according to Kautsky, created market dependence for the peasants by making them more dependent on money, merchants, and debt.
The increase in peasant commodity production for the market, coupled with the growing international competition in food markets, also led to proletarianization.[17] Some peasants, unable to acquire enough money, began to work for larger farms in order to meet their needs. While others with inadequate plots began to reduce the sizes of their families. In a more competitive market, farmers with larger plots began to hire more agricultural workers. The key point here is that growing market dependence as a result of the capitalist development in towns led to significant transformations in agriculture, even if the relations of production were not directly transformed.
According to Kautsky, while the towns did not transform the relations of production in agriculture, they produced the classes that would carry out this task. Kautsky stated “The transformation of rural property relations only really began to acquire momentum – first in France and then under French influence in neighbouring countries – after the rising of the revolutionary classes in Paris in 1789 under the political leadership of the bourgeoisie.”[18] In Prussia, this transformation took place “peacefully and legally” following the defeat at Jena against Napoleon;
“… that is, the bureaucracy oversaw the inescapable process as cumbersomely and hesitantly as possible, with the maximum expenditure of time and labour, always anxiously striving to retain the consent of the Junkers who eventually reaped the rewards of the whole procedure, which still remained unfinished in 1848. The price the peasants had to pay to the Junkers for this peaceful and legal path was a high one – cash, a part of their land, and new taxes.”[19]
Kautsky stated that this transformation led to “the lifting of feudal burdens on the one hand, and the abolition of the primitive communism of the soil on the other, with the establishment of complete private property in the land and soil.”
Once having described the establishment of capitalism in the countryside through the growth of markets and the removal of feudal relations by the bourgeoisie, Kautsky explained why the dynamics of capitalism would lead to dissolution of small farms by the large farms.[20] Kautsky claimed that the large farms were more advantageous as they could utilize land, animals, machinery, and labor more efficiently. They also had easier access to markets and credit, which allowed for more specialization and advanced division of labor.
Yet, Kautsky’s own findings contradicted his claims regarding the increase in the number of large landholdings and instead showed a rise in the number of medium sized farms across Germany.[21] Kautsky explained this contradiction by pointing to certain tendencies that are unique to agriculture. In agriculture the concentration of land went hand in hand with its centralization, unlike industry where these processes might develop independently of one another. This meant that the same inefficient methods would be applied to larger concentrations of land and would fail to outcompete small farms. Smaller farms that were more productive and farmed more intensively could be more profitable than large farms that were farmed sparsely.[22] Another tendency that prevented the dominance of large farms was the survival of small farms, not through competitive agriculture, but through producing a larger share of their income through wage-labor, as many small farmers were also wage laborers. Hence, these small farmers might not have been concerned with the level of production in their farms outside of their consumption needs.
In short, Kautsky assumed that the presence of capitalism in towns disrupted non-capitalist agriculture through the growth markets and the transformation of rural property relations by the bourgeoisie. These transformations should have led to the dissolution of small farms, but this process did not take place as Kautsky expected.
Present in Kautsky’s work were many of the presumptions of the commercialization model I mentioned in the previous section. Kautsky assumed that capitalism was already dominant in the industrial sector in towns. Capitalist development penetrated agriculture, first through the expansion of trade, and later through a peaceful bourgeois revolution carried out by the bureaucracy. While Kautsky did acknowledge market dependence as a precondition for capitalism, in his view this dependence was created through the peasants’ increased dependence on money rather than a transformation in the relations of production. While Kautksy later described the establishment of capitalist relations of production as a result of a bourgeois revolution, his description of this was more in line with the understanding of bourgeois revolution as the abolishment of serfdom noted in Marx’s early works. It is important to note that abolishment of serfdom or bourgeois revolutions do not directly result in the establishment of capitalism.
While Kautsky’s description of the relationship between the towns and agriculture is not very different from that of the Smithian commercialization model, his conception of bourgeois revolutions was informed by the way Prussian capitalism developed. Following the feudal crisis and population collapse of the 1500s, Junkers in Germany began to independently cultivate newly open lands, then eventually began to reimpose serfdom on farmers as they faced a labor shortage.[23] This led to the intensification of class conflict between the Junkers and the peasants, as the peasants began to lose their freeholdings. The Junkers won a decisive victory where they enserfed most of the formerly free farmers in east Elbia and established “a form of seigneurial market production (Teilbetrieb) in which, by means of extra-economic coercion, the landlords forced the peasantry to shoulder the cost of the labour, horsepower and tools necessary to demesne farming”[24] Inspired by the French Revolution and mobilized after the defeat at Jena, a group of farmers with medium sized landholdings, who were also paying the highest levels of ground rent forced the state into abolishing serfdom. Hence, Kautsky was correct in asserting that the abolishment of feudalism was carried on peacefully by the state, even as he failed describe how this would also establish capitalist relations of production.
