Geng Renjie: Lenin's Philosophical Critique of Russian Populism
Lenin’s philosophical thought is an indispensable component of Marxist philosophy and represents a significant stage in its historical development. For a long time, academic research on Lenin’s philosophy has concentrated on works such as Materialism and Empirio-criticism and Philosophical Notebooks, while studies on his early philosophical thought have remained relatively limited. An examination of the history of Lenin's ideas reveals that his initial interpretation of Marxist philosophy was inextricably linked to his philosophical critique of Russian Populism [1]. Similar to how Friedrich Engels first comprehensively and systematically elucidated the principal components of Marxism through a critique of Eugen Dühring’s erroneous views, Lenin first systematically expounded his Marxist philosophical outlook in the process of critiquing Russian Populism. From the perspectives of epistemology, dialectics, and the conception of history, Lenin profoundly analyzed the philosophical tenets of Populism and systematically articulated the fundamental viewpoints of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. This laid the philosophical foundation for the formation of Leninism and served as the starting point for the development of Lenin’s philosophical thought.
I. Critique of the Subjective Idealism of Populism in Epistemology
In Russia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, faced with the autocratic rule of the Tsarist government and the ideological confinement of the Orthodox Church, a group of intellectuals sought an answer to the question of "whither Russia." Initially inspired by the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, they turned their gaze toward Enlightenment thought and bourgeois liberalism. However, following the suppression of the Polish Uprising and the Decembrist Revolt [2], these theories gradually lost their appeal. To find a new path, some turned to the study of Russian historical and cultural traditions, others to German philosophy, while still others drew inspiration from Western European utopian socialists such as Saint-Simon, attempting to integrate socialism with Russian social reality. Following the Emancipation Reform of 1861 [3], Russian capitalism developed rapidly, leading to the differentiation of the peasantry and the gradual disintegration of the obshchina [4] (the traditional agricultural cooperative organization in the Russian countryside). Intellectuals viewed this with great anxiety, hoping that Russia could avoid the suffering of class antagonism inherent in the capitalist stage and "transition" directly to a socialist society—this core proposition later developed into a major social trend and movement in Russian history: Populism.
Alexander Herzen was the founder of Russian Populism. On epistemological issues, influenced by the philosophy of Feuerbach, he opposed the "ostentatious style" prevalent in European philosophy and science at the time, as well as the "scholastic appearance" brought about by "metaphysical gibberish." He argued that the foundation of science lies in the real world: "Science without facts is the ethereal science of ostentatious people" (Herzen, 1962, p. 68). By introducing the philosophical ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach, the materialist views articulated by Herzen influenced a generation of young Russian intellectuals. As Nikolay Chernyshevsky, another founding figure of Russian Populism, noted, "our best publicists" (referring to Herzen and others) in the 1840s did their utmost to introduce the then-vogue German philosophy to the Russian public (see Selected Works of Chernyshevsky, Vol. 1, p. 133). Lenin also pointed out that Herzen "went further than Hegel, following Feuerbach to materialism" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 284). Compared to Herzen, Chernyshevsky went a step further in his materialism. In his review of the pamphlet The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy by another Populist thinker, Lavrov, he proposed: "Natural science is the basis for that part of philosophy which deals with questions of the external natural world; it is also the basis for that part of philosophy which deals with questions of man. The idea of the unity of the human organism, as formulated by natural science, is the principle of the philosophical view of human life and all its phenomena" (Selected Works of Chernyshevsky, Vol. 2, p. 233). Chernyshevsky not only leaned toward materialism in epistemology but also used it to conduct research in political economy. After reading Chernyshevsky's Outlines of J.S. Mill’s Political Economy, Marx stated that Chernyshevsky had provided a "masterly exposition" of the bankruptcy of that bourgeois political economy which attempted to reconcile class contradictions (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 2, p. 89). On the one hand, Lenin gave a positive evaluation of Chernyshevsky’s materialism, asserting that this "revolutionary commoner-intellectual" represented a "solid materialist tradition" in advanced Russian social thought (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 4, p. 646); on the other hand, he agreed with Plekhanov’s critique of the main defect in Chernyshevsky’s materialist system—namely, that like Feuerbach, Chernyshevsky focused almost exclusively on human "theoretical" activity and failed to understand human activity itself as "objective activity" ( gegenständliche Tätigkeit) in the sense Marx described in the Theses on Feuerbach (see Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 55, p. 539). Generally speaking, although Herzen and Chernyshevsky set a materialist tone for the development of Populist philosophy, their ideas retained remnants of idealism to varying degrees. This point was later amplified by the liberal Populists and became a major target of Lenin's critique of Populism.
