_One move of hers has lifted the people over scores of steps, up
which in times of peace we would have had to drag ourselves with hardships
and fatigue_." The idea that the Revolution had "lifted the people over
scores of steps" possessed him and changed his whole conception of the
manner in which Socialism was to come. Still calling himself a Marxist, and
believing as strongly as ever in the fundamental Marxian doctrines, as he
understood them, he naturally devoted his keen mind with its peculiar
aptitude for Talmudic hair-splitting to a new interpretation of Marxism. He
declared his belief that in Russia it was possible to change from
Absolutism to Socialism immediately, without the necessity of a prolonged
period of capitalist development. At the same time, he maintained a
scornful attitude toward the "Utopianism" of the peasant Socialists, who
had always made the same contention, because he believed they based their
hopes and their policy upon a wrong conception of Socialism. He had small
patience for their agrarian Socialism with its economic basis in
peasant-proprietorship and voluntary co-operation.
He argued that the Russian bourgeoisie was so thoroughly infected with the
ills of the bureaucratic system that it was itself decadent; not virile
and progressive as a class aiming to possess the future must be.
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