Here, for the first time, we also see Lenin making the statement that the Russian state was a bourgeois state, an organ of rule by the bourgeoisie. Now, at first glance, this statement appears odd, and contradictory, because surely the Russian state was a Tsarist state, a state resting on the rule of the Russian landlords, and manifest in an autocratic regime. But, there is nothing odd or contradictory in Lenin's statement. In defining the state as a bourgeois state, Lenin is simply drawing the necessary conclusions from the analysis that capitalism was established in Russia, and it was capitalist productive relations which were now dominant, and on which the future of the state itself now depended. This is nothing other than the application of the point that Marx had made in his Letter to Zasulich. That is that, after 1861, Russia had proceeded down the path of capitalist development for a similar reason that Germany and Japan had done.
In a global economy, in which Britain and France had developed capitalist production, and, as a result, came to dominate the global market, as well as to acquire the wealth and technology to create huge, powerful armies, capable of exerting imperial power across the globe, other countries were left no real alternative but to follow in that path. Germany industrialised, whilst the Junkers continued to exercise political power; the US had already industrialised; Japan followed suit. When Russia was defeated in the Crimean War, it became obvious that it too had to industrialise or else suffer a similar fate as that which befell China. The old means of pumping surplus value from the Russian labourers were no longer adequate.
"Quite simply, the economic facts, which it would take me too long to analyse, have uncovered the secret that the present situation of the commune is no longer tenable, and that, through mere force of circumstances, the present mode of exploiting the popular masses will go out of fashion. Thus, something new is required; and this something new, insinuated in the most diverse forms, always comes down to the abolition of communal property, the formation of the more or less well-off minority of peasants into a rural middle class, and the straight forward conversion of the majority into proletarians."
(Marx Letter to Zasulich)
So, the state in Russia was a capitalist state determined by the productive relations. The bourgeoisie were, thereby, the ruling social class, even though they were excluded from the Tsarist political regime, just as the German bourgeoisie, defeated in the revolution of 1848, was excluded from the political regime, by the Junkers. This simply reflects the distinction between the state and the political regime. Where the two are out of alignment it indicates the need for a political revolution. But, it is always the state that occupies the determinate role, and it must always act to defend and promote the dominant productive and social relations.
By setting out clearly that capitalism already existed in Russia, and that it was dispossessing the peasants and handicraft producers, the Marxists were simply describing reality, and proposing a course of action based on it. But, The Friends of the People proclaimed this as being a desire of the Marxists for some future state of affairs, and thereby a desire for the peasants to be dispossessed.
“... that they want to destroy our peoples economic organisation!!” (p 196)
But, if Mikhailovsky had any understanding of the Marxism against which he polemicises, he would know that the foundation of the Russian Marxists was the existence of capitalism in Russia, and the requirement to wage a class struggle against it.
“How, then, and on what grounds, does he mix them up with some sort of senseless vulgarity? What right (moral, of course) has he to extend the term Marxists to people who obviously do not accept the most elementary and fundamental tenets of Marxism, people who have never and nowhere acted as a distinct group and have never and nowhere announced a programme of their own?” (p 197)
Mikhailovsky even admits that some of those he refers to are not Marxists, but that they proclaim themselves as such. But, in that case, Lenin asks, where did these people make such proclamations, and who are they? Are they, Lenin asks, liberals who make these proclamations in the salons of St. Petersburg, or in private letters?
“But you come out publicly and in the press against people who (under the banner of Marxism) have never come out publicly anywhere. And you have the effrontery to claim that you are polemicising against “Social-Democrats,” although you know that this name is borne only by one group of revolutionary socialists, and that nobody else should be confused with them!” (p 197-8)
“Who does not know that “at the present time, when” not only socialist activity, but any social activity that is at all independent and honest evokes political persecution—for every one actually working under some banner—be it Narodovolism, Marxism, or even, let us say, constitutionalism—there are several score phrase-mongers who under cover of that name conceal their liberal cowardice, and, in addition, perhaps, several downright rascals who are feathering their own nests? Is it not obvious that only the meanest vulgarity could make any of these trends responsible for the fact that its banner is being soiled (privately and secretly, at that) by all sorts of riffraff?” (p 198)
If on the other hand, you analyse Russian reality in the way the Russian Marxists did, then there is only one course of action that can flow from it, “namely, by helping to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat, by organising and uniting it for the political struggle against the present regime.” (p 199)
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