Any attempt to keep the working class seeking solutions within national bounds, as proposed by the Lexiters, for example, is, therefore, reactionary, even compared to the ruling class, just as Lenin describes the position of the Narodniks as reactionary compared to the bourgeoisie. It divides workers in each country from workers in every other country, and, instead, unites them with the most reactionary elements in their own country, with the petty-bourgeoisie which seeks to hold back the process of capitalist development, and, if possible, to turn history back to a time of a less mature form of capitalism, a time when workers themselves were weaker, and so further away from Socialism, rather than closer to it. Where workers have become a global class in itself, such ideas prevent it becoming a global class for itself.
Listen to the arguments of the Lexiters that the EU is a “capitalist club” and you can see in it the implication that Britain, somehow, is not! It is the kind of “idealisation” of “Britain” that Lenin describes in relation to the Narodniks exceptionalist arguments in relation to Russia. It seeks to deny the obvious contradictions of the abstract notion of “Britain”, between the interests of British workers and capital, and, instead, implies a common, but abstract, “national interest”. The other aspect of this, in relation to “anti-imperialism”, is to always compare the reality of what exists to the fantasy of what does not, whether that is with a so far non-existent Socialism, or else with some mythical golden era prior to capitalist development, which might be built upon via some, non-existent alternative path of development.
This latter is typical of the ideas of the Third Worldists, the environmentalists, and so on. In the case of the latter it is particularly reactionary, because it is connected to all sorts of Malthusian nonsense about restricting economic growth and population etc. Its also seen in the attitude to development in those parts of the world in which populations are not even at the stage of the idiocy of rural life, described by Marx, but in conditions of barbarism of the hunter-gatherer. Here, the petty-bourgeois moralist seeks to preserve this way of life in aspic, treating those trapped within it as though they were animals in a zoo, or exhibits in a museum.
“3) Disregard of the connection between the “intelligentsia” and the country’s legal and political institutions, on the one hand, and the material interests of definite social classes, on the other. Denial of this connection, lack of a materialist explanation of these social factors, induces the belief that they represent a force capable of “dragging history along another line” (Mr. V. V.), of “diversion from the path” (Mr. N. —on, Mr. Yuzhakov, etc.), and so on.” (p 514)
This aspect of petty-bourgeois moralism and idealism is manifest clearly in the approach of the social-democrats and reformist socialists who refuse to recognise the class nature of the state, and who think that its only necessary to win elections, or to win a battle of ideas, so that the state itself can be moved to act in a different direction. It fails to understand that what determines the battle of ideas is the material conditions existing within society itself. It is the domination of bourgeois property – socialised capital – that determines the dominance of social-democratic ideas, as against the liberal ideas of the 18th century.
It is witnessed in the ideas of the petty-bourgeois liberal interventionists who believe that imperialism can act in a way contrary to its own interests, simply in order to uphold some abstract system of moral values. It was seen in the attitude to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the rapid takeover, once again, of the Taliban, in which they said, “It didn't have to be this way”. That is pretty much a direct parallel with he idealist notions of the Narodniks, in which abstract logical arguments and moral principles take the place of analysis of objective material conditions and social laws. It is petty-bourgeois moralism, idealism and subjectivism. As Lenin says, however, “The truth is always concrete”.
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