# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I
§ 150.
WE now come to the concluding section of the second portion of this study, of our sketch of Russian philosophy of history and of Russian philosophy of religion, and have to expound the leading social and political trends and mass movements—Marxist social democracy, the narodničestvo, the social revolutionary movement, modern anarchism, and liberalism. From the nature of the case, the individualities of men of letters and of leaders will be less conspicuous than in the preceding studies, for we are now concerned mainly with general trends and currents.
We begin with Marxism and social democracy. Socialism is as old in Russia as in Europe. The socialist ideas of Europe always secured their earliest adherents in Russia.
The humanitarians at the close of the eighteenth and at the opening of the nineteenth century, those who advocated the liberation of the peasantry, had a political and indeed a democratic conception of their humanitarian doctrine, and this was especially noteworthy in Pestel. During the forties, socialist doctrine, if it was not the actual cause of the severance between radicals and liberals, at least made that severance more conspicuous and more definite. Bělinskii, Herzen, and Bakunin on the left, and Granovskii on the right, were characteristic representatives of the distinction between socialism ​and liberalism. (In Bělinskii's case this is shown by his youthful drama.)
The Petraševcy (1848) are the Russian analogues of the French revolutionary socialists of the same epoch.
The Russians were influenced above all by the teachings of French socialists; but German philosophy, and notably that of Feuerbach, likewise had its effect in promoting the development of political radicalism and socialism. Towards the close of the forties, the ideas of Marx and Lassalle began to be known in Russia.
After the liberation of the peasantry, socialism upon a theoretical basis of materialism became the credo of the intelligentsia. Černyševskii and his positivist realism matured into nihilism. In the secret society of the Narodnaja Volja, revolutionary aspirations secured their most logical elaboration in the form of a deliberate policy of terrorism, It was significant that the little secret societies should have been styled "communes."
Herzen, Bakunin, and Černyševskii regarded the Russian mir as the social unit of the society which was to be renovated by the social revolution, and this view was elaborated into a complete social and economic theory, the narodničestvo. Simultaneously Lavrov and Mihailovskii were endeavouring to found socialism anew as a philosophical system.
This brings us to the eighties, to the decade of reaction following upon the assassination of Alexander II. Even before the momentous March 13, 1881, a split had occurred in the revolutionary camp, and the Marxist social democracy had been organized under the influence of Marx and Engels, the terrorist tendency being greatly weakened, though not entirely destroyed.
A survey of the development of "Russian socialism" (or "Russian communism") since Herzen, cannot fail to convince us that the Russian socialists, like the French and the German socialists, were looking for a new philosophy and a new ethic. Life was to be entirely renovated; society was to be rebuilt upon completely new foundations.
In the domain of theory, this new foundation was to be positivism and materialism, the converse and the negation of official theocracy, Dostoevskii, therefore, had good reason for equating socialism with atheism and for pointing to atheism as the leading tenet of socialism.
​Positivist materialism and atheism had as its ethical aim the creation of the new man, and as its political aim the bringing about of the social revolution. Socialist practice had an ethical basis. Its ideal was a fundamental transformation, a social revolution, which should sweep away once and for all every form of injustice and inequality.
In practice, with one section of the revolutionary socialists, this ideal led to terrorism. The mass rising of the decabrists had given ocular demonstration of the impracticability of mass revolution.
The intellectuals, collectively forming the intelligentsia, were the leaders of the socialistic and philosophic revolution. This revolution was to liberate the mužik, the peasantry being then practically synonymous with Russia. Narodničestvo, mužikophilism, was characteristic of Russian socialism. It was not until a later date that the operatives, that urban influences, became important for socialism; and we have to remember that, after all, the urban operative who came to serve the needs of expanding industry was nothing more than a peasant. Marxism turned its attention to these operatives.
§ 151.
BY the term Marxism we understand in the first place the actual doctrines or works of Marx; but the word also signifies the movement inaugurated by Marx in philosophy, sociology (above all the philosophy of history), and economics; finally we have to think of the Marxist social democracy as a working-class party, and of the political aims and methods of that party.
Marx's doctrines and ideas speedily became known in Russia, and were widely diffused, the first translation of Capital being into Russian, Marx more than once drew attention to the fact that the Russians had always been enthusiastically receptive of his teaching, notwithstanding his criticism of Russia and his hostility to that country.
Bělinskii gave a friendly greeting to the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher" of Marx and Ruge. Prior to the year 1848, information concerning Marx had been sent to St. Petersburg by P. V. Annenkov, author at a later date of a history of literature. We have already made this writer's acquaintance as a member of Bělinskii's circle. From 1846 ​to 1848 he was living abroad, and was an associate of the Russian refugees, notably of Herzen and Bakunin. He was acquainted with Marx, and corresponded with him. A detailed report from Marx to Annenkov dealing with Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misére (1846) has recently been published. Among the Russian refugees, notably in Paris, there were towards the close of the forties numerous adherents of the socialism of that day, and Marx may have been personally acquainted with some of them.
Herzen and Bakunin were already acquainted with Marx at this date.
In the beginning of the fifties, the activity of all the refugees, those from Russia no less than those from Germany and elsewhere, was paralysed by the reaction after 1848, although Herzen and Ogarev continued their labours. During the early sixties, after the liberation of the peasantry, the number of Russian refugees underwent considerable increase, and their activities became more lively, being stimulated by Herzen's "Kolokol," by Bakunin's work as agitator, and by the struggle between Marx and Bakunin in the International. The repressive movement in Russia swelled the number of the refugees, and favoured the growth of their revolutionary sentiments.
In 1862, Bakunin translated the Communist Manifesto. In 1865, Tkačev, in his literary critiques, diffused the doctrine of historical materialism as formulated by Marx in 1859. In 1872 was published Nikolai-on's translation of the first volume of Capital (2nd edition, 1898). Bakunin, too, wished to translate this work. Nikolai-on translated the second volume of Capital in 1885, and the third volume in 1896.
As early as 1870, Mihailovskii applied Marx's theory to the historical development of Russia; subsequently (1877) he discussed Žukovskii's criticism of Marx; in the nineties, Mihailovskii defended the views of the narodniki against the Marxists.
Lavrov, too, was in friendly relations with Marx and his circle, and Lavrov learned much from Marx.
In 1861, Šelgunov availed himself of Engel's work upon the condition of the English working classes in the compilation ​of his own account of working-class conditions in England and France.
Engel's book on Dühring became known in Russia soon after its appearance (1878), and Dühring was eagerly read by the Russian socialists.
From the outset, Marx's theory of value, as a theory of labour, secured acceptance in Russia. The first detailed discussion of Marx in the Russian tongue was published in 1871. This was Ziber's book, Ricardo's Theory of Value and of Capital in relation to subsequent Elucidations and Enlargements, a work in which Marx's doctrine was represented as a development of the teachings of Ricardo and Adam Smith. Among Russian economists, Marx's theory of value has numerous and notable adherents down to the present day (Čuprov, Isaev, etc.).
Marx (like Engels) learned Russian, so that he might be able to study Russian works, above all statistical statementsconcerning economic conditions and their development. Some of his letters bear witness to the result of these labours, letters to Nikolai-on, Sorgé, Kugelmann, and others, wherein Marx is mainly concerned with the fundamental theme of the narodniki.
Marx’s doctrine of historical materialism had a fertilising influence upon Russian historiography and upon Russian histories of literature. Allusion has already been made to Tkačev's literary criticisms. There is a notable quantity of Marxist literary criticism in Russian, though this consists merely of studies of individual authors, for no complete history of Russian literature on Marxist lines has as yet been produced. Certain collective studies of literary history have recently appeared, but none embodying a consistent exposition of historical materialism.
The same observation applies to certain Marxist disquisitions on Russian history. Last of all we have to consider the matter which is of chief importance to ourselves, the achievements of Russian Marxism in the domains of philosophy and of the philosophy of history, which will shortly be discussed in some detail.
§ 152.
THE split in the Zemlja i Volja in 1879 resulted in the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1883, the year in which Marx died.
​The terrorist Narodnaja Volja crumbled away after the assassination of Alexander II, and the party of the Černyi Pereděl developed into the Social Democratic Party upon a Marxist basis, the social democrats tending more and more to constitute a working-class party.
It is a very difficult matter to furnish in Europe a history of the Russian social democracy which shall even approach to accuracy; the sources of information are inaccessible and have hitherto been subjected to little critical examination, while even in Russian literature but little has been written upon the history of the Russian social democracy. I can, therefore, attempt here no more than an incomplete sketch. Should I make any mistakes regarding facts, I must excuse them by the explanation that the Russian theorists and historians of the Russian social democracy differ among themselves as to points of the first importance in respect of chronological and other data.
The evolution of Russian manufacturing industry and the growth of the operative population during the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III, rendered possible the development of a spontaneous labour movement with which the socialist intelligentsia made common cause. From 1878 onwards, notable strikes began to occur. The strikes were non-political, for the workers did not formulate any political demands. The opening years of the accentuated reaction during the reign of Alexander III were characterised by an arrest of movement among factory operatives no less than elsewhere, but at this time the government took the first steps in the way of factory legislation.
The organisation of the Social Democratic Party in 1883 was fraught with weighty consequences. This organisation was first effected abroad, members of the Černyi Pereděl coming together under Plehanov's leadership and styling themselves Group for the Liberation of Labour (gruppa osvoboždenija truda). In St. Petersburg the first social democratic group was formed in 1885.
The political quiescence of the eighties was broken in 1891 owing to the famine and the cholera, and a great ferment occurred among the working classes. The intelligentsia of all trends and of all shades of opinion shook off the apathy of the preceding decade. In 1891 was established the Party of ​National Right, which aimed at effecting an alliance between the liberal and the revolutionary elements for the struggle against despotism. This party issued a periodical and a number of pamphlets. It was suppressed in 1894, but the suppression did not entirely put an end to its activities.
The Social Democratic Party gained increasing influence, and in consequence of the livelier political movement which ensued upon 1891 this body became the leading force among the workers. Until then, the remnants and the successors of the Narodnaja Volja, organised in various towns as petty groups, had maintained the upper hand, but in the strikes that became increasingly frequent after 1893 social democratic leadership was already dominant. The great strike of the St. Petersburg textile workers during 1896 may be regarded as the opening of the veritable labour movement.
The conduct of strikes, and the campaign against the entrepreneurs and the government, were undertaken by the League for the Struggle to Liberate the Workers, organised in the spring of 1895. The agitation among the operatives was partly oral and partly written (proclamations).
Of great importance was the comprehensive organisation of the Jewish workers of the west and the south to form the Bund. This took place in 1897. In view of the outlawed position of the Jews, the establishment of a Jewish socialist party was a matter of moment to the working classes, and further, the Bund served to give expression to the revolutionary sentiments of the Jews.
Just as in the working-class organisations the growing social democracy constituted an opposition to the adherents of the Narodnaja Volja, so during the middle nineties did those who were expounding the theories of the social democracy enter into a controversy with the narodničestvo concerning the application of the principles of the philosophy of history to explain the evolution of Russia. In 1884 Struve took the field; in 1895 Plehanov (Beltov) played a prominent part; and there were many other notable Marxist writers, some of them confining their activities to the domain of theory (Tugan-Baranovskii, Bulgakov, etc.), and others being in addition practical workers on behalf of social democracy (Věra Zasulič, Lenin, Martov, etc.). I have previously referred to this important literary duel, and shall have something more to say about the matter presently.
​In their campaign against the narodničestvo, most members of the intelligentsia took the side of the Marxists, but as soon as a victory had been gained over the narodniki, a great crisis took place within Marxism itself, leading ultimately to the secession of a number of distinguished theorists from social democracy and from Marxism. The writings and teachings of Sombart, Herckner, Schulze-Gavernitz, and Brentano, had for some time been exercising considerable influence, and these secessions were the practical upshot, the beginnings of German revisionism and above all the coming of Bernstein to the front notably contributing. The influence of those English and French socialists who are opposed to orthodox Marxism was less conspicuous in Russia than that of the German revisionists.
The Russian social democrats and their Marxist leaders, notably Plehanov, maintained a continuous and lively intercourse, both literary and personal, with the German social democracy. German influence and the German example were decisive, above all in view of the fact that the German social democracy, the ideas and the organisation of the German movement, were exercising a similar influence upon the French and English labour movements and upon socialism generally.
In Germany, after the repeal of the exceptional laws in 1890, the labour movement and the socialist current greatly increased in vigour; but the movement of the "Jungen" now began, and Vollmar and the Badenese compelled the party leaders of the social democracy to reconsider the question of tactics. It must not be forgotten that Engels had modified his views, especially upon the matter of revolution. Shortly before his death (1895) he had written the important preface to Marx's Class Struggles in France, and had here effected a far-reaching revision of social democratic tactics/
An analogous evolution took place in French, Belgian, and Italian socialism. Russian social democracy, while in the act of undergoing consolidation, was thus subjected to a cross fire from the orthodox Marxist and revisionist camps. It was only to be expected that in Russia, too, similar oppositions would speedily come to light.
As early as 1899, Struve gave expression to a direct opposition to orthodox Marxism. That which was at first manifested as critical revisionism, came before long to display itself as an independent philosophical trend, whose positive watch- word found expression in 1904 in the title of Bulgakov's essays ​From Marxism to Idealism. But whereas in Germany, Bernstein, all differences of opinion notwithstanding, desired and was able to remain in the party, the Russian revisionists cut themselves adrift from the social democracy.
In addition to revisionism, another independent trend known as "economism" found expression both tactically and in writing; this economism gives expression in Russia to the same opposition as exists in Europe between the political parties and the trade unions. The relationships between economism and revisionism remain obscure in respect of chronology no less than in respect of other matters.
In 1898 the first Russian social democratic congress took place, being held abroad. An organising central committee was appointed, and a program was elaborated, wherein the social democrats declared themselves to be a proletarian party (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party). The Jewish Bund joined the organisation.
The growth of the labour movement continued. In 1899 the reorganised Group for the Liberation of Labour set to work afresh, and there was great activity in all radical and liberal organisations. For both these trends, the year 1901 was rich in notable events. During this year there took place no less than 120 strikes. Among these the strike at Obuhov was of peculiar significance, since here for the first time barricades were erected by the workers. By this time the labour movement had become definitely political as well as economic.
Since 1899 the movement among the students had been markedly on the increase. At Kiev in 1901 there occurred an unprecedented academic revolution and a students' strike. The progressive professors, the men of letters, and all the advanced section of the intelligentsia, espoused the cause of the young people against the educational policy of the nagaika (the Cossack whip). Bogolěpov, minister for education, was shot by a student named Karpovič; in the following year another student, Balmašev, shot Sypjagin, the new minister for education.
From 1901 onwards terrorism and outrage again became dominant political forces. The traditions of the Narodnaja ​Volja were revived; the Social Revolutionary Party was organised (its beginnings date from about 1892); the fighting organisation (boevaja organisacia) of the social revolutionaries took the place of the extinct terrorist executive committee. The assassination of Sypjagin was followed in 1904 by that of Pleve and in 1905 by that of Grand Duke Sergius.
As the social revolutionary party increased in strength, and as Marxism became weakened by revisionism and economism, there ensued an increase in the vigour of the narodničestvo, which now entered the theoretic field as the "new" or "renovated" narodničestvo. The contentions by which the narodniki and the Marxists were kept asunder came to the front once more, for in the newly founded Marxist periodicals "Iskra" (Spark), 1901, and "Zarja" (Dawn), 1902, the former being a political and the latter a scientific journal, the Marxists were voicing their answers to the revisionist criticism, whilst the revisionists had entered into an alliance with the narodniki. The chief spokesmen of Marxism at this epoch were Plehanov, Věra Zasulič, L. Akselrod ("Orthodox"), Martov, Starověr (Potresov). Moreover, the vigorous movement among the peasantry which manifested itself in 1902, and the increasing urgency of the agrarian problem, served at first to strengthen the narodničestvo.
Journalistic discussion of the relationship of liberalism to Marxism and to socialism in general, and the cooperation which was desired by members of both these sections of thought, assumed palpable forms in 1902. In June of that year there was published at Stuttgart the first number of "Osvoboždenie" (Deliverance); edited by Struve, this periodical served the aims of the constitutionalist movement, and in especial those of the liberal members of the zemstvos. In 1903 was organised the League of Deliverance (Sojuz Osvoboždenija), which revived and extended the aims of the Party of National Right.
The same year, at the second congress (held in London) occurred the formal split in the Social Democratic Party. In especial, the group which controlled "Iskra" became severed into two distinct trends, the majority being led by Lenin and the minority by Martov. Simultaneously the Jewish Bund severed its connection with the party.
​At the outset the struggle between the two sections was declared to depend solely upon differences concerning the problem of organisation. The majority wished for rigid centralisation, whilst the minority considered that this centralisation would weaken the party. But in the course of an unduly rapid political evolution, additional differences of tactics and aim became apparent. On the whole, as far as it is possible to formulate these differences precisely, the bolševiki inclined towards the tactics of the social revolutionaries, and their tactical theories determined their general outlook on the situation and their choice of tactical methods. Whereas the men'ševiki desired that revolutionary energy should first be concentrated and that the masses of the workers should first be educated to understand socialist principles, the bolševiki believed in the imminent possibility of a definitive revolution, urged individuals and the masses towards an immediate struggle, and endeavoured to strengthen the centralist dictatorship as the framework of the future central government. They wished to follow the example of the Narodnaja Volja and to entrust the party leadership to a revolutionary élite.
In actual fact, Russia's internal and external situation was an incitement to a mass revolution. Universal dissatisfaction and a revolutionary mood had been stimulated by the disastrous war with Japan, whilst on the other hand this war had promoted the growth of nationalism, not the liberals alone, but converts from Marxism (Struve), having adopted nationalist views. Through the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements, all the progressive and all the conservative and reactionary forces in the country at length secured expression. The constitution, won by the revolution, rendered it possible to organise political parties, and work in the duma made it necessary for these parties to undertake practical administrative activities.
The bolševiki boycotted the duma and opposed cooperation with the liberals (cadets). Only with the social revolutionaries and with the trudoviki (members of the Labour Party) would they make common cause. The men'seviki, on the other hand, were in favour of the duma and of cooperation with the cadets. ​The bolševiki went so far as to rejoice at the (first) dissolution of the duma.
Despite these complications, quite a number of social democrats were elected to the first duma, and a still larger number to the second. In the later elections, however, the party was positively decimated. This did not induce the bolševiki to change their tactics. In the year 1906 a serious effort was made to reconcile the two factions, but without success, and the conflict between them subsequently became accentuated.
In the agrarian question, a matter of extreme urgency, and indeed in all questions, the bolševiki, pending the definitive collapse of absolutism, made a working program of their ultimate aim, whereas the men'ševiki were endeavouring, by critical methods and by their estimate of the existing situation and of the social and political forces of the day, to destroy the illusion of the bolševiki.
The members of the radical left wing of the bolševiki developed into anarchising socialists. In the name of orthodox Marxism they approved acts of expropriation, and they opposed the constitution and parliament, styling themselves or being known as otzovisty and ultimatisty. (The "otzovisty" are the "recallers," those who wish to recall from office their representatives in the duma. "Ultimatism," as a tactical method, meant that an ultimatum was to be presented to the members of the duma and to the party organisations in general, those that proved recalcitrant being terrorised by a boycott declared by the party executive.)
During this same period the men'ševiki, too, went through their political distemper. In their endeavour to be a purely proletarian party they penalised the intelligentsia, and the more extreme and radical section among them even demanded that the party should become wholly a mass movement, for leadership, they said, was improper and must be abolished (must be "liquidated," whence this trend was called "liquidationism").
The antipathy to the liberals was simultaneously displayed by the appearance of an anarchist trend which was theoretical rather than practical. This became conspicuous in 1904 in a polemic against the intelligentsia, and since Mahaev was its principal exponent it was denominated "Mahaevism."
The social revolutionaries, likewise, were torn by internal dissensions. Among them, too, there appeared a right and a ​left wing, minimalists and maximalists, the cleavage being analogous to that in the social democracy. On the other hand, the unmasking of Azev wrought much harm to the party. The proofs brought forward by Burcev (1908), the admission made by Stolypin in the duma (1909), and Lopuhin's confirmation, inspired mutual mistrust among the terrorists, and made them doubt the soundness of their tactics seeing that since 1892 Azev had been able to pursue his work as provocative agent, his double game with the party and the secret police. The assassinations of Pleve and Grand Duke Sergius had been his work, and presumably he aimed at still higher game.
It was natural, in view of this disintegration and of the mistakes of the revolutionary and radical parties, that after the revolution the reaction should quickly reconstitute its forces. Enough has already been said concerning the matter. The social democrats were not slow to grasp how deplorable was the situation, and they endeavoured to reorganise themselves, whilst the other parties made similar efforts.
The Russian social democracy has changed much since the revolution of 1905, and because of it, learning much during and after the revolution. To the masses as well as to the leaders the revolution furnished occasion for practical political and revolutionary activities. It became necessary for the revolutionaries, not merely to examine the efficacy of their everyday methods, but likewise to reconsider their aims, to ask themselves to what extent the socialistic goal was attainable.
