Well content with the ‘simple’ enlightenment, by which he has turned the surplus product into an invention of capital and the capitalist into a ‘fortuitous’ consumer who is ‘not organically connected with capitalist production’, Vorontsov now turns to the crises. On the basis of Marx’s ‘logical’ theory of the value of labour which he claims to ‘employ’ in his later works, he expounds them as an immediate result of the surplus value, as follows:
‘If the working part of the population consumes what enters into the costs of production in form of the wages for labour, the capitalists themselves must destroy [literally so—R. L.] the surplus value, excepting that part of it which the market requires for expansion. If the capitalists are in a position to do so and act accordingly, there can be no commodity surplus; if not, over-production, industrial crises, displacement of the workers from the factories and other evils will result.’
According to Vorontsov, however, it is ‘the inadequate elasticity of the human organism which cannot enlarge its capacity to consume as rapidly as the surplus value is increasing’, which is in the end responsible for these evils. He repeatedly expresses this ingenious thought as follows: ‘The Achilles heel of capitalist industrial organisation thus lies in the incapacity of the entrepreneurs to consume the whole of their income.’
Having thus ‘employed’ Marx’s ‘logical’ version of Ricardo’s theory of value, Vorontsov arrives at Sismondi’s theory of crises which he adopts in as crude and simplified a form as possible. He believes, of course, that he is adopting the views of Rodbertus in reproducing those of Sismondi. ‘The inductive method of research’, he declares triumphantly, ‘has resulted in the very same theory of crises and of pauperism which had been objectively stated by Rodbertus.’[285]
It is not quite clear what Vorontsov means by an ‘inductive method of research’ which he contrasts with the objective method—since all things are possible to Vorontsov, he may conceivably mean Marx’s theory. Yet Rodbertus, too, was not to emerge unimproved from the hands of the original Russian thinker. Vorontsov corrects Rodbertus’ theory merely in so far as he eliminates the stabilisation of the wage rate in accordance with the value of the aggregate product which, to Rodbertus, had been the pivot of his whole system. According to Vorontsov, this measure against crises is a mere palliative, since ‘the immediate cause of the above phenomena (over-production, unemployment, etc.) is not that the working classes receive too small a share of the national income, but that the capitalist class cannot possibly consume all the products which every year fall to their share.’[286]
Yet, as soon as he has refuted Rodbertus’ reform of the distribution of incomes, Vorontsov, with that ‘strictly logical’ consistency so peculiar to him, ultimately arrives at the following forecast for the future destiny of capitalism: ‘If industrial organisation which prevails in W. Europe is to prosper and flourish further still, it can only do so provided that some means will be found to destroy [verbatim—R. L.] that portion of the national income which falls to the capitalists’ share over and above their capacity to consume. The simplest solution of this problem will be an appropriate change in the distribution of the aggregate income among those who take part in production. If the entrepreneurs would retain for themselves only so much of all increase of the national income as they need to satisfy all their whims and fancies, leaving the remainder to the working class, the mass of the people, then the régime of capitalism would be assured for a long time to come.’[287]
The hash of Ricardo, Marx, Sismondi and Rodbertus thus is topped with the discovery that capitalist production could be radically cured of over-production, that it could ‘prosper and flourish’ in all eternity, if the capitalists would refrain from capitalising their surplus value and would make a free gift to the working class of the corresponding part of the surplus value. Meanwhile the capitalists, until they have become sensible enough to accept Vorontsov’s good advice, employ other means for the annual destruction of a part of their surplus value. Modern militarism, amongst others, is one of these appropriate measures—and this precisely to the extent to which the bills of militarism are footed by the capitalists’ income—for Vorontsov can be counted upon to turn things upside down—and not by the working masses. A primary remedy for capitalism, however, is foreign trade which again is a sore spot in Russian capitalism. As the last to arrive at the table of the world market, Russian capitalism fares worst in the competition with older capitalist countries and thus lacks both prospects as to foreign markets and the most vital conditions of existence. Russia remains the ‘country of peasants’, a country of ‘populist’ production.
‘If all this is correct,’ Vorontsov concludes his essay on ‘The Commodity Surplus in the Supply of the Market’, ‘then capitalism can play only a limited part in Russia. It must resign from the direction of agriculture, and its development in the industrial sphere must not inflict too many injuries upon the domestic industries which under our economic conditions are indispensable to the welfare of the majority of the population. If the reader would comment that capitalism might not accept such a compromise, our answer will be: so much the worse for capitalism.’
Thus Vorontsov ultimately washes his hands of the whole thing, declining for his part all responsibility for the further fortunes of economic development in Russia.