As a liberal, however, Skaldin could only see the problems facing the peasants as being the result of a continuation of the effects of serfdom. He could not see the effects of the new socio-economic relations that replaced it in causing distress.
“he absolutely refuses to entertain the thought, being profoundly convinced that the complete abolition of all these survivals of serfdom would usher in an era of universal well-being.” (p 503)
This view was typical of the 18th century enlighteners, and Skaldin's argument, cited by Lenin, that the large amount of cultivable land, in Russia, meant that there was plenty of scope for all to become affluent property owners, illustrates this delusion. As stated earlier, if all did, who would do the work? Moreover, if everyone were a self-sufficient property owner, where would be the basis of a market? Each would produce to meet their own needs, and would produce only on a small scale, meaning low levels of productivity and output. At best, they would exchange their surplus products with others, to meet their consumption needs. But, then, even this would lead to specialisation, and commodity production, to the growth of markets, to competition, the division into winners and losers, and so into bourgeois and proletarians.
“The Narodnik would no doubt look down on Skaldin with disdain and say that he was simply a bourgeois. Yes, of course, Skaldin was a bourgeois, but he was a representative of the progressive bourgeois ideology which the Narodniks have replaced by one that is petty-bourgeois and, on a whole number of points, reactionary. And this “bourgeois” had a better idea than the Narodnik of how to defend those practical and real interests of the peasants which coincided, and coincide now, with the requirements of social development generally!” (p 503)
And, Lenin then notes the opposite is also true. When it comes to those ideas the Narodniks promoted that were actually progressive, there was nothing Narodnik about them, because these ideas were fully bourgeois, as against the reactionary, petty-bourgeois ides that were characteristic of Narodism.
Completing his account of Skaldin's liberal views, Lenin says he opposes social estates, and supports single courts, public education, local self-government, and land credits.
“Here, too, Skaldin is a true “Mancunian”: he says, for instance, that Zemstvo and municipal banks are “a patriarchal or primitive form of bank” and should give way to private banks, which are “vastly superior” (80). The land might be endowed with value “through the stimulation of industrial and commercial activity in our provinces” (71), and so on.” (p 504)
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