Counter-revolution and reaction deprived all the revolutionary parties of leaders. Those leaders who survived the storm languished in gaol or in administrative exile, except for the many who had taken refuge in foreign lands. The increasing hostility to the intelligentsia was largely the outcome of the perplexities of the working-class organisations thus bereft of leadership. In my account of the reaction I showed that illegal activities were forced upon the social democrats because public and legitimate political organising work was forbidden them. The restrictions imposed by the state created additional obstacles to the centralisation desired by the bolševiki, and the party broke up into amorphous and disconnected local organisations.
Nevertheless a continuous process of organisation and reorganisation went on. The leaderless mass threw up new leaders, for the most part men of working-class origin, who ​gained experience in political organisations, yet more in trade union and cooperative organisations, and in the numerous strikes. The workers were consequently in a position to compare detail work in the legislative field with the illegal and so-called "underground" revolutionary activities, and could form their own opinions concerning the comparative efficiency of the respective methods.
None the less, the confusion is still extensive, and its degree may be measured by the fact that Plehanov, the real leader of the men'ševiki, has left his party on the ground that it is too opportunist. But Plehanov is now writing busily, and it may be that the real motive for his withdrawal was the desire for a detachment which would enable him to continue his work in the theoretical field. In the fourth duma, six bolševiki were at feud with seven men'ševiki. The men'ševiki were subdivided into the so-called "liquidators" and the "faithful" (partiicy) who desired to maintain the party organisation. The small force of bolševiki broke up into otzovisty, Leninists, and other sections; the organs of the respective groups continuing to fight one another with notable vigour.
The fury of the reaction, the light thrown upon the government by the Azev affair, the disclosures concerning the provocative suppression of the second duma, the relationship of the tsar to the crafty rogue Rasputin, and various other matters, are an incessant demonstration to the social democracy that it is necessary for it to close its ranks and to organise a central executive committee.
II
§ 153.
THE understanding of Russian Marxism will be facilitated if we make it clear to ourselves that Marxism in Russia is faced by special philosophical and socio-political tasks, Russian socialism has a tradition of its own, and Russian history has ​brought into being conditions of a quite peculiar kind, with which Marxism has to concern itself.
German Marxism has made its way into all the countries of Europe, and its tactical and theoretical principles have been widely adopted. As a socio-political system Marxism had to prove its validity in the struggle with extant social and political conditions, and in competition with other social and socialistic theories. England had its parliamentarism and its trade unionism, and in that country there has been little trace of a revolutionary movement since the days of the chartists. France, on the other hand, possesses the tradition of the great revolution and of several other notable revolutions; it has numerous socialistic systems and parties; it is a republic sui generis. In England and France, therefore, Marxism has made headway slowly, and only by small degrees has it been accepted by the working classes and their leaders. In Russia, Marxism found the field occupied by Russian socialism and its traditions of nihilism and terrorism, the traditions of the revolutionary narodničestvo. The assassination of Emperor Alexander II constitutes, as it were, a boundary stone between Russian socialism and Marxist socialism. In Russia, absolutism is dominant, absolutism in a markedly theocratic form; the country is predominantly agricultural, for manufacturing industry is found as yet in scattered oases only, and we cannot speak here of industrialisation as it is known in western lands. Owing to all these circumstances, Marxism in Russia has had to undertake peculiar tasks.
It was mainly a practical question of tactics which, after the split in the Zemlja i Volja in the year 1879, led a section of the revolutionaries and socialists into the Marxist camp. The supporters of the Černyi Pereděl made it their direct concern to study more closely the socialist movement in foreign countries. Plehanov, the leader of this group, says of himself that by 1880 he had already in large, part become a social democrat (he does not say that he had become a Marxist).
It was not by chance that Plehanov and his followers turned above all to Germany to study social democracy and to learn from the German movement. The Marxist recruits followed in the footsteps of their leaders, and it must be remembered that it had long been customary to supplement Russian culture by studies in Germany. Moreover, at this epoch the labour movement in Germany was extremely vigorous ​and was arousing general interest. The reconstituted empire, led by Bismarck, deliberately took up the campaign against socialism in the name of legitimate monarchy, so that from this aspect Prussia is a more advanced Russia. A year before the organisation of the Černyi Pereděl, Bismarck had introduced the exceptional laws, and thus it came to pass that the first Russian social democrats had before them the example of German Marxism in a revolutionary mood, as they had expected and perhaps desired from the first.
None the less, the development of Marxism in Germany took the direction of reformist revisionism and parliamentarism, and by German influence the Russian Marxists were likewise urged in the direction of revisionism. As early as 1894, Struve declared that he was not wholly orthodox.
Apart from differences of tactics, the Marxists were distinguished from the socialistic narodniki in respect of the historical and philosophical explanation of the evolution of Russia, the chief problem being whether Russia was already in a position in which she would be able to realise the socialistic order, although the country had not passed through all the stages of economic evolution that were known to Europe. Above all it was a disputed point whether Russia would have to traverse a capitalist stage in order, in accordance with the Marxist law of evolution, to pass from capitalism to socialism.
Finally there was a struggle upon the philosophical plane. It is true that the Russian socialists and radicals were materialists; like Marx and Engels, they were disciples of Feuerbach; adhesion to Comte and positivism was common ground. But Marxism, with its historic or economic materialism, involved a distinct trend.
In addition, it was the so-called subjective method which separated the Russian socialists and radicals from the-Marxists. The Marxists adopted a thoroughly objectivist standpoint. Eliminating, or at least ignoring, the individual consciousness, they took the masses and the laws of their historical evolution as valid arguments for the realisation of socialism. The significance and the foundation of socialism were differently conceived in the two camps. The controversy was one of ethics versus history.
To-day when we speak of the narodniki we mean above all the philosophical defenders of the narodničestvo in this conflict with Marxism. But the term has a wide meaning ​in addition, for narodničestvo likewise signifies the parties and sections of the new narodničestvo and the social revolutionaries which have come into existence since the revolution and the promulgation of the constitution. Some of the Marxists, with a certain malice, will not give the social revolutionaries any other name than "narodniki."
§ 154.
IN the old byliny (epic folk-poems) of Russia, one of the favourite heroes is Ilja of Murom, the peasant. When the country is in straits, Ilja awakens from his apathy, displays his superhuman energy, and saves the situation.
Of all the European states, Russia is alike economically and socially the most predominantly agricultural, and we have to note in this connection the peculiar characteristics of Russian agriculture, which on the whole, and above all in the remoter areas, is still in an extremely primitive condition. It is natural that the great concern of Russia, the chief concern alike of the government and of the political parties, should be the peasant and his destiny.
Interest in the mužik and in agriculture had already awakened in the days of Muscovy. From the time of Peter onwards the government perforce became more and more occupied with the matter, for the national finances demanded an increasing revenue. The great landowners, as we have learned, took a selfish advantage of the situation, using their powers, not in the interest of the state, not in the interest of the peasantry, and not indeed in their own true interest.
The mood prevailing at the close of the eighteenth century secured literary expression in the idyllic and pastoral poetry written during the reign of Catherine, by the Anacreontically inclined L'vov and_ others. Doubtless European example exercised a contributory influence. Just as the French disciples of Rousseau were, à la Chateaubriand, making a cult of the Red Indians, so did the Russians discover the mužik.
Great honour was then paid to the mužik. Even before the days of Herder, his songs were being collected and were receiving due literary appreciation, and this aesthetic recognition was followed by an appreciation of folk-performances in other fields. In the days of the enlightenment and of the popular philosophy, proverbs were regarded as incorporating an ​excellent, if not the most excellent, philosophy of the sound human understanding, as incorporating the true wisdom of life. Subsequently the customs and the economic institutions of the peasantry were looked upon as the embodiment of the best possible social institutions. Finally, for the intellectuals, the mužik came in addition to represent the religious ideal.
Yet Ilja of Murom, the Russian hero, was nothing but a serf. The aspirations of the humanitarians Radiščev and Pnin, the hopes of the decabrists and of the liberal thinkers, writers, and statesmen during the reign of Nicholas I, were not realised until 1861. Ilja's fetters were not struck off until long after his western congeners had been free men.
The new Russian literature reflects the growing interest in the mužik's fate. Beginning with Puškin, modern Russian authors have depicted an idealised rural life, and from the sixties onwards an increasing number of writers have dealt with all the activities of the peasants. Allusion was made to this literary development in connection with our analysis of the liberation of the peasantry and of the agrarian crisis.
"C'est la campagne qui fait le pays, et c'est le peuple de la campagne qui fait la nation." These words of Rousseau in Emile are the creed of the narodničestvo, in so far as that movement is simply an expression of the fact that Russia is preeminently agrarian, and that therefore all thoughts concerning Russia and Russia's destiny turn upon the mužik. Government and administration are busied with thoughts of the mužik; art and literature, history and the social sciences, centre in the mužik; the mužik constitutes an important section of every political program.
The narodničestvo, therefore, was likewise the basis of Russian socialism, the mir and the artel becoming the hope of Russian communism. Beginning with the slavophils, the narodničestvo recurs in Herzen, in Bakunin, in Černyševskii and his successors; the secret societies of the revolutionaries and the terrorists raise the war-cry, Land and Freedom.
The narodničestvo is not a unified doctrine, and was never advocated by a single leading authority, as socialism was advocated by Marx. Groups of various shades of opinion, and at a later date various political parties, have endeavoured after their respective fashions and in divers domains to expound the fundamental ideas of the narodničestvo.
Of political importance in the beginning of the seventies ​was the movement of the intellectuals, and in especial of the younger intellectuals, who endeavoured to educate the people and to win them on behalf of a program of social and political reconstruction. It is frequently contended that Lavrov was the originator of the movement "towards the people." True enough that Lavrov, in his Historical Letters (1868–1869), insisted upon the duty of self-sacrifice on behalf of the folk, and thus did much to promote the movement "towards the people." But that movement had been directly advocated by other writers before Lavrov. It originated out of the peculiar situation which ensued upon the liberation of the peasantry. The intellectuals, if they wished to realise their social and political ideals, had to turn for help to the enfranchised peasants. The movement was favoured by the literary idealisation of the peasant.
Simultaneously with the political movement there originated the ethico-economical movement introduced by A. N. Engelhardt. The intelligentsia was to withdraw to the country and was to engage in rational agriculture ("to establish itself upon the soil").
Towards the close of the seventies occurred the development of the radical and revolutionary narodničestvo led by the Narodnaja Volja. After the assassination of Alexander II, the revolutionary mood became weaker, and at the same time, owing to the increasing strength of Marxism, the narodničestvo was compelled, not merely to revise its doctrines, but above all to formulate them with greater precision. The development of manufacturing industry and the growth of the towns were contributory causes of the change, for an increasing number of peasants became operatives. It is usual to speak of a crisis in the narodničestvo, setting in during the eighties and attaining its climax in the middle nineties, when the Marxists were endeavouring to furnish statistical proofs that the teaching of the narodniki was fallacious.
§ 155.
JUZOV (Kablitz) attempted to provide a philosophic basis for the narodničestvo, not however with much success. He was a diligent translator of Spencer and the English empiricists (Bain and Mill), and he published detailed studies of the raskolniki, whom he considered to embody the genuine Russian essence. Juzov accepted Spencer's and Comte's emotionalism, and in his consideration of the national essence and of national character, he found these to subsist psychologically in the realm of feeling, in the dominance of emotion over understanding.
By his campaign against intellectualism he was led to take up a position adverse to the intelligentsia and to their endeavours on behalf of popular education. Drawing a sharp distinction between the nation and the state, he lapsed into a hazy apolitism, conceiving the mir and the artel to furnish sufficient support for the folk and for its economic activities in the domains of agriculture and home industry. Juzov's Principles of the Narodnicestvo (1882, etc.) thus inclined to the side of the reaction under Alexander III, and was opposed to the radical and revolutionary trend of the narodničestvo.
The more critical adherents of the narodničestvo did not follow Juzov's lead, being inclined rather to accept the views of Lavrov, Černyševskii, and Mihailovskii. On the other hand, some of the narodniki were especially interested in the economic aspect of the problem. In deliberate opposition to Marx and the Marxists, they attempted to show that the economic and social evolution of Russia was quite peculiar, was distinct from and independent of that of Europe. Notable was the manner in which the teaching of the narodničestvo was likewise defended by the historians of literature.
​The later narodniki modified the doctrine which had been first advocated by the slavophils and Herzen. To a large extent they accepted Marx's theory of value and agreed with his history and criticism of capitalism, but they modified his statement of historic evolution. Marx had declared that the historical evolution of mankind was a necessary development from primitive communism through the intermediate stage of capitalism into the higher and definitive form of communism. The narodniki considered that the Russian mir and artel represented primitive communism, but they believed that Russia could attain the higher and definitive form of socialism and communism without passing through the stage of capitalism. Capitalism had indeed developed in Europe, but would not be able to establish itself in Russia. The narodniki admitted that the mužik had not sufficiently developed the mir and the artel, had not turned them adequately to account; it was necessary therefore to educate the peasant, and this was the mission of the intelligentsia.
The narodniki did not overlook the fact that in Russia, too, certain capitalistic developments had taken place; they perceived that foreign capital had found its way from Europe into Russia. But they considered this capitalism an artificial product; they looked upon it as a continuation of the exploitation which European capitalism had undertaken in the case of all the less civilized peoples to the detriment of these. To the narodniki, Russian capitalism seemed purely destructive; it was not favouring political development, as European capitalism had done; it could not possibly undergo a vigorous evolution, for the foreign markets were already occupied, and the demand in the home market was weak. Russia, therefore, now that the liberation of 1861 had stimulated more intensive economic, social, and political activities among the peasants, would make its way forward with the aid of agriculture and home industry; it would never be capitalised, and therefore would never be proletarianised. In like manner, the narodniki believed that there would never develop in Russia a system of large-scale landed proprietorship working on capitalist lines. Russian agriculture in conjunction with Russian industry, both passing to a higher stage of development, would constitute a natural, organic, socialistic whole.
The later narodniki, adopting methods contrasting with those of the earlier members of their school, endeavoured to ​provide a firm inductive foundation for these basic doctrines, engaging in a statistical and historical study, and attempting to show that the economic and social conditions of the eighties and nineties furnished support for their outlook. It was the especial merit of Voroncov that, in contrast with Juzov, he aimed at the inductive verification of his teaching by the use of statistics, especially those furnished by the zemstvos.
The Marxists, for their part, were engaged in the onerous task of effecting a scientific survey of the history of Russia's economic evolution. Having secured as accurate statistics as possible concerning the economic conditions of Russia (number of factories, operatives, etc.) and concerning the position of the various classes, and having studied the development of industry and commerce, they endeavoured to prove, and indeed succeeded in proving, that Russia, notwithstanding the mir, notwithstanding the artels and the home industries, was already carrying on its economic life on a capitalist basis, and that the proletarianisation of the operatives and peasants was by now far advanced.
This criticism and counter-criticism of the narodniki (Voroncov, Nikolai-on, Karyšev, etc.) and the Marxists (Plehanov, Struve, Tugan-Baranovskii, etc.) was the chief concern of Russian theorists and politicians and of the wider circle of the intelligentsia during the early and middle nineties. The liberals took sides against the narodniki, although they were not in all points in agreement with the Marxists.
§ 156.
IN matters of detail the narodniki frequently differ considerably one from another. Some incline to be conservative and slavophil, whilst others are socialistic and westernist in trend. These differences depend upon the extent to which they make concessions to Marxism, or upon the other hand attempt to interpret Marxist doctrines in their own sense. The great difference between the economic and social structure of Russia as contrasted with the rest of Europe, and the peculiarities of Russian economic evolution, rendered the doctrines of the narodniki possible. Seeing that Russian ​economic statistics are still very imperfect, it is difficult, concerning disputed points, to adopt an apodictic interpretation of the facts, one that should exclude every possibility of doubt. Nevertheless the position of the narodniki has become untenable.
Let us consider the question of the capitalisation of Russia.
The eighties, in the reign of Alexander III (the epoch of the new economic policy which supported itself on French capital), was the era during which the historico-philosophical and economic views of the narodniki secured literary formulation. To others as well as to the narodniki, the febrile industrialisation of the country by the state was looked upon as a hothouse growth.
Russia was largely provided with capital from abroad, so that in this sense the development was "artificial," and was, as the narodniki phrased it, "nursed" by the state. But in a number of European countries, in Austria for example, and of late date in Hungary, foreign capital was introduced, and industrialisation was promoted by the state, no less "artificially" than in Russia. Similar conditions prevailed at one time in Germany, and almost universally.
It is true that the (foreign) capital of Russia was not gradually accumulated as it was in Europe, where the accumulation of capital was effected out of industry, and pari passu with the growth of industry. In Russia, however, side by side with the capital invested in large-scale manufacture, the working capital of home industry (kustar') has continued to exist. Small-scale manufacture carried on in houses, has developed alongside large-scale capitalist manufacture, giving rise to specific investments of capital, technical schooling, and so on. The inadequate facilities for communication in most parts of Russia, the large expanse of thinly populated areas, and above all the primitive state of agriculture, have helped to maintain kustar' industry; the simultaneous industrialisation and capitalisation of the two chief cities and of certain districts (eight in number) constituting industrial oases—districts which either enjoy an exceptionally favourable geographical situation or have been endowed by nature with coal, ores, naphtha, etc.—have favoured the growth of kustar' industry.
The Marxists drew attention to the fact that in Russia industrial concentration and the concentration of capital were taking place to a greater extent than in Germany and other ​European lands, and references were made to the similarities between Russian and American economic development.
No doubt this so-called concentration must be accurately explained in the light of Russian conditions, its distinct forms and causes must be grasped. A difference must be made between the concentration of operatives and the concentration of labour on the one hand, and the concentration of capital on the other. For example, the plethora of operatives is referable to their inadequate qualifications and to their poor capacity for work, for the majority of them are still peasants and semi-peasants, whose "concentration" is of a quite peculiar kind. Again, the concentration of capital has quite a different significance when great capitalists are still few in number, and when these appear to act as concentrators because from the very outset it has only been possible for men with large capital to undertake industrial enterprise. Since there does not exist in Russia a middle class corresponding to that known to Europe, the owners of a moderate amount of capital are likewise unknown. Nevertheless, in Russia, too, there has occurred an increasing development of trusts and cartels, whilst in addition there exist in that country the monopolies which are already of old standing.
Russia is becoming industrialised and capitalised; manufacturing industry, home industry, and agriculture, being transformed and developed by industrialisation and capitalisation. The home market is not so weak as the narodniki declared. This is evidenced by the increasing imports in spite of high duties, and by the increasing deposits in the saving banks. Russian exports of manufactured goods are as yet scanty, but even here the increase is noteworthy.
It is hardly needful to adduce serious arguments against the views of those among the narodniki who desire by all possible means to keep Russia a purely agricultural country, and who, with that end in view, go so far as to discountenance political activity and to boycott the constitution, for it is so obvious that in the domain of agriculture the control, cooperation, and initiative of the duma has led to an improvement in agricultural methods. If the narodniki said that parliament would destroy the mir, we have to remember that it is open to question whether it is really to the interest of the mužik that the mir should be retained. Moreover, it was not the duma, but the government hostile to the duma, which ​nearly brought about the destruction of the mir by the innovation of November 9, 1906. Again, though the defects of this measure are numerous, it cannot justly be said to have been injurious on the whole. Finally, it is certain to-day that agriculture and stock-raising are making notable and rapid progress, partly owing to the introduction of cooperative farming, and partly owing to the technical training in agriculture furthered by the government.
The historically conditioned peculiarities of Russian agricultural life will persist, just as Russian literature and art, Russian science and philosophy, Russian religious and social conditions, remain peculiar, notwithstanding the influence of the west, and notwithstanding the identical tendencies of evolution.
The narodniki could not shake their minds free from the mythical conception of the soil as "mother earth," or "little mother earth." Doubtless the narodniki had studied economics, most of them, indeed, were Marxists, or rather, to be precise, most of them expressed their ideas in Marxist terminology. They analysed the special problem of land rent, but continually diverged into the mythical conception and, estimate of the soil. The narodniki were the successors of the old physiocrats, who regarded agriculture as the primitive and natural economy, opposing thereto manufacture, commerce, and the other occupations of the "classe stérile" as unnatural. According to this view, agriculture and manufacturing industry, country and town, peasant and manufacturer, soil and capital, are irreconcilable opposites; the history of human development is a capitalist aberration which at the last moment Russia may be able to avoid.
In the light of these doctrines, strictly applied, fruit—fresh fruit—would be the only "natural" product of the soil, the only "natural" nutriment. Indeed we may go further, and say that only certain varieties of fruit could serve our turn, for fruit trees, just like cereals, have for the most part been improved by selection, while as for bread, this is an extremely complicated artifact. Indeed, it was the soil which first provided the stone from which the most primitive tools were made, and all that chemistry and chemical manufacturing industry can do is to elaborate the gifts of the soil. ​The first peasant needed tools, which were not provided him by nature in the form in which he used them. Cereals are to-day to a notable extent a manufactured product, even if we consider them simply as produce, and not as commodities in the marketable sense. It is true that the narodnik may object that the working of capitalism has been to turn the soil into a mere instrument for the production of land-rent, thus annulling the old conception of the soil as the nourisher; but even from this outlook it is necessary to strive for the technical perfectionment of agriculture, seeing that increase of population enforces this endeavour.
Besides, the narodniki have forgotten the question of stock-raising. Is stock-raising likewise perfectly natural? What is its relationship to the bringing of the soil under cultivation? Which was the earlier development, which is "more primitive"?
