One of the key aspects of historical materialism is the progressive force that each mode of production plays. Each new mode unlocks new productive power that develops new organizations of production and new heights of technology. Along with it comes a new ruling class.
In Marx’s time, capitalism was just coming into its own in Germany and Britain. Both were the most advanced industrialized countries. During their transformations from feudalism to capitalism, there was a power struggle between the burgeoning bourgeoise and the declining landed aristocracy. It was inevitable that the bourgeoise was going to win, history marches on no matter how much anyone tries to hold it back.
“…the direct relation between the owners of production to the direct producers ... always naturally corresponds to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and therefore its social productivity.”
Some monarchs were intelligent enough to recognize the change in the economic winds and adapt to them. The Royal Family of England is a good example. Instead of rigidly adhering to the old feudal order, they adapted along with the new capitalist system and remained in power. Many of the monarchs of old Europe were too stubborn to change and got left in the dustbin of history.
The English Revolution (1640) is a fine example: the burgeoning capitalist class went to bloody war with the landed aristocracy. At that time, the wealth of the merchants and middle peasants was increasing while the influence and wealth of landlords was decreasing. Silver was flowing in from the Americas, and as a form of payment to landlords, was replacing payment in goods and services. Money was becoming capital for investment.
1800 to 1900 marked a significant period when the landed aristocracy across Europe was cast aside by the new capitalist class. Cities began to be built as people moved from the countryside to the cities. Historical attitudes were changing as well. Ideas about religions, property rights, freedom, democracy, etc. were all in a process of metamorphosis.
Then came the curious case of Russia. The bourgeoisie came into being without having any conflict with the landed aristocracy.
Of course, he wasn’t being all too altruistic. Harsh lessons had been learned. The Crimean War (October 1853 to February 1856) proved to be an utter disaster for the Russian Empire. It exposed above all else, their terrible backwardness and underdevelopment.
Freedom wasn’t quite what the peasants got. They got a new more complex form of feudal slavery under new conditions. They could own land in a forced sale by the Czar at an outrageously inflated price that often took 40 years to pay. They were bound to that land, legally restricted to it unless they had permission from the police to leave. It was held in a village common with usually a single person in control. Heavy taxes and offerings for military conscription were made. Many peasants just opted to work for a landlord.
Industry hardly existed. It is doubtful that even a minority of Russia’s population knew what industrialization was.
Beginning in 1890, the Czarist leadership began putting forth an effort to modernize Russia. A massive effort was put forward, though it still lagged far behind that of the other European powers.
Half a century after the 1861 Emancipation, 50,000 miles of railway had been laid to bring Russian grain to foreign markets and for military strategic purposes. During the Crimean War, supplies were brought to troops dragged in by animals.
Iron output increased from 300,000 tons to 4.5 million tons. Coal and steel also increased in similar proportions. During the last 20 years of Czardom, there was an explosion of industrial power. Industrial plants employing over 1,000 workers each were being built. By 1910, 54% of all industrial workers were employed in factories with 500 workmen or more.
While this was taking place, the capitalist class was growing alongside it. Monopoly organizations, directly or by trusts owned groups of factories. The same ones-controlled Syndicates marketing their goods, and controlled 75% of iron output; with most of the coal and iron ore mined. They also owned most metal products, oil, and sugar production.
But there were some contradictions. The continued survival of feudalism in the countryside hindered the full move towards capitalism. Most of the increase in steel, iron, and railway was for military purposes. The empire was being put before the economy, as empires tend to do. There was very little machinery production outside of the simplest of farming implements.
In Marxist terminology we’d see the Czarist error like this:
Department I include the production of means of production, that is, of “commodities having a form in which they must, or at least may, pass into productive consumption”, and department II consists of industries for the production of commodities of consumption, that is, “commodities having a form in which they pass into the individual consumption of the capitalist and the working class.”
Financing this industrialization was not too dissimilar to how China achieved theirs. The economic leadership permitted vast amounts of foreign capital to flood the country. The industry was protected with tariffs during the 1880s. There was a tremendous exportation of grain during that time as well.
Loans for Treasury purposes and railway construction grounds for foreign capital imports. They invested in coal, oil, and steel industries. These had a higher profit return than many of their domestic investments. In Russia good 25 to 50%.
What proceeded were numerous wars by the Russian Empire for expansion into new territories and markets. All the while, the domestic weapons manufacturers were increasing in wealth.
Through great turmoil, the first Russian Revolution of 1905 took place creating some significant political reforms. It created the State National Assembly Duma. Political representatives from some groups could sit at this pseudo-parliament and discuss matters. What they could not discuss was military affairs and foreign affairs. But in the end, they had no real power. All they could do was approve Bills. The Czar held all the power via his ministers who didn’t answer to the Duma.
At one point the Duma representation looked like this:
• 1 elector per 230 landowners.
• 1 elector per 1,000 capitalists.
• 1 elector per 60,000 peasants.
• 1 elector per 125,000 workmen.
What was of significance was that at no time was there any political strife between the landlords and the capitalists. Marxist theory contends that the feudal order must be done away with by the burgeoning bourgeoisie. Yet, in Russia, this simply was not the case. The feudal lords and the capitalists lived side by side in harmony.
Interestingly, at no point did the capitalists ask for checks and balances against the Czar’s power.
Why? Because those capitalists owed everything to the aristocracy. High tariffs were placed on industrial goods, but not on luxury goods. The Czar’s troops always came to bloodily suppress any worker strike or revolt. The Russian capitalist class developed so closely aligned with the aristocracy, and with their help, they never became the “historically progressive force” they usually take. They skipped right past it and went directly to being a counter-revolutionary force.
In the 1905 Revolution, they joined with the landlords and middle-class intellectuals forming the Constitutional-Democratic Party (Kadets). Not once did they ask to limit the Czar’s power. All they ever asked for was to prevent the sale of land to peasants at a fair price and to prevent the establishment of an 8-hour workday. The latter demand they ended up abandoning anyway.
In the Duma, they collaborated with the police to limit the public’s freedom of speech in 1907.
Their only treachery came when the Czar was losing the First World War and conspired to replace him with someone more progressive. The most right-wing of them were the Octoberists (larger capitalists) whose only goal was defending private property.
In retrospect, Russia really was a curious case for the first socialist revolution. There were many contradictions to Marx’s theory. Russia was the most backward of the European powers, and its capitalist class wasn’t even in an antagonist contradiction with the aristocracy. Curious indeed.
The bourgeois is a fickle thing when you can consider that the 1640 Anglo-Saxon revolution was led by the Levellers who won the communalisation of the Royal Lands into Commons while private land property of aristocrats remained untouched, it seems.
The Russian bourgeoisie was just as distant and pathetic during the 1905 Revolution led in the streets by the Jewish Bund.
The February 1917 event was a bourgeoisie revolution that could only endure until Lenin made it back on a wave of mass anti-war revolt.