From populism to Marxism. Populism - revolutionary ideology Similarities between populism and Marxism
INTRODUCTION
In the chapter on populism in the 1870s, mention was made of the populists' reception of Marxism. Marx's description of the atrocities that accompanied primitive accumulation of capital and the industrial revolution horrified the populists and confirmed their conviction that the price to be paid for capitalist progress was too high and all efforts must be directed towards ensuring that Russia escapes capitalism. At the same time, the populists of the first half of the 1870s. did not see any contradictions between Marxist theory (which they repeatedly referred to) and “subjective sociology,” that is, the idea of a special path of development of Russia in accordance with “popular” principles. The populists considered Marx mainly as an economist, a critic of capitalism and the man who created the theory of surplus value, which the populists praised in every way for revealing the mechanism of political exploitation. Even the Bakunin wing of populism, which, following Bakunin himself, accused Marx of political opportunism, was inclined to accept Marxism as an economic theory. One of the most characteristic representatives of this wing, Yakov Stefanovich, wrote: “Marxism as a theory, and not as membership in a Western socialist party and support for its practical policies, does not exclude populism.”
Engels' polemic with Tkachev" (1875) made it possible to draw attention to the fact that Marxism is also a theory of social development, which postulates that a prerequisite for socialism is high level development of the productive forces achieved under capitalism. The evolution of any economic form
1 See: “Emancipation of Labor” group. M.; L., 1926. No. 4. P. 196. More detailed coverage early stage Populism's reception of Marxism can be found in the works of: Reuel A.L. Russian economic thought of the 60-70s. XIX century and Marxism. M., 1956; Pustarnakov V.F.“Capital” of Marx and philosophical thought in Russia. M., 1974. Wed. Also: Walicki A. The Controversy Over Capitalism. P. 132-139.
2 See Chapter 12 of this book.
Apjsy Valitskiy. HISTORY OF RUSSIAN THOUGHT...
mation, Marx wrote in the preface to the first German edition of Capital, is a natural-historical process, objective and independent of human will: society “can neither advance by leaps nor abolish the successive phases of its normal development.” The laws of social development operate with “iron necessity,” and backward countries must go through the same stages of development that developed countries have already gone through: “A more industrially developed country shows a less developed country only a picture of its own future” 1 .
The populists found it difficult to accept this statement. This is expressed most dramatically by Mikhailovsky in the article “Karl Marx before the Court of Mr. Yu. Zhukovsky” (1877). For a Western European socialist, Mikhailovsky wrote, Marx’s theory of social development gives scientific explanation the past and arguments about the inevitability of socialism; therefore, the acceptance of this theory does not involve a moral dilemma, a discrepancy between the ideal and reality. The Russian socialist, who begins to test the correctness of Marxist theory, will find himself in a different position: for him, Marx’s description of capitalist development will present an image of the near future of Russia and Marx’s historical determinism will force him to come to terms with the tragic sides of capitalist progress with all its painful consequences for the masses. As a socialist, the Russian person will have to accept the need for capitalist development, and therefore accept the collapse of his own ideal. Faced with a choice - either to participate in the progress carried out by the “knights of accumulation”, or to fight for the realization of his ideals (knowing that “iron necessity” dooms this struggle to failure in advance), the Russian socialist will undoubtedly reject both of these possibilities and become just a passive observer, a dispassionate recorder of social processes 2.
Marx himself responded to this point of view in November 1877 in a letter to the editor of Otechestvennye Zapiski, the journal in which Mikhailovsky's article was published. Marx, however, never sent his letter, but in it he argues that the process of accumulation described in Capital applies only to Western Europe during the transition from feudalism to capitalism and cannot be mechanically transferred to other countries of the world; processes that may appear apparently similar, but which occurred in different historical circumstances, can have completely different results. Every single period of economic development
1 Marks K. Capital. T. 1. M, 1978. P. 9.
2 Mikhailovsky N.K. Poly. collection op. 4th ed. St. Petersburg, 1909. T. 4. pp. 167-173.
CHAPTER 18. From populism to Marxism
Tia in stories must be examined according to its own characteristics and compared with other periods; It is impossible to give an exhaustive scientific explanation of a specific historical development, “using the universal master key of some general historical-philosophical theory, the highest virtue of which is its transhistoricity.”
This letter was published only in 1886. 2 By this time, Russian Marxists (especially Plekhanov) had developed their own theories, in which the thesis of the inevitability of the capitalist stage of development was brought to the fore. The fact that Marx himself had doubts on this score was passed over in silence by Plekhanov, and the significance of this fact was downplayed. In the 1890s, as industrialization in Russia began to gain momentum, Engels attributed Marx's doubts to tactical considerations: Marx, he believed, did not want to cool the ardor of the Russian revolutionaries, whose courage was supported by faith in the future socialist possibilities of the peasant community.
Engels' explanation contradicts three versions of the letter that Marx wrote to Vera Zasulich on March 8, 1881; detailed drafts of the letter indicate that Marx allowed for the possibility for Russia to bypass the capitalist stage and attached great theoretical significance to this controversial issue 4 . At the time of receiving the letter, Zasulich and Plekhanov, its ideological leader, were not yet populists. It can be assumed that their decision not to publish the letter was explained by the expectation of a more thorough development of Marx’s views on this issue in the form of a special brochure promised by the author of Capital to the leaders of Narodnaya Volya. Why, however, did they not do this later, after Marx’s death? Unfortunately, it is difficult to refute the hypothesis of deliberate concealment, formulated in exile by the former Menshevik E. Yuryevsky. In his “Thoughts on Plekhanov” he correctly pointed out that Marx’s letter to Zasulich directly contradicted all the ideas developed by
Correspondence of K. Marx and F. Engels with Russian political figures. M., 1951. P. 223.
2 In 1884, Engels gave Marx's letter to the Emancipation of Labor group. Plekhanov's group refrained from publishing the letter, but two years later it appeared on the pages of the populist publication Vestnik Narodnaya Volya. Geneva, 1888. No. 5. Narodnik publicists (Mikhailovsky, Vorontsov and Krivenko) interpreted the letter as proof that Marx himself did not share the views of his Russian followers, and immediately took advantage of this in their polemics against Russian Marxists.
3 Correspondence of K. Marx and F. Engels with Russian political figures. M., 1951.S. 296.
1 See above.
nym Plekhanov during the period of transition from populism to Marxism and presented in his works as the elementary truth of “scientific socialism” 1. Detailed analysis Marx's views on the future of underdeveloped countries are, of course, beyond the scope of this book. In the context of our study, it only needs to be said that Marx spoke very briefly on this issue and that his considerations, in themselves extremely profound, generally remained unknown to a wide circle of readers; on the other hand, Marx's most famous works contain formulations according to which capitalism is a natural stage through which every country must pass.
Marxist views began to spread among Russian revolutionaries as they became increasingly disillusioned with the previously used methods of struggle and could no longer ignore the obvious progress of capitalism in the field of agriculture. The break with populism was neither easy nor painless, and before radical polarization of positions occurred there were many attempts to reconcile Marxism with the old dream of bypassing the capitalist stage.
Populism and Marxism in Russia
Before the emergence of Marxist groups, revolutionary work in Russia was carried out by populists, who were opponents of Marxism.
The first Russian Marxist group appeared in 1883. It was the “Emancipation of Labor” group, organized by G.V. Plekhanov abroad, in Geneva, where he was forced to leave from persecution by the tsarist government for his revolutionary activities.
Before this, Plekhanov himself was a populist. Having become acquainted with Marxism in emigration, he broke with populism and became an outstanding propagandist of Marxism.
The Liberation of Labor group did a lot of work to spread Marxism in Russia. She translated the works of Marx and Engels into Russian: “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, “Wage Labor and Capital”, “The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science” and others, published them abroad and began to secretly distribute them in Russia. G.V. Plekhanov, Zasulich, Axelrod and other members of this group also wrote a number of works in which they explained the teachings of Marx and Engels and explained the ideas of scientific socialism.
Marx and Engels, the great teachers of the proletariat, in contrast to the utopian socialists, were the first to explain that socialism is not an invention of dreamers (utopians), but a necessary result of the development of modern capitalist society. They showed that the capitalist system will fall in the same way as the serfdom fell, that capitalism itself creates its own gravedigger in the person of the proletariat. They showed that only the class struggle of the proletariat, only the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie will save humanity from capitalism, from exploitation.
Marx and Engels taught the proletariat to be aware of their strengths, to be aware of their class interests and to unite for a decisive struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels discovered the laws of development of capitalist society and scientifically proved that the development of capitalist society and the class struggle in it must inevitably lead to the fall of capitalism, to the victory of the proletariat, to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx and Engels taught that it is impossible to get rid of the power of capital and transform capitalist property into public property peacefully, that the working class can achieve this only through the use of revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie, through the proletarian revolution, by establishing its political dominance - the dictatorship of the proletariat, which must suppress the resistance of the exploiters and create a new, classless communist society.
Marx and Engels taught that the industrial proletariat is the most revolutionary and therefore the most advanced class of capitalist society, and that only a class like the proletariat can gather around itself all the forces dissatisfied with capitalism and lead them to storm capitalism. But in order to defeat the old world and create a new classless society, the proletariat must have its own workers' party, which Marx and Engels called the communist party.
The first Russian Marxist group, Plekhanov’s “Emancipation of Labor” group, began to spread the views of Marx and Engels.
The Emancipation of Labor group raised the banner of Marxism in the Russian foreign press at a time when there was no Social Democratic movement in Russia. It was necessary, first of all, to pave the way for this movement theoretically and ideologically. The main ideological obstacle to the spread of Marxism and the Social Democratic movement at that time was the populist views that then prevailed among the advanced workers and revolutionary-minded intelligentsia.
With the development of capitalism in Russia, the working class became a powerful progressive force, capable of organized revolutionary struggle. But the Narodniks did not understand the leading role of the working class. Russian populists mistakenly believed that the main revolutionary force was not the working class, but the peasantry, and that the power of the tsar and landowners could be overthrown through peasant “revolts” alone. The Narodniks did not know the working class and did not understand that without an alliance with the working class and without its leadership, the peasants alone would not be able to defeat tsarism and the landowners. The populists did not understand that the working class is the most revolutionary and most advanced class of society.