Again, and similarly, we must enquire why home work, and above all the so-called home industry, should be considered more primitive and-more natural than technically perfected factory industry.
The history of agriculture is part of the general history of industry, and it is utterly fallacious to separate the two spheres of labour one from another, to oppose them one to another as Ormuzd to Ahriman.
But in addition to the economic problem, the socio-political problem, the problem of the apportionment of the soil presses for solution. It is really hard to see how the mir, the artel, and home work (whether as home industry for the capitalist market or as home industry for the supply of family needs), could solve the social question in the socialist sense, We have merely to turn the pages of Russian history to note on almost every page how unjustly the soil has been apportioned. We have to ask, Why did "holy" Russia, despite its mir and artel and kustar', fall into capitalist temptation at all, why did the Russian Ivan abandon his steppe to seek the modern Jerusalem?
Confirmation of the objections I have adduced is furnished by the agrarian program formulated by the narodniki after the revolution of 1905. The analysis of this program is beyond our present scope, but I may be permitted a brief reference to it in so far as it furnishes an additional argument against the fundamental positions of the narodniki.
​As early as 1905, the "young" narodniki came forward with a new program. This program for the "nationalisation" of the land was nothing more than a scheme for an authoritarian state socialism, which aimed, by the systematic restriction of capitalism, at creating for the first time an ideal mir, the mir that was to save Russia. It is not difficult to understand how the young narodniki yielded to the lure of state socialism when we remember that many of the old narodniki (Nikolai-on, for instance) had placed their hopes on state socialism and its agrarian bureaucracy. When we speak of the state, however, we must think of the extant Russian state of Peter the Great, an institution which the narodniki were often no less ready to ban than the slavophils had been.
This state now received the approval of the "folk-socialists," an offshoot of the narodničestvo formed after 1905. Pěšehonov, who was their spokesman, reasoned soundly when he displayed to the young narodniki the defects of the arbitrary repressive measures which would degrade the commune to an agrarian ghetto; yet he, for his part, distinguishing between "possibilities" and simple "desires," compounded with the historically extant monarchy, hallowed as it was by centuries, and assigned to it a decisive and leading role in agrarian reform. In regard to details, the "nationalisation" of the land was to be carried out in accordance with the teachings of Henry George, for Pěšehonov forgot that Henry George had based his ideas of reform upon the institutions of a state utterly different from the Russian. Or are we perchance to believe that Pěšehonov was prepared to approve the revolution and the constitutionalism it had inaugurated?
However this may be, Pěšehonov lays great stress on the consideration that the revolution must be social and not political, and he continually relapses into the apolitical socialism of the narodničestvo. He maintains, for example, that the demand for the eight-hour day will not be effectively realised until every worker has his own portion of land, for then the workers will not be dependent upon the factory. It is plain that Pěšehonov is here endeavouring to put a narodnikist gloss upon the social democratic demand which the folk-socialists have adopted. He refers to the unsuccessful strike of the St. Petersburg operatives, which the employers converted into a lock-out, simply letting the strikers starve. The operatives failed because they had no "land." Pěšehonov ​forgets that well-organised workers win their strikes, not through "land," bit through the possession of ample reserve funds and through discipline. But far more important, and far more characteristic of narodnikist "socialism," is Pěšehonov's recognition that factories are to continue to exist after the nationalisation of the land. How is it possible, we must ask, when once the land has been nationalised, when every worker (not merely every peasant) shall have received his share of land—how is it possible that these tillers of the soil can be expected to leave their land and to go to work in the factories?
It is plain that the folk-socialists constitute an intermediate link between the liberals (cadets) and the social democrats. Their program is a compromise, whose interest for us lies above all in this, that it is derived rather from the west than from the Russian east. Economically, it is mainly a scheme for ameliorations; socially it is a program for land reform, wherein the ideals of Henry George are reduced within the limits of the practically attainable.
The narodniki entertain uncritical, mythical views concerning the moral worth of the peasant and of rural or village life. It is a fallacy to regard the Russian peasant as at once the economic and the moral saviour of Russia. The country and the rural population, no less than the town and the urban population, possess shortcomings, errors, and vices. Recent critical investigations into the moral condition of rural areas, such as have been made in Germany (and, be it noted, by men of religious and conservative views), should surely put to flight for ever this traditional romanticism and Rousseauism.
A critical survey of Russian rural life would furnish precisely similar results. This is proved by the descriptions we owe to belletristic writers among the narodniki. Some, it is true, like Zlatovratskii, represent the peasant as a moral hero; but others, Glěb Uspenskii and Korolenko for instance, exhibit the mužik as human, all-too-human. Further, the descriptions we owe to such writers as Rěšetnikov show us rural life in positively repulsive colours. For the rest, even the romanticists involuntarily disclose the seamy side of Russian village life. ​Thus even Tolstoi, who believed himself to have been led by the mužiks and the sectaries to the discovery of true religion, disclosed in his The Power of Darkness the moral corruption of the mužik. It is enough in this connection to mention Čehov and Gor'kii!
Finally, if we were to believe the descriptions of the mužik which have been printed of late in clericalist organs, the Russian saviour and messiah has become an anarchistic hooligan.
In Smoke, Turgenev characterises the uncritical narodničestvo in the following terms: "The cultured Russian stands before the Russian peasant, makes a profound reverence, and says, 'Heal me, for I am perishing from moral corruption,' and the mužik makes a reverence no less profound, and rejoins, 'Help me, I am perishing from ignorance'."
As early as 1862, Turgenev justly indicated to Herzen the political conservatism of the mužik, insisting that beneath the sheepskin were concealed the germs of the same bourgeois spirit which Herzen had discerned in the western bourgeoisie. In his prose poem The Worker and the White Hand (1878) Turgenev depicts a workman who would like to have the luck-bringing halter wherewith a member of the intelligentsia who has gone down among the people has been hanged—hanged on account of his activities in the cause of the workers. Mihailovskii animadverted upon the "optimism" of Zlatovratskii. It must be admitted that the Russian peasant has changed of late, and has changed for the better, but the improvement is not due to the labours of the narodniki. The mir notwithstanding, the Russian village has since 1861 undergone rapid economic and social transformation; during this period the kulak (literally "fist," the name given to the village dealer or middleman) has acquired and enlarged his sinister reputation; the Russian village, as is conspicuously indicated by the great rise in prices, has been drawn within the vortex of capitalism.
The young narodniki recognise that Russia has already been capitalised and industrialised, and they recognise further that capitalism exhibits for Russia and releases for Russia energies that are not merely negative and destructive, but are in addition positive, organic and formative.
Thus the economic differences between the narodniki and ​the Marxists are overshadowed by the wide divergence between the two camps in the historico-philosophical domain. The two trends are distinguished in respect of the philosophic foundations they attach to socialism, and as a political party the narodniki have since 1905 exhibited numerous transitional stages between the left and the right. Some of them incline towards liberalism, others towards Marxism and social democracy. Of the latter, again, some are revisionists, others orthodox revolutionary Marxists. As previously explained, the social revolutionaries, like their predecessors the adherents of the Narodnaja Volja, are likewise counted among the narodniki.
III
§ 157.
FOR the understanding of Russian Marxism it will be advantageous, in view of the intimate mutual connection between Russian and European Marxism and especially between Russian and German Marxism, that we should give a brief account of the state of Marxism in Europe, concentrating our attention upon German Marxism. We shall discuss the crisis within the Marxist movement—for such is the aptest designation of the state of Marxism.
​According to Marx, the organisation of society in the epoch of civilisation, beginning in Greece with the dominance of Athens, and in Italy with the rise of Rome, fundamentally consists in the continual opposition and struggle between two classes; this struggle, he contends, makes up the essence and comprises the content of history; the mass of the working population is kept in subjection by the idle but dominant class, is kept in one form or another of social or political servitude. The state is the political expression of the dominant and oppressing class. In the modern era, class contrasts have become accentuated in the struggle between the proletarian masses and the capitalists. The proletarian masses undergo increasing impoverishment owing to the way in which the product of their labour, value and surplus value, is continuously absorbed by the capitalist entrepreneur; this process will continue until possessions become concentrated in the hands of a very small number of capitalists, and then will come the cataclysm, the definitive revolution, whereby the proletarians will reestablish communism. For in Marx's view, society in its most primitive stage was communistically organised, and primitive communism was swept away when the era of private property began. Extant capitalism is the terminal phase of private property, and in the comparatively near future will yield place to communism. This already imminent communism will doubtless differ in certain respects from primitive communism; it will be a complicated but deliberately thought-out system of social organisation. The coming of the communistic era can be foreseen by the scientific historian; and communism itself, therefore, is in part rooted in the historical process. Practically, socio-politically, the transformation inalterably determined by the objective dialectical process of historical evolution will be brought about in the following manner. In the very last phase of the capitalistic epoch the workers will gain control of the state (the dictatorship of the proletariat), will abolish the state, and will conduct society to the higher communistic stage of evolution. This stage will close the era of historical evolution.
Marx did not furnish a detailed account of the history of this evolution, but in his analysis of capitalist production and of the circulation of goods and commodities he endeavoured to elucidate the application of the dialectical process of evolution to the present day, to the most recent phase of history. ​It was left for Engels to undertake a detailed application of the Marxist scheme to history at large.
Marx and Engels were so exclusively historians, so exclusively dialecticians in Hegel's sense, that they were not concerned to undertake an exposition of social organisation (to deal with what Comte termed social statics in contrast with social dynamics). The concept of this organisation can, however, be abstracted from history, and we have moreover for this purpose the Marxist formula known as the doctrine of historical materialism.
Marx contends that the totality of the relationships of production, the economic structure of society, constitutes the real basis upon which the legal and political superstructure is built and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. These relationships of production are, in fact, independent of the human will; they have originated historically, in correspondence with a definite stage of the evolution of the material forces of production. In a certain phase of development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the preexistent relationships of production (i.e. conditions of ownership) within which they have hitherto had their being. These earlier relationships, which were at first evolutionary forms of the productive energies, now manifest themselves as shackles to those energies, and an epoch of social revolution ensues. With the transformation of the economic basis, the whole colossal superstructure is more or less rapidly overthrown. When we are contemplating such transformations we must ever be careful to distinguish between the material transformation in the economic conditions of production, which is effected in strict conformity with the reign of natural law, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical (in a word, ideological) forms wherein human beings become aware of this conflict and carry on the struggle. In broad outline Marx depicts the Asiatic, classical, feudal, and modern capitalist modes of production, respectively, as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The capitalist method of production has created the antagonism between the productive forces of society and the relationships of ownerships, an antagonism which will be solved by the material conditions which this same capitalist structure of society has already prepared; for humanity never sets itself problems which it is incompetent to solve, and indeed ​these problems can only become intelligible when the material conditions rendering their solution possible already exist, at least in the germ.
Such is the celebrated formula of historical or economic materialism whereby history is represented as a dialectical and objective mass process independent of the individual will. The formula will be found in the preface to Marx's Critigue of Political Economy, published in the year 1859. The first sketches of this formulation exist in earlier works, but Marx himself, and to a still greater extent Engels and his younger disciples, were subsequently responsible for such extensive variations in the formula that the "real basis" of productive relationships has been supplemented or replaced by technical advances (including the fundamental sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.), racial qualities, the geographical environment, the energies that determine the relationships of population, etc. At the same time, historical materialism, in view of the criticism it encountered, was reduced to a method, a heuristic method.
It would be quite incredible that so obscure and inaccurate a formula should have had so powerful an influence, had it not become the scientific basic formula of revolutionary socialism, which in Germany and other countries has effected the national and international organisation of the working masses to constitute the social democracy.
Marxist historical materialism has been philosophically and sociolologically superseded. The history of mankind has a significance different from that which Marx impressed upon it with his doctrine of historical materialism based upon the materialism of Feuerbach.
Practically and socio-politically, just as much as theoretically, Marxism abandons its positions, or at least modifies them to a great extent. In especial it is necessary to insist on the fact that Marxist social democracy, above all in Germany and Austria, has had the revision of its doctrines forced upon it by participation in political and parliamentary work. Revisionism has never possessed any theorist whose ability and force rivalled those of Marx. It was the work of practical politics which necessitated revisionism.
In Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, France, and England, the Marxists, during their political activities within their own party, during their work in parliaments, local governments, ​trade unions, etc., had forced upon them the conclusion that state and church are no mere superstructure, as Marx contended (Marx's own thought was obscure, since he conceived the superstructure, now as the state, now as political ideals, and now again as law). Moreover, in the work of practical politics the Marxist learned to prize nationality as an independent social organisation side by side with the organisation of state and church—in a word, he came to recognise that the complicated organisation of society cannot be accurately conceived in accordance with the simplifying formula of historical materialism. At the same time the practical Marxist learned that the social democracy and its program were less radically distinct from the other democratic parties and their programs than the founder of the social democracy had assumed and than many of its leaders still assume. Bernstein's phrase "from sect to party" affords a summary watchword of the new view which through the discussion of tactics has come to prevail widely among the Marxists of all lands.
This discussion of tactics relates in especial to the possible participation of the social democrats in the government. If the discussion laid especial stress upon the question of the acceptance of office by socialists and upon the question of voting for the state budget, the restriction of outlook, though comprehensible enough, is uncritical, for participation in local government is essentially of the same nature as participation in the government of the state—quite apart from the consideration that a Berlin town councillor may have more important functions than a minister in Baden.
In the last resort, the discussion of tactics must lead to a revision of the concept of social revolution; the terms revolution, reform, and evolution, must be accurately defined. The social democrat who enters parliament as a deputy, who enters a bourgeois institution, participates in the working of the state which in theory he boycotts and negates. In practice, therefore, he has decided in favour of the tactics of reform, for history has taught him that the time for the definitive social revolution anticipated by Engels and Marx has not yet arrived. In truth the people who expect too much are of as little practical use as were their forerunners the millenarians. In practice, the Marxist who is dominated by the revolutionary mood and aspires to the (definitive) social revolution is faced with a dilemma. According to his program, extant society ​is wholly bad; but he must either recognise it inasmuch as he makes no attempt to improve it, or else he must attempt to improve it and must thereby recognise it—and either course will conflict with the letter of the Marxist doctrine.
But theory, too, confutes Marxism. It is an old story that the materialism of Marx and Engels is untenable; the entire doctrine of historical or economic materialism is simply unscientific as a form of psychological and metaphysical materialism; and the whole conception of the "superstructure" is obscure and devoid of meaning.
The positivism of Marx and Engels, no less than their materialism, is epistemologically untenable and incapable of being carried out in practice.
With positivism, there falls likewise historism in its extreme form, the attempt to base socialism as communism in a purely objective manner and by a law of evolution. If Marx and Engels conceive the notion of science and conceive their scientific socialism in this sense of positivist historism, it is because they start from the entirely false assumption that for the masses, for society, for humanity (this concept is not accurately defined by Marx and Engels) and its history, the individual consciousness is a negligible quantity. The theory is in conformity with the teaching of Comte and with his contempt for psychology, but it is fundamentally erroneous. When Marx says, It is not the consciousness of human beings which determines their existence, but conversely it is their social existence which determines their consciousness, this is to say nothing at all, and is moreover to beg the question (by the use of "existence" and "social existence" as convertible terms). There is simply no such thing as a mass consciousness or a class consciousness; when Engels sacrifices the "beggarly individual" to the mass, and eliminates the individual consciousness as a negligible quantity, he is altogether wrong-headed. Everything which Engels and the Marxists adduce for the elucidation of their conception of ideology as a reflex, an indication, sign, and so on, lacks clearness, and is erroneous, precisely for the reason that the individual consciousness is not falsified in the sense in which Engels declared it to be falsified when he explained individual motive aa appearance, imagination, and illusion.
Postkantian philosophy has made so thorough a study of psychology and sociology, and above all of the philosophy of ​history, that, despite certain new attempts à la Dürkheim, we can quietly ignore the mass consciousness talked of by Marx and Engels. The discussion concerning the nature of history has been so diligently and so persistently conducted that we are further in a position to discard Marx's conception of history and his purely would-be-objective historism. The historical dialectic which was transferred from the Hegelian system into the Marxist system as an objective "material dialectic," has no real existence.
Marx and Engels developed historism into an ultra-positivist amoralism which is untenable precisely because the individual consciousness cannot be absorbed by the mythical mass consciousness. (The concept of mass is vaguely employed by Marx and Engels, now as party, and now as humanity.) From the notion of the determinism of nature and of history, Marx deduced the unfreedom of the individual will, instead of empirically approaching the problem of the so-called freedom of the will through a psychological analysis of facts. Thus determinism was transformed into fatalism.
In practice, none the less, Marx and Engels made a predominant appeal to the ethical decision of the individual; they continually appealed against capitalism to the revolutionary sentiment; every speech in a social democratic meeting, the entire social democratic party education, is a flagrant disavowal of objectivist amoralism; theoretical amoralism is overthrown by practical moralism. To Marx and Engels, moral preachments are tedious and appear ineffective—but they are themselves preachers, and expect their sermons to change the bourgeois outlook. Marxism as a philosophical and sociological system is, after all, itself nothing but ideology, and this ideology has been conceived prior to the practical realisation of communism. Marxist ideology is not a superstructure but a substructure and an anteroom!
Socialism can have no other than an ethical foundation. The European and Russian predecessors of Marx are perfectly right here. Criticism, science, does not do away with the motivation of actions or with the formulation of aims; utopianism is not rooted in morality, but in inadequate criticism and in the lack of scientific grasp. Consequently Marx's amoralism is itself utopian. Unquestionably it is far from easy to grasp and to decide how the course of history exercises a codeterminative influence upon the individual, or to what ​extent individual consciousness and will find expression in the mass and in the course of evolution, but this is not to admit that the individual is "beggarly" and of no account. There are differences between individuals; historiographers speak of great men, and associate historical happenings with the personalities of these; to what extent they are right in doing so is a question to be decided on its merits in each case, but anyhow the so-called great men are themselves individuals. Bernstein does no more than give expression to an admitted truth when he desires to establish socialism subjectively not objectively, ethically not historically. Socialism is an ethical problem.
Are we then to return to Kant? That is a different question. It is true that Engels discovered his philosophical mentors in Kant and Fichte as well as in Hegel, and reasons can be adduced for a synthesis of Marxism with Kantianism. Vorländer and others made such an attempt; Tugan-Baranovskii and men of similar views have written on the other side. The cry, Return to Kant, may signify that the Marxists wish to devote themselves to epistemological criticism, and to this extent there is good reason for the adoption of such a watchword. But Kant's philosophy is essentially ethical, and we are compelled to ask how the amoralist and positivist historism of Marx and Engels can be practically united (I mean of course organically united) with the teaching of Kant.
The orthodox Marxists, as contrasted with the younger socialists and the revisionists, raise the cry, Return to Marx. In many cases, especially in the field of political economy, there may be good reason for the demand. As a philosopher, Marx has been superseded, and revisionism has made no new contribution in this domain.
The Marxists, the orthodox Marxists that is to say, are accustomed to conduct their apologetics in a purely scholastic manner. Scholasticism arises everywhere and always when reputedly absolute concepts and absolute truths have to be maintained and restated in opposition to the progress of thought. For the orthodox Marxists, however, it remains a scandal that the so-called unorthodox revisionism should continue, to find a place within the party, should be tolerated there, and should be enabled to maintain its place with the assistance of scholastic and ambiguous resolutions passed at party congresses.
​Socialism is not identical with Marxism, but Marxism is an extremely important and significant socialistic system.
§ 158.
THE Russian social democratic refugees formulated their first program in the year 1884.
Russia, they said (and we read here the Marxist diagnosis), is suffering from the development of capitalism, but likewise from the incompleteness of that development. The outcome of these conditions is the lack of a middle class, one competent to take the initiative in the struggle against absolutism. Consequently the socialist intelligentsia must take over this task, must assume leadership in the fight for liberation; their work is to secure free political institutions for Russia and to found a democratic constitution. In matters of detail the constitutionalist demands of the social democrats were essentially identical with those of the Narodnaja Volja.
The socialist intelligentsia is to lead; but to lead whom? There is no middle class, the peasant is conservative, so there remain only the operatives, the proletariat. This last must be organised by the socialist intelligentsia, prepared for the struggle against absolutism, but also for the struggle against the bourgeois parties of a coming day.
In addition to the preparatory work, the program recognises that there is need for a terrorist campaign against the absolutist government. The relationship to the terrorist party of the Narodnaja Volja is expressly based upon the divergent conception of the social democrats regarding "the so-called seizure of power by the revolutionary party and regarding the aims of the immediate activity of the socialists within the working class."
The mere name of the new group, which was known as the Group for the Liberation of Labour, recalls the phraseology of the Gotha Program which served in 1875 as the basis of a fusion between the Marxist "Eisenachers" and the Lassallists. In certain other respects, too, the Russian program is reminiscent of the German, but the most important resemblance of ​all lies in this, that both were compromise programs. The Russian program was that of the terrorist executive committee, restated in Marxist terminology; it it was really Marxist in so far only as concerned the nature of its hopes for the future, seeing that for the present it recommended the tactics of the terrorist Narodnaja Volja.
Plehanov, who with Véra Zasulič and P. Akselrod, was the leader of the group, subsequently admitted the inconsistencies of the program, and agreed that unduly extensive concessions were made to the narodniki. Personally he endeavoured to make good the defect and to expound clearly the principles of social democracy.
