V. I.

Lenin

ARTICLE ONE

Alegal newspaper recently expressed the opinion that this is no time to dwell
on the “antagonism” of interests among the different classes
opposing the autocracy. This opinion is not new. We have come across it, of
course, with reservations of one sort or other, in the columns of Osvobozhdeniye and Revolutsionnaya Rossiya. It is natural that such a
point of view should prevail among the representatives of the bourgeois
democrats. As far as the Social-Democrats are concerned, there can be no two
opinions among them on this question. The combined struggle of the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie against the autocracy must not and cannot make the
proletariat forget the antagonism of interests between it and the propertied
classes. To get a clear idea of this antagonism it is necessary to have a clear
idea of the profound differences that exist between the points of view of the
different trends. This does not imply, of course, that we should reject
temporary agreements with the adherents of other trends, both with the
Socialists-Revolutionaries and the liberals, such as the Second Congress of our
Party declared permissible for Social-Democrats.

The Social-Democrats consider the Socialists-Revolutionaries to be the
representatives of the extreme Left group of our bourgeois democracy. The
Socialists-Revolutionaries resent this opinion of them and regard it as a mean
attempt to humiliate an opponent and to question his sincerity and good
faith. Actually, such an opinion has nothing whatever to do with suspicion; it
is merely a Marxist definition of the class origin and the class nature of the views of the Socialists-Revolutionaries. The more clearly and definitely
the Socialists-Revolutionaries state their views, the more they confirm
the Marxist characterisation of them. Of great interest in this respect
is the draft programme of the Party of the Socialists-Revolutionaries
published in Revolutsionnaya Rossiya , No. 46.

Thisdraft is a considerable step forward, not only in relation to clarity of
exposition of principles. The progress is to be noted in the content of the
principles them selves, the progress from Narodism to Marxism, from democracy
to socialism. Our criticism of the Socialists-Revolutionaries has obviously
borne fruit; it has compelled them to lay particular stress on their socialist
good intentions and the views which they hold in common with Marxism. All the
more glaring, on the other hand, are the features of their old, Narodnik,
vaguely democratic views. We would remind those who are prone to accuse us of
being contradictory (recognising the socialist good intentions of the
Socialists-Revolutionaries, while defining their social nature as
bourgeois-democratic) that examples of socialism, not only of the
petty-bourgeois but of the bourgeois variety, were long ago analysed in the
Communist Manifesto. The good intentions of being a socialist do not
rule out a bourgeois-democratic essence.

Astudy of the draft reveals three main features of the Socialist-Revolutionary
world outlook. First, theoretical emendations of Marxism. Second, the survivals
of Narodism in their views of the labouring peasantry and the agrarian
question. Third, the same Narodnik survivals in their view of the impending
Russian revolution as non-bourgeois in character.

Isaid emendations of Marxism. Precisely. The whole main trend of
thought, the whole framework of the programme, points to the victory of Marxism
over Narodism. The latter is still alive (kept so with the aid of injections of
revisionism of the latest style), but only as partial “corrections”
of Marxism. Let us take the main general theoretical emendation, the theory of
the favourable and unfavourable relation between the positive and
negative sides of capitalism. This emendation, insofar as it is not completely
muddled, introduces the old Russian subjectivism into Marxism. The recognition of the “creative” historical
activity of capitalism, which socialises labour and creates “a social
force” capable of transforming society, the force of the proletariat,
denotes a break with Narodism and a transition to Marxism. The theory
of socialism is founded on the objective development of economic
forces and of class division. The emendation: “In some branches of industry, especially
agriculture, and in en tire countries” the relation between the positive
and negative sides of capitalism “is becoming [how far they have gone!]
less and less favourable”. This is a repetition of Hertz and
David, of Nik. —on, [1] and of V. V. with his theory of the special
“destinies of capitalism in Russia”. The backwardness of Russia in
general and of Russian agriculture in particular is no longer regarded as the
backwardness of capitalism , but as a uniqueness justifying backward
theories. Alongside the materialist conception of history we get the time-worn
view according to which the intelligentsia is capable of choosing more or less
favourable paths for the country and of becoming the supraclass judge of
capitalism, not the mouthpiece of the class that is begotten by capitalism’s
destruction of the old forms of life. The fact that capitalist exploitation in
Russia takes on particularly repellent forms because of the survival of pre-capitalist relations is overlooked in typical Narodnik fashion.

