V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v47; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

16. XII. 09.

Dear Colleague,

I have received your reply and am taking up my pen to continue our conversation.

You want to shift the question more to the theoretical (rather than the tactical) plane.

I agree. I would only remind you that your starting point was tactical: you did, after all, reject the “classical formulation” of the fundamental tactical proposition. You outlined this tactical decision (without spelling out the tactical conclusions from it) in connection with the denial of the “possibility of an American path”. That is why I do not consider your exposition of our differences, which you put in the words: “You (i.e., I) emphasise the fact of the peasantry’s movement. I recognise the fact of the movement of the proletarianising peasantry”, to be correct.

That is not the difference. I do not, after all, deny that the peasantry is being proletarianised. The difference lies in whether the bourgeois agrarian system in Russia has become so firmly established as to make an abrupt transition from the “Prussian” path of agrarian capitalist development to the “American” path of agrarian capitalist development objectively impossible. If yes, then the “classical” formulation of the fundamental question of tactics falls. If no, it remains.

And I maintain that it must be retained. I do not deny the possibility of the “Prussian” path; I recognise that a Marxist must neither “vouch” for one of these paths nor bind himself to only one of them; I recognise that Stolypin’s policy takes another step forward along the “Prussian” path, and that on this path, at a certain stage, a dialectical turning point may set in, removing from the agenda all hopes and prospects for the “American” path.

But I assert that at present this turning point has probably not yet set in, and that therefore it is absolutely impermissible for a Marxist, absolutely theoretically incorrect, to renounce the “classical” formulation of the question. That is the essence of our differences.

Theoretically, they boil down, if I am not mistaken, to two main points: 1) Your “ally” V. Ilyin must be destroyed by me in order to justify my position. In other words, this position contradicts the conclusions of the Marxist analysis of pre-revolutionary Russia’s economy. 2) The “classical” formulation can and must be compared with the agrarian opportunism of the revisionists (David and Co.), for there is no essential, principled, fundamental difference between the formulation of the question of the worker’s attitude to the “peasant” in Russia and in Germany.

I consider both these propositions profoundly incorrect.

Ad 1) (In order not to touch on “tactics”, I will set aside Martynov’s raid on Ilyin 217 and proceed only to your formulation of the theoretical question.)

What did Ilyin prove and demonstrate? That the development of agrarian relations in Russia is proceeding capitalistically both in the landlords’ economy and in the peasant economy, both outside and inside the “commune”. That is one. That this development has already irrevocably determined no other path of development than the capitalist one, no other class grouping than the capitalist one. That is two.

This was the point at issue in the dispute with the Narodniks. This had to be proved. It was proved. It remains proved. The question now being posed (and posed by the movement of 1905-1907) is a different, further one, presupposing the solution of the question solved by Ilyin (and not by him alone, of course), but presupposing not only this, but something greater, more complex, something new. Besides the question finally and correctly solved in 1883-1885, in 1895-1899, the history of the 20th century in Russia has posed us a further question—and there is nothing more theoretically erroneous than to retreat from it, to dismiss it, to brush it aside by reference to what was solved earlier. That would mean reducing questions of the second, so to speak, i.e., higher, order to questions of the lower, first order. One cannot rest content with the general solution of the question of capitalism when new events (and events of world-historical importance, such as those of 1905-1907) have posed a more concrete, more detailed question, the question of the struggle between two paths or methods of capitalist agrarian development. When we fought the Narodniks to prove that this path was inevitably and irrevocably capitalist, we were quite right, and we could not but concentrate all our strength, all our attention on the question: capitalism or “people’s production”. That was both natural, inevitable, and legitimate. But now this question has been solved both by theory and by life (for the petty-bourgeois character of the Trudovik en masse* has been proved by the latest Russian history), while another, higher question has been placed on the agenda: capitalism of type α or capitalism of type β? And, in my humble opinion, Ilyin was right when, in the preface to the second edition of his book, he pointed out that from it follows the possibility of two types of capitalist agrarian development and that the historical struggle of these types is not yet over**.

The peculiarity of Russian opportunism in Marxism, i.e., Menshevism in our time, consists in its being bound up with a doctrinaire simplification, vulgarisation, and distortion of the letter of Marxism, a betrayal of its spirit (as was the case with Rabocheye Dyelo and with Struvism).

In fighting Narodism as an incorrect doctrine of socialism, the Mensheviks doctrinairely overlooked, missed the historically real and progressive historical content of Narodism as a theory of the mass petty-bourgeois struggle of democratic capitalism against liberal-landlord capitalism, of “American” capitalism against “Prussian” capitalism. Hence their monstrous, idiotic, renegade idea (permeating the whole of “The Social Movement”) that the peasant movement is reactionary, that the Cadet is more progressive than the Trudovik, that the “dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” (= the classical formulation) contradicts “the whole course of economic development” (p. 661 of the Menshevik “Social Movement”). “Contradicts the whole course of economic development”—is that not reactionary?