In articles and other writings published during the eighties, Plehanov followed the lines of the Communist Manifesto, doing this notably in Socialism and the Political Struggle (1883) and Our Differences (1884). Subsequently, during the nineties, he was guided rather by the tactics of the German social democracy.
Plehanov was critical of his socialist predecessors, the Bakuninists, the Blanquists, the Lavrovists, and the Narodnaja Volja. He described Herzen, Bakunin, Tkačev, and Černyševskii as narodniki, and he rejected the doctrines of the narodničestvo. He anticipated the further development of Russian capitalism, already fairly strong by 1884, and at the same time he hoped that the socialist ideal would be realised through the work of the Social Democratic Labour Party. An ex-narodnik and ex-member of the Narodnaja Volja, he regarded as mere utopianism the hopes that had hitherto been centred in the Russian mužik. It was, he said, positively childish utopianism to imagine that ninety per cent of the members of a national assembly elected by universal suffrage would decide in favour of the socialist (communist) program. The only goal for Russian socialists who desired to keep their fancies within bounds must be, he said, to secure a democratic constitution upon the basis of universal suffrage, and to prepare the elements for the future socialist party of the workers. To this end, the sympathy of society at large was essential, and he therefore warned his fellow socialists against needlessly alarming men of moderate views by the display of the "red phantom." The peasant mentality was not socialist, and therefore the preliminary work must be done by the socialists among the intelligentsia and by the urban operatives. It will be seen that Plehanov assigned to the ​"socialists" the role which in 1848 had been assigned by Marx and Engels to the "communists."
"In all the older revolutionary trends, from Herzen onwards, there had been, thought Plehanov, a strong admixture of anarchism. In his view, however, the main purpose of the political struggle must be to awaken the political consciousness of the workers and to educate them against absolutism. Barricades and bombs were not the only weapons in the political campaign.
These views had already been enunciated in the essay of 1883 on Socialism and the Political Struggle. They were reiterated in 1902 in the opening number of the review "Zarja." He here elaborated the distinction between his own "political" program and the program of Herzen and Herzen's successors, pointing out once more the anarchism that characterised these earlier revolutionaries. At this date, Plehanov had already come to accept the parliamentary tactics of the German social democracy, and subsequently therefore was consistent in his opposition to the boycotting of the duma. In conformity with these views, Plehanov declared himself opposed to the jacobin and anarchist theory of the "seizure of the reins of power," contending that in view of the unpreparedness of the masses this seizure could end only in a fiasco and would display itself in essentials to be nothing beyond an ephemeral conspiracy. When Plehanov thought of the seizure of power he had in mind that the seizure was to be effected by the masses sufficiently prepared for the social revolution, that is to say by the masses of the operatives. But Plehanov held that as far as Russia was concerned the hour for such a seizure was still far distant.
This opposition to anarchist Blanquism likewise inspired Plehanov's philosophical treatise against the narodniki, a work entitled Concerning the Evolution of the Monistic View of History. In this book, Plehanov laid the principal stress upon determinism, endeavouring to clarify the concepts of freedom and necessity. Speaking generally, as against the chance-it and trust-to-luck of Blanquism, he advocated a positivist insight into the law-abiding course of historical development as the essence and superior merit of the materialist conception of history.
§ 159.
THE history of the Russian social democracy is an effective refutation of Marxist historical materialism.
The forerunner of the Social Democratic party, the Group for the Liberation of Labour, was a literary association to popularise and diffuse the ideas of Marx. Plehanov's isolation after the disintegration of the party was itself an argumentum ad hominem, for it showed that philosophical ideas are not dependent upon economic relationships to the extent implied by the doctrine of historical materialism. Willingly or unwillingly, Plehanov and the orthodox Russian Marxists were a section of the socialist intelligentsia. In like manner, Marx and Engels were the teachers and organisers of the German social democracy, and according to them, too, the role of the social democratic intelligentsia was one of intellectual leadership. Hunger, said Marx, makes no history; but further, hunger makes no politics and no parties. Marxist ideas are not a mere superstructure, for they anticipate economic development. The Marxist program relates to social and political work which has yet to be performed; it is an anti​cipation of the future; it is not an ideological superstructure, but an anteroom.
Just as little as the intelligentsia, as a class and as a living representative of mental work, fits into the Marxist two-class system, so little, too, can the state, its political and administrative functions, and political life in general, be conceived as ideology in the Marxist sense. The weakening of tsarist absolutism, the establishment of the duma, and the legalisation of political electoral work and political party work in general, have an independent and high value of their own for Russia and for Europe. The alliance of the socialists with the liberals was necessary and right. Is it proper for a socialist to carry on propaganda among the peasantry and not among the bourgeoisie? Struve did good service by going to the bourgeois as before him the narodniki had gone to the people; the reasons he may subsequently have found for abandoning Marxism are another story.
In 1883 and 1884 Plehanov was perfectly right in holding fast to the Communist Manifesto, and in deducing therefrom rules for the political struggle and for cooperation with the liberals and the bourgeoisie. But in the nineties, and subsequently during the revolution, abandoning the teachings of the Communist Manifesto, he preached the later theories of Marx and Engels, and preached them in a manner altogether too one-sided.
The Communist Manifesto does not yet exhibit the doctrine of historical materialism in its full bloom, for the writing derives from the earlier phase of Marx and Engels, when they were political radicals, political revolutionaries, and not as yet Marxists. Later only did Marx and Engels formulate historical materialism with precision, and ascribe a decisive significance to the economic basis. The weakness of the political revolution of 1848, the triumph of reaction, the apolitism which, as far as practice was concerned, was forced upon the refugees, led Marx to conceive his historical materialism; his English experiences were responsible for his mistaken overestimate of the importance of economic conditions. From the English outlook, regular political activity appeared comparatively worthless. It was the parliamentarism of universal suffrage which ultimately taught Engels to esteem political, activity more highly, and to oppose parliamentarism to revolutionism.
This political development of Marxism and of the German ​social democracy exercised a confusing influence upon Plehanov and the Russian Marxists.
In the Communist Manifesto Plehanov had discovered arguments for the political struggle and for the alliance with the liberals; he found here also an argument against mere economism (Russian economism was no novelty); the Communist Manifesto harmonised with the transition from the terrorism of the Narodnaja Volja to Marxism. The later phase of Marxism, however, was out of harmony with this transition, and this later phase therefore provided Plehanov's disciples with their arguments on behalf of economism, their arguments against political activity, against the duma, against the state in general. None the less, Plehanov's disciples could discover arguments for politism also in Engel's writings during the latest of his evolutionary phases.
The establishment of the duma involved a number of theoretical and practical inconveniences for the Marxists. The first question they had to consider was whether they should recognise the duma or boycott that institution, and the answers they gave were divergent.
The agrarian question promptly came before the duma in a concrete practical form. The electoral system guaranteed the peasants a definite number of deputies, and in the duma the narodniki were able to discover whether they had been right in believing that ninety per cent of the peasants were socialistically inclined. The result of the elections was in the first place an argument against the narodniki, but the Marxists ​were likewise compelled to consider the agrarian program with more attention than it had hitherto received from Marxists in Germany and elsewhere in the west.
The problem of nationalism, too, had now to be faced by the Marxists. It became evident that the indentification of every kind of nationalist sentiment with chauvinism and official patriotism was fallacious. As long as the Marxists, living abroad, had little intercourse with the other refugees from Russia, a concrete internationalism among the members of the various Russian stocks was possible enough. But as soon as this international could engage in legalised activities in Russia, and as soon as the constitution guaranteed national as well as political freedom, the problem of language and the problem of nationality became actual for the Russian Marxists as it had become actual for the Marxists of other multilingual lands (notably for those of Austria-Hungary). Discussion concerning the language in which the proceedings of the duma were to take place, concerning the official language, concerning the language of public instruction, and so on, was now essential. As in the west, so in Russia, constitutional government first made people fully aware of the problems of nationality and speech, giving as it did an ocular demonstration that nationality is something more that a "reflex" of the capitalist economic order.
Hardly had Marxism, during the middle nineties, undergone general diffusion among the Russian intelligentsia, hardly had the one-sided philosophy of history of the narodniki been transcended, when the rise of revisionism ensued, and this not solely through the work of Bernstein. It was impossible that the inaccuracy of historical materialism and that the changes in the evolution of the Marx-Engels doctrine and of the social democracy should remain unnoted in Russia. The crisis in the Russian social democracy is the necessary outcome of the cleavage which the actual course of development forces upon Marxist theory. Historical empiricism does not conform to historico-philosophical deduction. Hence the vacillations, the inadequacies, and the perplexities of the Marxist leaders, above all during the revolution; hence, too, the insufficiency of the social democracy during the revolution and thereafter down to the present day. The Marxists gained the victory over the history of philosophy of the narodniki, but they were incompetent to understand the history of Russia in one of its most critical phases.
§ 160.
MARX and Engels had no clear and unambiguous formula of revolution. Although in the Marxist system the idea of revolution is of decisive importance, neither he nor Engels attempted to define the precise significance of the concept. Adopting the radical revolutionary trend in the mood that prevailed before and during the year 1848, Marx and Engels declared themselves and declared socialism to be preeminently revolutionary, and yet they offered no exact analysis of this most important element in their system. We cannot attribute the neglect solely to regard for the censorship of absolutism, for they were manifestly disinclined to say much about this serious theme. "A revolution is something to effect and not to talk about; for resolute practical men, the details are a matter of course; the prospects of success must be clear, or the attempt at revolution will not be made—this is the main point." Summarily expressed, this seems to be the attitude of these writers towards the revolution, as far as I can ascertain it from the scanty, casual, and unsystematic utterances of Marx and Engels upon the subject.
An attempt at a philosophy of revolution is found in the writings on Feuerbach compiled in the year 1845, but the results are meagre.
Starting from the theoretic revolution of Feuerbach, Marx accepted Feuerbach's views by recognising that religion was anthropomorphism and by considering the religious world to be a mere reflex of the mundane world. But Marx considered that after Feuerbach had demonstrated these facts, the chief task was still left undone, for it was necessary to put an end to the contradiction inherent in the mundane world itself. Men, he said, had constructed for themselves a religious world in the clouds because their earthly basis did not suffice them. The contradiction between the religious world and the mundane world was, in fact, the contradiction within the mundane world. The disintegration of the mundane world must be understood and transcended, and this could only be effected by the political revolution. Marx censured the philosophical materialists because they had hitherto conceived reality solely as object or as perception, but had not conceived it subjectively as practical, human, sensuous activity. The idealists had developed the active side, but only on the abstract plane, ​because they would not recognise real sensuous activity. "Philosophers have done no more than give different interpretations of the world; but what we have to do is to change it." This change could not be effected in accordance with Owen's recipe that men are the products of circumstances and education, for this would imply the division of society into two parts, one of these superior to society. Owen had forgotten that circumstances are modified by men and that the educator must himself be educated. The modification of circumstances, and the alterative activities, can be conceived and rationally explained in no other way than as revolutionary practice.
Marx's terminology is obscure; there is no sociological precision about the way in which he speaks of "circumstances" and of the "world" which is to be "changed"; without further ado the change is identified with a "revolutionary transformation" and with the "practical and critical" activity of revolution. At this early stage he is already conceiving historical evolution in too objective a manner. He represents the individual and the subject as "an abstract individual," who, however, in reality belongs to a specific social form. For Feuerbach and the older materialists, this social form had been "bourgeois" society; the newer materialism of Marx recognised only human society or socialised humanity.
The defects of extreme objectivism are conspicuous in this theory of revolution. Engels extols Marx on the ground that he did not simply brush aside Hegel, but adopted the revolutionary side of the dialectical method, transforming the Hegelian conceptual dialetic into a materialist dialectic. Here, however, our sole concern is with the concept of revolution, which Engels and Marx attempted to deduce in a purely objectivist manner from the alleged dialectic of the world process. As an answer to this attempt it suffices to insist that there is no objective dialectic, that nature does not exhibit dualism or dialectical trialism, that the evolution of the world cannot be conceived either dualistically or trialistically. Marx and Engels merely foisted the subjective on the objective, projecting into the outer world the conceptual and psychological oppositions and contrasts and the solution of these, and then quite uncritically formulating the résult as a sort of metaphysical law of the universe.
In the development of the individual there occur conflicts and crises which manifest themselves in the form of oppositions, ​but these are purely individual oppositions. In like manner there are logical, conceptual contrasts of different degrees and kinds. But it is necessary to determine precisely how far and in what sense it is permissible to speak of oppositions in social life and in history; we must not uncritically introduce psychological and logical contrasts into the sphere of sociology. Still less is it legitimate, in anthropomorphic fashion, to introduce psychological and logical oppositions into nature and the universe.
Marx makes an improper use of logical and psychological analogy when he bases his catastrophic theory upon the reputed opposition between two classes. Marx himself occasionally advocated a sounder view.
As time passed, the views of Marx and Engels upon revolution underwent modification, for they came to conceive the social struggle in the spirit of the modern doctrine of evolution. They no longer represented this struggle solely in political and strategical terms as a violent physical struggle, for they looked upon it also as a bloodless economic struggle, thinking here of strikes and above all of the general strike—the struggle in this form being likewise conceived as revolutionary. To put the matter in general terms, they now conceived revolution rather as the gradual evolution of the definitive social state. In this double sense Engels frequently spoke of his party as "the most revolutionary party known to history"; in this sense it was asserted that capitalism was "revolutionising society"; and so on.
Eventually Marx and Engels accepted Darwinism, and were thereby led to modify their Hegelianism and their use of the Hegelian dialectic, although they failed to take clear note of their change of outlook. The modern cosmologist no longer regards the developmental process as revolutionary or catastrophic, but looks upon it as an evolution effected by infinitesimal and innumerable quantitative and qualitative modifications. Geological and cosmical catastrophe is looked upon as the terminal outcome of numerous gradational changes.
​Many historians conceive historical evolution in like manner, and in the name of evolution such writers oppose the idea of political revolution. Such is the outlook of the revisionist reformists, of those who tell us that our aim must be to promote reform, not revolution.
The evolutionist argument against political revolution is not self-evident and is not entirely valid. Revolutions may well be a part of evolution; in actual fact, revolutions have occurred and do occur; but, despite this, evolutionists and historians espouse the theory of gradual evolution. Moreover, modern evolutionists incline to recognise the existence of an evolutionary process wherein progress is effected by leaps, and from this outlook the idea of revolution may likewise be defended in the domains of history and politics, although it is true that evolution by leaps may also be interpreted in the reformist sense.
As a matter of methodology it is necessary to point out that cosmological and botanical analogies cannot be taken as proof by the sociologist. Political revolution must be sociologically explained as a social and historical fact.
After 1848, during the first years of reaction, Marx had frequent occasion, in his political articles, to speak of the revolution of 1848 and of revolution in general, but he failed to define the term more precisely. For example, in articles upon the eastern question (1853 to 1856) he spoke of the explosive energy of democratic ideas, of man's natural thirst for freedom, and the like. Revolution and democracy in Europe were contrasted with absolutist Russia. In the Communist Manifesto, in the attack on Proudhon, in the series of articles entitled Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the definitive social revolution was assumed to be close at hand.
Marx's outlook was ever purely practical. He deprecated the "capricious attempts to foment revolution" made by many socialists and even by some of his own followers. In his essay upon the trial of the Cologne communists he showed that the overthrow of a government could be no more than an episode in the great struggle that was imminent, and that the matter of real importance was to make ready for this last and decisive contest. Capitalism, he said, was a mightier and more terrible power than political despotism. In like manner Engels distinguished in 1890 between the "fundamental transformation of society" and a "mere political revolution"; whilst shortly ​before his death (1895) he questioned the very possibility and need for revolution.
In Marx, therefore, and also in Engels, we have to note that a clear distinction is made. For Marx the definitive, terminal, "ultimate and decisive" revolution, the total transformation of the conditions of production and ownership, the negation of negation (in the Hegelian formula), was entirely different from lesser and indecisive revolutions. He did not clearly explain how far these lesser revolutions would be advantageous to the great revolution, but in accordance with the Communist Manifesto we may assume that such revolutions, too, were to be regarded as valuable. Granting this distinction, it is obvious that the critical question, the one that is decisive for the revolutionist, remains to be answered. When will the terminal revolution begin? How are we to recognise the decisive hour? Who shall determine that the decisive hour has struck?
To Marx it seemed self-evident that the terminal revolution must be unified, must be a mass revolution. In his literary and political contest with Stirner and Bakunin, Marx, from this outlook, sharply contrasted socialism with anarchism alike tactically and as a system. The Marxist conception of the mass movement eliminated the individual and individual consciousness, and at the same time an amoral estimate was formed of the purely objective historical process. At Amsterdam in 1872 Marx declared that in the United States of America and in England a social revolution could be effected by legal means. For England, in particular, Marx subsequently mooted the buying out of the landlords as a possibility in lieu of forcible expropriation. The catastrophic theory was thus modified in the evolutionary sense, and simultaneously a high value was placed upon a political constitution—in the case of America, upon a republic.
In the frequently quoted preface to Marx's Class Struggles, Engels showed in 1895 that the revolutionist was not concerned ​solely with the question of revolution, but must also be a politician and tactician. Parliamentary activity, everyday political work upon the basis of universal suffrage, were proclaimed to be the "sharpest weapon," whilst street fighting was declared practically impossible. "The revolutionist would be insane who should select for the erection of barricades the new working-class districts of the north and east of Berlin." The immediate task of the party, said Engels, was to be found in "the slow work of propaganda and in parliamentary activity." The right to revolution might be left to foreign comrades. "We, 'the revolutionaries,' can advance far more rapidly by legal means than by extra-legal and revolutionary tactics."
These explanations of Engels were interpreted at the time, and are still interpreted, in various senses by orthodox scholastics of Marxist trend; but even the ultraorthodox Kautsky and Mehring wrote contemptuously in the "Neue Zeit" of "revolutionary romanticism" and of "revolutionary philistinism," whilst the revisionists unhesitatingly advocated reformism and rejected revolutionism.
Concomitantly with their recognition of parliamentarism, the Marxists came more and more to advocate the economic organisation of the workers, to promote trade union and cooperative organisation, and to encourage self-help among the working classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the seizure of political power, politism in general, receded into the background as the new economism came to occupy the stage.
Connected with the discarding of revolutionism is the remarkable silence of orthodox Marxists concerning communism. Communism is the most essential, or at least the most important, social demand of Marxism, but to-day this demand is hardly voiced; or at any rate finds no place in the foreground of the program.
Within the social democracy there is an opposition movement against revisionist reformism, and the question of ​revolution is elaborately discussed in the party organs. The discussion is still far from its close.
To-day, in point of tactics, three trends may be distinguished in Marxist social democracy, for the radical opponents of reformism have split into two camps.
Kautsky, the literary opponent of revisionism, rejects reformism, and is able to appeal to Marx and Engels (first phase) on behalf of radical revolutionary tactics. Kautsky maintains the thesis that the party can for the nonce do no more than make ready for the definitive mass revolution, in order that, when the fitting moment arrives, it may be prepared to establish dictatorship and to inaugurate the social revolution.
But other representatives of a more radical tendency, other opponents of revisionist reformism, object to this outlook on the revolution (an outlook which is in the main that of orthodox Marxism), that this quiet preparation for the terminal revolution necessarily involves passivism, and that however radical it may be in theory it must inevitably in practice culminate in reformism. The representatives of the adverse conception of revolutionism demand that the need for direct action shall be continually inculcated upon the masses; they insist that the party executive must itself assume the revolutionary initiative, and must not content itself with the mere administration of the party organisation. In conformity with the revolutionary program of French syndicalism, mass action is advocated as the supplement and corrective to parliamentarism; in the trade unions and the cooperative societies and in all the democratic organisations, the revolutionary sentiment must not merely be sustained and fortified, but must be given practical expression whenever opportunity arises; in default of this radicalism, the spirit of those who advocate the terminal aim and the definitive revolution, tends to degenerate into a mere parliamentary opposition, and in the economic field into the advocacy of economic reform within the existing order.
§ 161.
IN the writings of the Russian Marxists we discern the same difficulties and uncertainties which, in respect of tactics, and above all as regards the question of revolution, perplexed Marx and Engels and their German successors—for the Russian Marxists were mainly influenced by German Marxist theory. ​When the diffusion of Marxism took place in Russia during the middle nineties, revisionism and antirevolutionary reformism found their place in the new movement.
Down to the present day Plehanov has continued the discussion concerning tactics which he began in the eighties. The principles and the leading arguments have remained unchanged; but the socialand political situation has undergone modification, and new, specifically Russian, problems have come to the fore. During the reaction of the eighties a species of enforced apolitism was widely diffused, and the discussion with the narodniki was historico-philosophical rather than political in character. During the nineties, however, political trends increased in strength, until at length at the opening of the new century the era of isolated acts of terrorism began, culminating in the mass revolution. The introduction of the constitution, the new constitutional problems pressing for solution, and the lively experiences of the last decade, have given increased interest to the discussion of the tactical problem.
