Socialist movement was still very weak.  In it Lenine defended the position of the Marxians, Plechanov and his group, that Russia was not an exception to the general law of capitalist development, as was claimed by the leaders of the People’s party, the Narodniki.  The book gave Lenine an assured position among the intellectual leaders of the movement, and was regarded as a conclusive defense of the position of the Plechanov group, to which Lenine belonged.  Since his overthrow of the Kerensky regime, and his attempt to establish a new kind of social state in Russia, Lenine has been frequently confronted by his own earlier reasoning by those who believe his position to be contrary to the true Marxian position.

From 1903 to 1906 Lenine’s views developed farther and farther away from those of his great teacher, George Plechanov.  His position in the period of the First Duma can best be stated, perhaps, in opposition to the position of Plechanov and the Mensheviki.  Accepting the Marxian theory of historical development, Plechanov and his followers believed that Russia must pass through a phase of capitalist development before there could be a social—­as distinguished from a merely political—­revolution.  Certainly they believed, an intensive development of industry, bringing into existence a strong capitalist class, on the one hand, and a strong proletariat, on the other hand, must precede any attempt to create a Social Democratic state.  They believed, furthermore, that a political revolution, creating a democratic constitutional system of government, must come before the social revolution could be achieved.  They accepted the traditional Marxian view that the achievement of this political revolution must be mainly the task of the bourgeoisie, and that the proletariat, and especially the Socialists, should co-operate with the enlightened bourgeoisie in attaining that political revolution without which there could never be a Socialist commonwealth.

Plechanov was not blind to the dangers of compromise which must be faced in basing the policy of a movement of the masses upon this reasoning.  He argued, however, that there was no choice in the matter at all; that the iron law of historical inevitability and necessity determined the matter.  He pointed out that the bourgeoisie, represented by the Constitutional Democrats in the political struggle, were compelled to wage relentless war upon Absolutism, the abolition of which was as absolutely essential to the realization of their class aims as it was to the realization of the class aims of the proletariat.  Hence, in this struggle, the capitalist class, as yet too weak to accomplish the overthrow of autocracy and Czarism, and the proletariat, equally dependent for success upon the overthrow of autocracy and Czarism, and equally too weak to accomplish it unaided, had to face the fact that historical development had given the two classes which were destined to wage a long conflict an immediate unity of interest.  Their imperative needs at the moment were not conflicting needs, but identical ones.  To divide their forces, to refuse to co-operate with each other, was to play the game of the Czar and his associates, argued Plechanov.