I maintain that the struggle against this monstrous distortion of Marxism was the basis of the “classical formulation” and a correct basis, although, unfortunately, due to the natural conditions of the epoch, this struggle was conducted very zealously tactically and insufficiently zealously theoretically. However, “unfortunately” is the wrong word here, which must be struck out!

This agrarian question is now in Russia the national question of bourgeois development. In order not to fall into the erroneous (mechanical) transfer to our country of the German model, which is in many respects correct and in all respects extremely valuable, one must clearly realise that the national question of the fully established bourgeois development of Germany was unification, etc., but not the agrarian question, whereas the national question of the final establishment of bourgeois development in Russia is precisely the agrarian (even more narrowly: the peasant) question.

Here is the purely theoretical basis of the difference in the application of Marxism to Germany of 1848-1868 (approximately) and to Russia of 1905-19??.

How can I prove that in our country the agrarian question, and not some other, has acquired national significance for bourgeois development? I do not even know if this needs proving. I think it is indisputable. But precisely here lies the theoretical basis, and precisely to this must all particular questions be reduced. If there is a dispute, I will briefly indicate (for now briefly) that it is precisely the course of events, the facts, the history of 1905-1907 that proved the significance of the agrarian (peasant and, of course, petty-bourgeois-peasant, not communal-peasant) question in Russia which I have indicated. This is also proved now by the law of June 3, 1907, and by the composition and activity of the Third Duma, and—a detail—by November 20, 1909 218, and (especially important) by the government’s agrarian policy.

If we agree that the latest history of Russia, the history of 1905-1909, has proved the fundamental, primary, national (in this sense) significance of the agrarian question in the establishment of a definite type of bourgeois evolution in Russia, then we can go further. If not, then not.

By 1905, Russia’s bourgeois development was already sufficiently mature to demand the immediate demolition of the obsolete superstructure—obsolete, medieval landownership (you understand, of course, why I take only landownership from the whole superstructure here). We are living in the epoch of this demolition, which different classes of bourgeois Russia are trying to complete, to finish in their own way: the peasants (+ workers) through nationalisation ((I am very glad that we agree with you on the complete absurdity of municipalisation; I have already cited quotations from Theorien über Mehrwerth* in favour of nationalisation in one of my works, published partly in Polish))**—the landlords (+ the old bourgeoisie, the Girondist bourgeoisie) through the law of November 9, 1906, etc. Nationalisation of the land = the peasant demolition of old landownership is the economic basis of the American path. The law of November 9, 1906 = the landlord demolition of old landownership is the economic basis of the Prussian path. Our epoch, 1905-??, is an epoch of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle between these paths—just as 1848-1871 in Germany was an epoch of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle between two paths of unification (= solution of the national problem of Germany’s bourgeois development), the path through a Greater German Republic and the path through the Prussian monarchy. Only by 1871 did the second path finally (that is where my “fully” applies) triumph. And then Liebknecht abandoned the boycott of parliament. And then the dispute between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers died out. And then the question of the general democratic revolution in Germany died out—while Naumann, David and Co. in the 1890s (twenty years later!) began to revive the corpse.

In our country the struggle is still going on. Neither of the two agrarian paths has yet triumphed. In our country, at every crisis of our epoch (1905-1909-??), the “general democratic” movement of the “peasant” will inevitably come to the fore, and ignoring this would be a fundamental error, in practice leading to Menshevism, even if in theory the dispute is placed on a different plane. It is not I who “reduce” the dispute to “Menshevism”, but the history of our epoch reduces the proletariat’s ignoring of the national task of Russia’s bourgeois development to Menshevism, for that is the essence of Menshevism.

Nebenbei*: Have you read Cherevanin’s “The Present Situation” on the opportunism of the “classical formulation” of the Bolsheviks’ question? Read it!

Ad 2) In essence, I have already said almost everything ad 2. In Germany, the worker’s support for the “peasant’s” desire to obtain for himself (i.e., for the peasant) the land of the big landlord, the Junker, is reactionary. Is that not so? Is it not true? In Russia, in 1905-1909-??, the refusal of this support is reactionary. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!** Here it is either a renunciation of the entire agrarian programme and a transition... almost to Cadetism—or the recognition of a principled difference in the formulation of the question in Germany and in Russia, principled not in the sense that ours is non-capitalist, but in the sense that they are entirely different, principledly different epochs of capitalism: the epoch before the final establishment of the national path of capitalism and the epoch after such establishment.

I will stop here for now. I will try to send you clippings on the subject of our conversations. Write when you find a free moment.

I firmly shake your hand.

Yours, Old Man