At the end of the nineteenth century, as Russian capitalism advanced irreversibly, a vast gap emerged between Populist ideals and the reality of economic change, leading to the rise of a group of liberal Populists who leaned toward the bourgeoisie. To "rationalize" their political claims, liberal Populists turned further toward subjective idealism on epistemological issues. Among them, the most representative and influential was Nikolay Mikhailovsky, known as the "chief ideologist" of liberal Populism. In April 1872, the Russian edition of Capital, translated by the Populist revolutionary Lopatin and the Populist economist Danielson, was published. Mikhailovsky published a review article specifically in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland)—"On the Russian Edition of Marx’s Book"—recommending Capital to Russian readers while also expressing many Populist philosophical views. Mikhailovsky believed that Russian social phenomena should be viewed through a so-called "all-human principle" that was neither Western nor Eastern; the victory of this "principle" in Russia was merely a matter of time. As to where this "principle" originated, Mikhailovsky’s answer was that it came from Russia—"many such things can be seen from its past and even its present, and by grasping them, one can prevent the incorrect aspects of European civilization" (Selected Works of Russian Populists, p. 231). To this end, Mikhailovsky constructed a so-called "subjective method in sociology," arguing that the objective world should exist and develop in a manner consistent with subjective consciousness, and that the task of the "sociologist" was to elucidate those ideal conditions that enable human nature to be realized and make things conform to human wishes. Drawing on Lenin’s "economic romanticism" (Lenin’s critical assessment of Populist economics), some Western scholars have defined Mikhailovsky’s philosophical views as a kind of "sociological romanticism" (cf. Walicki, p. 56). In 1877, Mikhailovsky again published an article in Otechestvennye Zapiski—"Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky"—ostensibly defending Marx's Capital but actually distorting Marxism. By the 1890s, the incompatibility between Mikhailovsky’s "subjective sociology" and dialectical materialism became increasingly prominent. Because Mikhailovsky was highly influential in the Russian intellectual circles of the time, and his "subjective sociology" largely catered to the "voluntiarist" ideological tendencies within the Populist movement, many Russian revolutionaries accepted his idealist views, consciously or unconsciously. In 1894, Mikhailovsky published the article "Literature and Life" in the liberal Populist publication Russkoye Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth), which he led, officially launching a polemic against Russian Marxists. Within this intellectual context, the young Lenin, having just stepped onto the revolutionary stage, recognized that for scientific socialism to spread and develop in Russia, the influence of Populism had to be cleared away. The first task was to complete the philosophical critique of liberal Populism.
Lenin pointed out that although Mikhailovsky claimed to be impressed by Marx’s immense power of demonstration and complimented Capital as a model of combining "logical power with profound erudition," what he actually did was narrow Marx’s ideas down to a purely economic theory, "completely ignoring the fundamental content of the doctrine and nonchalantly continuing to play the old tune of 'subjective sociology'" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 103). For Mikhailovsky, the only thing that mattered was how society could satisfy the needs of human nature; the theory he "created did not put forward the contradictions of social interests, but vainly counted on another path of development" (ibid., p. 366). Borrowing from the psychological maneuvers of the character Agafya Tikhonovna in the Russian writer Gogol’s comedy The Marriage, Lenin vividly likened this utopian attempt to "patch together good things from various places" to "a young lady of marriageable age wanting to put one suitor’s nose on another suitor’s chin" (see Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 477). Furthermore, incorporating Marx’s classic exposition in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Lenin profoundly elucidated the materialist philosophical outlook while critiquing "subjective sociology." Lenin pointed out that the basic idea of materialism advocated by Marx and Engels "is the division of social relations into material social relations and ideological social relations. Ideological social relations are but the superstructure of material social relations, which take shape independently of the will and consciousness of man, and are the (resultant) form of man's activity for maintaining his existence" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, pp. 120-121). In other words, materialism discovered the origin of human social ideas themselves and concluded that the course of ideas depends on the course of things; it "is the only one compatible with scientific psychology," and "for the first time raised sociology to the level of a science" (ibid., p. 109). Conversely, when faced with complex social phenomena, subjectivists are always unable to distinguish between important and unimportant phenomena because they limit themselves to pointing out human social ideas and purposes, failing to trace them back to material social relations; they are therefore forced to resort to subjectivity in their explanation of socio-historical phenomena.
