Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

56
V. I. LENIN
of consumption, but that he has thus stocked up the means
of production he needs, and nothing else” (Das Kapital,
II, 436. Russ. trans., 333). 28 This “very good knowledge”
of one’s relation to production has disappeared in capitalist
society owing to the latter’s inherent fetishism, which
presents the social relations of men as relations of products—
owing to the conversion of every product into a commodity
produced for an unknown consumer and to be realised in an
unknown market. And as it is a matter of the utmost indifference
to the individual entrepreneur what kind of article
he produces—every product yields a “revenue,”—this same
superficial, individual point of view was adopted by the
economist-theoreticians in relation to the whole of society
and prevented the process of the reproduction of the total
social product in capitalist economy from being understood.
The development of production (and, consequently, of
the home market) chiefly on account of means of production
seems paradoxical and undoubtedly constitutes a contradiction.
It is real “production as an end in itself”—the
expansion of production without a corresponding expansion
of consumption. But it is a contradiction not of doctrine,
but of actual life; it is the sort of contradiction that corresponds
to the very nature of capitalism and to the other contradictions
of this system of social economy. It is this
expansion of production without a corresponding expansion
of consumption that corresponds to the historical mission
of capitalism and to its specific social structure: the former
consists in the development of the productive forces of
society; the latter rules out the utilisation of these technical
achievements by the mass of the population. There is an
undoubted contradiction between the drive towards the
unlimited extension of production inherent in capitalism,
and the limited consumption of the masses of the people
(limited because of their proletarian status). It is this contradiction
that Marx records in the propositions so readily
quoted by the Narodniks and which are supposed to corroborate
their views on the shrinkage of the home market, the
non-progressive character of capitalism, etc., etc. Here are
some of these propositions: “Contradiction in the capitalist
mode of production: the labourers as buyers of commodities
are important for the market. But as sellers of their own