ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author deals with Lenin's 1893–1900 intervention in the Russian controversy over capitalist development, which the author considers to be a very fruitful contribution to Marxist theory concerning pre-industrial capitalist economic forms, and one which has not been taken into account in post-war Marxist analyses. Moreover, Lenin's analysis may be useful in exploring arguments about the genesis of capitalism, insofar as it is perceived as capitalist economic and social forms, which later Marxist theoreticians consider to be feudal or 'pre-capitalist'. The 'Narodniks', against whom the greater part of Lenin's polemic was directed, were historically the first and most powerful current of the Russian Marxist intelligentsia until the end of the nineteenth century. The fundamental error of Narodnik economics is that it ignores, or glosses over, the connection between the big and the small establishments.
