The Narodniks claimed lineage to the Russian liberals of the 1860's and 70's, who were revolutionary in respect of their opposition to Tsarism, but also in respect of the fact that, in opposition to it, they advocated a full throated development of Russian capitalism, and bourgeois democracy. In this article, Lenin sets out, again, to demonstrate that, in fact, the Narodniks did not represent the heritage of that earlier revolutionary liberalism, but rather a reactionary, petty-bourgeois perversion of it.
As Lenin set out, in the previous article, compared with the petty-bourgeois, moral socialists, who seek to hold back rational capitalist development, the bourgeoisie are progressive. In so far as the Russian Marxists did not want to hold back the rational and rapid development of capitalism, seeing in it the necessary foundations of the Socialism that would develop out of it, it was they who more legitimately could could clam the heritage of the earlier Russian liberals, not the Narodniks.
The Narodniks, however, argued that the Marxists did not acknowledge any continuity with the earlier revolutionaries. In this article, written by Lenin in exile, in 1897, he takes apart these Narodnik arguments. In doing so, he also provides the analysis which demonstrates the reactionary nature of today's petty-bourgeois, moral socialists, manifest in various forms, be it of “anti-imperialism”, and “anti-capitalism”, as well as in moralising social chauvinism and social imperialism, all of which demonstrate an abandonment of Marxism, and of the independent agency of the working-class, and a descent into mere cheerleading of contending bourgeois camps, or even worse, for reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism.
Lenin notes,
“The further the “disciples” developed their views in Russian literature, the more minutely and thoroughly they set forth their opinions on a number of issues, both theoretical and practical, the more rarely did one find the hostile press objecting in substance to the fundamental tenets of the new trend, to the view that Russian capitalism is progressive, that the Narodnik idealisation of the small producer is absurd, that the explanation of trends of social thought and of legal and political institutions must be sought in the material interests of the various classes of Russian society. These fundamental tenets were hushed up, it was—and still is—thought best to say nothing about them, but fabrications to discredit the new trend were concocted with all the greater fertility. One of these fabrications—”shabby fabrications”—-is the modish phrase that “the Russian disciples renounce the heritage,” that they have broken with the best traditions of the best, the most progressive section of Russian society, that they have severed the democratic thread, etc., etc., and all the many other ways in which this is expressed.” (p 493-4)
This lie is what prompts Lenin to set out his detailed refutation of it. In order to do so, Lenin says, his response will focus on the writing of two “essayists on the countryside”, dealing only with socio-economic questions.
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