The populists first tried to rouse the peasants to fight against the tsarist government. For this purpose, the revolutionary intelligent youth, dressed in peasant clothes, moved to the village - “to the people,” as they said then. This is where the name “populists” came from. But the peasantry did not follow them, since they did not properly know or understand the peasants. Most of the populists were arrested by the police. Then the populists decided to continue the struggle against the tsarist autocracy on their own, without the people, which led to even more serious mistakes,
The populist secret society "People's Will" began to prepare the assassination of the Tsar. On March 1, 1881, the Narodnaya Volya managed to kill Tsar Alexander II with a thrown bomb. However, this did not bring any benefit to the people. It was impossible to overthrow the tsarist autocracy by killing individuals; it was impossible to destroy the class of landowners. In place of the murdered tsar, another appeared - Alexander III, under whom life became even worse for the workers and peasants.
The path chosen by the populists to fight tsarism through individual murders, through individual terror, was erroneous and harmful to the revolution. The policy of individual terror was based on the incorrect populist theory of active “heroes” and a passive “crowd” expecting heroic deeds from the “heroes.” This false theory said that only individual outstanding individuals make history, and the masses, the people, the class, the “crowd,” as populist writers contemptuously expressed it, are incapable of conscious, organized actions; they can only blindly follow the “heroes.” Therefore, the populists abandoned mass revolutionary work among the peasantry and working class and switched to individual terror. The populists forced one of the largest revolutionaries of that time, Stepan Khalturin, to stop working on organizing a revolutionary workers' union and devote himself entirely to terror.
The populists distracted the attention of the working people from the fight against the oppressor class by killing individual representatives of this class, which was useless for the revolution. They hindered the development of revolutionary initiative and activity of the working class and peasantry.
The populists prevented the working class from understanding its leading role in the revolution and delayed the creation of an independent working class party.
Although the secret organization of the Narodniks was crushed by the tsarist government, populist views persisted for a long time among the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia. The remnants of the Narodniks stubbornly resisted the spread of Marxism in Russia and interfered with the organization of the working class.
Therefore, Marxism in Russia could grow and strengthen only in the fight against populism.
The Emancipation of Labor group launched a struggle against the erroneous views of the Narodniks and showed how harm the teachings of the Narodniks and their methods of struggle brought to the labor movement.
In his works directed against the Narodniks, Plekhanov showed that the views of the Narodniks had nothing in common with scientific socialism, although the Narodniks called themselves socialists.
Plekhanov was the first to give a Marxist critique of the erroneous views of the Narodniks. While delivering pointed blows to populist views, Plekhanov simultaneously launched a brilliant defense of Marxist views.
What were the main erroneous views of the populists, to whom Plekhanov dealt a crushing blow?
Firstly, the populists argued that capitalism in Russia is a “random” phenomenon, that it will not develop in Russia, and therefore the proletariat will not grow and develop.
Secondly, the populists did not consider the working class to be the advanced class in the revolution. They dreamed of achieving socialism without the proletariat. The populists considered the main revolutionary force to be the peasantry, led by the intelligentsia, and the peasant community, which they considered as the embryo and basis of socialism.
Thirdly, the populists had an erroneous and harmful view of the entire course of human history. They did not know or understand the laws of economic and political development of society. They were completely backward people in this regard. In their opinion, history is made not by classes and not by the struggle of classes, but only by individual outstanding individuals - “heroes”, who are blindly followed by the masses, the “crowd”, the people, the classes.
Fighting against the populists and exposing them, Plekhanov wrote a number of Marxist works, on which Marxists in Russia studied and were educated. Such works of Plekhanov as “Socialism and the Political Struggle”, “Our Differences”, “On the Question of the Development of a Monistic View of History” cleared the way for the victory of Marxism in Russia.
In his works, Plekhanov outlined the main issues of Marxism. His book “On the Question of the Development of a Monistic View of History,” published in 1895, was of particular importance. Lenin pointed out that “an entire generation of Russian Marxists was brought up on this book” (Lenin, vol. XIV, p. 347).
In his works directed against the Narodniks, Plekhanov proved that it is absurd to pose the question the way the Narodniks posed it: should capitalism develop in Russia or not? The fact is, Plekhanov said, proving this with facts, that Russia has already embarked on the path of capitalist development and that there is no force that could turn it off this path.
The revolutionaries' task was not to delay the development of capitalism in Russia - they would not have been able to do this anyway. The task of the revolutionaries was to rely on the powerful revolutionary force that is generated by the development of capitalism - on the working class, to develop its class consciousness, to organize it, to help it create its own workers' party.
Plekhanov also smashed the second main erroneous view of the populists - their denial of the leading role of the proletariat in the revolutionary struggle. The populists viewed the emergence of the proletariat in Russia as a kind of “historical misfortune” and wrote about the “ulcer of the proletariat.” Plekhanov, defending the teachings of Marxism and its full applicability to Russia, argued that, despite the quantitative predominance of the peasantry and the comparative small number of the proletariat, it is on the proletariat, on its growth, that revolutionaries should place their main hopes.
Why specifically the proletariat?
Because the proletariat, despite its current small number, is a working class that is associated with the most advanced form of economy - with large-scale production, and has a great future in mind.
Because the proletariat, as a class, grows from year to year, develops politically, is easily organized due to working conditions in large-scale production, and is most revolutionary due to its proletarian position, because in the revolution it has nothing to lose except its chains.
The situation is different with the peasantry.
The peasantry (we were talking about the individual peasantry - Ed.), despite its large number, is a working class that is associated with the most backward form of economy - small-scale production, as a result of which it does not and cannot have a great future.
The peasantry not only does not grow as a class, but, on the contrary, disintegrates from year to year into the bourgeoisie (kulaks) and the poor (proletarians, semi-proletarians). In addition, it is more difficult to organize due to its dispersal and is less willing to join the revolutionary movement due to its petty property status than the proletariat.
The populists argued that socialism would come to Russia not through the dictatorship of the proletariat, but through the peasant community, which they considered the embryo and base of socialism. But the community was not and could not be either the base or the embryo of socialism, since the community was dominated by kulaks, “world eaters” who exploited the poor, farm laborers, and weak middle peasants. The formally existing communal land ownership and the occasional redistribution of land by hearts did not change matters at all. The land was used by those members of the community who had draft animals, equipment, seeds, that is, wealthy middle peasants and kulaks. Horseless peasants, the poor and those with little power in general were forced to give the land to the kulaks and become hired laborers. The peasant community was in fact a convenient form for covering up kulak dominance and a cheap means in the hands of tsarism for collecting taxes from peasants on the principle of mutual responsibility. That is why tsarism did not touch the peasant community. It would be ridiculous to consider such a community the embryo or basis of socialism.
Plekhanov also shattered the third main erroneous view of the populists regarding the primary role in social development of “heroes,” outstanding personalities, and their ideas, and about the insignificant role of the masses, “crowds,” people, and classes. Plekhanov accused the populists of idealism, arguing that the truth was not on the side of idealism, but on the side of the materialism of Marx and Engels.
Plekhanov developed and substantiated the point of view of Marxist materialism. According to Marxist materialism, he argued that the development of society is ultimately determined not by the wishes and ideas of outstanding individuals, but by the development of the material conditions of the existence of society, changes in the methods of production of material goods necessary for the existence of society, changes in the relationship of classes in the production of material goods, and the struggle of classes for the role and place in the field of production and distribution of material goods. It is not ideas that determine the socio-economic status of people, but the socio-economic status of people that determines their ideas. Outstanding personalities can turn into nothing if their ideas and wishes are contrary to the economic development of society, contrary to the needs of the advanced class, and - on the contrary - outstanding people can become truly outstanding personalities if their ideas and wishes correctly express the needs economic development society, the needs of the advanced class.
To the populists’ assertions that the masses are the crowd, that only heroes make history and turn the crowd into people, the Marxists responded: it is not heroes who make history, but history makes heroes, therefore, it is not heroes who create the people, but the people who create heroes and move forward history. Heroes and outstanding personalities can play a serious role in the life of society only insofar as they are able to correctly understand the conditions of development of society and understand how to change them for the better. Heroes and outstanding personalities can find themselves in the position of ridiculous and useless losers if they fail to correctly understand the conditions for the development of society and begin to argue against the historical needs of society, imagining themselves as “makers” of history.
The populists belonged to the category of such loser heroes.
Plekhanov's literary works and his struggle with the populists thoroughly undermined the influence of the populists among the revolutionary intelligentsia. But the ideological defeat of populism was far from complete. This task - to finish off populism as the enemy of Marxism - fell to Lenin.
The majority of the populists, soon after the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya party, abandoned the revolutionary struggle with the tsarist government and began to preach reconciliation and agreement with the tsarist government. In the 80s and 90s, the populists became spokesmen for the interests of the kulaks.
The Emancipation of Labor group drew up two draft programs for Russian Social Democrats (the first in 1884 and the second in 1887). This was a very important step in preparing for the creation of a Marxist Social Democratic Party in Russia.
But the Emancipation of Labor group also made serious mistakes. Her first draft program still contained remnants of populist views and allowed the tactics of individual terror. Plekhanov did not take into account, further, that during the revolution the proletariat can and must lead the peasantry, that only in alliance with the peasantry can the proletariat defeat tsarism. Plekhanov further considered the liberal bourgeoisie as a force that could provide support for the revolution, albeit fragile support, while in some of his works he completely discounted the peasantry, declaring, for example, that:
“Besides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, we see no other social forces on which oppositional or revolutionary combinations could rely” (Plekhanov, vol. III, p. 119).
These erroneous views of Plekhanov were the germ of his future Menshevik views.
Both the Emancipation of Labor group and the Marxist circles of that time were not yet practically connected with the labor movement. This was also the period of the emergence and consolidation in Russia of the theory of Marxism, the ideas of Marxism, and the programmatic provisions of social democracy. During the decade of 1884-1894, Social Democracy still existed in the form of separate small groups and circles, not connected or very little connected with the mass workers' movement. Like an unborn baby already developing in the womb, social democracy was experiencing, as Lenin wrote, “the process of fetal development.”