The Narodnik theory stands revealed still more clearly in the notions on the
peasantry. Throughout the draft the following words and phrases are used without
discrimination: the toilers, the exploited, the working class, the labouring
masses, the class of the exploited, the exploited classes. If the authors
stopped to think over the last term (“classes”), which escaped them
unguardedly, they would realise that it is the petty bourgeois as well as the
proletarians who work and are exploited under capitalism. What has been said of
the legal Narodniks can be said of our Socialists-Revolutionaries: to them goes
the honour of discovering an unheard-of type of capitalism without a petty
bourgeoisie. They speak of the labouring peasantry, but shut their eyes to a
fact which has been proved, studied, weighed, described, and pondered, namely,
that the peasant bourgeoisie now definitely predominates among our labouring peasantry,
and that the well-to-do peasantry, although entitled to the designation
labouring peasantry, cannot get along without hiring farm-hands and
already controls the better half of the peasantry’s productive forces.

Veryodd, indeed, from this point of view, is the goal which the Party of the
Socialists-Revolutionaries has set itself in its minimum programme: “In
the interests of socialism and of the struggle against bourgeois-proprietary
principles, to make use of the views, traditions, and modes of life of the
Russian peasantry, both as toilers in general and as members of the village
communes, particularly its conception of the land as being the common property
of all the toiling people.” This objective seems, at first blush, to be a quite
harmless, purely academic repetition of the village-commune utopias long since
refuted both by theory and life. In reality, however, we are dealing with a
pressing political issue which the Russian revolution promises to solve in the
very near future: Who will take advantage of whom? Will the revolutionary
intelligentsia, which believes itself to be socialist, utilise the toiler
conceptions of the peasantry in the interests of the struggle against
bourgeois-proprietary principles? Or will the bourgeois proprietary and at the
same time toiling peasantry utilise the socialist phraseology of the
revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia in the interests of the struggle against
socialism?

Weare of the view that the second perspective will be realised (despite the
will and the consciousness of our opponents). We are convinced that it will be
realised because it has already nine-tenths been realised. The “bourgeois
proprietary” (and at the same time labouring) peasantry has already made
good use of the socialist phrases of the Narodnik, democratic intelligentsia,
which harboured illusions of sustaining “the toiler traditions and modes
of life” by means of its artels, co-operatives, fodder grass cultivation,
ploughs, Zemstvo warehouses, and banks, but which actually promoted the
development of capitalism within the village commune. Russian economic history
has thus proved what Russian political history will prove tomorrow. The
class-conscious proletariat has the duty to explain to the rural proletarian, without in any way withholding support of the
progressive and revolutionary aspirations of the bourgeois labouring
peasantry, that a struggle against that peasantry is inevitable in the future;
it has the duty to explain to him the real aims of socialism, as opposed to the
bourgeois-democratic fancies of equalised land tenure. With the bourgeois
peasantry against the survivals of serfdom, against the autocracy, the priests,
and the landlords; with the urban proletariat against the bourgeoisie in general
and against the bourgeois peasantry in particular—this is the only correct
slogan for the rural proletarian, this is the only correct agrarian programme
for Russian Social-Democracy at the present moment. It was this programme that
our Second Congress adopted. With the peasant bourgeoisie for democracy, with
the urban proletariat for socialism—this slogan will have a far stronger
appeal to the rural poor than the showy but empty slogans of the
Socialist-Revolutionary dabblers in Narodism.

Wecome now to the third of the above-mentioned main points of the draft. Its
authors have by now broken with the view of the consistent Narodniks, who were
opposed to political freedom on the grounds that it could only result in turning
over power to the bourgeoisie. But the survivals of Narodism stand out very
clearly in the part of the draft which characterises the autocracy and the
attitude of the various classes towards it. Here too, as always, we see that the
very first attempts of the petty-bourgeois revolutionary intelligentsia to
clarify its conception of reality lead inevitably to the complete
exposure of its contradictory and superannuated views. (Let us, therefore,
remark, parenthetically, that disputes with the Socialists-Revolutionaries
should always be reduced to this very question of their conception of reality,
since this question alone clearly reveals the causes of our deep-seated
political divergence.)