In contradiction to Kautsky’s account, the abolishment of serfdom neither led to capitalism nor was it a form of bourgeois revolution. With the abolishment of serfdom, former landlords retained their holdings.[25] A great number of these landowners, primarily among the nobility, were forced to sell their land following the depression of 1820s, as most of them held unsustainable levels of debt. Many commoners became landowners as they purchased land from the nobility. Many of these commoners also introduced wage-labor as this was the most profitable option following the abolishment of serfdom. Junkers with large land holdings followed suit in the following decades as they were compelled to compete with this rising group of capitalist farmers. This process might also explain the growth of middle-sized farms and persistence of small holdings Kautsky attempted to explain because as Junkers with large holdings lost land, smaller farmers were gaining ground or maintaining their holdings through more profitable forms of labor.
Hence, the establishment of capitalist farms in Germany neither resulted from a bourgeois a revolution, nor from the growth of markets. It resulted from abolishment of serfdom resulting from class struggle and the rise of a new agricultural capitalist class following the depression of 1820s that introduced wage labor as the primary means of employment.
A Note on The Political Context of The Agrarian Question
It is important to acknowledge the political context of Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question. As Jarius Banaji states;
“By 1898 it was clear that the ‘radicalism’ of the peasantry had nothing whatever to do with the aspirations of a workers’ movement. The underlying discussion in The Agrarian Question moves out from the idea that the proletarianisation of the countryside is the true basis for the victory of Social Democracy in the rural areas. Kautsky was thus concerned to show that agricultural workers were fast outstripping the peasantry in purely numerical terms (p. 319), and devoted the best part of his analysis to a study of the forms in which the ‘small peasant’ became a supplier of labour.”[26]
Hence, underlying Kautsky’s analysis was a polemic regarding the political character of the peasantry in relation to its proletarianization in the face of capitalist development. This was targeted against the idea that peasant communes could provide a path towards socialism. To counter this view, Kautsky’s argument centered on the “the ruin of the peasantry” and suggested peasants would only ally with the urban wage-laborers once they were proletarianized themselves.
A similar analysis was developed by Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia against the Narodnik economists. While Lenin was not directly influenced by Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question, he praised it very highly and his work had similar strengths and weaknesses.[27] Much like Kautsky, Lenin tried to explain the transition to capitalism, the differentiation of the peasantry, as well as the process of “the growth of the home market in Russia.”
Lenin and The Development of Capitalism in Russia
Lenin’s analysis began with a critique of “the Theoretical Mistakes of the Narodnik economists.”[28] In this section, Lenin outlined his theory of the transition to capitalism, the growth of the home market, and the overall dynamics of “the commodity economy” as a polemic against the theories developed by the Narodnik economists. For Lenin, the establishment of capitalism – or “the creation of the home market” – necessitated the separation of the direct producers from the land. The expansion process of the home market consisted of “various forms of processing raw materials (and various operations in this processing) separating from agriculture one after another and becoming independent branches of industry, which exchange their products (now commodities) for the products of agriculture.”[29] This process took place through the development of the social division of labor and led to specialization of productive enterprises.
Lenin believed that the peasantry was already functioning within the dynamics of capitalism in post-reform Russia.[30] He made this assumption based on the data he had regarding peasants’ landholdings, production, animal holdings and employment. Much like Kautsky, Lenin expected to observe a differentiation of the peasantry as the peasants began to produce for the commodity economy in the countryside. Lenin thought his evidence suggested peasant differentiation took place in large sections of the Russian countryside, as the data revealed a concentration of landholdings, animals, and employment opportunities in the hands of a small group of farms.[31] Lenin claimed that peasants with small and medium sized landholdings were proletarianizing and becoming dependent on loans and “subsidiary” labor for their subsistence.[32] At the same time, the rich peasants – and their industrialist partners, who were leasing their land and hiring wage laborers, had already become “the peasant bourgeoisie” and were running capitalist enterprises.