II. Critique of the Populist Distortion of Marxist Dialectics
In the 19th century, Russian intellectuals were deeply influenced by German Classical Philosophy; among its elements, the understanding of dialectics was a particularly prominent aspect. Herzen himself was profoundly influenced by Hegel. On one hand, Herzen opposed the metaphysics of artificial fragmentation and abstract ideas. In his view, "Truth is something living, just like all organic beings, and can only exist as a whole; once it is dissected into parts, its soul vanishes, and what remains is a lifeless abstraction with the stench of a corpse." (Herzen, 1962, p. 16) On the other hand, Herzen also opposed pure speculative philosophy and longed to use the Russian spirit to transform Hegelian dialectics, making it an intellectual force for changing the objective world. From this, Herzen proposed a famous view: "Hegel's philosophy is the algebra of revolution; it liberated man to an unprecedented degree, thoroughly destroyed the Christian world, and destroyed the obsolete world of tradition." (Herzen, 2018, p. 20) Herzen established the initial methodological foundation for Narodnik philosophy, which possessed a progressive character in the history of Russian thought. Lenin also remarked that Herzen "mastered Hegel’s dialectics" and "understood that dialectics is the 'algebra of revolution.'" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 284) After Herzen, it was Chernyshevsky who truly integrated dialectics with the core tenets of Narodnism. Although Chernyshevsky insisted he was not a follower of Hegel or Schelling, he spoke highly of the contribution made by the Hegelian and Schellingian dialectical systems to scientific development, and succinctly summarized dialectics into a single axiom—"In form, the highest point of development resembles the starting point from which it set out" (Selected Works of Chernyshevsky, Vol. 2, p. 93). Chernyshevsky believed that the essence of Hegel's entire system of thought lay in extending this axiom to every sphere and field through all phenomena. Proceeding from this understanding, Chernyshevsky "utilized the idea of the law of the negation of the negation in dialectics regarding development as a seeming return to the starting point" (An Qinian, p. 167) to argue that the socialist revolution should appropriately occur first in Russia, despite its economic and cultural backwardness.
Thus, Chernyshevsky constructed a logical consistency between the philosophical and political views of Narodnism, a viewpoint that was later further elaborated by Mikhailovsky. The difference between the two lies in the fact that Chernyshevsky, in his own era, pushed the Russian intellectual world to step out of the shackles of metaphysics and religious obscurantism, whereas Mikhailovsky, in his era, obstructed the dissemination of scientific socialism in Russia. Mikhailovsky believed that one of the theoretical cornerstones on which materialism is established is the indisputability of the dialectical process, and that the essential tool for materialists to analyze the regularity of development is the Hegelian dialectical formula of "affirmation—negation—negation of the negation," while Marx's outline of the history of philosophy was built upon the foundation of the Hegelian law of the syllogism. He wrote in Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky: "Capitalist private property is the negation of individual private property based on private labor; then follows the historical negation of this negation, restoring individual property once more, but this restoration is built upon the achievements of the capitalist era—that is, on the cooperation of free laborers and the common possession of the land and the productive forces [productive forces/means of production] produced by the laborers themselves." (Mikhailovsky, p. 37) In Mikhailovsky’s view, the historical process of things is essentially inscrutable; he therefore attempted to simply equate Marx's application of dialectics with the Hegelian "triad" [5], thereby undermining the foundation of dialectical materialism and further denying the truth of Marxist philosophy. To this, Lenin launched a profound critique. As the American scholar Kevin Anderson noted: "Mikhailovsky launched a new attack on Marx in the 1890s, arguing that Marx's method was determined by Hegelian dialectics and was thus erroneous and distorted; Lenin, in turn, sought to defend Marx." (Anderson, p. 21)