The Emancipation of Labor group “only theoretically founded social democracy and took the first step towards the labor movement,” Lenin pointed out.
The task of uniting Marxism with the labor movement in Russia, as well as correcting the mistakes of the Emancipation of Labor group, had to be resolved by Lenin.
WAS LENIN A MARXIST?
POPULAR ROOTS OF MARXISM-LENINISM
SIMON CLARKE
GREAT BRITAIN
The name of Lenin as one of the founders of the theory of “Marxism-Leninism” is closely associated with the name of Marx. However, despite the fact
that Lenin emphasized the role of revolutionary theory, its contribution to the development
Marxism is very limited. He possessed the talents of an unyielding revolutionary (in the populist traditions of Chernyshevsky), a brilliant propagandist and political organizer. His contribution to revolutionary theory was the modification of Marxist orthodoxy by incorporating the political and organizational principles of revolutionary populism based on Plekhanov's "dialectical materialism" - this peculiar interpretation was a constant guiding light for Lenin. In my article I want to show that Lenin never broke with the theoretical and political traditions of Russian populism, but only gave Plekhanov’s project of merging Marxism with the foreign framework of populism a complete character.
Populism and the Origins of Russian Marxism According to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, populism and Marxism represent two completely opposing political and theoretical traditions.
However, this is a completely false characterization, since Russian Marxism arose directly from populism, and the distinctive features of Marxism-Leninism are rooted in the theoretical traditions of Russian populism.
The development of Marxism in Russia took place not in spite of the populist movement, but within it. The early populists were romantic critics of capitalism, they borrowed heavily from Hegel's philosophy of history and especially from the Young Hegelian interpretation of Hegel's dialectic of history as a process of negation and transcendence. NeSimon Clarke - lecturer at the University of Warwick (Great Britain), author of a number of monographs on the history of sociology and economic sociology; V last years is engaged in research of social and political relations in Russia.
Despite their romanticism, they were ardent opponents of idealism, associating it with the tyranny of religion and autocracy and developing a materialist interpretation of Hegelian dialectics, according to which the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity were not derived from the world of spirit, but were considered as originally inherent in existing institutions peasant life, first of all, to the peasant community. In the 60s XIX century this materialistic understanding of history was complemented by Darwinian evolutionism. The greatest influence on the populists was L. Feuerbach, whose materialism directly inspired both Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, although they, like all populists, combined their materialism with romantic utopianism.
The populists were faced with the theoretical problem of relating their utopian dream to the more earthly aspirations of the peasantry, whose living conditions were supposed to provide a certain material basis for the realization of this dream. However, the ignorance of the peasants did not allow them to perceive the socialist dream as their own. Thus, despite the presence in the lives of peasants of material prerequisites for socialist aspirations, the values and ideals of the new society were shared only by the intelligentsia. This problem became the basis of a fundamental split within the populist movement: some believed that socialist values were an immanent condition of life for the bulk of the population and therefore focused on agitation; others believed that these values belonged only to intellectuals and therefore emphasized the need for education above all else.
It is important to note that this division expressed various solutions one and the same ideological and political problem - the legitimation and implementation of socialist values, supported only by a small minority of the population - the intelligentsia. In this sense, both movements represented what Marx characterized as “utopian socialism.” Populism looked at the material needs of the peasantry from the point of view of the need to provide a social basis for a political movement that could bring these values into practice."
In this sense, it was committed to "materialistic"
philosophy. But these “material needs” themselves were ideologically determined by the intelligentsia, since the aspirations that the populists wanted to realize were not the aspirations of the peasantry, but of the intellectuals themselves. And in this sense, populism was committed to a philosophy as idealistic as the one with which it fought.
In the 70s the process of demarcation led to the separation of anarchists, whose ideological inspirer was primarily Bakunin, “from subjective sociologists” led by Lavrov and Mikhailovsky. But this split was basically a tactical and even rhetorical division within the populist movement, since both factions went into the countryside to conduct propaganda among the peasants. And only with the collapse of the populist faith in the peasantry, which followed the famine of 1890-91, a much more significant split occurred, leading to the separation of the Social Democrats from the “legal Marxists”, on the one hand, and from the anarchists and “economists”, on the other. .
Marxism in Russia was influential already at the early stage of the development of populism, since Marx gave the most powerful criticism of modern capitalism and the strongest arguments to counteract its development. But the main thing was that Marxism created an ideological bridge from romantic populism to modern socialism, putting forward a scientific theory that could both explain the failures of populism and indicate new way forward. Contrary to the Narodnik belief that the narrowness of the market made the development of capitalism in Russia impossible, Marx's political economy showed the possibilities of its progress, as well as its limitations, pointing to the proletariat as the social force that would overthrow it. However, the Marxists of the 90s. they were just as little interested in the situation of the proletariat as the populists of the 70s. - the situation of the peasantry. The turn from the peasantry to the proletariat did not occur because the proletariat suffered more, and especially not because it constituted the majority. They simply saw in the proletariat a new conductor of old populist hopes, the “material basis” for the realization of socialist values. In this sense, Russian Marxism developed directly from Russian populism in response to changing economic, social and political conditions.
Plekhanov's Marxism developed in the context of disputes in Russian populism in the 1980s. at a time when Plekhanov turned from the peasantry to the proletariat as the basis of his revolutionary hopes. The laws of historical materialism guaranteed that the development of capitalism, while destroying the immediate hopes of the populists, would ultimately lead to their realization, since the revolutionary movement would be able to take advantage of the progress of capitalism as a necessary phase on the path to socialism. However, this did not mean that revolutionaries had to sit back and wait for the inevitable revolution. Plekhanov's Marxism emphasized the active role of ideas and political organization in determining the pace of historical development. At the same time, it was impossible to come to socialism until they matured historical conditions. Thus, Plekhanov opposed the voluntarism of “subjective sociologists.” The freedom of action of the revolutionary movement meant for the subject not a way to overcome the determining action of historical laws, but an opportunity to cognize them and thus accelerate (or slow down) the pace of historical development. This was the difference between scientific and utopian socialism. Following Engels's interpretation of Hegel, Plekhanov defined freedom as a recognized necessity and thus the ability to control the laws of nature and history, which had hitherto acted as blind forces. This idea was the soul of Plekhanov's reconciliation of the strict determinism of materialism and decisive political activism. Plekhanov called his philosophy, which he developed to express this idea, “dialectical materialism,” which opposed both the fatalism of “mechanical materialism” and the voluntarism of “subjective sociology.”
Plekhanov's philosophy of history:
populist foundations of dialectical materialism Exposition of the philosophy of “dialectical materialism”
(Plekhanov's term) is often attributed to Engels*. However, Plekhanov’s characterization of “dialetic materialism”
* Plekhanov used the term "dialectical materialism" in an article published in N e u e Zeit (1891). Lenin reproduced this term in his work “What are “friends of the people”....” The expression “materialist understanding of history” comes from Engels (review of the work)
Marx’s “Critique of Political Economy”), but the term “historical materialism” was introduced into circulation only in his special introduction to the English edition of the work “The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science”
differs significantly from Engels’ definition of “materialist dialectics” and from Marx’s criticism of bourgeois philosophy. This difference is very fundamental, since Plekhanov’s “dialectical materialism” is nothing more than the philosophical materialism of the populist followers of Feuerbach, that is, precisely the philosophy against which Marx and Engels directed their most destructive criticism*.
Plekhanov criticized the materialism of the 18th century. for his inconsistent adherence to materialistic principles, citing as an example the contradiction between the claim that people's opinions are determined by their environment and the view that the environment is determined by people's opinions. This approach returned to the view of opinions and environment, morals and human nature as interacting forces.
French historians of the Restoration period moved beyond this dualism, defining the place of both morals and the physical structure of man in civil conditions where class interests determined property relations. This, however, did not resolve the contradiction, since property relations were viewed as legal and political in their essence, the historical development of these relations was explained from the point of view of the spiritual development of humanity from the childhood age of feelings through the youthful age of passions for mature age mind.
Utopian socialists, and above all Saint-Simon, had little idea of \u200b\u200bsolving this problem, correlating the development of property with the development of production. However, the latter was ultimately viewed as a manifestation of human intellectual development, the development of scientific and technical knowledge. This was a repetition of the identification of the historical development of human nature and the development of the individual from childhood through youth to maturity.
All these various definitions of the materialist understanding of history stumbled at the final obstacle, reducing historical development to the moral and intellectual development inherent in human nature. Result * There is a connection between Engels and the populist roots of Plekhanov's philosophy, since Engels in his youth was a member of the group of Young Hegelians and followers of Feuerbach, who had a noticeable influence on philosophical views the first generation of Russian populists.
One of Engels’s own youthful articles, which developed Feuerbach’s criticism of Hegel, had a significant influence in Russia in the 40s.
There was a fundamental ambiguity in characterizing the role of the human factor in the historical process, which was expressed in fluctuations between extreme fatalism and extreme subjectivism. The belief that moral and intellectual development was subject to natural laws led to fatalism. On the other hand, the knowledge of these laws provided the basis for utopian plans for reforming human institutions in accordance with human Nature, without any regard to historical laws and institutional limitations. The preoccupation of the utopians with questions of “how it should be” led to ignoring what is.
In particular, existing political institutions and conflicts were seen simply as manifestations of an outdated stage of moral and intellectual development, unsuitable for the implementation of utopian projects, the fate of which depended not on the mobilization of material and political interests, but on the understanding of the idea. Thus, materialism, in order not to fall under the paralyzing effect of fatalism, ultimately slipped into idealism.
The significance of Hegel for Plekhanov was that he managed to break through the contradiction into the very core of “metaphysical” materialism, taking the point of view of dialectics, which studies phenomena in their development and, accordingly, in their interconnection. The dialectical study of the historical process, according to Plekhanov, presupposes an attentive attitude to its real flow, therefore dialecticians are not satisfied with abstract conclusions from abstract principles.
