Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

LETTER TO I. I. SKVORTSOV-STEPANOV119and theoretically there is nothing more erroneous than torecede from it, dismiss it, or wave it aside by a reference towhat has previously been solved. That would mean reducingproblems of, so to say, a second, i.e., higher, order to problemsof a lower, first order. We cannot halt at a generalsolution of the problem of capitalism when new events (andevents that are of world-historic importance such as those of1905-07) have raised a more concrete problem, of a moredetailed nature, the problem of the struggle between thetwo paths or methods of capitalist agrarian development.When we were fighting against the Narodniks to prove thatthis path was inevitably and irrevocably a capitalist one,we were quite right and we could not but concentrate all ourstrength, all our attention on the question: capitalism or“people’s production”. This was natural, inevitable and legitimate.Now, however, this question has been settled bothin theory and in reality (for the petty-bourgeois characterof the Trudoviks en masse has been proved by recent Russianhistory), and another, higher question has taken itsplace: capitalism of type α or capitalism of type β. And, inmy humble opinion, Ilyin was right when, in the preface tothe second edition of his book, he pointed out that it followsfrom the book that two types of capitalist, agrariandevelopment are possible, and that the historical strugglebetween these types has not yet come to an end.*The special feature of Russian opportunism in Marxism,i.e., of Menshevism in our time, is that it is associated witha doctrinaire simplification, vulgarisation and distortionof the letter of Marxism, and a betrayal of its spirit (suchwas the case with both Rabocheye Dyelo-ism and Struveism).While fighting Narodism as a wrong doctrine of socialism,the Mensheviks, in a doctrinaire fashion, overlookedthe historically real and progressive historical content ofNarodism as a theory of the mass petty-bourgeois struggle ofdemocratic capitalism against liberal-landlord capitalism, of“American” capitalism against “Prussian” capitalism. Hencetheir monstrous, idiotic, renegade idea (which has alsothoroughly permeated The Social Movement) that the peasantmovement is reactionary, that a Cadet is more progressive* See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 31-34.—Ed.