Lenin then contrasts the fundamental features of Narodism with those of “the heritage”.
“The enlightener believes in the present course of social development, because he fails to observe its inherent contradictions. The Narodnik fears the present course of social development, because he is already aware of these contradictions. The “disciple” believes in the present course of social development, because he sees the only earnest of a better future in the full development of these contradictions. The first and last trends therefore strive to support, accelerate, facilitate development along the present path, to remove all obstacles which hamper this development and retard it. Narodism, on the contrary, strives to retard and halt this development, is afraid of abolishing certain obstacles to the development of capitalism. The first and last trends are distinguished by what may be called historical optimism: the farther and the quicker things go as they are, the better it will be. Narodism, on the contrary, naturally tends to historical pessimism: the farther things go as they are, the worse it will be.” (p 525)
This, of course, illustrates the reactionary nature, itself, of what has passed for Marxism, at least over the last 80 years. As Lenin says, genuine Marxism has more in common with the bourgeoisie and its liberal ideologists than it does with the petty-bourgeoisie and its illiberal, reactionary and protectionist ideologists, and yet much of the Left has put itself in the position of forming alliances with, and usually playing second fiddle to, the latter. In pursuing “anti-imperialism”, and “anti-capitalism”, it has necessarily associated itself with those sentiments expressed by the petty-bourgeoisie, and its ideologists, even though their criticisms are derived from a reactionary and pessimistic perspective, as opposed to the revolutionary and optimistic perspective of genuine Marxism.
The enlighteners, in Russia, did not pose questions about capitalist development, and nor did their predecessors like Smith, Mill and Ricardo in relation to its development in Western Europe. Their revolutionary optimism was characterised by the fact that they argued for an unrestricted development of the productive forces, of production for the sake of production, and because they, therefore, aimed their fire at all of the vestiges of the old society that stood in its way. As Marx puts it, praising Ricardo,
“He wants production for the sake of production and this with good reason. To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself. To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.) Apart from the barrenness of such edifying reflections, they reveal a failure to understand the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.”
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)
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