Hegel showed that everything is useful when it is in its place and time, and he debunked all utopias that claimed to develop an ideal that would be effective in any place and at any time. By destroying the idea of the immutability of human nature, Hegel shook the foundations of utopianism. He preserved a universal historical principle - the principle of reason. But this is not the human mind of philosophers at all, but rather the objective mind, which the philosopher can learn about ex post, through scientific research its manifestations. For Hegel, reason governs history in the sense of its conformity to law. This leads to a fundamental difference between the concept of intellectual development and that of the metaphysicians, each of whom believed that he had achieved a truth in comparison with which all other systems of thought were false. Intellectual development is no less subordinate historical laws than any human institution adapting to changing historical needs. Thus, "philosophy is the intellectual expression of its own age... each philosophy is true for its age and wrong for the age of others."
Hegelian dialectics is undoubtedly idealistic. But what is much more important is that it is monistic, avoiding dualism, to which previous forms of materialism, which tried to define the role of consciousness and subjectivity, always slipped. For consistent idealists, including Leibniz and Spinoza, as well as for Hegel, the world of man and nature is governed by laws that operate independently of consciousness and human will. However, the fact that historical development is regulated by such laws in no way undermines human freedom.
The laws of material necessity in themselves do not mean anything for the laws of the activity of the spirit. “Freedom presupposes necessity, necessity completely transforms into freedom.” Thus, Hegel’s strict adherence to determinism provides much greater scope for freedom than is done by dualists, who “trying to delimit free activity from necessary, thereby tearing away from the kingdom of freedom the entire area ... to which they assign necessity” (DMVH. R. 130).
This apparent paradox is resolved when one realizes that the possibility of any effective exercise of my freedom depends on an understanding of the necessity that governs through my activity. “The possibility of free (conscious) historical activity of any individual person is reduced to zero if the very basis of free human actions does not lie a necessity accessible to the understanding of the subject” (DMVH. P. 132). Until I am aware of the necessity that governs through my actions, these consequences will not correspond to my intentions and will thus be determined not by my free will, but by necessity. The inevitable consequence of this will, in turn, be a change in the situation in which individual subjects find themselves, which determines the goals they freely pursue. Thus, freedom and necessity are not mutually exclusive categories, as the dualists believed, but interpenetrating opposites.
The consequences of the free actions of individuals are determined by the laws of necessity; this creates the basis for new forms of conscious free activity. This interpenetration of freedom and necessity “also takes place according to certain laws that can and should be discovered by theoretical philosophy (DMVH. R. 134). However, since theoretical philosophy has discovered “the laws of social and historical progress, I can influence it in accordance with my purposes” (DMVH, p. 135). Freedom can only grow from the knowledge of necessity.
Hegelian monism provides a stable basis for historical science. However, Hegel reduces the history of social relations to the history of the Idea, which cannot be the determining cause of historical development, since it is nothing more than “the personification of our own logical process (DMVH. P. 137), the result of our reflection on history. All that remains is to put Hegel's philosophy on a materialist basis.
The path was shown by Feuerbach, who replaced the Hegelian Idea with the category of Matter, inverting the Hegelian relationship between thinking and being. This point of view “was also accepted by Marx and Engels. It became the basis of their philosophy."
However, Feuerbach's materialism was incomplete and still did not get rid of the shortcomings of his predecessors.
For Feuerbach, the relationship between being and consciousness was exclusively contemplative; consciousness acted as a passive reflection of matter. Thus the laws of history were again reduced to the laws of nature. Marx finally resolved this problem in his Theses on Feuerbach, where he “completed and deepened Feuerbach's ideas by insisting that the relationship between man and nature is not contemplative, but practical. Practice provides the key to historical development. Human nature is not an immutable phenomenon, since, as Marx noted in Capital, man, by influencing and changing external nature, at the same time changes his own nature. The laws of historical development cannot be found either in the unchanging nature of man, as bourgeois materialists asserted, or in the disembodied Spirit of Hegel. Their place is in the concrete material interaction of man and nature, in the development of production. Marx developed a materialism that was both monistic and historical: he defined the general foundation of social and political institutions, mores, morality and constitutions, which determines their essential content and the forms of their interaction - the development of the means of production that mediate the relationship between man and nature. Marx gave a materialist explanation for the development of human society.
Plekhanov unequivocally argued that the progressive and autonomous development of the productive forces plays a decisive role in the historical process (DMVH. R. 156-157, 187, 188, 197, 198, 229). The basis of Plekhanov’s historical materialism is not the “economic” relations of society, since he argued that the “economics of society”
and his psychology represent two sides of the same phenomenon of the “production of life” of people, their struggle for existence, in which they are grouped in a certain way due to a certain state of productive forces. The struggle for existence creates their economy, and psychology grows on the same basis. Only in everyday speech can we talk about economics as the root cause of all social phenomena. Far from being such, it is itself a consequence, a “function of the productive forces”
(DMVH. R. 207)*.
The defectiveness of Feuerbachian materialism, from Plekhanov’s point of view, consisted in its inability to discover any principle of historical change in the material world. Marx's great merit was the introduction of the principle of historicism into nature: he discovered it in the development of the productive forces. Thus, Marx’s materialism did not differ qualitatively from Feuerbach’s and the forms of bourgeois materialism that preceded him; he simply completed and improved philosophical materialism.
Plekhanov argued that his criticism of bourgeois philosophy repeated the criticism of Marx and Engels. To a certain extent, this negligence is excusable, since many of Marx's early works, in which he developed this criticism, were not available to Plekhanov. However, despite the fact that these unpublished early works contained criticism of bourgeois philosophy, Marx's life's work was to develop a critique of the most advanced and sophisticated manifestation of bourgeois materialism - classical political economy. Plekhanov, while characterizing Marxist philosophy, almost completely ignored the significance of this criticism. All his life he was sure that Marx * Plekhanov also fell into geographical determinism, for which Soviet editors reproached him (DMVH. P. 161-163, 270-271).
only developed Feuerbach's materialism to its logical conclusion. Plekhanov argued that not a single one of the fundamental ideas of Feuerbach's philosophy was rejected, and Marx was content with improving them and demanding their more consistent application;... Marx's materialist views were developed in the direction indicated by the internal logic of Feuerbach's philosophy.
That Plekhanov's incorrect interpretation cannot be deduced from his ignorance of Marx's early work is clearly shown in the criticism of D. Ryazanov, who rejects Plekhanov's assertion that Feuerbach created the philosophical basis of Marxism. Plekhanov believed that Feuerbach’s thesis about the conditionality of consciousness by being was accepted by Marx and Engels and turned by them into the foundation of a materialist understanding of history... However, commenting on this statement, D. Ryazanov noted that Marx radically modified and supplemented Feuerbach’s thesis, which is just as abstract, no matter how unhistorical, since Feuerbach puts “man” in the place of “God” or “Reason”. Then quoting Marx’s sixth thesis on Feuerbach, he comes to the conclusion that the fundamental error of all philosophical systems, strIn “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” Lenin went even further than Plekhanov in reducing Marxism to vulgar materialism, to Hegelian idealism literally turned on its head and a simplistic identification with Feuerbach's materialism. Lenin condemned Plekhanov as an inconsistent materialist who believed that ideas are symbols or “hieroglyphs” of reality, rather than literal “copies of real things” (ME. P. 238). Following Plekhanov, Lenin noted that Engels criticized previous materialism for three things:
1) for his mechanistic nature (for example, for his attempts to reduce chemical and organic processes to the principles of mechanics); 2) for its undialectical nature (for example, the inability to understand the relationship between absolute and relative truth: the Machians believed that since truth is relative, there cannot be an absolute truth independent of consciousness. They did not understand that absolute truth “is composed of relative truths "that relative truth represents a relatively true reflection of an object existing independently of man, that this reflection becomes increasingly truer, that every truth, despite its relative nature, contains elements of absolute truth (ME P. 321). This is purely Hegelian and idealistic concept of science); 3) for his residual idealism in the field of social sciences.
Lenin emphasized: “Exclusively for these three things, exclusively within these limits, Engels rejects both the materialism of the 18th century and the teachings of Buchner and Co.” On all other, more elementary questions of materialism, there is no difference between Marx and Engels, on the one hand, all these old materialists - on the other hand, they are not and cannot be” (ME. R. 247).
who try to explain the relationship between consciousness and being is that, like Feuerbach, they lose sight of the fact that the abstract individual they are analyzing actually belongs to a special form of society. It is not surprising that Ryazanov was liquidated by Stalin.
Contrary to the usual definition of Marx as a materialist, it is important to understand that he did not oppose materialism to idealism. In The German Ideology (G1), as in other works, he characterizes his starting position as “materialist.” But this term does not refer to philosophical materialism, but to the premise in the form of real individuals, their activities and the material conditions of their lives, which are verifiable in a purely empirical way (G1. P. 31), to a perspective characterized by Marx as “practically materialist, i.e. i.e. communist" (G1. R. 56).
Engels usually characterized Marx’s works as “materialist,” but with this in mind that current of modern science that no longer needs any philosophy to stand above other sciences (AD. R. 39-40).
The task of philosophy was only to formalize the “materialist dialectic,” which Engels considered a method characteristic of modern science.
Marx believed that the opposition between materialism and idealism is false, since “matter” is no less amazing a concept than “idea”, therefore abstract materialism is an abstract spiritualism of matter.
Marx sought to overcome this false opposition by focusing on society as an intermediate category between the “material” and the “ideal,” but he understood society not as another abstraction, but as the everyday practical activity of real human beings. It was the separation of the individual from society that lay at the basis of the false antithesis of the Enlightenment, which eliminated the intermediate category between humanity and nature, between the ideal and the material, between the subject and the object." Thus, Marx in his early works criticized both materialism and idealism from the point of view of "human sensibility activity", the practice of human society, or socialized humanity"
(First thesis on Feuerbach). He characterized his own position not as materialism, but as humanistic naturalism or naturalistic or real humanism:
consistent naturalism or humanism is different from both idealism and materialism, ignores the truth +6f and the other” (CW. 336). At the same time, Marx also rejected the false opposition between humanity and nature, noting that society is the complete unity of man with nature, the completed naturalism of man and the completed humanism of nature” (CW. 3. R. 298). This formula should not be interpreted as offering a “sociological” solution philosophical problem, but as a transformation of the problem from philosophical to socio-historical. Marx declared the triumph not of materialism over idealism, but social science over philosophy.