We know that Marx carried on a campaign against Bakunin and Bakuninist revolutionism. Plehanov, after the split in Zemlja i Volja, continued this campaign against the followers of Bakunin and the supporters of Bakuninist methods. At first his opposition was conducted against the Narodnaja Volja, subsequently against the social revolutionaries, and finally against the revolutionaries in his own party. The creation of the duma gave a practical turn to the dispute concerning the importance and efficacy of politism and economism respectively, for the question now took the form, "Are you for or against the duma?" The first answers were purely abstract, but in practice it soon became apparent that the question comprised a considerable number of concrete subsidiary problems. Those who wished to decide whether on the one hand the duma should be theoretically and practically boycotted (in the latter case by "active," i.e. forcible, hindrance of the elections), or whether, on the other, the duma should be recognised, were compelled to consider the relationship of the socialists to other parties and to the programs of these, to consider the question of political alliances, and so on.
Plehanov and his supporters could not fail to point to the purely practical and utilitarian aspects of the new constitutionalism. The duma actually existed, and the question was how it could be turned to account for socialist ends. The ​argument could be reinforced by appeal to the German example and to German theories, notably those of Engels.
The duma elections necessitated a revision of opinions concerning the essential nature of mass organisation, and disclosed the inadequacy of the method of secret organisation. During the close of the nineties, vigorous discussions were in progress concerning kružkovščina. Subterranean secret societies and conspiracies, and the Machiavellianism and Jesuitism apt to be associated with such activities, are in fact essentially undemocratic. Publicity is the precise converse of aristocracy and aristocratic absolutism.
In the disputes between the majority and the minority this question played a considerable part. Lenin protested against conspiracies, but Lenin's adversaries accused him of being himself a conspirator, and declared that there was an aristocratic taint about the central committee of professional revolutionaries advocated by this leader of the majority. The social democratic party was in actual fact led by a central committee which acted in association with local committees. To a predominant extent the leaders of the party were intellectuals and this gave the social democratic organisation the character of an undemocratic and aristocratic secret society. In this connection, we have, of course, to bear in mind the nature of Russian conditions, which rendered it impossible to constitute a comprehensive united organisation such as exists in European lands, for in Russia there are obstacles to the union and association of the workers such as do not exist to the same degree in Europe. Owing to the defective development of means of communication, a comprehensive and elastic union of the masses is hard to secure. The industrial centres are widely separated; the towns are smaller and less populous than in Europe; there are fewer operatives, and the proportion of those who have had some political culture is much smaller. Further difficulties are imposed by the repressive policy of the government, which refuses to permit the radical parties to organise on laivful lines. Last of all (and the importance of this factor must not be underestimated), owing to the widespread illiteracy of Russian operatives they are far more de​pendent upon cultured leaders. The fact that among Russian operatives the great majority are uneducated, suffices per se to make the instructed workers into an aristocracy.
The struggle between the centralists and the autonomists within the Russian social democracy is thus based upon the nature of working-class conditions. The autonomists borrowed Liebknecht's argument against centralisation, saying that in an over-centralised party the destruction of the central executive involved the destruction of the entire party, and they referred in confirmation of this contention to the history of the Narodnaja Volja. However this may be, Ostrogorskii's demonstration, and still more recently that furnished by Michels, of the essentially oligarchical character of mass organisation even in the case of working-class parties is confirmed by Russian experience.
There are moral as well as utilitarian motives for the rejection of secret societies and the methods of the conspirator. Persons of frank and manly nature are repelled by the dishonesty, the Machiavellianism, and the Jesuitism so often associated with underground activities.
The amnesty associated with the promulgation of the constitution, and the return to Russia of many of the revolutionary refugees, served for a time to strengthen the party of those who favoured political activity by lawful methods. The subsequent reaction, however, and the efforts of absolutism to discredit the duma by rendering the activities of that body sterile, served once again to strengthen the opposition to politism. The remarkable agreement, in this instance, between radicalism and absolutism, is worthy of attention!
An attack on the methods of secret societies led to an attack on terrorism. Upon the basis defended by Plehanov, the orthodox Marxists came to condemn terrorism as anarchist tactics. This was the line taken, in a series of articles against ​the social revolutionaries, by no less a person that Věra Zasulič, one of the co-founders of the Social Democratic Party.
She endeavoured to prove that individual outrages could not destroy absolutism, nor even weaken it, but that, on the contrary, they actually favoured absolutism by natural selection among its tools. Individual terrorist acts were mere demonstrations, not a means of combat. They might perhaps gratify the sentiment of personal vengefulness, but it was not the mission of the Russian revolutionist either to take vengeance for the masses or to defend the masses; it was his task to act among, not for, the masses. He must inspire them with enthusiasm, must carry them along with him. Věra Zasulič considered that the terrorist social revolutionary organisation was merely a bureaucratic regulation of spontaneous personal outbreaks of sentiment, and she condemned systematic terrorism no less emphatically than she condemned spontaneous acts of vengeance on the part of individuals.
The situation was certainly a strange one. The terrorist of 1878 penned in 1902 an ardent philippic against terrorism, whilst her party, in the dispute with the bolševiki, recognised terrorism as a temporary method of revolution!
Men with a political intelligence can hardly doubt which method is likely to be more effective politically, the terrorist slaughter of a despot, or the parliamentary decision of a majority, a competent majority, to reduce the civil list to the maintenance of the president of a republic. But it is true that such a parliament presupposes the political education, not of the deputies merely, but likewise of the electorate, to a degree still unknown in Europe. It is therefore all the easier for us ​to understand that Plehanov's main demand for Russia was that there should be a revolution in men's minds.
Without an effective revolution in men's minds, in millions and millions of minds, the radical program of socialism cannot be realised. Whereas, in his comments on the Gotha program of 1875, Marx had justified the failure of that program to demand a democratic republic for Germany, as regards the Russia of the years 1905 to 1913 the question was debated whether the demand for a socialist or at least for a democratic republic ought not to form a permanent rubric of political agitation.
Plehanov's great merit was that he laid bare the weaknesses of the revolutionary parties, and in especial the weaknesses of the social democracy; and that he counterposed blind radicalism with his realistic criticism of the existing situation and of the factors of political power. He laid due stress upon the consideration that evolution has a law-abiding character and a constancy, in virtue of which (in accordance with a well-known saying) the labour pains attending the birth of the new social order, though they can be mitigated and though their duration can be reduced, can never be wholly avoided.
Involuntarily, therefore, Plehanov was led to give his support to the reformism of the revisionists. Emphasising the reign of law in socio-political no less than in capitalistic evolution, condemning terrorists tactics, exposing the blindness of the incautious radicalism which would not look ahead, and recommending cooperation with the liberals, he reinforced constitutionalism and its advocates, and assisted the revisionists in maintaining their program of reformism.
It is this that makes Plehanov's relationship to Russian reformism so interesting. Struve, who simultaneously with Plehanov during the middle nineties took the field as a Marxist against the narodniki, found his main argument against revolutionism and terrorism in his insistence upon the constancy of historical evolution. Nature, he said, makes no leaps; the variations in social life are not discontinuous variations. In addition, Struve contested the validity of Marx's theory of increasing misery, and he was of course right in maintaining that it was impossible for a degenerate class to effect the great social revolution. In essentials this argument is identical with the evolutionary conception.
​The earlier Russian Marxists passed through the school of Mihailovskii and Lavrov, already contemplating evolution as the opposite of revolution, and thus paving the way for revisionism and reformism.
I have already pointed out that these evolutionist arguments by no means exhaust the problem of reformism versus revolutionism, and that still less can they be said to solve it. Struve appeared to feel this, and he therefore attempted to rescue reformism by rejecting revolution in toto as epistemologically incomprehensible. But Struve's formula is one difficult to establish, and at any rate Struve did not succeed in establishing it. Epistemologically the revolution becomes comprehensible enough as soon as it exists. In the collective work entitled Věhy (signposts), the sometime ex-Marxists, Struve among them, took up another position. The revolution of 1905-1906 was made the occasion for the publication of their philosophical confessions, wherein not this revolution alone, but also the entire revolutionary spirit of the intelligentsia, the spirit which had animated the intelligentsia for years, were discarded as theoretical and moral confusionism. The revolution was condemned, not epistemologically, but ethically—as nihilism.
Theoretically, the revolution is comprehensible enough, but the question is whether revolution is ethically permissible. Primarily, of course, we think here of a forcible revolution attended by-bloodshed; but the question applies more generally to every revolution, in the field of theory as well. Marx and Engels have an easy task of it here with their amoralism, and Engels declares that the right of revolution is the only historic right, seeing that all modern states have in fact come into existence through revolutions.
In reality the question is less simple, but for the time being our sole concern is with the way in which the Marxists envisage the problem. The orthodox Marxists claim the "right to revolution (since they are amoralists the word right must be placed in quotation marks). Some of them, in this connection are thinking of the future definitive revolution, whilst others have in mind an uninterrupted revolutionism. But the orthodox Marxists have not yet discussed the problem of revolution in a way that can be considered even partially satisfactory.
§ 162.
THE contradictions noticeable in the Russian Marxists' views concerning the general question of revolution are especially conspicuous in their appraisement and analysis of the Russian revolution of 1905–1906.
​The subject was eagerly considered. It was natural that contemporaries, a number of whom participated personally in the events, should be interested in searching out the causes of the revolution. The question they usually asked was, whether and to what extent the revolution was socialistic, whether it was a working-class revolution, a peasant revolution, or a bourgeois revolution; and they wished to estimate the value of the revolution from the socialist outlook, to ascertain whether and to what extent it had advantaged or injured particular classes and above all the working class, whether and to what extent the revolution had favoured or hindered the attainment of the socialist goal. The discussion was instructive, but was somewhat confused. Participation on the part of the workers in its events does not make the revolution socialistic. The concepts, bourgeoisie, liberalism, intelligentsia, etc., have many meanings. No attempt was made to ascertain precisely how great a part the capitalists played in bringing about the revolution, side by side with, and after a certain point independently of, the great landowners; no attempt was made to determine when either of these two classes intervened, or when and why either of them ctased to participate. But it is equally difficult to ascertain the precise share of the Marxists and the social revolutionaries in the revolution.
I am not thinking solely of direct and active participation in the struggle. We are also concerned with the question how far the revolutionists received sympathetic help from various strata of the population. It is further necessary to examine what were the consequences of the revolution, what trend the movement took, and why.
Finally, the individual facts and the revolution as a whole ​ought to be considered historically and philosophically in their general bearing on the historical evolution of Russia.
Russian works available in translation afford us some insight into the discussion. Čerevjanin's book, The Proletariat and the Russian Revolution, 1908, written from the standpoint of the men'ševiki, concludes that the economic development of all classes of the population, with the exception of the feudal ability, must lead to the formation of an opposition to the government, and must ultimately culminate in revolution. In this anti-absolutist coalition the working class unquestionably plays the leading role, but it experiences reverses and hinders the further development of the revolution because it does not understand how to work hand in hand with the liberal bourgeoisie. Čerevjanin considers the enforced concession of the eight-hour day, and all extreme demands and actions on the part of the operatives, to have been tactical errors, whose only result was to sow dissension between the workers and the liberals and thus to promote the victory of reaction. For Čerevjanin, the boycott of the duma was another characteristic example of this erroneous tactic, and the boycott was a contributory cause of the further tactical errors committed by the labour leaders.
It is, of course, quite easy after the event to point to the errors of the revolution. There need be no hesitation about admitting that not the workers alone, but the liberals also, made numerous and extensive mistakes. On the whole, hower, a study of the revolution induces the impression that the movement was better conducted than might have been anticipated in view of the lack of firmly established and well-tried organisations. In my opinion, the council of workers' deputies in St. Petersburg, despite some weakness and vacillation, deserves commendation for its general conduct of the cause; but it is plain enough that the first successes had a somewhat intoxicating effect upon the working-class leaders and that they overestimated the strength of the revolutionary forces while they underestimated the power of the government.
Judged as a whole, the revolution of 1905–1906 was advantageous to the development of Russia, was a notable warning to the government and an impressive lesson to the revolutionaries.
IV
§ 163.
WE must now devote a brief section to considering the position of Marxism as a part of the most recent trends in philosophy and above all in the philosophy of religion. The influence of Marxist philosophy was peculiarly powerful in Russia. By the Russian Marxists, therefore, an exceptionally keen attention has been paid to philosophical problems, and it is easy to understand the reason, seeing that since the days of Herzen the fundamentals of socialism have been eagerly debated. Before Marxism came to Russia, its philosophical groundwork had already been prepared in that country. Hegel, Feuerbach, French and English positivism, materialism, all the philosophical elements out of which Marxism id constituted, had made themselves at home in Russia. For this very reason, Marxism did not long retain its grip upon the Russians.
The matter is partly explained by the fact that Marx had failed to give a systematic exposition of his philosophical foundations, and had exhibited them merely in the concrete in his political and economic studies. Marx had doubtles aimed at becoming a teacher of philosophy, and his first essays in literature dealt with this field of knowledge, but his subsequent development and the course of events modified his plans, so that towards 1848 he devoted himself to revolutionary political activities and revolutionary journalism, these activities culminating in his critical and revolutionary economic studies.
In Germany, Marx's adversaries have for a long time concerned themselves almost exclusively with his economics, the philosophical content of his writings receiving inadequate attention.
Moreover, Marx never formulated his philosophy clearly and unambiguously. His commentators are not agreed to what extent he remained a Hegelian, and to what extent he must be considered a Feuerbachian, a positivist, and a materialist. Misled by Hegel's failure to recognize the principle of con​tradiction, Marx contented himself with epistemologically uncritical positivism and positivist historism, and this is why his formula of historical materialism remains so nebulous.
Engels, in his criticism of Dühring’s philosophy, attempted to systematise the philosophy of Marxism, but the work Engels was attacking, Dühring's The Revolution of Science, is, epistemologically considered, nothing more than a naive exposition of naive realism. Seeing, therefore, that the Russian orthodox Marxists, Plehanov in especial, but also Lenin, took their theory of cognition from Engels (as Plehanov is careful to explain), we cannot expect much valuable fruit from the philosophical discussions of the Marxists.
"The father of Russian Marxism" is, in fact, satisfied with Engel's naive realism. Nevertheless he believes himself to be an orthodox Marxist in proclaiming materialism as monism, in approximating it as closely as possible to Spinozism, and even in positively identifying it with Spinozism, for he maintains that the materialism of Marx and Engels, and also the materialism of Feuerbach and Diderot, are no more than a variety of Spinozism. At the same time he defends the materialistic foundation of dialectic, wherein he discovers the true essence of historical materialism, of the Marx-Engels philosophy.
It need hardly be said that there is no justification for the identification of Marxism with Spinozism, as the Marxists have admitted (Stein, for example, in his book on Spinoza). Spinoza assumes a parallelism between being and thought, whereas in the Marx-Engels philosophy the relationship is regarded as causal, for existence is assumed to determine thought. As a parallelist, Spinoza is a rationalist, and indeed an ultra-rationalist. Marx, on the other hand, is an ultra-empiricist. Moreover, Plehanov may learn from Engels how ​as early as 1844 the latter, in his critique of Carlyle, following Feuerbach, rejected Spinozism as pantheism. Plehanov's belief in an objective dialectic based on materialism is equally void of foundation, for there is no such thing as an objective dialectic. Plehanov weakens his own position by his fondness for advocating dialectic as a method. He learned this from Engels, but both he and Engels were in error. Historical materialism is merely materialism; as such, in interpreting history, it may formulate its own method, but it is not itself a method. Struve, therefore, successfully maintained as against Plehanov that dialectic has no proper place in Marxism (materialism). It is true that Plehanov offers two proofs on behalf of objective dialectic. He says that motion and becoming involve an inward contradiction, Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, being again raised to honour; and he introduces into the concept of becoming an antirevolutionary contrast, which is itself however subjective, conceptual, not objective.
Against the revisionists, who advocate a return to Kant, Plehanov adduces Jacobi's argument against Kant. If we base ourselves on Kant we are faced with a dilemma. We have to choose between Feuerbach's materialism ("I am a real, a sensual being, and the body in its totality is my ego, my essence"), and Fichte's solipsism. But solipsism is absurd (no one can contend that my mother exists only within me), and we are therefore compelled to accept materialism.
It is needless to refute a disjunctive statement of this sort or to waste time discussing arguments of such a calibre. We may reject Kant and Fichte, we may reject Kantian apriorism and Kantian subjectivism; but it does not follow that subjectivism is wholly false, and that materialism as naive realism or objectivism, is sound. The whole aim of recent philosophy has been to revise Hume and Kant, and to provide a critical foundation for empiricism—"critical" in the Kantian sense. The Marxists have hitherto taken no part in this work of revision, but no one who seriously attempts it can possibly remain a materialist.
Plehanov is doubtless right in his energetic rejection of extreme subjectivism as scepticism. Bělinskii, Bakunin, the slavophils, Mihailovskii, etc., took the same sound view. Plehanov sees in the scepticism which has been diffused since the eighteenth century a manifestation of decadence, and we have in fact to do here with decadence, with the degeneration of ​the lay and ecclesiastical aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and with the degeneration and decay of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Plehanov further contends that scepticism has nothing to do with theological ("extra-human") doctrines. The bourgeois ideologues are "instinctively" aware of the approaching destruction of their class, and this explains their feeling of profound discontent, which finds expression in scepticism, pessimism, etc. Proletarian ideologues, on the other hand, are animated with a vigorous feeling of the joy of life, and every one of them exclaims with Hutten: "It is bliss to be alive!" The proletarian knows nothing of scepticism.
Thus Plehanov rejects Hume as well as Kant, for Hume's philosophy is incompatible with Marxism. With Hume, the modern Humists, and especially Mach, must be discarded. Plehanov vigorously animadverts upon Bogdanov and other Marxists who accept the philosophy of Mach.
Lenin, too, though an opponent of Plehanov, defends Marxist materialism in a writing against empirio-criticism. Lenin considers that the ideas of Avenarius, Mach, and their Russian successors, are merely a reiteration of the masked solipsism of Fichte and Berkeley. The adoption of subjectivism involves the burial of the healthy human understanding with its belief in an objective world subordinated to the reign of law. But thereby religion, one of the main props of the bourgeoisie and of bourgeois dominion, is favoured. Consequently empirio-criticism is a reactionary philosophy.
Lenin's book is written in a racy style : Avenarius, Schuppe, and the others are smartly handled; but no further light is thrown upon the essential questions in dispute. Lenin makes no advance beyond Engels.
§ 164.
THE old dispute in Russian philosophy between objectivism and subjectivism is the nuclear point at issue between the Russian orthodox Marxists and the revisionists. Bernstein, who insists that socialism must be founded, not objectively but subjectively, upon the basis of a proper direction of the will and upon individual motivation, thereby gives an accurate epistemological formulation to his opposition to Marxism. The Marxism of Marx and Engels is decisively ​objectivist. The individual and the individual consciousness are wholly absorbed in the mass; the individual consciousness must yield place before the mass consciousness. Russian orthodox Marxists take the same standpoint, and therefore attack the subjectivism of Mihailovskii and Lavrov and these authors' endorsement of ethics and ethical aims. Objectivist Marxism is objectively historical and amoralist.
Russian revisionism was inaugurated by Struve, who declared himself in favour, not only of ethical but also of metaphysical individualism. Struve defended the individual consciousness and the idea of substance, giving a more than Kantian prominence to soul-substance and the freedom of the will.
From positivism and materialism Struve made an abrupt return to metaphysics. The acceptance of metaphysics implied the acceptance of religion and mysticism. Before long it was hardly possible to speak of the movement as one of Marxist revisionism; the revisionists had simply become "idealists," the name used by friend and foe alike to denote those who tend towards the opposite pole from materialism and positivism ("from materialism to socialism," Bulgakov).
For Russians the watchword, Return to Kant, embodies a comparatively vague philosophical program, for there has hitherto been little accurate study in Russia of the Kantian philosophy. In the present volumes it has been possible to refer to Solov'ev alone as possessing a knowledge of Kant. For the Russian revisionists (and indeed for the German revisionists) the name of Kant is little more than a catchword. The reference is really to neokantianism or, to speak yet more strictly, to the various German philosophers of the present day whose thought is related to that of Kant. F. A. Lange, Schuppe, Riehl, Cohen, Windelband, Rickert, Stammler, and others, have been the teachers of the Russian revisionists.
Properly speaking, therefore, Russian revisionism falls back upon Mihailovskii. The revisionists accept Mihailovskii's subjective method. The orthodox Marxists regard this as a reversion to the narodničestvo, or at any rate Plehanov identifies subjectivism with the narodničestvo. But as far as metaphysics and the philosophy of religion are concerned, the revisionists find Mihailovskii inadequate, and therefore these sometime Marxists have returned to Solov'ev and Dostoevskii.
So general has been this turning away from Marxism as ​an embodiment of materialism that even the orthodox Marxists have begun to abandon their Marx. Avenarius, Mach, and empirio-criticism, have become the authorities of many of the orthodox, whilst Dietzgen begins to replace Engels. Plehanov disputes the validity of these new authorities championed by his comrades, and so does Lenin, but it cannot be said that either Plehanov or Lenin is wholly right, for Marxist positivism can readily be associated with the ideas of Mach or Hume. Still, we are concerned with ethics as well as with epistemology and metaphysics, and from the ethical outlook Marxist amoralism is incompatible with Humism. It would seem, however, that even Plehanov must have been attacked by the revisionist intellectual anaemia—for why else should he make out Marx to be a Spinozist?
