Narodism itself, thereby, had progressive and reactionary sides. The Lexiters who object to the EU's bourgeois nature are reflecting a progressive motive, but instead of looking forward, to going beyond its bourgeois constraints, they look backwards to the nation state, which is reactionary. The “anti-imperialists”, who object to the exploitation of workers in developing economies, by multinational capital, express a progressive motivation, but, in the absence of any realistic socialist alternative, for those workers, the “anti-imperialism” amounts to only pursuing a reactionary alternative based on the small scale capital within the developing economy itself.
The “anti-capitalists” who object to the actions of big capital express a progressive motivation, but their objections are not connected to any realistic proposals by which the workers could take control of those businesses, and, thereby, go beyond their bourgeois limitations. As a result, it amounts only to a protest against big capital, at a more or less individualistic level that simultaneously gives small capital a free ride, a more reactionary form of capital. They appear as a protest not against capital, and for socialism, but only a protest against the more developed, more progressive forms of capital, and, thereby, support for the less developed, more reactionary forms of capital.
“Narodism is reactionary insofar as it proposes measures that tie the peasant to the soil and to the old modes of production, such as the inalienability of allotments, etc., insofar as it wants to retard the development of money economy, and insofar as it expects not partial improvements, but a change of the path to be brought about by “society” and by the influence of representatives of the bureaucracy (example: Mr. Yuzhakov, who argued in Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1894, No. 7, about common tillage as projected by a Zemsky Nachalnik and engaged in introducing amendments to these projects). Unconditional warfare must, of course, be waged against such points in the Narodnik programme.” (p 504)
And, the same thing can be seen today in relation to that “anti-capitalism”. On the one hand, it wants to place constraints on this capitalist development. It does not seek the kinds of actions that would actually make real change possible such as development of worker-owned cooperatives, a struggle for workers' control of their pension funds, or a political struggle to change company law to prevent shareholders exercising control over capital they do not own, and for company boards to be elected by employees. On the other hand, it insists on a complete change of course for society, a change of course brought about not by society, i.e. by the workers themselves, but by the capitalist state, which is called upon to undertake large-scale nationalisation and then to provide workers' control. And, like the Narodniks, those that propose such nonsense seem to have failed to have noticed that this state belongs not to them but to that very bourgeoisie against whom they are demanding it act!!
“But there are also other points, relating to self-government, to the “people’s” free and broad access to knowledge, to the “raising” of the “people’s” (that is to say, small) economy by means of cheap credits, technical improvements, better regulation of marketing, etc., etc. That such general democratic measures are progressive is fully admitted, of course, by Mr. Struve, too. They will not retard, but accelerate Russia’s economic development along the capitalist path, accelerate the establishment of a home market, accelerate the growth of technique and machine industry by improving the conditions of the working man and raising the level of his requirements, accelerate and facilitate his independent thinking and action.” (p 503-4)
In this respect, Lenin says, the Narodniks better represent such development than does Skvortsov, who is favoured by Struve.
“The Narodniks in this respect understand and represent the interests of the small producers far more correctly, and the Marxists, while rejecting all the reactionary features of their programme, must not only accept the general democratic points, but carry them through more exactly, deeply and further. The more resolute such reforms are in Russia, the higher they raise the living standard of the working masses—the more sharply and clearly will the most important and fundamental (already today) social antagonism in Russian life stand out.” (p 504)
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