Marx's early criticism was directed against both Adam Smith and Hegel, and he certainly did not support the "materialist" Smith against the "idealist" Hegel.
Marx's position was that both of these theories were equally idealistic, since they were based on the categorical opposition of matter and idea, individual and society, humanity and nature. He considered these opposites to be empty abstractions; empty - because these concepts do not correspond to any specific realities and, thus, cannot have a specific effect. This is a criticism not only of Smith and Hegel, since these conceptual opposites are attributes of bourgeois thought in general.
According to Marx, the weakness of bourgeois materialism was that it sought to explain social relations by relating them to the material basis, which was understood naturalistically as the physical conditions of production. This led to the naturalization of what were in reality historically specific social relations based on a special social basis. Thus, Marx and then Engels criticized early materialism for the lack of a systematic and historical perspective, for a naturalistic vision of the world that was unable to embrace history. Within these limits, Plekhanov’s characterization of Marx’s critique of Feuerbach’s materialism is correct. But Marx saw Feuerbach’s mistakes not in the fact that he was not sufficiently a materialist, taking history beyond the limits of nature, but in the fact that he was an excessive materialist, reducing history to the history of nature. Of course, Marx criticized Feuerbach's static vision of nature. But Feuerbach's theory was not the last word of bourgeois materialism. While Feuerbach's Materialism was characterized by ideas about the immutability of human nature, classical political economy was no longer so limited.
It is noteworthy that Plekhanov, in his extensive studies of the history of materialism, completely ignores the role of classical political economy and the historical materialism of the Scottish Enlightenment, which proposed a philosophy of history that exactly corresponded to Plekhanov’s characterization of Marx’s philosophical revolution. While continental materialism proposed various forms of racial, demographic and climatic determinism, the materialism of the Scottish Enlightenment offered a philosophy of history that explained the development of manners, morality and constitutional order through the prism of the stages of development of "subsistence", although it was not so limited rudely, like Plekhanov, neither to the means of production, nor to geographical conditions. The Scots proposed precisely this kind of historical materialism, which Plekhanov characterized as the discovery of Marx. In the tenth thesis on Feuerbach, Marx, speaking about the limitations of this form of materialism, noted that “the point of view of the old materialism is “civil” society; the point of view of the new materialism is human society, or socialized humanity.” Thus, Marx did not defend the materialism of political economy against the idealism of Hegel, but criticized both as equally idealistic theories of history.
The philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment had exactly the Hegelian view of the relationship between freedom and necessity, which Plekhanov attributed to Marx. That is why they turned to the study of political economy as a science that can discover the laws of social development. In contrast to the romantic idealism of the French philosophers, the political economists believed that the only basis for social reform was the knowledge of the material foundations of history provided by their new science. However, science, according to Marx, does not provide a solution to the problem of the dualism of bourgeois materialism, since the materialist teaching that people are products of circumstances and upbringing, that, therefore, changed people are products of different circumstances and changed upbringing - this teaching forgets that circumstances change namely by people and that the educator himself must be educated. It therefore inevitably comes “to something that divides society into two parts, one of which rises above society (for example, in Robert Owen).”
For Marx, knowledge is undoubtedly a weapon in revolution, but it is not knowledge that makes the revolution, but the proletariat;
knowledge is a revolutionary weapon only then”
when it becomes part of the proletarian movement. The philosophical roots of Bolshevik politics go directly to Plekhanov's fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of Marx's critique of political economy.
In Hegel's works, bourgeois reason receives its most complete and systematic expression. According to Marx, Hegel's great merit was that he brought bourgeois reason to its limits, thus its speculative foundations clearly stood out in the contradiction of the general and the particular, which Hegel could resolve only speculatively in the dialectical development of Reason. In exactly the same way, Smith and later Ricardo recognized the real contradictions between universal human needs, aspirations and the particular social relations of the capitalist system of production. However, they also resolved these contradictions speculatively, in the dialectical development of Nature. Both there and here there is a superhuman force that creates history - be it Reason or Nature. Thus, Marx's critique of Hegelian idealism can immediately be translated into a critique of the idealism of political economy, since it is a critique of their common ideological foundations.
Marx could apply the method developed in the critique of Hegel's abstract spiritualism to the critique of political economy because they were two sides of the same coin.
Like Hegel, political economy was content with describing alienated forms of social existence, seeking their cause in alienated force: on the one hand, in the Idea, on the other, in Nature.
Excursion: Marx, Engels and the inversion of Hegel For Lenin and Plekhanov, who characterized Marxism as philosophical materialism, the most authoritative was the well-known passage from the afterword to the second edition of Capital, where Marx wrote: “My dialectical method is not only fundamentally different from Hegel’s, but is its direct opposite... For me... the ideal is nothing more than the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it. “Hegel has dialectics on his head. We need to put her on her feet in order to reveal the rational grain under the mystical shell.”
The orthodox interpretation of this passage sees the reversal as philosophical: Marx placed the dialectical method on a rational foundation, replacing Hegel's idealist monism with a symmetrical materialist monism. Thus, Plekhanov argued that materialism is the direct opposite of idealism. Idealism seeks to explain all natural phenomena, all qualities of matter by one or another properties of matter, by one or another human organization.
Thus, the Hegelian dialectical method is justified insofar as dialectical laws are assessed as laws not of consciousness, but of matter. For Lenin, Hegel’s “transition from the logical idea to nature” at the end of “Logic” is “a stone’s throw to materialism.” Indeed, “the entire chapter on the “absolute idea” ... contains almost no specific idealism, and its main subject is the dialectical method - this is extremely remarkable. And one more thing: in this very idealistic work of Hegel there is the least idealism, the most materialism.”
Contrary to this interpretation, it is worth noting that Marx defined the reversal he carried out as a reversal not of ontology, but of method, which is considered by the orthodox interpretation as untouched by Marx's criticism. Marx, as noted above, characterized his philosophy not as “materialism”, but as “humanistic naturalism” or “naturalistic humanism”. When he used the term "materialism" in in a positive sense, he used it as a synonym for the word “science”. His dialectical method is the method of scientific work, while the Hegelian method is the method of speculative philosophy. Marx's reversal of the Hegelian dialectic is not a philosophical reversal leading to its replacement by monistic materialism, but a reversal of the idealist relationship between science and philosophy.
How to determine Engels' position? She is somewhere in the middle between Marx and Plekhanov. In "Ludwig Feuerbach"
Engels says of the Hegelian system that, both in method and in content, it represents only idealism turned on its head.
Although Engels considered Marx’s reversal of Hegel both philosophically and methodologically, he constantly emphasized precisely the latter aspect and only in second place put the philosophical revolution allegedly accomplished by Marx. He described his theoretical innovations as a scientific revolution, in contrast to Feuerbach's achievements, which did not go beyond philosophical antinomies. Marx's departure from Hegelian philosophy led to a turn towards a materialist point of view. This, according to Engels, meant understanding the real world - nature and history - as it appears to any person, free from idealistic embellishments that cannot be brought into harmony with facts. Thus, Engels followed Marx in understanding the revolution of Hegelian dialectics as a revolution in the relationship between science and philosophy, which becomes possible when science includes the principle of dialectics as its own method.
“Modern materialism is essentially dialectical and no longer needs any philosophy standing above other sciences. As soon as each individual science is faced with the requirement to clarify its place in the universal connection of things and knowledge about things, any special science about this universal connection becomes unnecessary. And then, from all previous philosophy, independent existence is still preserved by the doctrine of thinking and its laws - formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is included in the positive science of nature and history.”
Consequently, materialist dialectics does not reverse the idealistic relationship between consciousness and nature; it overcomes this opposition as soon as science realizes through its practice the dialectical principles of movement and interconnection. The dialectical method affirms only scientific positivism.
Materialistic understanding of history?
Plekhanov's resurrection of bourgeois materialism as a principle of Marxism confronts us with the same dilemma that he characterized as the core of the materialism that existed before him. If the development of customs, morality and the constitutional structure of society are determined by the development of productive forces, then how should we explain the active role of the human factor in historical development? Engels, unlike Marx, supported philosophical materialism. He argued that the products of the human brain, which are ultimately also products of nature, do not contradict the rest of the connection of nature, but correspond to it. He characterized dialectics as the science of the general laws of movement and development of nature, human society and consciousness, as nothing more than a simple reflection of the flow of reality in the thinking brain. However, this argument was not used by Engels, as has become common in “dialectical materialism,” as an ontological guarantee of the truth of the laws of materialist dialectics.
The word “reflection” used by Engels does not imply either the theory of reflection in epistemology, nor the corresponding theory of truth that Lenin attributed to him.
Engels repeatedly emphasized that human history cannot find its ultimate intellectual limit in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth.
He insisted on the hypothetical and limited nature of all knowledge, a principle which he applied to his own and Marx's works. If Lenin, in a dispute with neo-Kantians, argued that such relative truths are a progressive approximation to absolute truth, then Engels looked at truth pragmatically. He rejected the skepticism of Hume and Kant as a product of the chimerical pursuit of “absolute truth,” which has no meaning if we proceed from the fact that one can strive only for relative truths achievable along the path of the positive sciences, the methods of which—“experiment and industry”—transform “thing-in-itself” into “thing-for-us”. Perhaps Engels's criticism of Kant is naive, but his materialism is a defense of science from philosophy, its pragmatism from Kantian epistemological dualism, for which “consciousness” is something given, something opposed from the outside to being, nature;
the resulting gap between consciousness and reality can only be overcome by metaphysics, be it metaphysical materialism or speculative idealism*.
* Engels' Dialectics of Nature may be equally naive, but it does not seek to revolutionize the natural sciences by applying the laws of dialectics, but rather tries to adapt Marxism to modern science, demonstrating the universality of its laws through a review of what has been achieved modern natural science results.