For the Marxists the struggle between subjectivism and objectivism has no mere theoretical significance, but is, rather, practical and ethical. With good reason since the days of Hume and Kant subjectivism has been in essentials a moral philosophy. In the dispute between the orthodox Marxists and the revisionists, the ethical problem comes to the front, the question whether our estimate of socialism and the socialist program is to be ethical or amoralist and historical. The orthodox Marxists are especially concerned with founding and defending revolution and the revolutionary mood, and for them the revolutionary mood is the touchstone of philosophy. From this outlook Plehanov defends materialism as objectivism against subjectivism, contending that subjectivism leads to scepticism, and therefore weakens and destroys the evolutionary spirit. ​In his philosophical opus magnum, The Monistic View of History, Plehanov discusses the ethical problem, although the work is properly concerned solely with the question of freedom and necessity. How, asks Plehanov, can the consciousness, how can voluntary decisions, how can motivation, be explained in a purely objectivist manner? How can voluntary decisions, above all, be even partially conceived as a mere "reflex" of the object? With this question, the objectivism of Marx and Engels is shivered to fragments, and despite all his Marxist orthodoxy, Plehanov takes refuge in Spinoza.
§ 165.
WHEN we talk of "from Marxism to idealism," we have to understand by idealism, religion as the definite opposite of materialism. In Russia, materialism signifies, irreligion or antireligion, and in the narrower sense, atheism.
The return to religion effected by the revisionists was partly determined by the example of the German revisionists. For the most part, however, the Russian revisionists followed the current represented by Solov'ev and Dostoevskii. To-day, as I have said, it is no longer possible to speak of Struve, Bulgakov, and similar writers, as revisionists. But there do exist ​Marxists friendly to religion, of whom Lunačarskii is the best known—not to speak of Gor'kii, who has coined the term "creator of God" (not "seeker after God!"), a term used by opponents to designate the trend. At the head of the Marxists hostile to religion stands Plehanov, and Plehanov tilts with especial vigour against Lunačarskii, who has defended his position in a two-volume treatise.
The discussion has been somewhat unedifying and discursive, but may be briefly summarised as follows.
The question is frequently asked, what is the relationship between socialism and religion, and it is necessary to point out how the history of socialism shows that socialism and religion are not mutually incompatible. With regard to the special question whether socialism can or cannot be reconciled with Christianity, we have to ask what is meant by Christianity, the teaching of Jesus or the extant ecclesiastical forms, and further we have to ask which system of socialism is meant, some desire to prove that materialism is essentially incompatible with Christianity and religion, whilst others believe that Marxism can be reconciled with religion in general and with Christianity in particular.
Another formulation of the problem occurs when socialism itself, or the social democratic movement, is spoken of as a religion, as the new religion. This line has been taken by Dietzgen, to whom others besides Marxists and declared socialists appeal as an authority upon the matter. In the works of Filosofov, for example, I find such an appeal to Dietzgen, and a reminder that Dietzgen had lived in Russia for several years. Filosofov is one of those who recognise the great importance of socialism, and for that reason are loath to admit that religion and socialism are antagonistic.
Again, it often happens that socialism (or social democracy) is represented as a new stage in the development of the religious consciousness, a stage to which ecclesiastical religion will have to adapt itself.
In connection with all these formulations, it is necessary to insist upon a more precise definition of the concept religion, and above all it is essential to distinguish the principal elements of religion in general from extant ecclesiastical religion.
Frequently when people speak of the religious factor in socialism, they mean the faith, the believing energy, the conviction, and the hope, of the socialists. Plehanov extols this ​believing energy of socialism as contrasted with the scepticism of the bourgeoisie, and declares that the proletarian is peculiarly unsceptical. Before Plehanov, nearly all the socialists, and in particular the revolutionary socialists, valued and demanded this energy of belief. In such a sense, for example, the nihilists were "religious,’" were persons animated with faith. We recall, too, how the earlier writers, beginning with Bělinskii and Herzen, demanded faith and condemned scepticism. But it is necessary to distinguish between faith and religious faith, between belief and religion.
Intimately related with this mood of faith is the enthusiasm of the socialists, admired even by their adversaries—an enthusiasm which may on occasion pass into fanaticism.
Another notable trait is the self-sacrificingness and the active fraternity of the socialists. Those to whom the essence of religion lies in morality will gladly term socialists "religious persons."
We have further to consider the mystical tendency and the belief in miracle, factors which play a notable part in Russia in constituting the idea of religion. Whilst the orthodox Marxists cling to Marxist rationalism and its associations with the enlightenment, the Marxists with religious inclinations (to whom Plehanov, of course, refuses the name of Marxists) turn towards mysticism which is, they insist, a necessary supplement to purely scientific, one-sidedly scientific, Marxism. From this outlook, ceremonial and symbolism are recognised as important. (For Lunačarskii, for example, productive energies are the Father, the proletariat is the Son, and scientific socialism is the Holy Ghost.)
Finally an appeal is made (as by V. Bazarov, whose philosophic starting-point is Engel's empiricism) to religion as an authority which will be competent, in virtue of its higher religious power, to maintain order in a disintegrated society that is breaking up into separate classes and castes.
In this study of the relationships between Russian socialism and religion, it is interesting to note that Christian socialism is practically unknown in Russia. A certain number of priests have joined the liberal movement, and a few even have entered the Social Democratic Party; this party carries on an agitation among the sectaries and old believers, but there are few traces of Christian socialism. Whereas in France, England, Germany, and everywhere throughout the west, socialism ​first manifested itself as Christian or religious socialism, Russian socialism was from the outset a philosophic movement, influenced by western philosophic doctrines.
In his philosophy of religion, Plehanov follows Feuerbach, whose anthropomorphic theory he supplements for the first stages of evolution by Tylor's animism. But for Plehanov the essential ideas of religion are the reflex of the productive forces of society and of material conditions in general. (For him philosophy, too, is a reflex, law is a reflex—in fact we have too much reflex altogether!) Plehanov does not merely deny revelation but he contests the existence of an inborn subjective need for religion. He follows Comte in holding that religion is essentially a lower stage in the theoretical elucidation of the world; that the main theological doctrines (for example, that of the creation of the world by God, a conception itself based upon the analogy of primitive or more advanced technical acquirements) are hypotheses to be abandoned as reason gains strength. For Plehanov, therefore, there is no inner connection between morality and religion. Morality, as a systematic formulation of the mutual relationships of human beings, arises antecedently to religion, and is not subordinated to religion until a subsequent stage of development, when duties are represented as the commands of the godhead. When despotism prevailed, God was conceived as a despot, but the fod of the deists has his heavenly constitutionalist parliament—thus literally does Plehanov reecho the teaching of Feuerbach. Religion, says Plehanov, is destined to disappear, and is already disappearing in proportion as man comes to understand social life and its relationships, and in proportion as he acquires power over nature and himself.
It is plain that Plehanov supplements Feuerbach's philo​sophy of religion by Comte's positive philosophy. Whereas Feuerbach conceived religion as the religion of humanity, agreeing here with the later developments of Comte's philosophy, Plehanov divorced humanity from religion. Religion for him was purely ephemeral, and he could not agree with Feuerbach and Schleiermacher in the view that there exists a natural need for religion.
Plehanov shares the prejudice of Comte and the positivists when he represents religion as a lower stage of evolution. How can religion be replaced by the positive philosophy if it be completely different from the positive philosophy? Comte confused theology or myth with religion, and it was upon the basis of this confusion that he formulated his three stages, which conflict with history and with the idea of evolution and progress. A priori it is extremely improbable that religion will now cease to exist and will leave science victor on the field, seeing that religion has continued to develop since the very beginning of history. Mankind has already existed for thousands of years, perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years, and throughout this long period religion has unceasingly developed. Will it now pass away entirely? Is it not more probable, above all from the evolutionist standpoint, that religion will continue in the future to develop side by side with science, just as science has hitherto developed side by side with religion?
Plehanov follows the views of Engels, who (in the before-mentioned critique of Carlyle) declared that all the possibilities of religion have been exhausted, and maintained that no other form of religion could come into existence in the future. This contention was a presumptuous one, and was the outcome of a false philosophy of religion and of history, of an epistemological confusion of religion with myth.
Lunačarskii, who would like to combine his Marx with Avenarius and others, likewise follows Comte and Feuerbach, but comes to conclusions differing from those of Plehanov, for in his view the positivistic phase of evolution is likewise religious. Atheism, says Lunačarskii, is religious; man is put in God's place, and we have the Comtist religion of humanity; God disappears, or, à la Feuerbach, he is transformed into man; "homo homini deus" repeats Lunačarskii after Feuerbach. To put the matter otherwise, democracy is not merely a political system but also a religious system; the aspirations ​of the scientific and fully conscious socialist are guided by the idealism of the class and the species. Collectivism is religious; socialism is a religious system; Marxist socialism, above all, is "the fifth great religion formulated by Jewry."
Since the days of Herzen the Russian socialists have followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Bulgakov, who gave the watchword "from Marxism to idealism," needed therefore strong personal reasons before forsaking Feuerbach. In a work entitled The Religion of the Man-Godhead in the Works of L. Feuerbach (1906), a belated contribution to the Feuerbach centenary (1904), the sometime Marxist declares that the Feuerbachian religion of humanity is inadequate. Not the man-god, he says, not the god-humanity, but the God-Man, the Christ, is the true object of religious devotion. As the terminology indicates, Bulgakov, too, is returning from Feuerbach to Solov'ev and Dostoevskii. Bulgakov states the alternatives: "Humanism with Christ and in Christ's name, or humanism versus Christ and in man's own name." Nevertheless, Feuerbach is given a place among the holy ones of the Christian calendar (an honour which Solov'ev had paid to Comte as well), for the social freedom of mankind is and must remain the precondition of the kingdom of God on earth, and Feuerbach, despite his atheism, sincerely cooperated in the upbuilding of this kingdom.
§ 166.
FOR Russia, as for Europe, Marxism is something more than a living memento to the defenders of the old social order, it is in addition a positive creative energy.
Apart from its scientific performances in the domain of economics and economic history, Marxism during the nineties awakened and reinvigorated the Russian intelligentsia. The revision of the narodničestvo and its documentary refutation with the aid of economic and financial statistics was a valuable service, through the performance of which realism first became wholly realistic. The blind hopes based upon the peasant had to be abandoned—though we must admit that the Marxists, in their campaign against the narodniki, endeavoured to prove a good deal more than was susceptible of proof.
The political achievements of Marxism have been con​siderable. By their defence of politism, Plehanov and his associates established a clearer distinction between socialism and anarchism. For a time, none the less, the influence of Marx was overshadowed by that of Bakunin; only a minority of the Marxists remained equal to their task; but the views of this minority have continually gained ground. During the strenuous days of the revolution, though all the progressive parties were joint leaders in that movement, and though it was approved and supported even by the right wing of liberalism, it was the Marxists in especial who proved their organising capacity.
Marxist social democracy teaches the workers to advance by legal methods; the duma and the constitution are utilised to better and better effect on behalf of the minimum program. Everyday political and administrative work in the individual organisations (the trade unions, cooperatives, etc.), is training up a new generation of operatives, and the organisation of the workers necessitates to an increasing extent the development of political capacity.
The tactical struggles between the "economists" and the advocates of political action become less acrimonious; educational activity is diffusing among the workers a large share of culture, and above all of political culture. To a notable extent, this development is promoted by the consciousness of belonging to a party and to an international organisation. The Russian social democratic workman's outlook upon the social and political activities of the entire world, lifts him to a higher plane, politically speaking, than has been attained by the average liberal. Working-class leaders play the part which, during the reign of Alexander I, was played in the army and in society by those officers who had been in Europe ; these leaders, too, have made personal acquaintance with Europe. To this extent, therefore, Marxism is in essentials a renovated radical westernism. In Russia, the land of so many nationalities, the mission of Marxist internationalism cannot but be fraught with blessings.
It is impossible for the nonce to say whether and when the Russian Marxists will succeed in winning over the peasants, but this much is certain, that the agrarian question is of far more pressing importance to the Russian than to the European Marxist.
We cannot esteem the social democracy too highly for the ​way in which it has made it a point of principle to insist that science must be applied to political practice, to demand that politics shall be based upon strictly scientific historical and sociological knowledge. In this matter, Marxism follows the example set by Herzen and his successors.
On the philosophical plane, the religious problem presents great difficulties to the Marxists, though it must be admitted that the other parties, and above all the representatives of the church, have the same problem to solve. Mere Feuerbachian negation will not suffice. Doubtless such negation may have been the most effective weapon to employ against theocratic caesaropapism, but the old religion can be defeated only by a new religion.
To a certain extent, Marxism replaces religion by the cultivation of art.
In the literary field, at any rate, the Marxists make their appearance as critics, for in Russian Marxism literary criticism plays the same role as in the other trends. The Marxists have endeavoured to create a comprehensive history of literature, but since the task is still beyond their unaided strength they have had to join forces here with the narodniki, the liberals, and the social revolutionaries.
Among creative artists, the Marxists have a certain right to claim Gor'kii as their own, although the orthodox Marxists incline rather to regard him as a revisionist or a social revolutionary.
In the sphere of the fine arts, Marxism is still weak. Further, it is necessary to note that Marxism as yet has done hardly anything for the populdrisation of art. Its endeavours to popularise science have a one-sidedly intellectualist stamp.
It must be accredited to Marxism as a service that it has vigorously opposed the decadent movement in literature, as manifested not only in Saninism, but also in metaphysical, religious, and political aberrations. The works of Andreev, Merežkovskii, and Sologub, were rightly criticised, and an apt estimate was formed of Nietzsche and the Nietzschean cult. The cause of decadence was seen to lie in the social system of capitalism. It was recognised that pessimism, idealism, and mysticism, are merely so many outward manifestations of the widespread taedium vitae which is charac​teristic of the decay of the old era, with its satiety and debility. Plehanov, we remember, regards scepticism (itself, too, an outcome of subjectivism) as a symptom of bourgeois decadence. Bakunin wrote against scepticism in a quite similar manner. So did Mihailovskii, who, in addition, referred to the symptomatic significance of suicide. Quite recently (January, 1912), the epidemic of suicide among the Russian youth was analysed by Gor'kii in an animated attack upon "the fathers" who drive their "children" to suicide. We can readily understand that some of the decadents will turn for sensational stimulation to social democracy and the revolution. The decadent vacillates between the church and the lupanar, and in his physical and mental debility he may also find his way to the barricade.
But however much I admire the democratic aspirations of Marxism and the social democracy, however gladly I accept socialism (not communism!), I deplore the scholasticism of Marxist orthodoxy, and lament the philosophic and scientific sterility of the doctrine.
V
§ 167.
IN our historical sketch we gave an account of the development of the revolutionary parties in Russia, and we have made acquaintance with the radical program and with the essential features of the terrorist revolution which came to its climax with the assassination of Alexander II.
After the tsar's death the members of the Narodnaja Volja remained organised in small local circles. These circles were continually breaking up and being reorganised, and in some cases small new centres of the party came into existence. The relationships of the Narodnaja Volja with the growing social democratic organisation were friendly in some places, hostile in others.
During the autumn of Igor, the various revolutionary elements amalgamated to form the Social Revolutionary Party with a central committee. Side by side with this central committee there was soon formed a more or less independent "fighting organisation" (boevaja organizacia). Bogolěpov, Sypjagin, Pleve, Sergius, Šuvalov, and others, were its victims. ​The term "social revolutionaries" goes back to Bakunin, and was intended to denote those who aimed at the definitive social revolution; but the name likewise stressed the idea of revolutionary tactics.
In respect of organisation and of program the Social Revolutionary Party was the rival of the Social Democratic Party. The contrast between the two organisations is succinctly shown in the following table:—
| Social Revolutionary Party. | Social Democratic Party. |
| Represents the workers generally, opposes every kind of exploitation of the workers; is not a class party, but a union of the intelligentsia, the peasantry, and the operatives. | Represents the factory workers, the proletariat as a class, which will put an end to the class struggle. |
| The peasants constitute the most numerous contingent of the working class and must be revolutionised; the factory operatives will then follow their lead. The peasant is not a petty bourgeois but a collectivist. | The peasant is inferior to the factory operative in respect of revolutionary energy; he is a petty bourgeois. |
| The mir is a socialistic factor; it has defects, but they can be remedied. | The mir has played its part, and is now a moribund and reactionary institution. |
| The small holdings of the peasantry will not be absorbed by the large estates; on the contrary, the number of small holdings is on the increase. | The small-holding peasant will be gobbled up by the great landlord. |
| Private property in land is inadmissible; the land belongs to all (nationalisation of the land). Private property in land, free ownership of land, advantages none but the rich. | Freedom of landownership may serve to accelerate the concentration of landownership. |
| Terrorism is ethically and politically permissible as a supplement to the mass revolution; it must however be conducted by the party, and must not be undertaken by individuals upon their own initiative. | Terrorism is injurious to the mass revolution, and does no good. |
| All the revolutionary parties should amalgamate. | The social democrats can make common cause with other revolutionary parties only temporarily and ad hoc. |
| The organisation of the party is centralist. | The organisation of the party is either centralist or autonomist. |
| The party considers a republic to be a practicable aim. | The party aims at a republic. |
| The duma is to be boycotted. | The duma is to be boycotted (majority); deputies should be sent to the duma (minority). |
revolutionaries is the program of the narodniki in a socialist dress; the folk-socialists (social-narodniki) and the neonarodniki developed pari passu and in association with the social revolutionaries. Since the question of tactics was the main interest of the social revolutionaries, since they advocated the fomenting of revolution by terrorist methods, it was natural that they should pay comparatively little heed to economic questions; these matters were left to the narodniki and their leading periodical ("Russkoe Bogatstvo"). The menace to the existence of the mir involved by the law of November 9, 1906, aroused little discussion among social revolutionaries, although from time to time it was frankly recognised that the working of this law would completely destroy the mir within two or three decades, and that the hopes based upon Russian socialism by the narodničestvo were therefore tending to prove illusory.
The experiences that followed the revolution of 1905 wrought much confusion in the ranks of the social revolutionaries, a confusion manifested by the cleavage of the party into numerous factions, whose existence was often ephemeral. We have already learned that the social revolutionaries, like the social democrats, split into maximalists and minimalists; for a short time there was a section known as "initiativists," who advocated radical terrorism as it had been practised by the narodovolcy. There were several social revolutionary periodicals which preached a boycott of the duma, but there was another organ which opposed this boycott. In three of the elections to the duma, the boycott was actually practised, but the second duma was not boycotted.
Upon the question of revolutionary terrorism the party was disunited, and failed to formulate clear views. It was not by its constitution outspokenly terrorist. After certain terrorist activities and after the revolution, at a congress held in June 1906 it was decided to abandon the terrorist struggle until further notice. The party was here yielding to the general sentiment. The first terrorist acts had been at least tacitly approved by persons of all parties and trends, but after the revolution, terrorism was decisively condemned.
​The counter-revolution which followed the revolution led the revolutionists to harbour doubts about the policy of individual outrage, for it seemed that these at best must be useless, seeing that even the mass revolution had been unsuccessful. At the same time, terrorism was compromised by the practice of brigandage, a decomposition in the revolutionary organisations setting in owing to the activities of those who practised expropriation in the name of the revolution.
It has previously been explained that an especially severe blow was administered to the party by the unmasking of Azev. When the terrorists could no longer feel sure whether they were not promoting the aims of provocative agents, they could not fail to reconsider the whole question of the efficacy of terrorism.
Since the government was actually willing to sacrifice persons of considerable importance in order to sow panic throughout society, and in order that the reaction might be enabled to pursue its course undisturbed, the revolutionists were compelled to ask themselves whether terrorism, whether the policy of individual outrage, could possibly be a sound and efficient method. After the unmasking of Azev, the Social Revolutionary Party was decimated. Azev had wielded great authority in the party and, as one of the party organs said, had been esteemed even more highly than the revolutionists Željabov and Geršuni. Now, of a sudden, came a crushing disillusionment! There was little consolation to be found in the fact that the party itself had discovered the traitor (Burcev, who unmasked Azev, was a member of the party); nor was it an effective argument that provocative agents had likewise been discovered among the social democrats and in the Bund, for in these non-terrorist organisations provocative agents had never played a leading part such as Azev had played among the social revolutionaries and Degaev in the Narodnaja Volja. When therefore in 1909, at a meeting of the party executive, the resolution of 1906 was revoked, and it was agreed that the terrorist campaign should be continued notwithstanding the experiences with Azev, the impression produced by this decision was that an attempt was being made to gloss over the disintegration of the party. A minority faction, organising ​itself in Paris as a "League of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left," and carrying on its journalistic and literary activities from the French capital, attempted under the leadership of Burcev, the indefatigable historian and publicist, to carry out an inexorable self-criticism, and thereby to liberate the party and its organisation from "revolutionary philistinism." The creative activity of the individual, and the active struggle of an organised minority of persons of initiative, must, said the members of this group, come into their own. The party must realise that it was no more than a minority, and could be nothing else. There is no revolutionary mass; the mass has always been led by minorities. The party must therefore abandon its centralist organisation; Azev was the product of centralisation, The greatest enemy, in truth the only enemy, of socialism (not only in Russia but elsewhere as well) is autocracy. In concrete terms, the Romanov dynasty is everywhere the prop of reaction; it must therefore be the first object of attack, and must first of all be annihilated. The autocracy, too, is only a minority.