Lenin accurately perceived Mikhailovsky’s theoretical intentions and pointed out relentlessly that although Mikhailovsky used certain expressions from Engels' Anti-Dühring as evidence for his own views, in reality, Engels' classic arguments refuting Dühring were equally applicable to refuting Mikhailovsky. Lenin reaffirmed that Marx did not use the Hegelian "triad" to "prove" anything; his focus always remained on studying the process of the development of social phenomena. The purpose of Engels citing some natural and social phenomena as examples of the "triad" was to emphasize that "the task of the materialist is to correctly and accurately depict the actual historical process; while insisting on dialectics and choosing examples to prove the correctness of the triad is merely a vestige of Hegelianism from which scientific socialism grew, a vestige of the Hegelian mode of expression." (Complete Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 133) Lenin further analyzed Mikhailovsky’s deeper motive: namely, to evade the core content of materialist dialectics—that social evolution is a natural-historical process of socio-economic development. Although the liberal Narodniks were unwilling to admit this, they were incapable of refuting it, and so they had no choice but to force-fit Hegelianism onto Marx, attempting to dissolve the scientific nature of materialist dialectics by highlighting the "purely dialectical nature" of Hegelian philosophy. In Lenin’s view, Marxist dialectics regards society as a "living organism in constant development" and is therefore the "scientific method in sociology," which is diametrically opposed to the metaphysical methodology of the "subjective method in sociology." Plekhanov also stated that only Marxism truly realized the "algebra of revolution" (Selected Philosophical Works of Plekhanov, Vol. 1, p. 72). In fact, the person truly trapped in Hegelian idealism was Mikhailovsky himself. As previously mentioned, Mikhailovsky’s "subjective sociology" maintained that the development of objective things should conform to a certain "all-human principle," which appears more like a Russian version of Hegelianism. The difference was that the "Absolute Spirit," which was objective in Hegel, was transformed and subjectivized in Mikhailovsky.
It must be specified that Lenin’s opposition to Mikhailovsky’s distortion of Marxist methodology as a Hegelian "triad" did not mean that Lenin disregarded the influence of Hegelian philosophy on materialist dialectics. The reason Lenin mentioned this influence less frequently when critiquing Narodnism was that in the actual theoretical struggle, it was necessary to explain the fallacies of the Narodnik philosophical view by placing more emphasis on the thorough transcendence of Hegelian philosophy by dialectical materialism. Regarding this, Lenin once made a special clarification: namely, that he was clarifying the "present content" of materialism, rather than denying the connection between Marxism and Hegelianism in its historical origins. (Cf. Complete Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 356) In fact, in his subsequent philosophical reflections and revolutionary practice, Lenin repeatedly emphasized the importance of correctly viewing Hegelian dialectics. For example, in the 1904 work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Lenin proposed that one should at no time vulgarize the "great Hegelian dialectics which Marxism, after putting it on its feet, has taken over," and that "true dialectics does not justify personal errors, but studies inevitable transitions, proving their inevitability by a detailed study of the development in all its concreteness." (Cf. Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 523)
Looked at historically, from Herzen and Chernyshevsky to Mikhailovsky, the Russian Narodniks had always attempted to transform Hegelian doctrine to serve the Russian revolution, but they were unable to complete this task. Marx completed the theoretical "transformation" of Hegelianism, while the one who applied this intellectual crystallization to revolutionary practice and achieved great success was Lenin. As the Western "Leninologist" [6] Neil Harding stated: "Lenin rediscovered the Hegelian roots in the dialectical structure of Marx's thought, a rediscovery that was highly innovative and unique at the time." (Harding, p. 13)
III. Critique of the Narodnik Idealist and "Heroic" Conceptions of History
The conception of history is the most wichtige [important] aspect of Russian Narodnik ideology and theory; in a certain sense, one might even say that Narodnism is a historical philosophy concerning a special view of Russian social development. Since Herzen, although Russian Narodnism tended toward materialism on epistemological issues, it exhibited a clear idealist tendency in its conception of history—which is what Lenin meant when he said they had "come right up to dialectical materialism but halted before historical materialism" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 284). As mentioned previously, Russian Narodnism tended to explain the historical development of human society as an evolution conforming to certain principles, rather than as a natural-historical process. They regarded the progress of human intellect and the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas as the primary motive force of historical development; they "did not entirely shake off the shackles of metaphysical thought-methods, and particularly in the realm of social history, they essentially retained idealist views" (Miao Litian, p. 5), which created a fundamental contradiction with the Marxist materialist conception of history.