Engels does not claim to advance science forward, he simply embodies scientific results into the bizarre rhetoric of dialectics.
his ideals often lag behind his new needs (DMVH. R. 188)*.
It is this lag that allows law and politics to influence the pace social development, if not in its direction. Political institutions, Plekhanov noted, influence economic life. They either facilitate its development or slow it down. The first case is in no way surprising from the point of view of Marxism, since this political system was created with the aim of promoting the further development of the productive forces. The second case also does not contradict Marx’s point of view, for historical experience shows that since a given political system ceases to correspond to the state of the productive forces, since it turns into an obstacle to their further development, it begins to decline and is ultimately destroyed (DMVH. R. 203, 272).
Social needs that give rise to certain legal, political and ideological superstructures are expressed in certain conflicts and class interests. Productive forces determine the economic relations of society. These relations naturally give rise to certain interests, expressed in law, which gives rise to government organization, whose goal is to protect dominant interests. The pace of historical development is therefore determined by the outcome of the class struggle, which expresses the balance of class forces. Only a concrete study of the relationship of class forces can show what is “inevitable” and what is not so for a given society (DMVH. P. 298). So, for example, the inevitability of capitalism in Russia was dictated not by the existence of some external forces, some mysterious law that pushed it along this road, but by the fact that there was no effective internal force capable of pushing it off this road (DMVH. R. 302)** .
The struggle over the forms of law and the constitution manifests itself not directly as a struggle between conflicting class forces, but as a struggle between different ideas, expressing. In the same spirit, he argued that the psychology of a society always corresponds to its economy, is determined by it.
** This essay is again indistinguishable from the ideas of Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, which developed the theory of class on the basis of the new science of political economy, with the aim of identifying the opposing class interests that determine the course of history.
ting? It seems that monistic materialism has once again doomed us to a populist oscillation between fatalism and voluntarism.
Plekhanov sought to overcome this dilemma, relying, as we have seen, on Hegel's analysis of the relationship between freedom and necessity: knowledge gives us the freedom to overcome necessity. This, however, does not offer a solution. If knowledge is a simple knowledge of necessity, then it remains purely contemplative and retrospective. But if knowledge is to be a means of changing the direction of history, then we return to the dualism of which Plekhanov accused bourgeois materialism, and the question of delimiting the spheres of freedom and necessity arises again. Plekhanov answered this question by distinguishing the direction and pace of historical development, the content and form of legal, political and ideological superstructures. The direction of historical development is determined by necessity, but its pace is subject to human intervention. The content of the superstructures is ultimately determined by the needs of production and mediated by class interests, but the same content can be expressed in different forms.
While the development of the productive forces unambiguously determines the direction of the historical process, the rate of development of the productive forces is in no way independent of the form of social relations in production. Thus, Plekhanov noted, slave labor is not very favorable for the development of productive forces; under slavery they progress extremely slowly, but under capitalism they develop at an unprecedented pace.
The legal and political superstructure can also play a role in determining the pace, but not the direction, of historical development. Law and constitution are functionally determined by the needs of society, which, in turn, are determined by the mode of production and the relationships between people that are created by it. "Certain"
legal and constitutional systems express certain ideas, but ideas arise on the basis of needs, and those ideas that satisfy social needs dominate. In reality, Plekhanov wrote, the “ideal” is what is useful to people, and each society in developing ideals is guided only by its own needs. The apparent exceptions to this indisputable general rule are explained by the fact that in the process of social development there are conflicting class interests. The content of these interests is determined by economic relations, but the latter do not determine the ideological forms of expression of these interests.
The relationship of ideas to social needs and class interests is not simple. The world of ideas is an autonomous world, subject to its own laws, so that ideas do not act as a direct expression of class interests.
Intellectuals cannot be reduced to smarmy representatives of special interests, but their ideas are nonetheless conditioned by their historical environment.
The relationship between interests and ideas, by virtue of all of the above, is not genetic. It is rather a Spinoza-like correspondence between the material world of interests and the intellectual world of ideas. This concept obviously fit very well with the reality of Russian political and ideological conflicts that erupted among intellectuals who had very limited contact with any organized class forces. So the dividing line in political conflicts was drawn not so much by the criterion of the contending social forces, but by the criterion of the interests that certain ideas supposedly represented*.
It is not surprising that Plekhanov decisively overcame this Spinozian dualism in the classical Hegelian sense. Ideas are subject to their own laws, but they are also subject to the laws of material necessity, which predetermine that humanity will go beyond the rule of necessity to the understanding of its freedom. With the development of productive forces, Plekhanov argued, the production process becomes more complicated and goes beyond the control of people, the producer turns out to be a slave of his own creation. However, the relations of production, social relations, the very logic of their development lead a person to pony. This discrepancy was most clearly manifested in Lenin’s criticism of economism in the book “What is to be done?”, where the strange conclusion is made that the proletarian consciousness is bourgeois, while the consciousness of the radical bourgeois intelligentsia - proletarian. Plekhanov, who retained some connection between interests, ideas and the social forces they represented, sought an alliance between the radical bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On this issue Lenin parted ways with him politically. There is no doubt that in this split it was Plekhanov who remained closer to Marxism, while Lenin turned to populism, as evidenced by the very title of the work, which reduces Marx to Chernyshevsky.
mania for the reasons for his enslavement by economic necessity. This creates the opportunity for a new and final triumph of consciousness over necessity, reason over blind law. Realizing that the reason for his enslavement to his own creation lies in the anarchy of production, the manufacturer organizes it and subordinates it to his will. Then, Plekhanov believed, the kingdom of necessity ends, and the kingdom of freedom begins, which itself turns out to be necessary (DMVH. R. 273-274).
The coming revolution is not so much a matter of realizing the material interests of the working class or liberating it from capitalist exploitation, as it is the realization of human reason (speaking modern language- “universal human values”). The working class appears as the agent of this realization.
Plekhanov gave an extremely powerful critique of voluntarism, but it is quite obvious that it was not a Marxist critique. His point of view is not “human sensory activity, practice”, “human society or socialized humanity” (“Theses on Feuerbach”), but an anonymous “dialectic”, which does not become less idealistic because it is associated with natural-geographical, technological , biological and psychological processes.
Plekhanov's philosophy makes no sense at all as an interpretation of Marx. But it makes sense as a criticism of the first generation of populists, who proved their inability to connect revolutionary ambitions with the material basis of the aspirations of the peasantry. She softened her philosophical materialism with voluntaristic romanticism. It is from here that the power and influence of Plekhanov’s works in Russia stems. But this was criticism from the point of view of populism, not Marxism, and the contrast between materialism and idealism corresponded to the split that arose in the populist movement.
If Plekhanov had started from a Marxist position, then he, relying on the aspirations of the emerging labor movement, would have opposed both the “materialist” and “idealistic” wings of the populist movement. However, such criticism was impossible in Russia at the end of the 19th century, just as it was impossible in Germany early XIX c., because such a movement did not yet exist. Socialism in Russia remained the preserve of the intelligentsia and was therefore in the sphere of ideas. German Social Democrats could look for the need for revolution in concrete historical development labor movement. In Russia, the need for revolution could only be justified philosophically, through the principles of dialectical materialism and the mystical laws of “transition of quantity into quality” and “denial, negation.”
Lenin's Populist Interpretation of Marxism The problem facing Russian Marxists was that their revolutionary ideas ran far ahead of the development of the labor movement. This inevitably gave the intelligentsia a leading role in the revolutionary process, a role that Plekhanov’s “dialectical materialism”
sought to substantiate philosophically. These were intellectuals who could transfer the lessons learned in more developed countries and embodied in the scientific laws of historical materialism to the Russian proletariat. His laws allowed revolutionary intellectuals to scientifically understand the connection between the interests of the working class and the ideals of socialism, even where this connection was not visible to the workers themselves.
However, this brings us back to the political dilemma of populism. What is the political imperative of a revolutionary movement in a country where the mass of the population has not yet become aware of the ideas that express its objective interests? Will revolutionary ideas inevitably arise as a result of the growing consciousness of the working class in the process of its struggle (this is exactly what Bakunin thought, as well as the “economists” and “ultra-leftists” whom Lenin fiercely fought against)? Or should revolutionary ideas be spread through a process of patient propaganda, education and preaching, as the “subjective sociologists” believed and the “legal Marxists” asserted? Or should the cause of revolution be taken into the hands of a small group of dedicated revolutionaries, armed with the idea of a just society, as Chernyshevsky believed, as the terrorist wing of populism from which Lenin arose thought?
The orthodox Marxist answer was a combination of the first and second options: social democracy develops a conscious class movement of workers through agitation, organization and education. In Russia this would be a long historical process, since the working class remained a minority of the population. This implied that the proletariat must look for allies somewhere, since without them it would be crushed by the autocratic state.
The peasantry could not be such an ally, because it was a doomed class that resisted the development of capitalism. Therefore, the Social Democratic movement was forced to look abroad, to the international labor movement.
Life, waiting for the world revolution, was forced to forge a tactical alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie. Although Plekhanov legitimized the role of the intelligentsia in revolutionary movement From the point of view of the philosophy of history, which had nothing in common with Marxism, politically he remained tied to Marxist orthodoxy, which assigned a leading role in the revolution to the organized labor movement.
Nevertheless, it was possible to give Plekhanov’s philosophy of history a different interpretation. If the intelligentsia has privileged access to a scientific understanding of reality, if ideas must accelerate the necessary development of the historical process, then why should the intelligentsia wait for the historical development of the labor movement? Why shouldn't the revolutionary intelligentsia itself play a leading role in history, seizing power by any means necessary, seeking any social classes and layers that can be mobilized in their support, using all possible measures to fulfill their historical role?
It was this logic that led the first generation of radical populists into terrorism, and it was this logic that led Lenin to the transformation of Plekhanov’s “dialectical and historical” materialism into the ideology of Bolshevism. The privileged status of the intelligentsia, approved by Plekhanov's philosophy, was realized in Lenin's theory of the party. It represents the working class not because it is the political form of the mass of workers representing their aspirations, but because it is the institutional form in which revolutionary ideology is mobilized as a historical force.
