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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY359of the whole [!] population”*—and not of the local bourgeoisie,my dear Larin?The philistine illusions of the philistine heroes of West-European municipal socialism are already making themselvesfelt. The fact that the bourgeoisie is in power is forgotten;so also is the fact that only in towns with a highpercentage of proletarian population is it possible to obtainfor the working people some crumbs of benefit from municipalgovernment! But all this is by the way. The principalfallacy of the “municipal socialism” idea of municipalisingthe land lies in the following.The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the EnglishFabians, elevate municipal socialism to a special“trend” precisely because it dreams of social peace, of classconciliation, and seeks to divert public attention awayfrom the fundamental questions of the economic system as awhole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questionsof local self-government. In the sphere of questionsin the first category, the class antagonisms stand out mostsharply; that is the sphere which, as we have shown, affectsthe very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie.Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionaryutopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularlyhopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor localquestions, being directed not to the question of the classrule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chiefinstruments of that rule, but to the question of distributingthe crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the “needsof the population”. Naturally, since attention is focused onsuch questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparisonwith the total surplus value and total state expenditure ofthe bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing toset aside for public health (Engels pointed out in The HousingQuestion that the bourgeoisie itself is afraid of thespread of epidemic diseases in the towns 132 ), or for education(the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able toadapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, itis possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold* The Peasant Question and Social-Democracy, p. 66.