Herzen believed that "Man's mission lies not only in logic, but also in construction within the world of social history, the world of spiritual freedom and active action." (Herzen, 1962, p. 86) Chernyshevsky attributed the cause of social progress to the development of reason, believing that "The reason of men gradually breaks free from the shackles of their weaknesses and defects, and uses the power of reason to gradually improve men" (Selected Works of Chernyshevsky, Vol. 2, p. 479). While Lavrov touched the threshold of the materialist conception of history in his representative work Historical Letters, suggesting that the struggle of interest groups drives historical development, he stopped there and turned to emphasize that the needs of the individual are the necessary starting point for explaining any historical phenomenon—"All elements of historical phenomena can be reduced to the various needs of the individual" (Selected Works of the Russian Narodniks, p. 80). By the time of the liberal Narodniks, Mikhailovsky, Vorontsov, and others, holding fast to an idealist conception of history, even went so far as to distort the materialist conception of history as being merely a theory of some kind of historical necessity; Mikhailovsky, despite having read The Communist Manifesto, Capital, and The Poverty of Philosophy, actually claimed not to know in which work Marx had expounded the materialist conception of history. The ideological confusion caused by the Narodniks among Russian revolutionaries filled many Russian Marxists with anxiety; however, due to their insufficient theoretical cultivation, they lacked the theoretical weapons to strike back. In 1894, the young Lenin read his representative work critiquing the Narodniks and expounding Marxism, What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats (hereafter referred to as What the "Friends of the People" Are?), to a Marxist circle in St. Petersburg. This pamphlet, nicknamed the "Yellow Notebook," spread rapidly after being lithographed and published, triggering widespread discussion and a strong reaction; it was regarded by Russian revolutionaries of the time as "the book that expounded the views of revolutionary Social-Democracy in the best, most powerful, and most complete way" (Krupskaya, p. 7).
Lenin pointed out in What the "Friends of the People" Are? that the Narodnik conception of history "always a priori invents some general theories that never yield any results" (Complete Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 113). He resolutely opposed Mikhailovsky’s attempt to brand Marxism with the label of "explaining the whole of man’s past." In Lenin’s view, the materialist conception of history does not attempt to explain all history of all social formations, but as a scientific methodology for explaining history, it "will necessarily be applicable to all other social formations, even though these social formations have not yet been subjected to special factual study and detailed analysis" (ibid., p. 115). Compared to the idealist conception of history, the materialist conception of history is able to find the most essential and foundational issues amidst complex social phenomena—namely, the interaction between the productive forces and the relations of production: "Only by reducing social relations to relations of production and the latter to the level of the productive forces, could a firm basis be found for the conception that the development of social formations is a process of natural history" (Complete Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 110). Therefore, the materialist conception of history "is not 'more or less a scientific' conception of history, as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of history" (ibid., p. 112).
Lenin emphasized that without the materialist conception of history, there would be no social science. The problem with the Populist conception of history was that, while it acknowledged historical laws, it focused solely on the role of subjective social ideas and purposes. It failed to look further to see the decisive role of material production, and even less did it recognize the reality of class as an objective factor in socio-historical development. Conversely, Marxism "attributes the decisive influence in social development to objective forces, primarily to the 'productive forces,' and not to the subjective thoughts of individual thinkers" (Cole, p. 408). In short, Marxism overthrew the view of society as an accidental, mechanical combination of individuals that could be changed at the whim of certain persons. As Lenin stated, Marxism "elaborated the concept of the socio-economic formation as the sum-total of given relations of production, and elaborated the fact that the development of such formations is a process of natural history, thereby for the first time providing a scientific basis for sociology" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, pp. 111-112). Regarding the Narodniks' simplification of the materialist conception of history into a theory of historical necessity, Lenin also delivered a powerful counter-attack. Lenin believed that although the Narodniks called themselves socialists, they were unable to provide a scientific answer to the question of why socialism is possible or why it is necessary. Starting from idealism, Populism could only arrive at subjective dogmatism such as "only the socialist system conforms to human nature" (ibid., p. 127). Unlike all previous socialists, Marx "by this objective analysis of the capitalist system, proved the necessity of its transformation into the socialist system" (ibid.). Thus, the materialist conception of history transcended philosophy of history in the general sense and rose to the level of historical science.