Lenin could rightly criticize Plekhanov for not following the logic of his own philosophy right down to political conclusions. That is why Lenin could, while sharply criticizing his policies, remain slavishly devoted to his philosophy. However, Lenin's transformation of Plekhanov's political theory did not go in the direction of Marxism, but rather along the path of returning Plekhanov's Marxism to the populist theory from which Lenin emerged. While Plekhanov used populist philosophy to build a bridge from populist to Marxist politics, Lenin used it to move in the opposite direction.
Populist roots of Lenin's political thought obvious and well known. Revolutionary populism had four distinctive features, which Lenin placed at the center of his Marxism and which formed the core of “Marxism-Leninism.
1) It emphasized the active role of revolutionary ideas in determining the course of history and thus gave intellectuals a prominent political role. This was an element developed by Plekhanov and adopted from him by Lenin. The orthodox Marxism of the Second International certainly did not underestimate the role of ideas in historical development, but for it revolutionary ideas arose from the revolutionary movement, and intellectuals could play a role in their formulation. Although Kautsky's theory gave intellectuals a special position in the struggle for socialism, it did not give them any special power. For Lenin, the spontaneous struggle of the working class is inevitably a group struggle for economic goals. Only the scientific theory of Marxism can open up broader perspectives leading to political struggle. This perspective is provided by intellectuals and institutionalized in the party, which expresses the political interests of the class as a whole, rather than the private interests of its constituent parts. For Kautsky, on the contrary, there was no such separation of the economic struggle from the political one, and the revolution, in his opinion, does not depend on the leading vanguard party representing the class as a whole, but on the fusion of socialist ideas with the struggle of the working class. With the integration of socialism and the labor movement, the socialist party is able to transcend any group representation and express the aspirations of all non-capitalist classes and strata.
2) Populism emphasized the strength of revolutionary will expressed through a disciplined organization of revolutionaries. Lenin took this idea from his revolutionary teacher, N. Chernyshevsky. It was rejected by orthodox Marxists, who emphasized the mass, democratic nature of the proletarian movement.
3) Populism was characterized by a radical rejection of the state, resistance against any involvement in constitutional politics on the grounds that the state was essentially the agent of capitalist development, while the basis of the new society lay outside the state, in the community and in cooperative production. Accordingly, populism had an insurrectionary view of revolution, the task of which was to destroy the economic and political forces of capitalism in the name of liberating the elements of socialism. This idea was also rejected by orthodox Marxists, who, of course, did not believe that socialism could be achieved through elections, but who saw democratization of the state and civil liberties as the first condition for the development of the labor movement, and political agitation as the main form of propaganda.
Orthodox Marxists also rejected the populist belief that the material basis of socialism lay in community and cooperative production. They believed instead in the need to take control of the state in order to nationalize the means of production, creating the material basis for socialism. Lenin's revolutionary party, by contrast, provided a means of organization that had no need for democracy or civil liberties, while at the same time its concept of party leadership eliminated the need to develop working-class consciousness. On the question of the material basis of socialism, Lenin had an ambivalent position. He rejected the populist belief in community and the revisionist belief in cooperative production. Before the revolution, however, he wavered between a commitment to the Soviets, which created the material and political basis of the new society, where the state played a transitional role as an instrument of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and an orthodox belief in the state, which provided a more permanent basis for the new society. Ultimately, he combined the worst of the two positions, soon institutionalizing the dictatorial state as the permanent basis of the new society.
4) The most fundamental feature of populism was the belief in the revolutionary role of the peasantry. It was on this issue that orthodox Marxism diverged most decisively from populism, regarding the peasantry as a doomed class and its living conditions as such that it could never unite as a conscious class force. For this reason, Plekhanov and the Mensheviks looked for a political ally against the autocratic state in the liberal bourgeoisie. On the other hand, in Germany, one of the most developed capitalist countries, the proletarianization of the rural population meant that they could play a positive role in the revolutionary movement, not as peasants, but as workers. Lenin, in “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” gave such a critique of populism, which paradoxically confirmed the role attributed to the peasantry by the populists: the development of the Russian rural peasantry is proceeding in such a way that the peasantry is on the path to destruction. Although this meant that it was no longer possible to look at the community as the basis of socialism, these same facts suggested that the rural population could play a revolutionary role. According to Lenin's revolutionary politics, it is not so important that the rural population is not organized as part of the proletariat and does not express socialist aspirations, since the real interests and aspirations are those expressed on behalf of the population by the revolutionary party.
Unfortunately for the peasantry, Lenin's characterization was completely wrong. The mass of Russia's peasants were not proletarianized either by 1917, as Lenin was forced to admit when he introduced the NEP, or by 1929, when Stalin decided to take matters into his own hands and strengthen the necessary course of history with the forced proletarianization of the peasantry.
AD - F. Engels. Anti-Dühring.
CW - K. Marx, F. Engels. Favorite op.
D M V H - V. Plekhanov. On the question of the development of the monistic view of GI - K. Marx, F. Engels. German ideology.
ME - V.I. Lenin. Materialism and empirio-criticism.
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Marxists vs populists
With the split of the First International, Western European Marxists were freed from close association with these overly radical Russians. But not for long. To Engels' joy, Russian Social Democracy arose, defending the orthodoxy of Marxism with the zeal of neophytes. This orthodoxy emphasized Marxism's most radical leftist features. Russia was becoming a hotbed of left-wing Marxism, most fully represented by Bolshevism. But the ideological leader of the left wing of German Social Democracy, Rosa Luxemburg, also came from the Russian Empire. This shift of the left center of ideological search to the east is not accidental. Where industrial society became mature, where the successes of capitalism were more obvious, and its social stabilizers more effective, there the integration of social democracy into the System was more successful. In the east of Europe, capitalism was weaker, and the socialist movement retained the ideological freshness of the times of the First International. From the east, it was possible to look at Western stability through the eyes of the previous revolutionary generation, acting as the ideological reincarnation of the young, mature, but not yet fading Marx and the leaders of revolutionary populism.
Russian Marxism, comparing the state of capitalism in its own country and in the West, could not maintain its centrist Kautskyan position. According to the laws recognized by Marx, Engels and Kautsky economic determinism German Social Democracy slowly slid to the right with the success of capitalism, and the Russians stubbornly pointed out the ulcers of its underdeveloped forms. The Russian socialist had to either become a revolutionary orthodox on the model of Marxism of the 40-70s, or, recognizing the underdevelopment of Russian capitalism, consider socialism a matter of the distant future, anticipating and then approving Bernstein’s conclusions for reasons of “place and time” - the soil is not yet ready for socialism, capitalism must mature, it is necessary to learn from older comrades who, through the mouth of Bernstein, propose evolutionary methods of work.
This internal conflict of the young Russian Social Democracy developed under the constant influence of the populist tradition, with which the Social Democrats found themselves in a relationship of competition and mutual influence.
Russia thus became an important ideological laboratory, underestimated by Western social democracy until 1905. Meanwhile, it was in the moderately developed countries that the System was not yet strong enough to effectively integrate the socialist movement. From here, from Russia, the features were clearer not only specifically Russian situation(on which the populists already insisted), but also the new revolutionary potential of Asia.
In the mid-90s. Russian Marxism launched a decisive offensive against populism. In his work “On the Question of the Development of a Monistic View of History” and other speeches, Plekhanov tried to crush the main populist theoretician of this time, Mikhailovsky. Economic determinism was supposed to dispel Mikhailovsky's subjectivism. But Plekhanov, in his polemical fervor, argued more with the “stupid” Mikhailovsky he had invented. As Plekhanov’s biographer S.V. writes: Tyutyukin, “essentially speaking, a real scientific discussion with N.K. Mikhailovsky, for example, Plekhanov clearly did not succeed, and in a number of cases he either did not understand or clearly distorted the point of view of his opponent.”
The Russian Marxist spoke from the position of extreme fatalism, accusing his opponent of utopianism simply because he decided to write about a “desirable society.” Mikhailovsky explains that social processes can be looked at in two ways: objectively, examining their course without judgment and excluding one’s own influence on it, and subjectively, introducing criteria for evaluating the process and considering the possibilities of influence in a positive (from the subject’s point of view) direction. Confusing these two approaches, according to Mikhailovsky, is the same as adding up “yards and pounds.” Plekhanov does not understand Mikhailovsky’s warning when speaking about his famous formula of progress: “It does not speak about how history went, but about how it should have gone in order to earn Mr. Mikhailovsky’s approval.” If Plekhanov had re-read Marx’s works on French revolutions, for example, he would have found a lot of ratings there historical events, which deserved the approval or disapproval of the “founder”. Marx, in any case, was not a fatalist; history “deserved” approval and censure from him, as well as from Mikhailovsky.
Plekhanov, with the radicalism of a neophyte, expels “utopia” (that is, in in this case- understanding the post-capitalist model of society), and allows only a minimalist program of transformation to be put forward: “the socialization of labor created by the newest industry should lead to the nationalization of the means of production.” This is the limit of permitted dreams, let alone think about socialism. Plekhanov, in fear of populist “utopianism,” drives himself into the narrow framework of the “bourgeois tasks” of the revolution, which predetermines his future Menshevism.
Marx and Engels looked much further, and Plekhanov is forced to admit this “idealism” of theirs. But Plekhanov understands the strategy of his teachers as scientific and educational: “Marx and Engels had an ideal, and a very specific ideal: the subordination of necessity to freedom, of blind economic forces to the power of human reason.”
Plekhanov has to defend Marxism against the charge of fatalism, and he also does this in the spirit of future Menshevism. He agrees that the existing society needs to be transformed, but considers it necessary to rely on that “element of reality” “in which the future is maturing.” In relation to Russia, according to Plekhanov, this is capitalism. It turns out that Social Democrats must support the capitalist trend. And this is pointless, since the bourgeoisie itself will cope with feudalism (however, as if refuting this, Plekhanov will still advocate an active struggle against the autocracy). There is only one thing left to do - to work on growing the self-awareness of the proletariat. But the substantive part of this work, without a model of the future society, comes down to trade unionism, which, according to Marx, is also a false path. It is necessary to create a party of the proletariat, but, according to Plekhanov, it does not yet have the opportunity to develop a program for the transformation of Russia, since the time for this has not yet come. Plekhanov finds himself in an ideological impasse, from which only the emergence of a new generation of Russian Social Democrats will lead him out.
