If we acknowledge that "the Narodniks are the left neighbors of the Kadets," that they "constantly waver between K.D. and S.D.," then from this there inevitably flows recognition of Bolshevik policy: to compel the Narodniks to take the side of the S.D. against the Black Hundreds and against the K.D.

The Mensheviks seek to weaken or reject this inevitable conclusion from their own admissions by referring to the fact that the peasantry, while being "more revolutionary and democratic" than the liberals, at the same time is "permeated with reactionary social utopias" and strives "in the economic sphere to turn back the wheel of history."

This argument, very common in our S.D. literature, contains a great logical and historico-economic error. They are comparing arshin with pud, the reactionary nature of peasant ideas about socialist revolution with the reactionary nature of liberal policy in the bourgeois revolution.

If with respect to the tasks of socialism the peasants undoubtedly stand for reactionary utopias, then liberal bourgeois stand, with respect to these tasks, for reactionary reprisals like those of June 1848 or May 1871{95}.

If, however, in the given, that is bourgeois, revolution the peasantry and its ideologists, the Narodniks, conduct a reactionary policy compared to the liberals, then a Marxist will never recognize the Narodniks as more left, more revolutionary, more democratic than the liberals.

It is clear that something is wrong here.

Compare the agrarian policy of the liberals and the Narodniks. Are there economically reactionary features in it at the present time? The desire to restrict the mobilization of landed property is reactionary in both parties. But the bureaucratic character of the Kadet agrarian policy (landlord-bureaucratic land committees) makes its reactionary nature far more dangerous in practice and immediately. Thus, on this point the comparison is entirely unfavorable to the liberals.

"Equality" of land use… The idea of equality of small producers is reactionary as an attempt to seek the solution to the tasks of the socialist revolution behind, rather than ahead. The proletariat brings with it not the socialism of equality of small proprietors, but the socialism of large socialized production. But this same idea of equality is the most complete, consistent and decisive expression of bourgeois-democratic tasks. Marxists who have forgotten this may be advised to turn to the first volume of Marx's *Capital* and to Engels' *Anti-Dühring*. The idea of equality expresses most fully the struggle against all remnants of serfdom, the struggle for the broadest and purest development of commodity production.

We often forget this when speaking of the reactionary nature of Narodnik "egalitarian" agrarian projects.

Equality not only ideologically expresses the most complete realization of the conditions of free capitalism and commodity production. Materially, too, in the sphere of economic relations of agriculture growing out of serfdom, equality of small producers constitutes the condition for the broadest, most complete, freest and fastest development of capitalist agriculture.

This development has been taking place in Russia for a long time. The Revolution has accelerated it. The whole question is whether it will proceed along the so-called Prussian type (preservation of landlord economy with the enserfment of the peasant, paying "at fair valuation" for a hungry plot) or along the American type (destruction of landlord economy, transition of all land to the peasants).

This is the fundamental question of our entire bourgeois-democratic revolution, the question of its defeat or victory.

Social-Democrats demand the transition of all land to the peasants without redemption, that is, resolutely struggle for the second, advantageous to the people, type of capitalist development. In the struggle of peasants against serf-holding landlords, the idea of equality is the strongest ideological impulse in the struggle for land,— and the most complete elimination of all and every remnant of serfdom is the creation of equality among small producers. Therefore, the idea of equality is the most revolutionary idea for the peasant movement not only in the sense of a stimulus to political struggle, but also in the sense of a stimulus to the economic purification of agriculture from serf-like survivals.

Insofar as the Narodniks dream that equality can be maintained on the basis of commodity production, that this equality can be an element of development toward socialism,— insofar their views are erroneous, their socialism is reactionary. Every Marxist must know and remember this. But a Marxist would betray his cause of historical examination of the specific tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution if he forgot that this very same idea of equality and all manner of egalitarian plans are the most complete expression of the tasks not of the socialist, but of the bourgeois revolution, tasks of struggle not against capitalism, but against the landlord and bureaucratic order.

Either evolution of the Prussian type: the serf-holding landlord becomes a Junker. For a decade the landlords' power in the state is consolidated. Monarchy. "Military despotism dressed in parliamentary forms"{96} instead of democracy. The greatest inequality among the rural and remaining population. Or evolution of the American type. Destruction of landlord economy. The peasant becomes a free farmer. Popular sovereignty. Bourgeois-democratic order. The greatest equality among the rural population, as the starting point and condition of free capitalism.

Such is in reality the historical alternative, painted over with the hypocrisy of the Kadets (leading the country along the first path) and the socially reactionary utopianism of the Narodniks (leading it along the second).

It is clear that the proletariat must direct all its forces to support the second path. Only in this case will the laboring classes soonest shed the last bourgeois illusions,— for the socialism of equality is the last bourgeois illusion of the small proprietor. Only in this case will the popular masses, learning not from books but from experience, in actual practice experience in the shortest time the impotence of all and every egalitarian schemes, the impotence— against the power of capital. Only in this case will the proletariat most speedily shake off the "labor," that is, petty-bourgeois traditions, free itself from the bourgeois-democratic tasks that inevitably fall upon it now, and give itself wholly to its own, truly class, that is, socialist tasks.

Only the failure to understand the relationship between bourgeois-democratic and socialist tasks forces some S.D.'s to fear the policy of carrying the bourgeois revolution through to the end.

Only misunderstanding of the tasks and essence of the bourgeois revolution engenders arguments like the following: "It (our revolution) is ultimately engendered not by the interests of the peasants, but (??) by the interests of developing bourgeois society" or "this revolution is bourgeois and therefore (!!??) it cannot proceed under the peasant banner and leadership" (*Narodnaya Duma*, No. 21, of April 4). It turns out that peasant economy in Russia stands on some other, not bourgeois, ground! The interests of the peasant mass are precisely the interests of the most complete, swift and broad "development of bourgeois society," "American" rather than "Prussian" development. Precisely for this reason a bourgeois revolution can proceed under "peasant leadership" (more accurately: under proletarian leadership, if the peasants, wavering between K.D. and S.D., follow the S.D. on the whole). A bourgeois revolution under the leadership of the bourgeoisie can be only an incomplete revolution (that is, not a revolution but a reform, strictly speaking). It can be a genuine revolution only under the leadership of the proletariat and peasantry.

*Nashe Ekho*, Nos. 10 and 12, April 5 and 7, 1907

Printed from the text of the newspaper *Nashe Ekho*