Russian Populism tended to believe that the true interests of the people were identified by a small number of intellectuals; for example, the voice of the peasantry often conflicted with their "true" interests (cf. Copleston, p. 139), and a few intellectuals could educate and lead the people to participate in revolution with a single call. In his famous novel What Is to Be Done?, Chernyshevsky [7] referred to these commoner-intellectuals as "typical people," believing that they had a responsibility to educate and lead the Russian people who were yet to be enlightened. Lavrov [8] also believed that it was "separate, struggling individuals" who drove historical development: "They preserve within themselves all the possibilities of the future. If these people did not exist in society, any historical progress would immediately cease" (Selected Works of the Russian Narodniks, p. 68). Mikhailovsky [9] went even further, making a dualistic division of human society into "heroes" and the "crowd": a "hero" is "one who leads the masses by their example toward good or evil, to perform the noblest or the basest of deeds, rational or irrational" (ibid., p. 815); the "crowd" consists of those "capable of being led by the noblest or the basest examples, or by those neither noble nor base" (ibid.). The most concentrated expression of the Populist "heroic conception of history" was the near-sacralized description of intellectuals in the Basic Propositions of the Narodniks—"they have detached themselves from personal self-interest or class interest, and are completely loyal to the latent ideas of truth among the laboring masses" (ibid., p. 554). A long-term consequence of this heroic conception of history was that, after the "Going to the People" [10] movement subsided, the Populist movement became increasingly detached from the masses. It first branched into the "Power-Seizure Faction" exemplified by Tkachev, who abandoned the organization and mobilization of the masses, and later saw the emergence of radical revolutionaries such as the "People's Will" and the "Combat Organization" of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, who resorted to terror and assassination to achieve the democratic revolutionary goal of overthrowing Tsarist rule. After his elder brother Aleksandr was executed for participating in the "People's Will" plot to assassinate the Tsar, the young Lenin realized there was no way out for the Populist movement: "We shall not take that road; that is not the road to take" (Chronicle of Lenin's Life, Vol. 1, p. 36).
Marx and Engels wrote in The Holy Family: "History is the activity of the masses; as historical activity deepens, the size of the mass of humanity whose activity it is will also increase" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, p. 287). Lenin adhered to the Marxist standpoint of the people's conception of history, launching a sharp critique against the Populists' dualistic heroic conception of history. In response to Mikhailovsky's claim that the materialist conception of history "ignores or incorrectly elucidates the hero and the masses," as well as the Populist tendency to slight the power of other social classes and believe that a few intellectuals could dictate Russia's path of development, Lenin offered an explicit refutation. In What the "Friends of the People" Are and The Heritage We Renounce, he successively expounded the core view of the materialist conception of history regarding the masses as the drivers of history: "the whole of history is made up of the actions of individuals, who are undoubtedly active figures" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 129). "As man's history-making activity grows broader and deeper, the size of that mass of the population which is the conscious maker of history is bound to increase" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 127). Lenin pointed out that the Narodniks always viewed the masses as objects for the application of measures, "as material that must be led onto one path or another, and never regarded the various classes of the population as independent historical actors on the given path" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, pp. 127-128). In other words, the Populist heroic conception of history objectified and instrumentalized the masses, thereby eliminating their subjective status; whereas Marxism views the people as "independent historical actors," thus placing the masses in the subjective position of driving historical development. In Lenin's view, this was precisely one of the most profound and important principles of the materialist conception of history.
IV. The Status of Lenin's Philosophical Critique of Russian Populism in the History of His Thought
A survey of the history of Lenin's thought reveals that Lenin rarely wrote specialized treatises on specific philosophical problems; instead, he used philosophy more as a method for understanding and transforming the world, applying it to actual theoretical struggles and political practice. His critique of Russian Populism was the preliminary application of Lenin's integration of the Marxist worldview and methodology with the needs of the actual struggle. The seeds of several very important viewpoints in Lenin's philosophical thought can be found in his philosophical critique of Russian Populism.