Nevertheless, while the Russian countryside was dominated by capitalist social relations, it was still in a transitional phase, as the peasants with middle sized landholdings still held about 15-20 percent of land, and the corvée economy was still the primary economic form in these parts of the countryside. According to Lenin, the three main characteristic of the corvée economy were; the predominance of the natural economy – an economy not based on production for the market, peasant ownership of the means of production, and peasant dependence on the landlord.[33] Lenin believed all three of these elements were being undermined with the differentiation of the peasantry and the advancement of the social division of labor.
Lenin interpreted employment in the form of labor services as representative of the corvée economy, while wage-labor represented capitalist farms. Based on the number of wage-labourers in different areas, Lenin concluded that “although the labour-service system predominates in the purely Russian gubernias, the capitalist system of landlord farming must be considered the predominant one at present in European Russia as a whole.”[34] Lenin was most interested in labor services that paid in the form of rent in kind, as he perceived this to be “simply a survival of the corvée economy.”[35] On the other hand, he argued rent in kind in most cases represented “renting from dire need, “renting” by the peasant who is no longer able to resist his conversion, in this way, into an agricultural wage-worker.” This was evident to Lenin partly because labor services paid significantly lower than wage labor. The middle peasantry represented the majority of those who became dependent on labor services, since poor peasants could much easily become wage laborers and rich peasants had already become capitalists. Hence, labor services and payment in rent in kind for Lenin represented merely a transitional form of labor and payment, as the corvée economy was transitioning to capitalism under market pressures. As Lenin stated, “The greater the decline of natural economy and of the middle peasantry, the more vigorously is labour-service bound to be eliminated by capitalism.”[36]
To summarize, Lenin theorized that following the abolishment of serfdom, the Russian countryside began to develop within the logic of capitalist development. This was evident to him since the differentiation of the peasantry was already taking place – richer peasants were increasing their output, specializing, and hiring wage labor; at the time poorer peasants were losing land, becoming dependent on debt, and proletarianizing. While the pre-capitalist corvée economy persisted in certain regions among the middle peasantry, within the corvée economy labor services paid in rent in kind represented renting out of dire need for the failing peasantry. This differentiation of the peasantry resulting from capitalist development also led to the expansion of the home market as it proletarianized the peasantry and strengthened agricultural capitalists.
Lenin and the Commercialization Model
Much like Kautsky, Lenin followed a similar line of reasoning to that of the commercialization model in multiple ways. Similar to Kautsky, one of Lenin’s fundamental errors was equating the abolishment of serfdom with the establishment of capitalism. Where Kautsky defined bourgeois revolutions as the driving force for the establishment of capitalism, Lenin substituted the Emancipation Reform in Russia in the place of a bourgeois revolution. While Lenin claimed that the separation of the direct producers from the land is a necessary precondition for capitalist development, he assumed such a process also resulted from the differentiation of the peasantry and the growth of the home market – even in the absence of forceful expropriation. Parallel to Kautsky’s theory, the dynamics of the market itself led to the creation of the market through the separation of the peasants from the land, by making them more dependent on money and markets. This once again exemplifies the teleology in Lenin and Kautsky’s thinking, where the transition to capitalism itself resulted from the dynamics of capitalism.
Theoretically, this appears to have stemmed from defining “commodity production” or “the home market” synonymously with capitalism in Lenin’s work. For Lenin, the expansion of the markets and the social division of labor, put pressure on peasants to specialize, and was also the condition for their market dependence. Poor and middle peasantry struggled to compete with large landholders and became dependent on loans or wage labor. At the same time large landholders became capitalists and introduced technical innovations to agricultural production which lead to further differentiation of the peasantry.
Overall, we can see that for Lenin, the establishment of capitalism was a process of quantitative growth in commodity production for the market and trade, as well as the expansion of social division of labor. It is important to note that, like Kautsky, Lenin also noted the unique dynamics of specialization that was taking place in agriculture in contrast to industry. Though unlike Kautsky, he argued that this dynamic contributed to the growth of the home market via exchange between different agricultural enterprises, as each region could only specialize on a limited number of crops. On the other hand, Kautsky was arguing that it slowed down the expansion of markets since the same inefficient practices would be performed on a larger patch of land. Lenin’s perspective on this is perhaps most clear in the following passage;
“The growth of commercial agriculture creates a home market for capitalism. Firstly, the specialisation of agriculture gives rise to exchange between the various agricultural areas, between the various agricultural undertakings, and between the various agricultural products. Secondly, the further agriculture is drawn into the sphere of commodity circulation the more rapid is the growth of the demand made by the rural population for those products of manufacturing industry that serve for personal consumption; and thirdly, the more rapid is the growth of the demand for means of production, since neither the small nor the big rural entrepreneur is able, with the old-fashioned “peasant” implements, buildings, etc., etc., to engage in the new, commercial agriculture. Fourthly and lastly, a demand is created for labour-power, since the formation of a small rural bourgeoisie and the change-over by the landowners to capitalist farming presuppose the formation of a body of regular agricultural labourers and day labourers.”[37]
In this passage, unlike earlier in the text, Lenin defines this exchange relationship which resulted from agricultural specialization as the dynamic that created the home market. Evidently, Lenin conceptualizes markets as opportunities, production for market opportunities as the process of the creation of the home market for capitalism, and competition as a byproduct of production for the market.
