Having established the nature of “the heritage”, Lenin then sets out the fundamental features of Narodism. Some individual Narodniks obviously put forward additional, even more reactionary ideas, but the following are what was common, and fundamental, to all Narodism.
“1)Belief that capitalism in Russia represents a deterioration, a retrogression. Hence the urge and desire to “retard,” “halt,” “stop the break-up” of the age-old foundations by capitalism, and similar reactionary cries.” (p 513)
This is the same approach taken by petty-bourgeois, “anti-imperialists” and “anti-capitalists”, today. As I write this, at a time when large sections of the petty-bourgeois Left have capitulated into social patriotism and social imperialism, and left social democrats have gone over completely to pro-imperialist positions, in relation to the Ukraine-Russia War, its, perhaps, worth reiterating the point that opposing petty-bourgeois “anti-imperialism” does not at all imply “pro-imperialism”, any more than opposition to petty-bourgeois “anti-capitalism” implies being “pro-capitalist”.
I am not “anti-capitalist”, in the same way that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were not “anti-capitalist”. That is we recognise that Socialism is only possible via the route of capitalist development. Being “pro-socialist” requires also not being “anti-capitalist”, at least until such time that Socialism itself is established, because, otherwise, being “anti-capitalist” implies going back to some form of pre-capitalist social formation. Its obvious manifestation is the focus of “anti-capitalists” on the most progressive, most developed forms of capital, the proposals for “anti-monopoly alliances”, as cross-class alliances with small capitalists and the petty-bourgeoisie, which means defending and idealising the former, reactionary forms of capital and small commodity producer. Calls for a UBI, so that everyone can become such artisans or small producers are symptomatic of this reactionary ideology.
The same is true in relation to “anti-imperialism”. Anti-imperialism, in terms of opposing imperialist wars or military intervention, to annex or colonise countries, is quite different to “anti-imperialism” in the form of opposing the investment by multinational companies on the basis that such companies engage in unequal exchange, or super-exploitation. These latter arguments are simply an extension of the reactionary anti-capitalist arguments, in relation to monopolies etc. Imperialism, as Lenin describes it, is “the highest form of capitalism”, and, as Marxists, we are in favour of the fastest, freest, most rational development of these higher forms, as the fastest route to Socialism itself.
Indeed, not only are we not “anti-capitalist”, but compared to pre-capitalist modes of production, we are most definitely “pro-capitalist”, just as compared to the world prior to imperialism, prior to the creation of a a world economy, and the domination of it by multinational monopolies, we are “pro-imperialist”! But, precisely, because we are “pro-socialist”, we are partisans of the working-class within this process, and so neither “pro-capitalist”, nor “pro-imperialist”. It is again, an example of the basic principle that we do not work on the basis that “my enemy's enemy is my friend”.
Lenin makes this point in his later writings.
“And from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class.”
(Two Tactics of Social-Democracy)
“. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs”.
(The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It)
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