The sentiments of the Narodniks are the same as those heard to day from the same petty-bourgeois, moral trends, when they attack "monopoly capitalism" or multinational capital. They are the sentiments of the small capitalist that sees their impending descent into the ranks of the proletariat, because of their inability to compete with this large-scale capital. So, the Narodnik declares that the capitalist development – by which they mean large-scale capitalist development – is harmful to the people.
"He declares the bourgeois trend to be “harmful and dangerous” to the morals and well-being of the people! Which “people,” respected Mr. Moralist? Those who worked for the landlords under the serfdom that fostered the “family hearth,” “settled living” and the “sacred duty of labour,” or those who subsequently went away to earn money to pay off land redemption fees? You are well aware that the payment of this money was the main and chief condition of the “emancipation,” and that the peasant could only get this money from Mr. Coupon. You yourself have described how this gentleman carried on his business, how “the middle class have introduced their own science, their own moral code and their own sophisms into life,” how a literature has already been formed praising the “cleverness, enterprise and energy” of the bourgeoisie. Clearly, it all boils down to one form of social organisation being succeeded by another: the system of appropriating the surplus labour of tied-to-the-land serf peasants created feudal morality; the system of “free labour for others,” for the owners of money, created bourgeois morality to replace it." (p 383-4)
And, of course, as Marx sets out, in the Communist Manifesto, this process meant that millions were rescued from the "idiocy of rural life", a fact that was far from harmful to those millions. For the Narodnik, and the same for all such petty-bourgeois trends, they see only the small scale production and producer as moral, and see wage labour as immoral. Today's moral socialists may also not see small-scale production as moral either – though many of those that have tied themselves to the environmentalists often purvey the sentiment of "small is beautiful" – and superficially align themselves with the concept of large-scale collective ownership, but the trouble is that not only do they have no idea of how to achieve it, but their practical politics leads in the opposite direction, seeking not to push forward through the progressive developments that large-scale capital has brought, but instead to hold it back, or as with Lexit, to turn it back.
"He does not compare the modern form of exploitation with the previous one, that of serfdom; he does not look at the changes that it has introduced into the relations between the producer and the owner of the means of production—he compares it with a senseless, philistine utopia, with the sort of “small independent undertakings” that, while being commodity economy, should not lead to what it actually does lead to (see above: “kulakdom is in full bloom, is striving to enslave the weakest, and turn them into farm labourers,” etc.). That is why his protest against capitalism (as such, as a protest, it is quite legitimate and fair) becomes a reactionary lamentation." (p 384)
And, the same applies today to the "anti-capitalists" and "anti-imperialists" who claim that capitalism and imperialism are no longer progressive. But, progressive compared to what? Progressive compared to what went before, or progressive only compared to a fantasy that does not exist? In other words, is it progressive compared to feudalism, to the small capitalist production that developed out of feudalism, and developed into modern capitalism and imperialism? Yes it is. Is it progressive compared to the landlordism and clericalism of many of the reactionary nationalist regimes and movements the petty-bourgeois moralists associate themselves with? Yes, it is. Of course capitalism and imperialism is progressive compared to all of these alternatives that belong in the past. Of course, as Marx says, in relation to Sismondi, he is only correct in pointing out all of the harmful effects of capitalism as against those that deny the existence of those effects that arise from the contradictions within the system. But, for Marx, as, here, for Lenin, those "harmful effects" do not change the fundamentally progressive nature of capitalism, or of its more mature form, as a global system – imperialism.
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