Contrary to Lenin’s view, while markets were present and serfdom was abolished, there were no market imperatives in the Russian countryside that would lead to competitive capitalist agriculture or the continuous development of productive forces.[38] Throughout the 19th century, and until the Russian revolution, the Russian countryside functioned under non-capitalist social relations. Prior to the Russian revolution, majority of the peasants continued to work under a feudal-absolutist rule.[39] As I will discuss in the last section, a more accurate analysis of the peasant economy in pre-revolutionary Russia was developed by A.V. Chayanov.
A Note on Lenin’s Theory
It is important to note that Lenin’s work would be most consequential, as he was the leader of the Bolsheviks and would become the head of the state after the Russian Revolution. Before and after the Russian Revolution, most Bolsheviks, some perhaps influenced by Lenin, maintained the belief that capitalism was the dominant mode of production and “that ‘small scale production’ characteristic of the peasantry ‘continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie”[40] This belief was particularly detrimental for the Soviet economy, as the peasants gained their freedom from feudal absolutism following the Russian Revolution and began to produce primarily for subsistence, in line with the general logic of peasant production. Lenin maintained his views from The Development of Capitalism in Russia regarding the dominance of capitalist social relations in agriculture all the way until the 1920s. According to Marot, this influenced the New Economic Policy as the Bolsheviks expected peasants to act as capitalists after the Russian Revolution. While many Bolsheviks at the time believed that the fundamental threat to the Soviet economy was being cut from foreign markets, the persistence of peasant agriculture and the crisis that resulted from its dynamics, led to massive food shortages and the collapse of the industrial sectors of the economy in the 1920s. This collapse in part enabled Stalin to seize power and forcefully collectivize land in 1929.
Alternative Perspectives
So far, I summarized the theoretical works of Lenin and Kautsky regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the agrarian question. I also critiqued their works briefly with alternative accounts of agriculture in their respective countries. Both Lenin and Kautsky assumed “the ruin of the peasantry” was already in process as serfdom was abolished and markets were expanding, leading to proletarianization and the strengthening of capitalist agriculture. In doing so, both authors try to explain the process of the destruction of non-capitalist forms rather than the dynamics of these forms. While Lenin did describe the dynamics of the corvée economy, his primary goal in doing so was to show that the corvée economy was also in a transitional state towards capitalism. In contrast, the agrarian economist A.V. Chayanov focused primarily on the peasant economy in The Theory of the Peasant Economy when describing the Russian countryside in the 20th century.[41] Alternatively, Rosa Luxemburg tried to describe the precise ways through which the capitalist economy interacted with non-capitalist forms.
Starting from the peasant household as his central unit of analysis, Chayanov argued that the differentiation of the peasantry was not the result of class formation, instead it was the result of “the locations of households in the demographic cycle, traced in the ‘labour–consumer balance’ or ratio of producers (working adults) to consumers (working adults plus dependants: children and the old) at different moments in the recurrent process of generational reproduction.”[42] According to Chayanov, once peasants had children, they had a long period during which their labor-consumer ratio declined, as they had more mouths to feed but the same number of hands to work with.[43] In order to sustain themselves under this scenario, peasants could either work harder (self-exploitation); or they could rent land, hire more wage workers, invest in more equipment and animals, or more broadly, participate in market activities.
While Lenin described peasants’ engagement in market activities as evidence to “the ruin of the peasantry” and condition for their increased market dependence, for Chayanov these activities took place strictly for the subsistence of the peasant household when faced with a decline in labor-consumer ratios or other external pressures. Chayanov, by the virtue of recognizing that peasants’ main economic goal was self-subsistence, rather than production for the market, described the dynamics of the peasant economy more accurately than Lenin did in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. At the same time, Chayanov conceded that a certain group of peasants were receiving most of their income from wage-labor, but he argued that they remained peasants so long as they continued to produce for their own subsistence on their own plots of land.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that Chayanov’s work had significant limitations as well. Chayanov was influenced by neoclassical economics and described the peasant household as a transhistorical economic unit of analysis.[44] More specifically, Chayanov’s focus on the peasant economy and its internal dynamics allowed him to elaborate how the peasant household would react to external forces, while it avoided a broader analysis of the relationship between these forces and the peasant household.