“Theclass of big, manufacturers and tradesmen, who are more reactionary
than anywhere else,” we read in the draft, “stands more and more in need
of the protection of the autocracy against the proletariat”.... This is
false; for nowhere in Europe is the indifference of the advanced bourgeoisie
towards the autocratic form of rule so evident as in our country. Discontent with the autocratic regime is growing among the
bourgeoisie, regardless of its fear of the proletariat, in part simply
because the police, for all its unlimited powers, cannot crush the
working-class movement. In speaking of “a class” of big manufacturers, the draft confounds the subdivisions and groups
within the bourgeoisie with the entire bourgeoisie as a class. The in
correctness is all the more patent in that it is precisely the middle and
petty bourgeoisie that the autocracy is least of all capable of satisfying.

“... Thelanded nobility and the village kulaks stand more and more in need of such
support against the labouring masses in the villages....” Indeed? Where, then,
does Zemstvo liberalism come from? Whence the attraction for the enterprising
muzhik on the part of the uplift (democratic) intelligentsia and vice versa? Or
does the kulak have nothing in common with the enterprising muzhik?

“... Anirreconcilable and growing antagonism is arising between the
existence of autocracy and the whole economic, social-political and cultural
development of the country....

Inthis they have reduced their own premises ad absurdum. Is it
possible to conceive of an “irreconcilable antagonism” with the
entire economic, as well as other, growth of the country that would not be
reflected in the mood of the classes in economic command? It is one or the
other:
Either the autocracy is really incompatible with the economic
development of the country; in that case it is incompatible also with the
interests of the entire class of manufacturers, tradespeople,
landlords, and enterprising muzhiks. That this class has been controlling
“our” economic development since 1861 [2] is probably not unknown even to the
Socialists-Revolutionaries (although they were taught the contrary by
V. V.). That a government incompatible with the bourgeois class in general can
make capital out of the conflicts between the groups and strata of the
bourgeoisie, that it can make peace with the protectionists against the free
traders, enlist the support of one stratum against another, and keep up these
equilibristics for years and decades, is borne out by the whole trend of
European history. Or , in our country the manufacturers, the landlords,
and the peasant bourgeoisie “stand more and more in need” of the autocracy. In that case we should have to accept
the notion that they, the economic lords of the country, even taken as a whole,
as a class, do not understand the interests of the country’s economic development, that not even the advanced, educated and intelligent representatives and
leaders of these classes under stand these interests!

Butwould it not be simpler to accept the idea that it is our
Socialists-Revolutionaries who do not understand the situation? We need but see:
a little further on, they themselves admit “the existence of a
liberal-democratic opposition, which embraces chiefly (in point of class) the
intermediate elements of the educated society”. But is our educated
society not a bourgeois society? Is it not bound by a thousand ties to the
tradesmen, manufacturers, land lords, and enterprising muzhiks? Can God have
possibly ordained for Russia a capitalism in which the liberal-democratic
opposition is not a bourgeois-democratic opposition? Do the
Socialists-Revolutionaries know of any precedent in history or can they
conceive of any case in which the opposition of the bourgeoisie to the
autocratic regime was not or would not be expressed through
the liberal, educated “society”?

Themuddle in the draft is the inevitable outcome of confounding Narodism with
Marxism. Only Marxism has given a scientifically correct analysis, confirmed
more and more by reality, of the relation between the struggle for democracy and
the struggle for socialism. We, like the rest of the world, have bourgeois
democratism and working-class democratism. With us, as with the rest of the
world, the Social-Democrats must expose mercilessly the inevitable illusions of
the bourgeois democrats and their ignorance of their own nature. With us, as
with the rest of the world, the class-conscious proletariat must support the
bourgeois democrats in their opposition to the survivals of serfdom and their
struggle against them, against the autocracy, without forgetting for an instant
that it is a class by itself, and that it has as its class aim the overthrow of
the bourgeoisie.

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Notes:
[1]
Nikolai —on—pseudonym of
N. F. Danielson, an ideologue of liberal Narodism in the eighties and
nineties of the nineteenth century.

[2]
The reference is to the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861.