Talk:Nikolai Danielson

Letter from Marx to Zasulitch

"However, in the 1890s, Plekhanov, Lenin and their associates argued that capitalism in Russia must follow essentially the same course as capitalist development in Western Europe. Danielson believed that the "capitalist stage" of development could be foreshortened in Russia, since Russia's late development would allow it to adopt the latest western industrial technology without having to undergo the social evolution that had first produced it in the West. This theory went back to A.I. Herzen and N.G. Chernyshevsky and strongly influenced the theoreticians of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (PSR), such as Victor Chernov." (Article)

Marx wrote: "Should the Russian admirers of the capitalist system deny that such a development is theoretically possible, then I would ask them the following question. Did Russia have to undergo a long Western-style incubation of mechanical industry before it could make use of machinery, steamships, railways, etc.? Let them also explain how they managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, that whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries in the West.

...

If the spokesmen of the ‘new pillars of society’ deny that it is theoretically possible for the modern rural commune to follow such a path, then they should tell us whether Russia, like the West, was forced to pass through a long incubation of mechanical industry before it could acquire machinery, steamships, railways, and so on. One might then ask them how they managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries [elsewhere] in the West."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/ --80.108.185.59 (talk) 23:16, 7 July 2014 (UTC)