Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

282V. I. LENINcan be seen most clearly in the latter’s attitude towardsthe petty-bourgeois utopias of the Narodniks (includingthe Socialist-Revolutionaries). In 1846, Marx ruthlesslyexposed the petty-bourgeois character of the American Socialist-RevolutionaryHermann Kriege, who proposed averitable General Redistribution for America and calledit “communism”. Marx’s dialectical and revolutionary criticismswept away the husks of petty-bourgeois doctrineand picked out the sound kernel of the “attacks on landedproperty” and of the “Anti-Rent movement”. Our vulgarMarxists, however, in criticising “equalised redistribution”,“socialisation of the land”, and “equal right to the land”,confine themselves to repudiating the doctrine, and thusreveal their own obtuse doctrinairism, which prevents themfrom seeing the vital life of the peasant revolution beneaththe lifeless doctrine of Narodnik theory. Maslov and theMensheviks have carried this obtuse doctrinairism—expressedin our “municipalisation” programme, which perpetuatesthe most backward and medieval form of landownership—to such lengths that in the Second Duma thefollowing truly disgraceful things could be uttered in thename of the Social-Democratic Party: ...“While on thequestion of the method of land alienation we [Social-Democrats]stand much nearer to these [Narodnik] groupsthan to the People’s Freedom group, on the question ofthe forms of land tenure we stand farther away from them”(47th sitting, May 26, 1907, p. 1230 of Stenographic Record).Indeed, in the peasant agrarian revolution the Mensheviksstand farther away from revolutionary peasant nationalisation,and closer to liberal-landlord preservation ofallotment (and not only allotment) ownership. The preservationof allotment ownership is the preservation of downtroddenness,backwardness, and bondage. It is natural for aliberal landlord, who dreams of redemption payments, tostand up for allotment ownership* ... with the preservation* Incidentally, the Mensheviks (including Comrade Tsereteli,whose speech I have quoted) are deeply mistaken in believing thatthe Cadets are at all consistent in their defence of free peasant ownership.They are not. Mr. Kutler, on behalf of the Cadet Party, spoke