The Narodniks painted a picture of community life that was a fantasy, because the existence of such communities was not at all incompatible with a differentiation of the peasantry within them, or, thereby, of land renting, a growth of usury, and so on. The petty reforms proposed by the liberals, in the 1870's, only exacerbated these trends, and that was true of the same kinds of reforms proposed by the liberal Narodniks of the 1890's. In fact, the Narodnik writer was forced to admit, even in 1879, that the available data suggested that the size of the rural bourgeoisie was already substantial.
"Quite true! It is this fact, that was true in 1879 and is still more true in 1895, that serves as one of the mainstays of the Marxist understanding of Russian reality." (p 372)
Earlier, we encountered the Narodnik view about capitalist development being "held back". Lenin now examines the practical consequences of this view. The Narodniks argued that the bourgeoisie was still weak in the countryside. Therefore, rather than simply "holding back" this development, as they wrongly claimed was the objective of the labour movement in the West, it was possible to "turn back" this development along what they considered to be an unnatural path. Lenin points out that they could not deny the extent of these bourgeois relations, in the countryside, even if they wanted to argue that they were not deep. The fact that some of the rural bourgeoisie were not representatives of its higher reaches was a consequence of such people having already moved to the towns to develop their fortunes.
But, to "turn back" the bourgeois relations, in the countryside, living individuals, desirous of bringing about such a change is required. It is, in fact, the extensive, but shallow, nature of these relations, in the countryside, which means that no such individuals exist, on a mass scale, to bring it about. What does the actual social relation consist of? It begins with two peasants. One grows richer and acquires capital. The other grows poorer and must sell their labour-power to the other. But, the shallowness of the relation means that the second peasant continued to be a commodity producer. They sell their labour-power to the richer peasant to supplement their inadequate income. They are still only partially a proletarian, partially a peasant commodity producer in their own right, whose perspective is formed by this commodity production, destined for the market. It frames their mentality still as that of a petty-bourgeois individualist, and their social position as an atomised individual producer reinforces that outlook.
"How can our labouring peasant change this relation if he himself is half-rooted in what has to be changed? how can he understand that isolation and commodity economy are no good to him if he himself is isolated and works at his own risk and responsibility for the market? if these conditions of life evoke in him “thoughts and feelings” that are peculiar to one who works on his own for the market? if he is isolated by the very material conditions, by the size and character of his farm, and if by virtue of this his contradiction to capital is still so little developed that he cannot understand that he is faced by capital and not merely by “tricksters” and shrewd people?" (p 373)
And, it is precisely this which led Lenin, in later writings to set out why the Russian peasants could never have followed the example of the agricultural labourers at Ralahine, in establishing a worker-owned agricultural cooperative. As Kautsky had also concluded, it is only when peasants have been transformed into agricultural labourers, wage workers, and consequently develop a collectivist rather than individualist consciousness that the creation of such cooperatives becomes possible. Consequently, Lenin says, if we are to look to where the "living individuals" are, who are going to overturn bourgeois social relations it can only be amongst those that have become totally differentiated from capital, i.e. The industrial workers in the towns and cities.
"And when the immediate producers in these advanced conditions are “differentiated from life” of bourgeois society not only in fact but also in their minds—then the labouring peasantry, who are in backward and worse conditions, will see “how it is done,” and will join with their fellow workers “for others.”" (p 373)
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