Description
The result of over three years of intensive work, begun while he was in prison and exile, The Development of Capitalism in Russia was first published in March 1899. At that time the populists (Narodniks), who were still the most influential strand of socialist thought in Russia, wanted to preserve the village communes, as a basis for future socialism and as a bulwark against a capitalist development which they reckoned was harmful and in any case could not amount to much. In his full-length study, Lenin showed that capitalist development was substantial; that it was proceeding despite and within the framework of the commune, and would continue to do so; and that socialists should demand the removal of all the old legal obstacles to the quickest and most free development of capitalism. However, this approach did not lessen his insistence on working-class political independence from bourgeois reformers and liberals.