Critique of the Narodnik Conception of History

One of the ideological premises for the birth of Leninism.

After the 1880s, Russian populism (Narodnism), which had a revolutionary tradition in its early days, gradually transitioned into petty-bourgeois socialism, advocating compromise with the Tsar and representing the interests of rich peasants. Mikhailovsky and others inherited Bernstein’s thoughts, claiming that “the essential task of sociology is to ascertain the social conditions under which any particular requirement of human nature is satisfied”, believing that “the essence of the historical process is elusive in general” and denying that social development has objective regularity. Lenin severely criticized the Narodnik subjective sociology in What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats and other works. Lenin argued that the Narodnik subjective sociology was a naive sermon that could be fundamentally destroyed by Marxist theory of “the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history”. He pointed out that Marx “singling out the economic sphere from the various spheres of social life, by singling out production relations from all social relations as being basic, primary, determining all other relations”, and “only the reduction of social relations to production relations and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of formations of society is a process of natural history”. This interpretation grasped the key to Marx’s understanding of the law of social development. Lenin also cited Marx’s exposition of historical materialism in “The Preface to The Critique of Political Economy” as his theoretical basis. He argued that the contradictions between relations and forces of production, and between economic base and superstructure revealed by Marx were the mechanisms of major social transformations, thus making it possible for people to treat historical and social problems with a scientific attitude for the first time, ending the dominant position of idealism in sociological research and realizing revolutionary changes.

In response to the Narodniks’ interpretation of historical materialism as fatalism, claiming that historical materialism makes inevitability and human freedom into opposite concepts, and completely denying the role of individuals in creating history, Lenin pointed out that determinism abandons the absurd myth of so-called free will, but does not deny the role of individuals in history at all, nor the idea of “all history is made up of the actions of individuals, who are undoubtedly active figures”. Historical materialism never one-sidedly stresses the role of single individuals, but divides individual activities into activities of different classes, and activities of the masses. However, Narodniks only drew moral conclusions about the social and economic processes, and “they don’t regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life”.

Lenin criticized the Narodniks’ theory of social development and explained scientifically the historical inevitability of Russia’s stepping into capitalism. Lenin wrote The Development of Capitalism in Russia and other works, studied the class differentiation of peasants in Russian rural communes, investigated the characteristics and ways of the evolution of Russian landlord economy to capitalist economy, refuted various fallacies of the Narodniks, such as the unique national conditions of Russia determine that the development of capitalism in Russia has no necessity, advocating a direct transition from village community to socialism and the primary forces of the revolution was not workers, but peasants, and the leader of the revolution was intellectuals. In response to the Narodniks’ question of “village community or capitalism” and the view contrasting village community with the capitalist mode of production, Lenin pointed out that the village community is not an undifferentiated association of people but divides people into different strata. Based on this, even the villages with the highest number of village communities were flourishing with usury capital and other forms of primitive capitalist exploitation. Therefore, different forms of land possession would never be an insurmountable obstacle to the development of the capitalist economy. In Russia, there was a transitional labor-service system that includes the characteristics of both the corvée and capitalist economy. With the development of commodity economy, this kind of corvée economy unconsciously transited to a capitalist economy.

Lenin refuted the Narodniks’ view claiming Russia’s social division of labor as “artificial”. He pointed out that the social division of labor was the foundation for the entire development process of the commodity economy and capitalism, and was the key to the establishment of a capitalist domestic market. It was an undeniable fact that the social division of labor existed in Russia. It’s not an artificial result, but a natural historical process.

Lenin also discussed the forms, stages, and laws of the development of Russian capitalist industry, and refuted the Narodniks’ view claiming that individual handicraft industry and capitalistic production were contrary. He pointed out that the development of Russian capitalist industry had gone through three stages: simple capitalist collaborations, capitalist handicraft workshops, and factories (modern mechanized industry). The development of mechanized industry created a huge domestic market and a large number of industrial workers, thus preparing the material premise and class foundation for the socialist revolution.

Lenin’s criticism on the Narodnik view of history not only upheld and publicized Marx’s and Engels’ materialist view of history, but also combined Marxism with Russia’s specific national conditions, scientifically analyzed the then situation and development trend of Russian society by applying the Marxist theory, cleared up theoretical confusion on the development of Russian society, and effectively guided the labor movement in Russia.