First, regarding the question of epistemology. We know that Lenin's representative view on epistemology is active reflectionism, as stated in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: "Our sensations, our consciousness are only an image of the external world," and "materialism deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 66). Lenin systematically elaborated his Marxist epistemological thought while critiquing Machism [11], which—like Mikhailovsky's "subjective sociology"—was a form of subjective idealism. In fact, in his early critique of Mikhailovsky, Lenin noted that this Russian subjectivist "had no desire to deny regularity, yet asserted that freedom of the will is a fact of our consciousness" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 382). When critiquing Bogdanov, who held Machist philosophical views, Lenin again used Mikhailovsky as an example, pointing out that Bogdanov, like Mikhailovsky, "completely failed to understand 'what is idealism' and what is materialism" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 222). Lenin's critique of Mikhailovsky's "subjective sociology" provided theoretical preparation for his later critique of Bogdanov's idealism. Furthermore, in critiquing the Populists, Lenin particularly emphasized that materialism must not be vulgarized into a form of objectivism. This is because materialism is not only "more consistent, profound, and comprehensive" than objectivism, but it also acknowledges that the evaluation of any thing represents a certain class standpoint—that is, "materialism includes within itself what is called party-mindedness" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 363). This reflection later developed into the famous thesis in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: "Recent philosophy is as partisan as was philosophy two thousand years ago" (Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 240). Thus, it is evident that the core viewpoint of Lenin's thought regarding the party-mindedness of materialist philosophy had already begun to take shape during his critique of Populism in the mid-1890s.
Second, regarding the question of dialectics. In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin proposed the famous idea of the "identity of the three"—that is, "In Capital, the logic, dialectics, and epistemology [three words are not needed: it is the same thing] of materialism are applied to one science; this materialism has taken everything of value in Hegel and developed it further" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 55, p. 290). Scholars have long held differing views on how to understand this thought of Lenin's. Some argue it suggests that Lenin's dialectics belong to an "epistemological dialectics," while others emphasize that it is inconsistent with Lenin's own thought to reduce it merely to "applying dialectics to the theory of reflection," divorced from his praxeological understanding of the relationship between thinking and being (see Sun Zheng-yu, p. 15). Regarding this issue, we might find some clues in Lenin's relevant discussions in What the "Friends of the People" Are. Mikhailovsky believed that Marx "was fond, and even overfond, of the assistance of the Hegelian dialectic" (Mikhailovsky, p. 35), and that his thesis in Capital regarding the capitalist development inevitably leading to the expropriators being expropriated was of a "purely dialectical nature"—that is, the Marxist understanding of the laws of social development was "put forward purely dialectically" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 137). In response to this distortion of Marx's dialectical thought, Lenin pointed out that Marx's requirement for social science was that it should accurately describe the actual process, rather than applying a priori dialectical laws to socio-economic formations: "He strictly observed this requirement in Capital, having set himself the task of making a scientific analysis of the capitalist social formation; and having proved that the actual development of this organization, which is taking place before our eyes, has such a tendency and that it must inevitably perish and turn into another, higher organization, he ends his analysis" (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 147). Clearly, from his youth, Lenin always understood and applied dialectics—this "living soul of Marxism"—proceeding from actual social history and the needs of practical problems. This was not only the methodological guidance for Lenin in leading the victory of the Russian October Revolution and establishing the first socialist state in human history, but also an important prerequisite for Lenin's later proposal of "revolutionary dialectics" which possessed "higher philosophical theoretical thinking and world-historical height" (Wang Dong, p. 5).
