Chapter 1
To examine this Narodnik article of faith, Lenin refers to an 1879 article in Otechestvenniye Zapiski, “New Shoots in the People’s Fields”. The article sings praise to the countryside, whilst attacking the old nobility on the one hand, and the new middle classes on the other. Lenin comments,
“This is a very typical passage. Firstly, it shows clearly the essence of Narodism: it is protest against serfdom (the old-nobility stratum) and bourgeoisdom (the new middle-class stratum) in Russia from the peasant’s, the small producer’s, point of view. Secondly, it shows at the same time that this protest is based on fantasy, that it turns its back on the facts.” (p 340-1)
In other words, it sets up an abstract countryside that did not exist. There was the countryside of the past, based upon the old nobility and the serfdom that went with it, and that countryside was in the process of dissolution, following the Reform, and there was the countryside in which the new middle-class, the capitalist farmer, the rich peasant, was now establishing itself, alongside the consequent ruination of the mass of peasants.
“Whichever way you look at the countryside, if you confine yourself to stating the actual situation (that is all that is at issue) and not to possibilities, you will not be able to find anything else, any third “stratum,” in it. And if the Narodniks do, it is only because they cannot see the wood for the trees, the form of land tenure in the separate peasant communities prevents them from seeing the economic organisation of Russian social economy. This organisation turns the peasant into a commodity producer, transforms him into a petty bourgeois, a petty isolated farmer producing for the market. This organisation, therefore, makes it impossible to look backwards for “guarantees for the future” and makes it essential to look for them ahead.” (p 341)
And, consequently, if you were looking ahead to identify the forces upon which Russian social development would be based, it could not be sought in the countryside, as the Narodniks sought to do, because, in the countryside, this process was still immature. The process of differentiation of the peasantry was an undeniable reality, but it was not yet complete. And, alongside this process, the vestiges of the old system continued to linger on, and, thereby, to obscure the reality of the social division into bourgeois and proletarians.
In order to identify the force by which Russia's social development would be propelled forward, it was necessary to look to where this process of differentiation was already mature, and where the division between proletariat and bourgeoisie was clear, and that was in the towns and cities, in industry and the large factories.
Lenin returns to the article in Otechestvenniye Zapiski, where the author writes that Gleb Uspensky understood the relation between the poverty and morality of the people, “better than many admirers of the countryside, for whom ... the countryside ... is something like the liberal passport which all intelligent and practical bourgeois usually provide themselves with in an epoch like the present.” (p 342)
The Narodniks bemoaned the fact that the new middle-class could see their agenda, put forward in the name of the working-people, as such a “liberal passport” to the future, but that was because the Narodnik programme posed no threat to the continued advance of that middle-class. On the contrary, because it was based on something that was not real, its only effect could be to further undermine the old aristocracy, and its system, and, thereby, to strengthen the only other reality – that of the rising bourgeoisie.
“Do you think such a scandalous thing would be possible if you were to point to the “guarantees for the future,” not where the social contradictions inherent in the system dominated by the “practical and intelligent bourgeois” are still in an undeveloped, embryonic state, but where they are developed thoroughly, to nec plus ultra, where, consequently, one cannot confine oneself to palliatives or half-measures, where the desiderata of the working people cannot be utilised for one’s own benefit, and where the issue is squarely put?” (p 342)
In fact, Lenin says, the Narodnik writer themselves had recognised this fact.
““The passive friends of the people refuse to understand the simple thing that in society all active forces usually add up to two equally operating, mutually opposite ones, and that the passive forces which apparently take no part in the struggle, merely serve the force preponderant at the given moment” (p. 132).” (p 342)
No comments:
Post a Comment