Petty-Bourgeois and Proletarian Socialism

“Petty-Bourgeois and Proletarian Socialism” was a short article by Lenin on the differences between different class characteristics of socialism. It was written on November 7, 1905, in the Proletary  newspaper issue No. 24, November 7, 1905. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 12 of the second edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

First of all, Lenin pointed out that the proletarian socialism had gained a dominant position. In Europe, among all kinds of socialist theories, Marxism has now gained complete domination, which has been consolidated only after a long struggle with various backward theories, such as petty-bourgeois socialism and anarchism.

At the same time, he pointed out that the reason for the rapid and complete victory of Marxist socialist theory in recent decades lies in the economic and political developments of modern society, all the experience of the revolutionary movement and the struggle of the oppressed class have increasingly confirmed the correctness of the Marxist view. The decline of the petty-bourgeoisie will inevitably lead to the extinction of the prejudice of all the petty-bourgeoisie. At the same time, the development of capitalism and the sharpening of the class struggle within the capitalist society has made the best propaganda for the idea of proletarian socialism.

Secondly, Lenin pointed out that: the peasant question is focal in the Marxists’ controversies with both the pure Narodniks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and those three trends had different views.

Narodniks argued that the peasant movement stands for a direct socialist revolution, the genuine, truly socialist and immediately socialist movement. The Marxist held the opposite view. Arguing that the future masters of Russia were going to be the workers, that the peasant movement was precisely not a socialist movement, but a democratic movement, bourgeois in its social and economic content. Therefore, the complete victory of the peasant movement can only create a stronghold for a democratic bourgeois republic, within which a proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie will for the first time develop in its purest form.

On the other hand the “Socialist-Revolutionaries” could not also give a clear answer to the nature and function of the peasant movement at present. They could not regard the peasant movement as a democratic revolution with bourgeois nature; they ignored the opposition of the peasant movement to the remnants of the serfdom and couldn’t see the relationship between the democratic struggle and the socialist struggle.

Lenin also criticized the idea of the “Socialist-Revolutionaries” which advocated “first to support the peasant in general against the landlord, and then (i.e., at the same time) to support the proletariat against the peasant in general, instead of at once supporting the proletariat against the landlord”, Lenin pointed out that this is the most primitive and childishly, naive anarchist stand point. “For many centuries and even for thousands of years, mankind has dreamt of doing away ‘at once’ with all and every kind of exploitation. These dreams remained mere dreams until millions of the exploited all over the world began to unite for a consistent, staunch and comprehensive struggle to change capitalist society in the direction the evolution of that society is naturally taking. Socialist dreams turned into the socialist struggle of the millions only when Marx’s scientific socialism had linked up the urge for change with the struggle of a definite class. Outside the class struggle, socialism is either a hollow phrase or a naive dream.”

Lenin has concretely analyzed two different struggles by two different social forces in Russia. The proletariat is fighting against the bourgeoisie wherever capitalist relations of production exist (and they exist—be it known to our Socialist-Revolutionaries— even in the peasant commune, i.e., on the land which from   their standpoint is one hundred percent “socialised”). As a stratum of small landowners, of petty bourgeois, the peasantry, is fighting against all survivals of serfdom, against the bureaucrats and the landlords. Only those who are completely ignorant of political economy and of the history of revolutions throughout the world can fail to see that these are two distinct and different social wars. To shut one’s eyes to the diversity of these struggles by demanding “at once”, is like hiding one’s head under one’s wing and refusing to make any analysis of reality.

Lenin criticized the Socialist-Revolutionaries for forgetting that landlord farming in Russia combines within itself features both of capitalism and of serf-ownership and that there is a system of economy based on labour rent, which is a direct survival of the corvée system. Lenin added: “Socialist-Revolutionaries ignored to look into the orthodox Marxist book such as Vol. 3 of the Capital, which said nowhere could the corvee system develop, and nowhere did it develop, and turn into capitalist farming except through the medium of petty-bourgeois peasant farming”.

Lenin pointed out that in order to slander Marxism, the Socialist-Revolutionaries resorted to methods which are too primitive, and ascribed to Marxism a grotesquely oversimplified conception of large-scale capitalist farming directly succeeding to large-scale farming based on the corvée system: thus the aforementioned claims of the Socialist-Revolutionaries were undoubtedly a step backward. Lenin stressed that the two kinds of struggles are both in unity as well as differ in nature.

Since Russia’s landlord economy combines features of both capitalism and serfdom, the Social-Democratic Labor Party must, in its own program and in its tactics, combine the purely proletarian struggle against capitalism with the general democratic (and general peasant) struggle against serfdom.

However, Lenin put forward that the party of Social-Democracy must not confuse the two struggles. “We must support the general democratic and general peasant struggle, but not become submerged in this non-class struggle; we must never idealise it with false catchwords such as “socialization”, or ever forget the necessity of organizing both the urban and the rural proletariat in an entirely independent class party of Social-Democracy. While giving the utmost support to the most determined democratism, that party will not allow itself to be diverted from the revolutionary path by reactionary dreams and experiments in “equalisation” under the system of commodity production.