What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social Democrats

One of the most important theoretical works of Lenin in his early period. The subtitle is “A Reply to Articles in Russian Fortune Opposing the Marxists”, aiming to refute the wrong views of Russian liberal Narodniks which defended the Marxist scientific worldview. The book was published secretly in 1894, however due to the poor underground working conditions at that time, the second part was lost, and now only the first and third parts of the original book are published. At that time, Russia’s liberal Narodniks had abandoned years-long Narodnik revolutionary struggle against the Tsarist government, shifted their efforts to oppose and attack Marxism. Since 1893, Mikhailovsky and others of the same mind, published articles on Russian Fortune, publicly challenged the historical materialism, and they had a bad influence on Russian people. In response, Lenin wrote this pamphlet in three parts, systematically criticized the philosophy and sociologic theory, economic theory, economic policy and guiding principles of the Narodnik school. Of the three parts, the first part is the most critical part. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 1 of the revised second edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

In this first part, Lenin criticized Mikhailovsky’s idealistic view of history and the subjective idealistic method of sociological research, defending the materialistic view of history of Marxism.

Firstly, Lenin and Mikhailovsky had very different views on whether Marx founded the materialistic conception of history. According to Mikhailovsky, Marx did not support his theory with a large number of facts and materials as Darwin did when he founded evolution, so Marx did not create a “completely new” view of history. Lenin pointed out that Mikhailovsky and others took “society in general” (ignoring the relations and economic formation of society) as the research object. Lenin then exposed this “subjective sociology” by recalling Mikhailovsky’s words of “Sociology must start with some utopia”. Through a large number of objective facts, Marx’s Capital reveals the economic law of motion of the modern society, ascribes social relations to production relations and production relations to the level of productive forces, in order to understand the development of social-economic formations as a process of natural history, and by corresponding the social-economic formation to the production relations which Lenin describes as clothing the skeleton with flesh, Marx explained the fundamental principle that the socio-economic structure constitutes the social consciousness thus establishing historical materialism, which fundamentally foils the idealistic concept of history, in Lenin’s words “cuts at the very root of this childish morality which lays claim to the title of sociology”.

Secondly, Lenin and Mikhailovsky held totally different views on whether Marxism is solely an economic theory or a theory about the general law of social development. Mikhailovsky thought that Marx “not so much affirms the basic propositions of economic materialism as simply touches on the economic aspect of a certain group of historical phenomena”, and the essence of the historical process is elusive. Lenin pointed out that Marx had repeatedly explained how civil equality, free contract and similar principles of the law-governed state are based on relations among commodity producers and this should be taken as the affirmation of materialism. Capital is Marx’s objective analysis of the economic law of motion of society and development of capitalist social formations, thus revealing the inevitability of the capitalist system being transformed into a socialist system. Marx demonstrates that the transformation of capitalism to socialism depends on the proletariat’s class struggle against the bourgeoisie. These are not simple economic theories, but the basic principles of historical materialism.

Thirdly, on the evaluation of Marxist theory, Mikhailovsky claimed that he “did not see” Marxist materialist theory, while Lenin spoke highly of Marxist historical materialism. Lenin thought that this materialistic thought was only a hypothesis at that time, but one which first created the possibility of a strictly scientific approach to historical and social problems. Prior to historical materialism, sociologists directly investigated and studied political and legal forms but they did not probe into production relations in depth, thus they argued that social relations were consciously established by men as it appeared to be the case. Materialists, as they carried their analysis deeper into the origin of social ideas accepted the conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things which is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Lenin argued that the appearance of Capital made Marx’s historical materialism an undeniable reality. For the first time, Marx raised sociology to the level of science, classified production relations as social structures, and applied repetitive scientific standards to these relations. It’s ridiculous that Mikhailovsky’s people didn’t see any materialism and historical materialism in Capital.

Fourthly, Lenin and Mikhailovsky have different views on how to evaluate the research methods and research attitudes of Marxist theory. Mikhailovsky argued that Marx’s research begins from the beginning, not from the end; starting from the study of particular, historically-determined social relations, not with general theories about what these social relations consist of in general and he claimed that this made Capital useless.

Lenin pointed out that in the past, all sciences started from metaphysics and didn’t know how to set about studying facts, they always invented a priori forged some general theories which were fruitless/sterile. Marx discarded all these arguments about society and progress in general and produced a scientific analysis of the one society (capitalist society) and of one progress (capitalist progress). Marx’s method of studying social problems is to separate economic fields from various fields of social life and productive relations from all social relations, that is, the basic primitive relations that determine all other relations. When the productive forces of a society develops to a certain stage, there will be contradictions with the relations of production or property relations. The contradictions and conflicts between the productive forces and the relations of production are the internal driving force of social movement, and thus explain the evolution of the economic formations of societies via the modes of production of Asia, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeoisie. The rich materials collected by Morgan in America enabled Marx and Engels to analyze the nature of gentile organization and brought them to the following conclusion: the explanation of the clan organization should not be sought in the ideological relations (such as legal and religious relations), but in the material relations. Obviously, these facts confirm the materialistic method of Marxism.

