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

58
V. I. LENIN
(III, 2, 21. Russ. trans., p. 395). 33 These propositions all
speak of the contradiction we have mentioned, namely,
the contradiction between the unrestricted drive to expand
production and limited consumption—and of nothing else.*
Nothing could be more senseless than to conclude from these
passages in Capital that Marx did not admit the possibility
of surplus-value being realised in capitalist society, that he
attributed crises to under-consumption, and so forth. Marx’s
analysis of realisation showed that the circulation between
constant capital and constant capital is definitely limited
by personal consumption; but this same analysis showed the
true character of this “limitedness,” 34 it showed that,
compared with means of production, articles of consumption
play a minor role in the formation of the home market. And,
furthermore, there is nothing more absurd than to conclude
from the contradictions of capitalism that the latter is
impossible, non-progressive, and so on—to do that is to take
refuge from unpleasant, but undoubted realities in the transcendental
heights of romantic dreams. The contradiction
between the drive towards the unlimited expansion of
production and limited consumption is not the only contradiction
of capitalism, which cannot exist and develop at
all without contradictions. The contradictions of capitalism
testify to its historically transient character, and make
clear the conditions and causes of its collapse and
transformation into a higher form; but they by no means rule
out either the possibility of capitalism, or its progressive
character as compared with preceding systems of social
economy.**
VII. THE THEORY OF THE NATIONAL INCOME
Having outlined the main propositions of Marx’s theory
of realisation, we still have briefly to point to its enormous
importance in the theory of national “consumption,”
* Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is mistaken in thinking that in advancing
this proposition Marx contradicts his own analysis of realisation
(see article “Capitalism and the Market” in Mir Bozhy [God’s Earth]
1898, No. 6, p. 123). Marx does not contradict himself at all, for the
connection between productive consumption and personal consumption
is also indicated in the analysis of realization.
** Cf. “A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism. Sismondi
and Our Native Sismondists.” (See present edition, Vol. 2.—Ed.)