But, the practical work of the Narodniks required that they go among the peasants and promote this communist programme. As soon as they did so, they found that these assumptions, about the inherently communist nature of the peasant and peasant life, fell apart on contact with reality. Lenin points to an interesting phenomenon, here, that can be seen amongst sections of the Left today. The Narodniks argued that it wasn't that their assumptions about the communistic nature were wrong, but that it was not being manifest, because of the actions of the government. Today, the same idea is presented as the idea that the working-class is really chomping at the bit for Socialism, but is being held back by a “crisis of leadership”, as opportunist and treacherous leaders of the working-class act to restrain it and betray it.
“It was decided, incidentally, that they did not have to do with the muzhik, but with the government—and the entire activity was then concentrated on a fight against the government, a fight then waged by the intellectuals alone; they were sometimes joined by workers. At first this fight was waged in the name of socialism and was based on the theory that the people were ready for socialism and that it would be possible, merely by seizing power, to effect not only a political, but also a social revolution. Latterly, this theory is apparently becoming utterly discredited, and the struggle waged by the Narodovoltsi against the government is becoming a struggle of the radicals for political liberty.” (p 277)
It is perhaps ironic that, thirty years later, Lenin found himself in conditions where he and the Bolsheviks were led into such a seizure of power, in order to carry through a political revolution, which was now portrayed as the means of undertaking a social revolution, rather than vice versa. The idea, of course, was not new. Engels in The Peasant War in Germany had warned about the inevitable consequence of trying to seize political power as the means of bringing about a social revolution.
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development. Whoever can still look forward to official positions after having become familiar with the experiences of the February government — not to speak of our own noble German provisional governments and imperial regencies — is either foolish beyond measure, or at best pays only lip service to the extreme revolutionary party.”
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