From the maximalist side, objections were raised to this program of the left.
The maximalists contended that the minimum socialist program (the minimum social revolutionary program not excepted) comprised, as a whole, those demands which were realisable under the continuance of the old regime. Of course the minimum was extensible, varying according to the way in which the term "realisable" was defined. The minimum might be conceived either in a reformist or in a revolutionary sense.
​The maximalists, who began to organise themselves towards the close of 1905, demanded a social revolution. They were therefore sceptical regarding the political revolution of the left. If, they said, the minority can seize political power, why should it not make social revolution its direct aim? Simple political dictatorship by the minority was repudiated by the maximalists as Marxism and socio-political realism.
The maximalists expanded the program of socialisation of the land to include the socialisation of factories and industrial enterprises. In accordance therewith, political terrorism was enlarged to include "economic" (agrarian) terrorism. Expropriation was to be inaugurated by a campaign against the capitalists, carried on by individual action.
The organisation of the party must be democratic. The maximalists rejected centralisation, but demanded nevertheless a "strong centre." Maximalist democracy was to be secured by the federation of autonomous revolutionary communes. There was talk of "the method of communal revolution"; this demand goes back to Bakunin and Proudhon, but I cannot see that those who formulated it had paid due attention to the social characteristics of the modern great town and its administrative tasks. How is such a city as St. Petersburg or Moscow (to say nothing of London) to be revolutionised? On the other hand, how are the Russian villages to be revolutionised? The maximalist program, too, is unduly abstract, unduly schematic; and it is noteworthy that at the first maximalist congress (in so far as a judgment can be formed from the very inadequate reports), sympathy for the program was mainly displayed by the peasants and the representatives of the lesser towns.
The maximalists are declared adversaries of Marxism and social democracy. They speak of the Marxists as "scientific reactionaries," and extol personal initiative, especially that of academic youth. They aim at a union of classes and at cooperation with the declassed intelligentsia.
§ 168.
THE stress laid upon revolutionist tactics led the maximalist social revolutionaries to reexamine the traditional views of their party, and this reexamination resulted in an unrestricted approval of traditional ethics and in a rejection of the amoralist outlook of the Marxists. Mihailovskii and Lavrov gained the victory over Marx.
The rules followed by the expropriators show that a distinction was made between social revolutionary expropriations and ordinary theft, and between social revolutionary assassination and ordinary murder. The rule was that in the first place the funds of the state were to be requisitioned, and in the second place the treasure houses of the capitalists were to be attacked. The money thus secured was to be used solely for revolutionary party purposes (to defray the costs of party administration, to provide chemicals, and so on).
It is instructive to note the attitude of Russian public opinion towards expropriation. Even in extremely conservative circles the condemnation of political outrage was far less severe than the condemnation of ordinary theft or murder, and experience of the expropriations would seem to sanction the customary distinction between political and ordinary crime In the rural districts, indeed, "idealised robbery" was supported by the peasantry, and those who practised it were esteemed heroes.
The ethical problems of the revolution and of terrorism have been very vividly discussed by a young maximalist named Grigorii Nestroev.
Nestroev began his revolutionary career when he was still a student, participating in the students' movement of the year 1899. He soon came into personal contact with Geršuni, Azev, and other well-known revolutionists. In 1902 he was arrested for the first time. After his release he played a practical part in the revolution, and had a notable share in some of the more important revolutionary enterprises. Having again been ​arrested, he was sent to Siberia, and thence escaped abroad.
His personal experiences confirmed Nestroev's ethical outlook, and led him to take an ethical view of the revolution.
In conformity with Stepniak, Nestroev justifies revolution and terrorist methods by considering them to embody reprisal and punishment. In this connection he would like to make a clear distinction between anarchism and maximalism, but does not succeed very well. All that he is able to suggest by way of distinction is that anarchism practises terror in its lesser forms, for the anarchists kill policemen, spies, and so on; maximalism wishes to avoid this needless and purposeless bloodshed, desires above all to avoid the wastage of its own energies, and is therefore concerned to practise "central terrorism," that which is directed against the highest peaks of absolutism, against the centre of all the centres. Hence organisers of genius, "creative terrorists" like Geršuni, abundant means, and large groups, are essential.
The quality of the revolutionists is of decisive importance, for nothing but quality can protect the party against the Azevs.
Nestroev is sufficiently critical to find fault even with the Napoleons of the revolution. In the case of one of them (M. J. Sokolov) whom he admires, he points out that Sokolov put too light a value upon life—his own and others. To this revolutionist the saying is especially applicable, that the Russian terrorists can strive for death but not for victory. Nestroev complains that his hero, though leader of a democratic organisation, was a born dictator. Finally, Sokolov is charged with carelessness in the choice of instruments.
In addition, Nestroev draws attention to the romanticism of many of the terrorists, their love of danger and even death. "To such a man the beauty of life seems to consist in death for death's sake, in action for action's sake."
Nestroev depicts for us certain types of revolutionists whom he characterises as "individualistic." To one of these, shortly before his expected execution, the question occurs, Are all means permissible for the construction of the temple of the future? He is tempted to save his own life by betraying the party and the revolution, but he withstands the temptation by invoking the concept of honour, and goes to meet death. Another considers the example of Azev and similar persons. The methods of the provocative agent, he says, are dangerous ​only to the weakly, not to the strong, and I am one of the strong. One who rejects the concept of duty as part of the religion of the master class cannot admit the need to recognise the idea of revolutionary duty. I am not, he says, a slave to conventionalities, but neither will I be a slave to party morality. I will seek new paths, on which I will march boldly forward.
Nestroev had frequent opportunities for the study of the new brigandage and its advocates; he was acquainted with the "revolutionary robbers" and the "gamins of the ideal." Such a lying and thievish mob-revolutionist once declared that he could not live a quiet life, and that he loved danger, for he enjoyed the sensations it brought. This individualist, of course, had long ago abandoned all ethical valuations. Why is lying dishonourable, he would ask. What is moral uncleanliness? And so on. His metaphysics culminated in the proposition: "What is man?—a piece of flesh and that's all." In view of such an interpretation and such a practical realisation of principles which he himself approves, Nestroev enquires whether the revolution, even should it prove victorious, can do any good when it contains such elements.
In Siberia, among persons of this type there were formed "proletarian communes" and groups of expropriators, dissenters being convinced with the knife.
The "dead house" and its abnormalities, concluded Nestroev, have a bad influence upon men. But in addition, his experiences as a refugee made Nestroev take serious if not positively pessimistic views. He found the commonness of human nature especially conspicuous among the refugees; the differences and oppositions of personal life were in glaring contrast with party principles; there was a great gulf fixed between the peaks and the plain.
In his preface to Nestroev's diary, Burcev expresses the hope that the work will restore to the Russian revolutionaries the prestige they enjoyed before the revolution of 1905–1906. In actual fact, Nestroev's criticism aims at distinguishing the true revolution from the false; but we are left enquiring, What is the criterion of true revolution?
This is the problem which disturbs Nestroev. Speaking ​of his personal development, he tells us that at first he joined the social democrats, but was repelled by their anti-terrorist campaign against the social revolutionaries and the anarchists—for Nestroev felt himself to be an anarchist. He therefore went over to the social revolutionaries, considering that in this party his own watchword, "A life for a life," adopted from Stepniak, was effectively realised. Lavrov's Historical Letters, Mihailovskii's writings, Thun's History of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia, and Stepniak's Underground Russia, confirmed him in his decision.
But Nestroev grew tired of the ordinary social revolutionaries, and developed into a maximalist. We have learned what were the practical demands of the maximalist section of the social revolutionaries, and can now come to a definitive judgment.
The program of this section lacks definiteness in its details and as a whole; we see in it a non-organic synthesis of anarchism and Marxist socialism.
Nestroev formulates the task of maximalism in five demands: promotion of the class consciousness of the workers; their organisation into a class; the revolutionising of the will; the destruction of the fetichism of private property; the destruction among the people of the sentiment of legality, and the strengthening of the sentiment of revolt.
Not one of these demands conflicts with Marxism. There is not even any contradiction between Marxist rationalism and the voluntarist idea of revolutionising the will, although Nestroev is somewhat prejudiced against the leadership of the intelligentsia. What distinguishes Nestroev's maximalism from Marxism is his distinctively ethical outlook. Socialism definitely represents to him the ethical "thou shalt," the sense of moral duty, that which is ethically desirable.
But the question arises, how far that which is ethically desirable can also be considered possible. Now we learn from Nestroev that from the point of view of possibility, maximalism is justified provided that the social revolution can be realised forthwith. Apart however from the considerations which led Nestroev while in Siberia to doubt whether revolution was salutary, we are compelled to enquire whether maximalism has not, first of all, to weld its adherents into a class and to educate them for the revolution. And will not this education take a very long time before we can hope that the ​definitive revolution will be actually realised and accepted by at least a notable minority of the European nations? How, then, is the definitive social revolution to be effected forthwith?
The problem, therefore, is not theoretical merely, but ethical and thoroughly practical. Nothing but the widest knowledge of men and things, the widest understanding of all social and political forces, can enable us to decide whether a definitive social revolution is as yet possible. I do not lay claim to such a knowledge, for I confine myself to the numerous experiences since 1905 and say that these lead me to the conclusion that neither in Russia nor in Europe is such a revolution possible forthwith. By this reasoning Nestroev would be compelled to deny the justification of maximalism, but his own philosophical view is an opposed one, for he contends that what ought to be, is and must be possible. "Thou canst, for thou oughtest."
§ 169.
THE philosophical and scientific achievements of the social revolutionaries cannot be so precisely defined as those of the Marxists, for the social revolutionary program is less definite and exclusive. In philosophy and sociology, the social revolutionaries take their stand upon the views of Lavrov, and above all upon those of Mihailovskii; but they likewise regard Černyševskii and Herzen as authorities; whilst as concerns economics and the philosophy of history they are narodniki. In individual cases, it is not easy to decide whether a writer is a social revolutionary or a narodnik. The main difference is that the narodniki or neonarodniki treat more of theoretical, the social revolutionaries more of political matters. Upon the social revolutionaries, no less than upon the narodniki, Marxism exercises much influence, even when they are attacking the Marxist doctrine; and in their onslaughts on Marxism they are glad to enter into an alliance with revisionism.
As typically representative of their views I select Černov and his Philosophic and Sociological Studies (1907).
It is plain that Černov derives his philosophical views from Marx, or, if he does not take them directly from Marx, that he is influenced by Marxist ideas as restated by Lavrov and Mihailovskii. Indeed, he describes himself as an "ardent and honest" admirer of Marx; but he attempts to build a ​bridge between Marx and the "ethico-sociological school" (Lavrov and Mihailovskii), the piers of his bridge being Riehl and Ward. Now as regards the evolution and ripening of ideas, such bridges may exist; but there is no justification for this particular bridge. Černov abandons the economic and metaphysical materialism of Marx and Engels, and accepts the empirio-criticism of Avenarius (adding the ideas of Mach)—but what have Riehl and Ward to do with the matter? It is obvious that Černov has learned epistemological criticism in the school of Riehl, and thus his native realism develops into empirio-criticism; Ward's "dynamic sociology" attracts him to the "active-dynamic" school of sociology and to active realism in general.
When Černov desires to construct a "synthetic" social revolutionary philosophy, we are compelled to ask whether he does not succumb more than he would like to admit to the eclecticism which is so much censured by himself and the other members of his party.
Černov commends empirio-criticism for its antagonism to all metaphysic, to all that is supranatural and transcendental, commends it for its view that man cannot get beyond "pure experience." He adopts this doctrine in order to prove that Mihailovskii's positivism was essentially a foreshadowing of the empirio-criticism of Avenarius and Mach. Černov is a declared monist, and even in his outlook on history he regards his own views as more monistic than economic materialism, wherein he detects a certain remnant of dualism. Ideas are simply extant as an important part of reality, and must therefore be recognised as social forces. Černov concedes, however, that ideas are not properly speaking primary forces (he borrows from Ward here); man is dominated by feeling, the emotions are the motive power, and the intelligence is merely the directive energy. But why, in this matter, should Černov base himself upon Ward, seeing that not Spencer alone, but also Mihailovskii's teacher, Comte, taught that the intelligence was a secondary factor? Ward's Dynamic Sociology had bewitched him. It seemed to him but a short step from the "dynamic" to revolution, although the idea of the dynamic as expounded by Ward, and Ward's whole sociology, contain but little admixture of revolutionary elements
Subjectively, the dynamic appears in Černov as voluntarism. Like so many voluntarists, Černov's definition of truth ​is utilitarian; the preservation of the individual is the "root" of theoretical truth. Černov has failed to reflect that from this standpoint he might readily lapse into the detested metaphysics and even into religion, for from this outlook it might easily be made to appear that religion is useful for the preservation of the individual and of the species (compare, for example, Benjamin Kidd’s Social Evolution).
Černov pleads for unity of theory and practice. In support of this he can appeal to Herzen, and he is influenced, too, by his fondness for monism. Further, he bases himself on Marx, who represented "practically critical" activity as revolutionary practice. For Černov, socialism is at once an instrument of research and a measure of value; it is a revolutionary philosophy, simultaneously the philosophy of reality and of activity; the "active-dynamic" school of sociology is for him the scientific equivalent of practical revolutionary socialism.
In contrast with Marx and Engels, Černov recognises the existence of a universally valid morality. The conscious, critically thinking individuality (of Lavrov) does not accept class morality, for this is of purely accidental origin, the outcome of birth, environment, etc., whereas socialism must recognise a universally valid morality. Positivist, historical foresight does not suffice as a guide to action, does not suffice the revolutionary. Foresight relates solely to the temporary result of the decision; but the socialist has ideals, and the ideal is something more than foresight. Foresight is the outcome of observation, whilst the ideal goal is prescribed by feeling. The revolution, in Černov's sense, therefore contains subjective ideal factors, whereas Marx entertained a fatalistic optimism based upon a claim to the foreknowledge of historical events.
In this matter, as in general, Černov does not get beyond the sphere of psychology. We can see that he is influenced by the antihistorism, the voluntarism, and the emotionalism of Nietzsche (and of Schopenhauer, etc.). But he does not attempt an epistemological foundation and appraisement of morality; he does not try to explain why emotion is better, more right, than intelligence, or to which feelings the assertion applies. Speaking generally, we may say that Černov's ​empirio-criticism does not pay due attention to the theory of cognition. It is true that he attempts to discard apriorism, but he does not succeed in getting any further than Mihailovskii with the empirical explanation of the axiom. To-day, to do no more than this is to do too little.
Seeing that Černov emphasises the importance of ethics as contrasted with the amoralism of Marx, he ought to have considered the ethical problem more closely. Above all the problem of revolution ought to have been more precisely formulated from the outlook of the Social Revolutionary Party, seeing that this is preeminently the problem which has to be faced in practice. Other writers have of late considered the theory of revolution, and very notably has this been done in the novels of Ropšin. The maximalist discussions of the topic, discussions to which I have previously referred, are likewise worthy of attention.
In actual fact, in a series of articles published in the recently founded party magazine "Zavěty" (testaments), Černov has dealt with the question. He sees quite rightly that the revolution of 1905 has above all a moral significance for the new ethic. Černov, just like Bakunin, demands a new ethic, the ethic of the new man, of the new humanity, the ethic which is one of the primary aspirations of the social revolution.
Černov is much interested in the thought of Nietzsche, but does not identify his new man with the superman. On the contrary, it appears that the new ethic makes essentially the same demands as the old, the only difference being that the new ethic lays especial stress upon the social aspects of life. The new ethic, like the old, demands personal improvement, but efforts at personal improvement must always be directed with an eye to their bearing upon the social whole, and must not be undertaken merely in the interest of the individual.
Černov likewise terms his ethic "dynamic," but the new name denotes in truth a very old thing, the new morality aims at giving room for the strong and vigorous expression of individuality. At the same time, the concept of the dynamic is defined on the ethical plane after the Comtist example by saying that social statics constitutes the moral maximum, social dynamics the moral minimum; ethical maximalism is the demand for the universalised ideal harmony of mankind, of all the members of the human race; the moral minimum is the bridge to the maximalist ideal.
​Černov's attempt to combine socialistic ethics with sociology and history deserves commendation, It is clear, and the demand has long been current, that the socialist, one who desires to play an active part in political life, should, like every politician, be thoroughly conversant with the elements of political science. In view of existing conditions in Russia, Černov did well in that he attempted to provide an ethical foundation for politics and to give politics an ethical trend. We are faced, it is true, by the time-worn puzzle which was considered by Černov's predecessors when they discussed the problem of freedom and necessity, and above all the problem of historical necessity. As repeatedly occurs, we are confronted with the essential question, what is the importance of the individual within the social whole, a historically evolving whole; and we have to enquire whether the individual's voluntary decisions are free decisions.
On the one hand Černov lays stress upon the strong personality, but on the other he insists that we must give due weight to the social whole. Since the whole develops, since the ideal maximum is not yet attainable, Černov is prepared to compromise "with life." The right compromise will be recognised by its being a step towards the ideal, and not away from the ideal.
I do not think it can be said that the difficulties formulated by Nestroev the maximalist are overcome by Černov's new socialistic ethic. Černov declares that ethical maximalism completely excludes the use of force; but ethical minimalism permits the use of force. The revolutionary has to answer the definite question, May I, shall I, must I, kill or expropriate? Černov replies: Ethical maximalism forbids the use of force in any form, for ethical maximalism leads with inexorable logic to Tolstoian non-resistance; but ethical minimalism permits revolution and terrorism when these are steps to the ideal. The revolutionist will naturally enquire, Is this particular deed, is, let us say the revolution of 1905, such a step? Černov's reply is that in this matter sociology and history must provide the answer for socialistic ethics. It need hardly be said that the reflective revolutionary will find the reply inadequate, and he will press the question whether he, a definite individual, not a revolution in general, nor a historic epoch, nor any similar abstraction, may, shall, and must decide in favour of action in a particular case.
​We cannot discover in Černov's writings any clear and definite answer to this question. Here the "new ethic" fails us. We are merely told that the maximalist ideal "must" be carried into effect by the consciousness and the will of all, or at least by the majority"; but on further examination it transpires that this "majority" does not signify the majority of, say, the Russian people, but signifies the majority of the party which is united into a collective whole by its pursuit of a particular ideal—an ideal which can be realised by joint action. We are further told that the principle of majority involves the submission of the minority and of the individual, for these must yield to the desires of the majority, and must recognise the morally coercive energy of the common action.
Poor arguments, these! The periodical in which Černov published them had, apropos of the seventieth anniversary of Mihailovskii's birth, made a formal declaration that the social revolutionaries, including Černov, regarded themselves as Mihailovskii's disciples. But Mihailovskii would never have consented to such an abdication of individuality, and to-day he would have envisaged the problem of revolution far more energetically. Černov had under his eyes, not merely Nestroev's diary, but the works of his comrade Ropšin as well, and these deserved better treatment! For the rest, Černov has written about Ropšin, and this is a matter to which we shall return after the discussion of certain other important ideas or trends.
* ↑ To Herzen's Moscow circle belonged N. I. Sazonov, who subsequently engaged in journalistic work in France, and died there in 1862. Another Russian refugee in France was I. N. Tolstoi, who had been a decabrist and friend of Puškin, but ultimately proved to be an agent of Nicholas' government.
* ↑ N. V. Vodovozov, who died prematurely, was the leader of this body.
* ↑ I may take this opportunity of giving a concrete example to show how the theorists and historians of social democracy differ in their accounts of important events. Plehanov declares that economism originated in 1897; the date given by Dr. Ida Akselrod is 1899; Akimov tells us that economism came to an end in 1897, the movement having begun in 1895.
* ↑ The names of "majoritarians" (bolševiki, bolševisti) and "minoritarians" (men'ševiki, men'ševisti) have become current. At first people spoke of the "hard" iskrovcy and the "soft" iskrovcy, the former designation attaching to the majoritarians. "Iskra" remained in the hands of the minority, and has since been known as the "Novaja Iskra."
* ↑ In 1912 there came into existence the organisation committee of the bolševiki and the central committee of the men'ševiki. These two committees lead the secret organisations, which are increasing in number. It counts among the absurdities of the reaction that the two clandestine organisations should be permitted to issue daily newspapers. "Luč" (Light) is the bolševik organ "Pravda" (Truth) the men'ševik organ. In additidn there are a number of scientific reviews and specialist periodicals.
* ↑ In 1861 Herzen issued to the students sent down from the university the watchword, to the folk. In 1862 Bakunin urged upon the young "the heroic action of drawing near to the folk and reconciliation with the folk"; and from Bakunin originated the phrase "towards the people." Pisarev commended physical toil as a means for genuine approximation to the folk.
* ↑ Abramov, a talented writer of belles lettres, represented in his work the same trend as Juzov. During the middle eighties Šelgunov stigmatised "Abramovism" (Abramovščina) as a reactionary development of the narodničestvo.
* ↑ In this connection, mention should be made of Ivanov-Razumnik, author of a number of works bearing on the history of literature, wherein he defended the attitude of the narodničestvo as against Marxism. The most notable of these books were, A History of the Russian Social Spirit (1908), and The Meaning of Life (1910). But he insisted on the need for a "critical" narodničestvo, and accepted the experience philosophy, while basing his views upon Kant, especially in ethical matters "Russian socialism" and Marxism, he said, were not opposites, but Russian Marxism must certainly be contrasted with the narodni4estvo. K. Kačorovskii was another writer who discussed the theory and history of the mir (The Russian Village Community, 1900 et seq.)