Where other theorists either avoided the question or opted for the commercialization model’s teleological approach, Rosa Luxemburg’s work provided an important contribution with regards to the relationship between capitalist and non-capitalist forms. For Rosa Luxemburg, the natural economy had two main characteristics; it was “based on an internal demand for its own products; and the reproduction of the social formation is effected by means other than the purely economic, that is, means of production and labour-power are in some way ‘bound’ under natural economy”[45] As the capitalist economy necessitated its own expanded reproduction for the realization of surplus value, it had to interact with the natural economy.[46] Capitalism did so by penetrating the internally driven market economy of the non-capitalist form, and by removing the bond between the means of production and labor power.
Capitalism expanded to the non-capitalist milieu by the means of direct “force, the State and taxation and the introduction of cheap commodities.” Luxemburg believed that the establishment of exchange relations between capitalist and non-capitalist forms required direct acts of violence, as was the case with the opium wars.[47] In contrast, the ruin of the peasant economy still largely took place through market competition following the “seizure of land and sources of raw materials, the liberation of labour-power and the introduction of a commodity economy”[48] Much like in Kautsky’s account, the peasantry was “ruined” first through the separation of industry from agriculture – which led to the destruction of peasant craft industries, and later on through the competition between large-scale capitalist farmers and the remaining peasants.
Luxemburg’s key contribution was the idea that the relationship between capitalist and non-capitalist forms initially necessitated extra-economic violence. While Luxemburg derived this conclusion from a misunderstanding of Marx’s theory of expanded reproduction of capital, this was a significant contribution since neither Kautsky, nor Lenin really gave much of a role to extra-economic violence within their frameworks. At the same time, the rest of Luxemburg’s account of the destruction of the natural economy followed Kautsky and Lenin’s works relatively close, as it relied heavily on dynamics market competition.
In summary, Chayanov and Luxemburg provided important contributions to the theory of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. While both authors’ works had their own unique limitations, Chayanov’s work on the dynamics of the peasant economy and Luxemburg’s work on the role of extra-economic violence in the expansion of capitalism into non-capitalist milieus, provided important breaks from Lenin and Kautsky’s accounts.
Conclusions
The two most prominent theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism are the commercialization model and the social property relations model. The former describes the transition as the growth of exchange and production for the market, while the latter describes it as a radical change in the relations of production, as an unintended consequence of class struggle. The former influenced the early works of Marx, while the latter was developed in his later works.
Kautsky, Lenin, and many second international Marxists reproduced the teleology of the commercialization model in their works by presuming the existence of capitalism at the start of their analyses and explaining the process of its raveling through the growth of markets. Chayanov provided a critical alternative by focusing almost exclusively on the peasant economy and explaining peasants’ relation to markets within this framework. Furthermore, Luxemburg made an important contribution by emphasizing the necessity of extra-economic violence for the expanded reproduction of capitalism. Each of these analyses had their own limitations, but it is essential to pinpoint these critiques in order to develop a consistent theory of the transition and prevent teleological narratives, as they are prevalent in many current studies of the transition question.
[1] Robert Brenner, “Bourgeois Revolution and Transition to Capitalism,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 271–304., 272-273
[2] Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, 11-17
[3] Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, Book 1 (Electronic Classics Series, 2005)., Book 1, Chapter 2, 18
[4] Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I, 1st ed. (University of California Press, 2011), http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnrj9., Medieval Prelude, 37-38
[5] Christ Harman, “The Rise of Capitalism,” Spring 2004, https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/2004/xx/risecap.htm.
[6] Paul Sweezy, “A Critique,” in The Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism (New York: Science and Society, 1963), 1–20.
[7] Karl Marx, “Communist Manifesto,” 1888, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007.
[8] Marx, Capital A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, Chapter 18, 360
[9] Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, 37
[10] Wood.37
[11] Byres, “The Landlord Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the Transition to Capitalism: England, France and Prussia Compared”, 33-34
[12] X. LaFrance, “From Extra-Economic Class Relations to the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Post-Revolutionary France,” in Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism (Springer International Publishing, 2018).
