Once capitalist development became more firmly established, in Russia, those old conceptions about the common goals of the liberals and socialists became untenable. They continued to share a common agreement of what they were against, but not what they were for, and, because they no longer shared a common goal, that meant that the reasons why they opposed absolutism, and how to fight it, also differed.
As the development of bourgeois production continued, its reflection in the minds of the intelligentsia also became apparent.
“The composition of the “intelligentsia” is assuming just as clear an outline as that of society engaged in the production of material values: while the latter is ruled and governed by the capitalist, among the former the fashion is set by the rapidly growing horde of careerists and bourgeois hirelings, an “intelligentsia” contented and satisfied, a stranger to all wild fantasy and very well aware of what they want.” (p 294)
And, the response of the petty-bourgeois radicals was to deny the immorality of this intelligentsia in the same way that they had tried to argue against the development of capitalism with phrases about how such development was ruining “the people”. Such moralising and warnings, Lenin said, are reminiscent of the trial of the pike, who being convicted was sentenced to be thrown into the river.
The petty-bourgeois radicals longed for a return of the 1860's, when there was unanimity in the opposition to absolutism, but without understanding that the material foundation of that unanimity was a more or less uniform condition of all those on whom serfdom pressed down. That uniform condition no longer existed, as a consequence of capitalist development, and the differentiation of the peasantry.
“The only tie that linked all these people together was their hostility to serfdom; beyond that unanimity, the sharpest economic antagonism began. How completely one must be lulled by sweet illusions not to perceive this antagonism even today when it has become so enormously developed; to weep for the return of the days of unanimity at a time when the situation demands struggle, demands that everyone who does not want to be a WILLING or UNWILLING myrmidon of the bourgeoisie shall take his stand on the side of the proletariat.” (p 295)
The old Russian socialists had held on to their illusions about the possibility of the development of peasant socialism, in Russia, but one of the good things about the work of the “friends of the people” was that their thorough revelation of the class nature of the intelligentsia, and petty-bourgeois nature of the small producers that the old socialists were forced to revise their theories about the possibility of peasant socialism, or to abandon those theories entirely.
The task of a socialist intelligentsia, Lenin says, is to seek out the real antagonisms existing in society, and to analyse their material foundations, freed from any superficial peculiarities that disguise them.
“They must present an integral picture of our realities as a definite system of production relations, show that the exploitation and expropriation of the working people are essential under this system, and show the way out of this system that is indicated by economic development.” (p 296)
Such scientific analysis would inevitably lead to a growth of social-democracy (Marxism), “for even the most artful guardians of the present system cannot prevent the awakening of proletarian thought, because this system itself necessarily and inevitably entails the most intense expropriation of the producers, the continuous growth of the proletariat and of its reserve army—and this parallel to the progress of social wealth, the enormous growth of the productive forces, and the socialisation of labour by capitalism.” (p 297)
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