Third, regarding the issue of the historical outlook. To refute the liberal Narodniks' distortion of Capital, Lenin compared historical materialism to the "skeleton" of Capital and pointed out that Marx made this "skeleton" flesh and blood through two types of efforts: first, by correctly analyzing "heaps of factual material," and second, by "investigating at every step" the superstructure corresponding to a given economic base. Since the publication of Capital, historical materialism has no longer been a mere hypothesis, but a truth increasingly proven by science. Furthermore, Lenin went a step further by applying historical materialism to analyze the economic and social realities of Russia at different stages. Engels once remarked that Marx originally planned to analyze Russian land ownership in Volume III of Capital, but ultimately did not realize this plan. It was Lenin who completed this theoretical work in the history of the development of Marxism, as centrally embodied in his work of political economy written to criticize Narodnism, The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In this work, Lenin learned from Marx's method in writing Capital, analyzing voluminous economic statistics to, on the one hand, completely refute the Narodnik view that the development of capitalism in Russia was insufficient and, on the other hand, scientifically demonstrate the role of the working class as the political leading force and the peasantry as the ally of the proletariat. Lenin both "fully explained the depth of the sources of the peasant revolutionary movement and the deep roots of the revolutionary nature of the peasant masses," and profoundly showed that the peasantry's "vacillation between the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat is inevitable." He thereby thoroughly negated the Narodnik view of peasant revolution, which held that Russian peasants could undertake the revolutionary tasks of industrial workers in Western European capitalist societies and that a Russian peasant revolution would thus possess a socialist character. Lenin’s method of permeating political economy research with historical materialism was later developed in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916, becoming an important main thread running through the history of Lenin's thought.
Furthermore, beginning with his critique of the Narodniks' "Heroic" view of history [12], a steadfast people-centered view of history (人民史观) ran through Lenin's entire revolutionary life. Historically, many members of the Bolshevik Party had been Narodniks before turning to Marxism, so Lenin remained vigilant against the "dying embers glowing again" [13] of the Heroic view of history within the Bolshevik Party. For example, after the October Revolution, Lenin emphasized to the whole Party that it would be a very naive idea to think of building a communist society by relying solely on Communists. "Communists are but a drop in the ocean, a drop in the ocean of the people. They can lead the people on their path only if they correctly determine the path, not just from the perspective of the direction of world historical development." In practice, Lenin was also very careful to avoid blind followership toward himself within the Party, always making the greatest effort to persuade people with theory during ideological debates concerning major decisions. Of course, Lenin’s critique of the Narodniks' Heroic view of history did not mean he neglected the leading role of revolutionaries in mass movements. Lenin believed that the fundamental strength of a revolutionary movement lies in the masses, and "victory cannot be achieved by the vanguard alone," while at the same time, revolutionaries must provide leadership based on scientific theory; both are indispensable for the victory of the revolution. As he said in What Is to Be Done?: "We shall certainly succeed in this, for the spontaneously awakening masses will also produce increasing numbers of 'professional revolutionaries' from their own ranks."
One more point needs to be noted: Lenin's critique of Russian Narodnism was not an all-encompassing negation, but rather focused on identifying the active, historically progressive value within Narodnism while criticizing it. Engels once proposed that "what is formally incorrect from an economic point of view may be correct from the point of view of world history." Lenin attached great importance to this idea, requiring Russian Marxists to adhere to this "historical dialectics," and while criticizing the "dross of the utopia" in Narodnism, to "carefully extract the healthy and valuable core of the sincere, resolute, and militant democracy of the peasant masses." The idea of "historical dialectics" that Lenin emphasized in his critique of Narodnism is also a key to understanding the development of Lenin's philosophical thought. "The early thought on historical dialectics became Lenin's standpoint for considering problems. Without seeing this, it is in a sense impossible to understand Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks." (Yang Haifeng, p. 12)
In general, the philosophical critique of Russian Narodnism is an important constituent part of Lenin's philosophical thought and an ideological precursor to the development of Marxist philosophy into the "Leninist stage." Together with Lenin's later critique of empirio-criticism, it constitutes two important "philosophical critiques" in the history of Lenin's thought. The former provided theoretical preparation for the latter, and the latter further deepened and developed the core viewpoints of the former. In his philosophical critique of Russian Narodnism, Lenin initially elucidated his Marxist philosophical outlook, which laid a solid philosophical foundation for the formation and development of Leninism. The 20th National Congress of the CPC pointed out that only by persisting in the application of dialectical materialism and historical materialism can we answer the major questions raised by the times and practice, and maintain the vigorous vitality and strength of Marxism. Lenin's philosophical critique of Russian Narodnism is a model of using dialectical materialism and historical materialism to solve revolutionary problems in the history of Marxist philosophy. The intellectual characteristics it contains—such as dialectical thinking, the people-centered view of history, and problem-consciousness—are highly consistent with the "Six Must-Upholds" [14] for grasping the worldview and methodology of Sinicized and modernized Marxism. They are precious ideological and theoretical resources worthy of our in-depth study.