[13] Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, 10
[14] Kautsky,11
[15] Kautsky, 14-16
[16] Kautsky,16
[17] Kautsky,17-18
[18] Kautsky, 33
[19] Kautsky, 34
[20] Kautsky,96-120
[21] Kautsky,135
[22] Kautsky,149
[23] Byres, “The Landlord Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the Transition to Capitalism: England, France and Prussia Compared.”,47
[24] William W. Hagen, “How Mighty the Junkers? Peasant Rents and Seigneurial Profits in Sixteenth-Century Brandenburg,” Past & Present, no. 108 (1985): 80–116.,111
[25] Byres, “The Landlord Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the Transition to Capitalism: England, France and Prussia Compared.”, 50
[26] Jairus Banaji, “Illusions about the Peasantry: Karl Kautsky and the Agrarian Question,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1990): 288–307, https://doi.org/10.1080/03066159008438422., 292-293
[27] Hamza Alavi and Theodor Shanin, “Introduction to the English Edition: Peasantry and Capitalism,” in The Agrarian Question (London: Zwan Publications, 1988), xi–xxxviii.
[28] Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 37-71
[29] Lenin.,68-69
[30] Lenin.,39
[31] Lenin., 71-170
[32] Lenin, 176-181
[33] Lenin, 192-193
[34] Lenin,197
[35] Lenin, 199-200
[36] Lenin,207
[37] Lenin,312
[38] John Eric Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect : Interventions in Russian and Soviet History (Leiden, UNITED STATES: BRILL, 2012), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cunygc/detail.action?docID=944160, 10-86
[39] Marot, 13
[40] Marot, 56
[41] A.V. Chayanov, The Theory of the Peasant Economy (Homewood, Illinois: The American Economic Association, 1966).
[42] Henry Bernstein, “V.I. Lenin and A.V. Chayanov: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 55–81, https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150902820289.
[43] Chayanov, The Theory of the Peasant Economy, 1-29
[44] Bernstein, “V.I. Lenin and A.V. Chayanov: Looking Back, Looking Forward”, 65
[45] Barbara Bradby, “The Destruction of Natural Economy,” Economy and Society 4, no. 2 (May 1, 1975): 127–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147500000005, 138
[46] Bradby argues this was a “non-problem” based on a theoretical misreading of Marx.
[47] Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Routledge, 2003), 367-374
[48] Bradby, “The Destruction of Natural Economy”, 139
Bibliography
Alavi, Hamza, and Theodor Shanin. “Introduction to the English Edition: Peasantry and Capitalism.” In The Agrarian Question, xi–xxxviii. London: Zwan Publications, 1988.
Banaji, Jairus. “Illusions about the Peasantry: Karl Kautsky and the Agrarian Question.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1990): 288–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066159008438422.
Bernstein, Henry. “V.I. Lenin and A.V. Chayanov: Looking Back, Looking Forward.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 55–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150902820289.
Bradby, Barbara. “The Destruction of Natural Economy.” Economy and Society 4, no. 2 (May 1, 1975): 127–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147500000005.
Brenner, Robert. “Bourgeois Revolution and Transition to Capitalism.” In The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, 271–304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Byres, Terence J. “The Landlord Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the Transition to Capitalism: England, France and Prussia Compared.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36, no. 1 (2009): 33–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150902820453.
Chayanov, A.V. The Theory of the Peasant Economy. Homewood, Illinois: The American Economic Association, 1966.
Hagen, William W. “How Mighty the Junkers? Peasant Rents and Seigneurial Profits in Sixteenth-Century Brandenburg.” Past & Present, no. 108 (1985): 80–116.
Harman, Christ. “The Rise of Capitalism,” Spring 2004. https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/2004/xx/risecap.htm.
Kautsky, K. The Agrarian Question. Vol. 1. Roots of Radicalism. London: Zwan Publications, 1988.
LaFrance, X. “From Extra-Economic Class Relations to the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Post-Revolutionary France.” In Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. Springer International Publishing, 2018.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich. The Development of Capitalism in Russia. [2d rev. ed.]. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967.
Luxemburg, Rosa. The Accumulation of Capital. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Marot, John Eric. The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect : Interventions in Russian and Soviet History. Leiden, UNITED STATES: BRILL, 2012. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cunygc/detail.action?docID=944160.
Marx, Karl. Capital A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Moscow,USSR: Progress Publishers, 2015.
———. “Communist Manifesto,” 1888. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007.
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Sweezy, Paul. “A Critique.” In The Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism, 1–20. New York: Science and Society, 1963.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System I. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnrj9.
Wood, E.M. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002.
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Hakan Yilmaz 