Those that came forward, then, with proposals for general reforms that were supposed to benefit the whole “people”, and who presented the state that would implement these reforms as being a class neutral state, were reactionaries. The same approach is taken by reformists today, whether it is the kind of general liberal reforms proposed by liberal-democrats, and conservative social-democrats, or those put forward by left social-democrats such as the Communist Party, and the Bennites, calling for extensive measures of state capitalism to be instituted from above by that capitalist state, and by those "Marxists/Trotskyists" who similarly call on the capitalist state to act in workers' interests via nationalisation, liberal intervention and so on.
“They are reactionary in depicting our state as something standing above classes and therefore fit and capable of rendering serious and honest aid to the exploited population.
They are reactionary, lastly, because they simply can not understand the necessity for a struggle, a desperate struggle of the working people themselves for their emancipation. The “friends of the people”, for example, seem to think they can manage the whole thing themselves. The workers need not worry.” (p 286)
Phrasing these reforms in radical language, be it Wilson's “White Heat of Technology”, Long Bailey's “Green New Deal”, or the idea of Planning Agreements and Enterprise Boards of the Bennites, and the AES, does not change the essentially petty-bourgeois nature of these schemes that seek to simply find a managerialist-bureaucratic compromise between workers and bourgeois within the framework of the existing system.
“Why, an engineer has even visited the offices of Russkoye Bogatstvo, and there they have almost completely worked out a “scheme” for “introducing capitalism into the life of the people.” Socialists must make a DECISIVE and COMPLETE break with all petty-bourgeois ideas and theories—THAT IS THE PRINCIPAL USEFUL LESSON to be drawn from this campaign.” (p 286)
The “friends of the people” were just one of the trends of petty-bourgeois socialism. In the same way, the petty-bourgeois socialism of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists” is different to the petty-bourgeois socialism of social democracy, be it conservative social-democracy or progressive social democracy, though sections of the latter can also be found amongst the ranks of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”. Their progressive social-democracy is always constrained, and made reactionary by an economic nationalist wrapping.
A criticism of petty-bourgeois socialism always has to be nuanced in its application to the specific manifestation in these different trends. Hence, also, Lenin, in his critique, distinguishes between the “friends of the people”, and the old Russian petty-bourgeois socialists, even though the inadequacy of both stemmed from the same root, its assumptions founded on the nature of the peasantry and peasant socialism.
“I have throughout tried to show that such a degeneration of the old theories was inevitable. I have throughout tried to devote as little space as possible to criticism of these gentlemen in particular and as much as possible to the general and fundamental tenets of the old Russian socialism. And if the socialists should find that I have defined these tenets incorrectly or inaccurately, or have left something unsaid, then I can only reply with the following very humble request: please, gentlemen, define them yourselves, state them fully and properly!” (p 287)
Indeed, Lenin says the Marxists would welcome the opportunity to debate with the socialists rather than have to respond to the “friends of the people”. But, it was only the latter who had come forward to attack the Marxists, and it was only to them that the Marxists could then address their response.
“Surely, we are not to blame for the fact that only such gentlemen now take upon themselves the job of vindicating and expounding these ideas. I ask you also to note that I speak of the need for a break with petty-bourgeois ideas about socialism. The petty-bourgeois theories we have examined are ABSOLUTELY reactionary INASMUCH AS they claim to be socialist theories.” (p 288)
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