* ↑ The utterances of Marx and Engels upon the question discussed in the text are not without importance. These two writers were no less hostile towards absolutist Russia than had been the European liberals of 1848. As previously recounted, Marx became personally acquainted with a number of Russians, and the influence of these could not fail to confirm him in his unfavourable views. In the first volume of Capital (1867), Marx engaged in a vigorous polemic against Herzen. In the second edition (1872), this adverse passage was suppressed; Marx commended the Russian translation of Capital, spoke favourably of the before-mentioned works by Ziber, and extolled Černyševskii for his critique of Mill. As early as 1870, in Marx's letter to the Russian section of the International in Geneva, a word of praise had been given to Černyševskii and to Flerovskii (Condition of the Working Classes in Russia). In his letters to the Russian editor and translator of the first volume of Capital, Nikolai-on (Danielssohn), Marx, in 1873, declared himself opposed to Čičerin's theory concerning the origin of the mir. In 1877, Mihailovskii, writing in the "Otečestvennyja Zapiski," basing his views on Marx's history of European capitalism, had anticipated a sinister future for Russian economic evolution. Writing, however, to the editor of this periodical, Marx declared that if Russia should continue to pursue the path entered in 1861, that country would rob itself of the finest opportunity that any nation had ever had of eluding all the vicissitudes of capitalistic organisation. Marx further declared in this communication that his history of European capitalism (in the first volume of Capital) was nota historico-philosophical theory of the general course of evolution, an evolution which all nations must inevitably follow. In 1882, writing an introduction for the Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto (the translation by Věra Zasulič) Marx and Engels insisted that the mir ought not to be broken up, as the village community had been in the west, for it might serve as the starting point of a communistic development, but could do so only on condition that the Russian revolution should give the signal for a working-class revolution in the west. Writing to Nikolai-on in 1892, Engels recalled Marx's words of 1877, and declared that the Russian peasant was already feeling the traditional Russian agrarian conditions (those of the mir) to be a fetter, as in former days the peasant had felt similar conditions to be in Europe. "I am afraid," continued Engels, "that we shall soon have to look upon your mir as no more than a memory of the irrecoverable past, and that in the future we shall have to do with a capitalistic Russia. If this be so, a splendid chance will unquestionably have been lost." Engels anticipated the proletarianisation of the mužik, but anticipated likewise the ruin of the great landed proprietors, who would be compelled by the burden of their debts to alienate their lands. Between the proletarians and the impoverished landed proprietors there was pressing in a new class of landowners, the village usurers and the burghers from the towns, who would perhaps be the ancestry of the coming agrarian aristocracy. In this letter and in other letters of 1892, Engels admitted that large-scale industry in Russia was being artificially cultivated, but he rightly pointed out that similar artificial methods were being used to promote industrialisation in other lands. As soon as Russia ceased to be a purely agricultural state, she must necessarily adopt artificial methods of industrialisation (protective measures, etc.) Engels pointed out to Nikolai-on the inevitable consequences of the capitalisation of Russia, underlining the analogies with the other countries whose economic development was described in Capital. In 1893 Engels entered into a controversy with Struve, who took a lighthearted view of the evils of capitalisation. Engels believed, with Nikolai-on, that the capitalisation of Russia would, in view of the peculiar institutions of that country, involve an extensive and disastrous social revolution. Nevertheless he did not share Nikolai-on's pessimism. The mir, certainly, was doomed; its continued existence was impossible as soon as some of its members had become debtors (and in fact slaves) of the others. Capitalism, however, would open up new perspectives: new hopes would dawn; a great nation such as the Russian would survive any crisis.
* ↑ The Russian term "zemlja" denotes the world, land, and soil; in the doctrine of the slavophils and the narodniki, these three significations merge.
* ↑ I may allude once more to Mel'nikov, for his descriptions of the raskol have frequently been eulogised in the spirit of the narodničestvo. But his writings indicate the existence among the raskolniki of marked elements of sexual decadence, such as a Merežkovskii could well have utilised in his accounts of the sectaries.
* ↑ In illustration of these transitional phases it may be pointed out that after 1905 Voroncov joined the trudoviki. This group was distinguished from the folk-socialists by its tactical methods. As a writer, however, from 1900 onwards, Voroncov became connected with the liberal periodical "Věstnik Evropy," which previously he had fiercely attacked. Thus the views of the narodniki underwent development, and their position was modified. Of late Pěšehonov has been advocating a working alliance between the two socialist parties, between the social revolutionaries and the social democrats.
* ↑ In 1808 I gave a summary of the scientific, philosophical, and political situation within the Marxist movement. A more detailed consideration of the same theme will be found in the work which I published in German in 1809, The Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of Marxism. My analysis has been confirmed by the subsequent history of Marxism, a history with which I have dealt in a number of essays. In the "Zeit" of Vienna during the years 1899 to 1901 appeared: Bernstein's Suppositions, Kautsky's Critique of Bernstein, The Millerand Affair, The Party Congresses of Stuttgart and Lübeck, The Revision of the Hainfeld Program. In the "{{lang|de|Wolfschen Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft" during the years 1904 to 1907 were published: the Viennese Marx-Studies, Lassalle by H. Oncken, the Ethics of A. Menger and of Kautsky, Vandervelde's Socialistic Essays. In the "Zeitschrift für Politik" for 1912 was published, Syndicalism and Democracy (Lagardelle and Sorel). I append this list of my own writings to justify myself for introducing a summary of my views into the present study.
* ↑ The exclusion of the author Hildebrand for his colonial policy, decreed in April 1912 by the executive committee of the German Social Democratic Party, having been referred to a special arbitral committee, was confirmed by four votes against three.
* ↑ Cf. English translation, The Gotha Program, Socialist Labour Press, 1919.
* ↑ Plehanov was born in 1857, and joined the revolutionary narodniki whilst still a student at the mining academy in St. Petersburg. From the outset he preferred to work among the operatives. He was a member of the Zemlja i Volja, and after the split in that party was one of the leaders of the Černyi Pereděl. In 1880 Plichanov sought refuge in Europe. Here for a time he collaborated in the periodical issued by the Narodnaja Volja, but his autagonism to Blanquism severed him from his sometime friends, and he thus became the real founder of the Russian social democracy and the "father of Russian Marxism." It was remarkable that in 1895 he should have been expelled from Paris as an anarchist. In 1889 he had been expelled from Geneva, but before long was readmitted. The granting of constitutional freedom in Russia enabled Plechanov to return home. When the social democrats broke up in 1903, Plehanov, though taking the side of the minority, adopted a peculiar position which led, as previously described, to his leaving that faction and taking up a somewhat isolated position. After 1905 Plehanov published his Diary of a Social Democrat, composed after the manner of Mihailovskii and Dostoevskii. He also issued collected essays, comprising literary criticisms (The Narodniki in Belletristic Literature, viz.: Naumov, Glěb Uspenskii, and Karonin; Nekrasov; Gor'kii; Ibsen); essays on Bělinskii, Černyševskii, Herzen, and Pogodin; and philosophical articles, polemic for the most part, directed against the various opponents of historical materialism. In addition to the two works against the narodniki, I may mention his translation of Engels' book on Feuerbach, and his contributions to the Russian translation (1903) of Thun's History of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia (first published in German in 1883). In the German language he has contributed numerous articles to the "Neue Zeit." Independent works in German are Contributions to the History of Materialism (Holbach, Helvetius, and Marx), 1896; N. G. Tschernischewsky, 1894; The Fundamental Problems of Marxism, 1910.
* ↑ The distinction between the conceptions of the Communist Manifesto and those of the later phase of Marxism, are very well characterised in Engel's preface to the fifth edition (1591). Explaining the designation "communists," he says: "Those among the workers, on the other hand, who, convinced of the inadequacy of purely political revolutions, demanded a thoroughgoing transformation of society, spoke of themselves at that time as communists." Thus we see that "purely political revolutions" are contrasted with the thoroughgoing (i.e. communistic) "transformation of society" [not merely of the state]. In the manifesto, Marx and Engels declaim against economism. In the section on bourgeois socialism we read: "A second, less systematic but more practical form of socialism endeavoured to disincline the workers for any sort of revolutionary movement by the demonstration that no political change could be of any use to them, but only a change in the material conditions of life, in economic relationships." It is true that Russian economism was of a somewhat different character from the economism to which Marx and Engels were referring in the manifesto, for the former doctrine was the outcome of trade union organisation, and was in part the doctrine of those who contended that trade union organisation was the only thing which mattered; but "apolitical" syndicalism teaches us that trade unions can also cherish political and revolutionary aims.
* ↑ For example, in the criticism of the Gotha program the bourgeoisie is not described as a unified class, nor was the existence of such a unification suggested even in the Communist Manifesto, Kautsky, too, in his writing published in 1889, the Class Oppositions of 1789, attacked the views of those who hold that in accordance with the theory of historical evolution by class struggles there can be no more than two camps within society.
* ↑ In his elucidatious to the Erfurt program, Kautsky states that the definitive revolution may assume the most varied forms in accordance with changing circumstances, and will not necessarily be associated with violence and bloodshed. He admits, for example, that the transition to the collectivist organisation of society can in no case involve the expropriation of the lesser manual workers and the peasants; it is only large-scale industries that will need to be socially owned and controlled; all that Marxism demands is that the means of production shall become social property.
* ↑ In his work, Le vie nuove del socialismo, the reformist Bonomi points out that Marx advocated the ultimate seizure of political power in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the precondition of the economic transformation of society in the socialist sense, simply because it was impossible for him to foresee the material uplifting of the proletariat that would be effected by the trade union movement and by the gradual conquest of political power through the working of universal suffrage. It was not true, as Marx had contended, that the state was merely the executive organ of the bourgeoisie, for the state could likewise serve the labour party.
* ↑ Kružkovščina is derived from kružok, a small circle of persons, and denotes the pettifogging activities of such a circle. It is frequently applied by Marxists to the revolutionaries. Many terrorists have spoken adversely of kružkovščina, Tkačev being especially adverse.
* ↑ At the unifying congress held in 1906, thirty-five of the delegates were of the working class, while one hundred delegates had had a university and secondary school education.
* ↑ Consult Ostrogorskii, La démocratie et l'organisation des partis politiques, Calman Lévy, Paris, 1903; Robert Michels, Political Parties, a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Jarrold, London, 1915.
* ↑ Plehanov tells us that as a member of the Zemlja i Volja, in opposition to the majority of his comrades, he disapproved of the tactics employed in the before-mentioned peasant rising at Chigirin.
* ↑ The social revolutionaries quoted Marx as an authority in support of terrorism. In April 1331, writing to his daughter, Marx referred to the specifically Russian tactics of the terrorists, saying that these were "true heroes, without any melodramatic pose," and referring to their methods as "historically unavoidable." But Marx said nothing in this letter as to the political efficacy of terrorism, and still less is it possible to extract from it an argument for terrorism now that the duma exists. In 1900, Kautsky declared that terrorism, which had opened with the shooting of Trepov by Věra Zasulič, was a glorious struggle on the part of a handful of heroes. But he went on to say: "Although the individual terrorists were heroes, and although their unselfish hazarding of their lives in an unequal struggle for the great cause makes a profound and elevating impression upon our minds, nevertheless the system of terrorism was a product of the weakness of the social forces opposed to tsarism. As long as the adversaries of tsarism had no other means of attack than terrorism, though they might be able to kill individual ministers and even tsars, they were unable to overthrow tsarist absolutism."
* ↑ An attempt has been made by A. Bogdanov. This writer, too, is a revisionist in so far as he desires to harmonise Marxism with Mach (and also with Dietzgen). Upon the foundation of "empiriomonism" (monism, be it observed, not criticism!) revolution arises out of the contradictions of social life, out of the struggle of the productive energies of society against the ideological forms; revolution is social criticism and social creation, it is the harmonisation of human existence. Philosophy results from the recognition of a conflict between human experience and the historically transmitted ideas and conceptual forms. Marx was the first, says Bogdanov, to understand the true nature of this conflict, for Marx recognised that men regarded their social and historical life as determined by the understanding, divine or human as the case may be, and it was this conception of social and historical life which led to the formulation of socialist utopias. Marx perceived that existence determined consciousness, not conversely, and was thus the first to found a true philosophy. With Auguste Comte, Bogdanov conceives the utopian stage of philosophy as religious and metaphysical fetichism, and he discovers the essence of this fetichism in the dualism which results from the individualistic atomisation of the social whole. The dualism of Descartes is outspoken, whilst the dualism of Spinoza is masked. Accurately regarded, Spinoza's "god" is merely the "crystallised reflex" of the interconnection of all the elements of a society organised upon a basis of exchange—an interconnection of which we are elementally aware. Fetichistic dualism must give place to scientific monism. Monism is equivalent to philosophy, that is to say to genuine philosophy. The revolution, harmonising life, will create new motives and a new material for the harmonising of cognition. The old philosophy was often no more than instinctively revolutionary, and was frequently conservative; but the new philosophy, having become self-conscious, is purely revolutionary. When class contrasts disappear, when the class struggle has come to an end, the revolution will be resolved into the continuous and harmonious progress of society, and philosophy will be resolved into the continuous and harmonious progress of the monism of science. According to Bogdanov, modern philosophy must be based upon natural science, for natural science is merely the systematisation of technical experience, the systematisation, that is to say, of what Marx termed the productive energy of society. Bogdanov therefore, in contradistinction to Plehanov, accepts the ideas of Mach, finding in the logical consistency of this writer and in his unsparing positivist annihilation of all intellectual fetiches, the indispensable philosophical revolution. Bogdanov gave expression to these ideas in the preface to the translation of Mach's Analysis of Sensation, and in a number of other writings (notably in the essay, Revolution and Philosophy). I need not undertake a detailed criticism of Bogdanov's views, which are in essence no more than an exposition of the Marxist glosses on Feuerbach, and are tainted with all the errors of positivist materialism and amoralism. The connection between the revolution and philosophy is not clearly elucidated, for surely there is a great difference between revolutionising people's minds in the way suggested by Plehanov, and simply clubbing them on the head. Monism misleads Bogdanov into instituting a deductive parallelism between revolution and philosophy which conflicts with the empiricism customary in natural science. (Be it noted that Marx was not a student of natural science, and yet Bogdanovy tells us that Marx inaugurated the true philosophy!) When Bogdanov tells us concerning Marx, that in Marx philosophy discovered itself, became aware of its own position in nature and society, a position "above nature and society, but not outside them" we cannot but feel that, despite Bogdanov's general veneration for positivism, he departs here from a strictly positivist and monistic outlook. Bogdanov has also written "novels of fancy" wherein he describes the future of society by depicting life on Mars. Here we are told of a "universal science of organisation" which will afford a ready solution of the most complicated tasks of organisation after the fashion of mathematical calculations in practical mechanics. Manifestly the inhabitants of Mars, in their amoralist objectivism, take very kindly to these calculations. It need hardly be said that the "universal science of organisation" is founded by a disciple of Marx, the Martian Marx, however, passing by the name of Xarma. I can understand why Plehanov reproached Bogdanov for being no longer a Marxist.
* ↑ Cf. A. Tscherewanin, Das Proletariat und die russische Revolution, 1908. Čerevjanin's overstrained criticism, which is based upon a too literal application of Plehanov's political doctrines, may be usefully corrected by a perusal of N. Trotzky, Russland in der Revolution, 1909. Trockii was a member and one of the leaders of the council of workers.
* ↑ In Plehanov's latest polemic writing, From Defence to Attack, Kant's thing-by-itself and subjectivism are disposed of with the assertion that modern science does not merely study things by its analysis, but actually produces things, and that what we can ourselves produce cannot be said to be uncognisable. Here is Plehanov's epistemological basic formula: "We give the name of material objects (bodies) to such objects as exist independently of our consciousness, act upon our senses, and thus awaken in us definite sensations, these sensations, in their turn, being a fundamental element of our ideas of the outer world, that is to say, our ideas of the aforesaid material objects and of their mutual relationships." Mihailovskii was likewise a materialist, but Mihailovskii at least did not fail to recognise the subjective element of apperception.
* ↑ To the epilogue to the Russian translation of Thun's work on the Russian revolutionary movement, Plehanov expressed his objections to the so-called objectivist method of Lavrov. The task of science, he said, and therefore the task of scientific socialism, was to explain the subject (in so far as explanation was requisite) by the object. Russian progressive thought had become more and more objectivistic in proportion as it was richer in the revolutionary spirit, whereas it had become increasingly subjectivistic in proportion as it was poor in revolutionary content. Černyševskii and Dobroljubov, he contended, had certainly not been subjectivists. This is perfectly true, but they were far from being extreme objectivists; they recognised the significance of ethics and gave their socialism an ethical foundation, whilst the narodovolcy and the terrorists agreed with them in representing the duty of revolution as an ethical imperative. Rosa Luxemburg, writing in "Iskra" an article criticising Lenin (1904) discerned subjectivism in the fondness of Lenin's adherents for centralism. The ego, crushed by absolutism, took its revenge by enthroning itself as a conspirators' committee, as an almighty "popular will."
* ↑ Be it noted that Plehanov does not in truth, as does Engels, completely eliminate the subject. In his translation of Engels' Feuerbach (1892) Plehanov declares, just like Descartes, that his own existence at least stands for him above the possibility of doubt, for this existence is guaranteed by "an absolutely insuperable" inner conviction. In his polemic against Kant he contends that, objectively regarded, Engels' position is that in the historical process of transition from one form to another, reality comprises Engels as one of the necessary instruments of the imminent revolution; whilst subjectively regarded, we perceive that Engels found this participation in the historical movement as agreeable, and that he looked upon it as his duty. The objective historical process is agreeable to the individual, who considers participatition in it to be his duty—thus Plehanov, in this matter likewise, is not an amoralist of orthodox rigiditz, for Spinozist parallelism has him in its toils. This is why I say that Plehanov, too, was a revisionist. Is it not to him that we owe the term "the red phantom"? Did not Lenin ridicule Plehanov's revolutionism by saying that its motto was, "Kill with kindness"?
* ↑ Social democracy, with its parliamentary minimum program, can more readily be accepted than can theoretical Marxism by a practising clerk in holy orders. We must of course take into account the differences of creed. A Protestant pastor in Germany or America differs from a Russian pope. Work among the sectaries is political in character, is an advocacy of social reform. (See, for example, "Razsvět" [Dawn], a periodical edited for the social democracy in Geneva, during the year 1904, by Bonč-Bruevič.) Lunačarskii claims Bulgakov as a Christian socialist; also Solov'ev and Tolstoi, although he admits that Tolstoi should rather be termed a Christian anarchist, and that Solov'ev was not really a socialist. Nor is it accurate to speak of the sometime Marxists as Christian socialists. They have abandoned Marxism, and Plehanov, in his polemic against these adversaries, has good reason for speaking of them as "Mr. So and So," no longer as "Comrade So and So."
* ↑ A collection of antidecadent essays filling two volumes was published during 1908 and 1909, under the title, The Literary Decadence.
* ↑ The translations of Thun's book and the supplements to that work which we owe to Plehanov and Šiško respectively, facilitate an interesting comparison between the Social Democratic Party and the Social Revolutionary Party. (Šiško, who died recently, was at one time a member of the Narodnaja Volja and was one of the few seniors among the social revolutionaries.)
* ↑ "Azev's participation in a number of terrorist enterprises has not discredited and cannot discredit this fighting method in the eyes of the party. The better the existing situation has become understood, the more plainly has the party recognised that whilst the participation of provocative agents cannot prevent a great victory in this field, such participation does serve to impair the energies of the terror at the most critical moment for the government and the revolution, for it prevents the unfolding of the entire strength of this fighting method, prevents the display of all the energy which the party might devote to it; it increases the confidence of the government, and increases therewith the resoluteness of the government at a time when the government has especial need for resolution. While, therefore, the unmasking of Azev has led certain individuals to doubt the efficacy of the terrorist campaign, the party as such merely discovers therein the reason for the failure of the terror to do all that it might have done for the party and the revolution; and it has taught the party what a renascent terror may be competent to do. In this matter, consequently, the party retains its old fighting position."
* ↑ The reader must not forget that the "maximalists" referred to in this and the ensuing sections are social revolutionaries, not the maximalist social democrats or bolševiki. See pp. 296 and 364.
* ↑ "The Commune," the organ of the maximalists, was first published in December 1905, and the first congress of the group was held in the following year.
* ↑ A well-known instance is that of Saška Savickii. In 1905 he joined the revolutionary movement. In the end of 1906 he withdrew into the forests of the administrative district of Chernigov, and maintained himself there with the connivance of the country folk until 1909, when he was betrayed by one of his associates, and was shot by the soldiers who were pursuing him.
* ↑ Pages from the Diary of a Maximalist, with a Preface by V. L. Burcev, Paris, 1910.
* ↑ In Russia, as well as in Siberia, many of the camp followers of revolution took to thieving, organising quasi-syndicates for this purpose, communistic societies of thieves.
* ↑ The Russian term for "reality" is "děistvitel'nost," that for "action" or "activity" is dějanie; this facilitates Černov's comparison.