Fifthly, Lenin refutes Mikhailovsky’s misinterpretation of Marxist dialectics and scientific socialism. (1) Lenin pointed out that Marxist dialectics, on the contrary of metaphysics, do not mix all sorts of arbitrary combinations of separate social elements, but regards society as a living organism in a state of constant development. Studying this organism requires an objective analysis of the production relations that constitute the given social formation and an investigation of its laws of functioning and development. One of the fundamental characteristics of dialectics is perpetual development. (2) Lenin refuted Mikhailovsky’s accusation that materialists based their sociological theory on Hegelian triads, by pointing out that the key to understand the sharp contrast between Marx’s dialectics and Hegel’s method lies in the difference of philosophical basic standpoint that Marx argued that “the ideal is nothing but the reflection of the material” on the contrary that development of the idea determines the development of the real world. Lenin elaborated that what Marx and Engels called dialectics is the scientific method in sociology. (3) Lenin disagreed with Mikhailovsky’s claim that Marx’s theory was not able to correctly explain Marxist conception of reality, so it turned out to be forecasts of the future. Lenin pointed out that within Capital, scientific socialism never painted any prospects for the future; only analyzed the present bourgeois regime, studied the the trends of development of the capitalist social organization, restricting itself to the most general allusions to the future and merely tracing those already existing elements from which the future system grows.

In the third part, Lenin mainly criticizes the strategies and political programs of Narodniks, and puts forward the thoughts of the alliance of workers and peasants and the transformation of democratic revolution into socialist revolution.

First of all, Lenin criticized their view that capitalism is “artificial”, pointed out the reasons why workers are exploited, and clarified the historical role of capitalism. “The Narodniks” can’t understand the connection between the handicraft industry and capitalist industry. They regard handicraft industry as “people’s production” and capitalist industry as “artificial”. They believe that the oppression of labor in the handicraft industries is caused by policies, and hope that the state government will adopt improved policies. Lenin proved by a large number of indisputable facts and research data that the “people’s production” has been a budding of capitalist production relationship, and capitalism is the direct continuation and development of the “People’s production”. Lenin pointed out that the domestic system of large-scale production is a capitalist form of industry, handicraft industry by the means of its organization is in the pure form of capitalism, capitalist production relations have been dominant but the level of development is still relatively low. In Lenin’s view, the exploitation of the working people in the countryside is not a “defect” caused by the policy, and capitalism and its production relations are the root cause of the enslavement of the working class. Under the “people’s system”, a large number of small rural exploiters oppress the isolated, single toilers, which is not only a robbery of labor, but also an Asiatic abuse of human dignity. However, Social Democrats regarded the development of Russian capitalism as progressive, considering that it will draw small markets into one nation-wide market with a large number of small farmers that can lead to socialized labor, improve productivity, and enable workers to break free from the exploitation of local blood-suckers and subordinate those workers to a large scale capital; which can also be used to enlighten workers’ thoughts, turn dumb and incoherent discontent into conscious protest, and convert scattered and senseless revolt into an organized class struggle for the emancipation of all working people. Historical materialism can’t skip this kind of development, only face it directly, and take correct policies according to the situation.

Secondly, Lenin criticized the political program of liberal Narodniks. What these historical idealists desired was the petty bourgeoisie capitalism without exploitation and dreamt that such kind of petty bourgeoisie capitalism could survive under the protection of the benevolent landlords and liberal administrators. Liberal Narodniks desired that the class confrontation in the countryside obliterated and appealed to the government for the implementation of moderate methods of the liberals, in order to lure the exploited working people to give up the struggle and make the semi-serfdom and semi-free labor economic system permanent. Lenin wrote: the old Narodniks advocated the political program of mobilizing peasants to carry out “socialist” revolution, which was revised by the liberal Narodniks which represented the interests of the liberal bourgeoisie and which began to advocate an peasant emancipation program under the condition of preserving the existing social system.

Thirdly, Lenin pointed out the direction of the theoretical work of the Russian social democracy (Marxism) and put forward the ideas of the alliance of workers and peasants and the transformation of the Russian democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. Lenin said that the attraction of Marxism lies in that it combines strict and highly scientific nature with revolution, helps the oppressed class to fight, completely and thoroughly eliminates any exploitation and any oppression. The direction of the theoretical work of Russian socialists should be to study concretely all forms of Russian economic confrontation and their relations and development. We should regard reality as a system of certain production relations, reveal the inevitability of the exploitation and deprivation of workers under this system, and point out the way out of this system. In this way, dogmatism and sectarianism can be avoided. Lenin pointed out that the working class is the only and natural representative of all people and the leading force of the revolution. The Social Democrats should help the working class to grasp the doctrine of scientific socialism, help them recognize its historical mission, Social Democrats should turn the scattered economic struggle into the conscious class struggle, guide the Russian proletariat and the proletariat of all countries to walk side by side along the road of open political struggle towards the victorious communist revolution.

This work criticized idealism and subjective sociological views of the liberal Narodniks, defended the tenets of historical materialism, promoted the combination of Marxism and the Russian workers’ movement, played a great role in the establishment of the proletarian revolutionary party in Russia.