The phenomenon of Marxism in Russia took place in such a form that the exchange of ideas every now and then developed into squabbles, and the legacy of Marx itself was not so much deepening as it was being primitiveized for more convenient consumption by workers and students (a similar primitivization, as we have seen, happened in the West as well). Mikhailovsky later wrote about the Russian Marxists of the 80s and 90s: “They bowed to the one-saving idol of the “economic factor,” they mocked the right of moral judgment over the phenomena of social life, they threw overboard the multimillion-dollar mass of the peasantry for the sake of their “village idiocy.” ; they treated the intelligentsia as an insignificant or “supported” figure; they saw a progressive phenomenon in kulaks-usury, fatally destined to turn into its opposite, etc., etc. At the same time, proud of their “new word,” they did not find words strong enough to depict the stupidity, ignorance and “reactionary aspirations” of their predecessors.” Marx's ideas were sharpened and simplified by neophytes, making those populists who were ready to include Marx's theoretical achievements in the palette of their views wince.
German Social Democrats made some efforts to achieve a rapprochement between the Emancipation of Labor Group and the group of “old Narodnaya Volya” members united around Lavrov. It seemed to German Marxists that with intensive dialogue they could quickly explain to the populists the correctness of the only scientific socialism. But Plekhanov did not show up for negotiations on such a rapprochement, and Engels spoke with N. Rusanov, who represented the populists, in 1892. An unpleasant surprise awaited him. It turns out that Rusanov is a former Marxist with a good knowledge of the literature of the “founders”, and, moreover, a populist. How can it be that a person who has already touched the truth can exchange it for obviously weaker ideas? Engels finds the answer in the same economic determinism - in Russia the conditions for the predominance of Marxism are not yet ripe. But soon this problem will solve itself: “For you, political economy is still an abstract thing, because until now you have not been sufficiently drawn into the whirlpool of industrial development, which will knock out of your head any abstract view of the course of economic life... Now this situation is changing ... The gear of capitalism has already firmly crashed in places into the Russian economy... But in most cases you have not yet abandoned archaic concepts... However, I repeat, it is not your fault, consciousness lags behind being...” But the entire history of socialist thought shows how consciousness is capable of getting ahead of being . The polemics of Marxists and ideologists of liberation socialism anticipated almost all the major problems that humanity faced in the twentieth century.
The dispute between populists and Marxists primarily unfolded in the field of assessment degree of development of capitalism in Russia. The topic is completely legal. But the conclusions from it went beyond the legality - whether or not it is possible to bypass capitalism on the path to socialism.
On this field, the still united Marxists hoped to defeat populism as scientific theory, prove the superiority of their scientific theory and thus gain the right to develop a scientific strategy for change in Russia.
If the development of Russia is possible only along the capitalist path, then Marxism is right, and the prerequisites for socialism will come into being as a result of capitalist development. This is the concentration of production, a high level of industrial development, the large number and consciousness of the proletariat. The populists insisted that the Russian economy could develop without destroying the traditional rural world, preserving such prerequisites of socialism as the connection of the worker and the means of production, and communal self-government. If this is so, then Russia’s path to socialism is special; capitalism can not only create the prerequisites for socialism, but also destroy them. At the same time, the populists did not insist on the harmfulness of all manifestations of capitalism, and especially industrial development, but called for limiting the most destructive aspects of the process, primarily the pauperization of the peasantry and the destruction of the community.
Many valuable observations have been made in this debate about capitalism. The populists, anticipating Keynesianism, argued that the ruin of the peasantry narrows the market and retards the development of the economy (N. Danielson), the Marxists - that it contributes to this development, replenishing the number of free hands. Marxists listed in detail the elements of capitalism that appeared in Russia, trying to prove the irreversibility of the capitalist path.
Who was right, the populists or the Marxists? There is a reason for both lines of reasoning. Both are right. Marxists could prove that capitalism had penetrated deep into the fabric Russian society, but it was possible to imagine it as the dominant way of life only through various kinds of broad interpretations, when any industrial and any commodity relations were represented as capitalist.
In principle, this dispute about the degree of development of capitalism in Russia could not be completed with a victory for one of the parties, since a counter-argument could be given to any argument. It was debate about whether the glass is half empty or half full.
No matter how many elements of capitalism there were already in the Russian village, it was not yet capitalist. And since the vast majority of subjects Russian Empire lived in the village, then Russia was not yet capitalist. But capitalism was undoubtedly present and developed in it. It was easy to solve this problem using the concept of multi-structure. But is it possible to create socialism on the basis of only one way of life out of many?
The Social Democrats indirectly recognized the rightness of the populists, advocating the transfer of landowners' land to the peasants, which was supposed to delay the proletarianization of the countryside. The difference between the Marxists and the Narodniks at this point was that the former believed that the peasantry would be ruined anyway, and this would benefit the cause of socialism. But this is, in any case, a matter for the future.
It was important to decide whether the development of capitalism was sufficient to set actual socialist tasks. However, such a formulation of the question made sense primarily for Marxists, who perceived socialism as highest degree development of industrial society (without using such a term, but identifying the ongoing industrial progress with “capitalism”). The populists saw in socialism not a super-industrial system, but a society organized on the basis of self-government. The advancing industrialism (in this case capitalism) did not contribute to this (as Marxists believed), but hindered it. Therefore, what for Marxists was the road to socialism, the ripening of the preconditions of socialism, for the populists of the 19th century was an increase in obstacles, a complication of the task.
Bearing in mind this difference in the positions of the two schools of socialist thought, we can leave aside the rich factual material introduced into the theoretical battle by the debating parties. Regardless of this material, the debate was about quality indicators. Industrialism developed rapidly in Russia in two forms - capitalist and statist (state-owned). Narodnik V. Vorontsov reminded that capitalist production is only one form of industrial progress.
Peripheral, “Asian” capitalism turned out to be much less productive than Western models. N.S. Rusanov, summing up populist studies of economic development, argued: “capitalism is developing in our country almost exclusively as a form of exploitation (usurious, kulak, hoarding), and not as a form of national production...”. Large industrial centers exist only in a few places, in modern terms - enclaves. When a peasant goes bankrupt, he, contrary to the Marxist scheme, usually does not go to the factories, but “wanders anywhere.” There is an accumulation of impoverished, savage, destructive marginal masses. Marxists have so far expressed the hope that in the future this mass will be integrated by the factory, and capitalism will become mature and develop according to general rules. Industrial development led to an industrial society (either capitalist, state-capitalist or purely statist). But did it lead to socialism? Russian Marxism did not provide evidence on this score, since it was taken for granted that after the current world capitalism only socialism and nothing else could come. For the populists the problem was more complicated. Socialism for them was the future society, but the populists considered its emergence precisely from “overripe capitalism” to be doubtful. Capitalism was seen as some kind of deviation (maybe inevitable) on the path to socialism.
The dispute between Marxists and Narodniks thus boiled down to the problem: Is the full development of capitalism a prerequisite on the path to socialism?. We have seen that in relation to Russia, even Marx was not an apologist for total capitalist transformation. However, for him (as later for the Bolsheviks) it was obvious that countries of less developed capitalism could not independently create a socialist society. They can act as allies of the Western European proletariat and, with its help, build their own socialism - nothing more. Will this socialism have fundamental features in comparison with Western European? This problem has been left to the future.
The practical experience of the Russian revolutions allowed us to resolve some of these theoretical problems better than any statistics. The level of development of the country turned out to be sufficient to overcome capitalism (if we understand by it a system based on private property). This level turned out to be insufficient to create socialism (if we understand by it a society without an elite class and exploitation). The country continued to move along the path of industrialism, the industrial structure (having lost the capitalist shell) became dominant. But socialism has remained a hypothetical prospect, and if it is destined to become a reality, it will already be post-industrial. This makes the Narodniks’ thoughts again relevant about the kind of socialism that will flow not from industrial growth, but from its introduction into a framework limited by the interests of the individual and the capacity natural environment, and in the future - overcoming industrialism.
In this controversy, he entered the public arena Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870-1924). His first monograph, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” is devoted to the topic that excited Russian thinking society at the end of the century. Already at this stage, the duality of Lenin’s attitude towards capitalism is noticeable. As a competent Marxist, Lenin understood that without capitalism it is impossible to achieve socialism. But as a person who interacted with workers and was interested in factory life, he wrote: “The worker becomes part of a huge machine apparatus: he must be as unquestioning, enslaved, deprived of his own will as the machine itself.” Here Lenin, like Marx in his time, comes close to understanding that the oppressed position of the worker in the factory is determined not by the nature of the property, but by the industrial organization itself. The worker will be oppressed as long as this organization operates, as long as he is an appendage to the machine - even if it belongs to the state and (formally) to the whole society, to all workers.
But then Lenin no longer develops this idea. His intellect struggles with the tasks of current politics, with the technology of overthrowing the existing system, and not with organizing the future. The industrial basis of capitalism is perceived as a guarantee of the almost automatic self-organization of a new society, which will occur after the collapse of capitalism. The constructive tasks of the revolution would take Lenin by surprise, which would force him to formulate a program of reforms in a hurry in 1918. The problem of industrial domination over the worker will be abandoned, and Lenin, after coming to power, will become an adept of Taylorism.
V. Ulyanov began his polemical activities with the brochure “Who are the friends of the people and how they fight against the Social Democrats,” printed in samizdat in 1894. He also chose Mikhailovsky as an object of criticism. The natural choice for a young radical is to attack the leading theorist of the opposing camp. And let the veteran not notice the young man’s polemical jabs, but still the honor is great. Also in the second half of the twentieth century, young radicals will self-confidently attack the bronzed figures of Lenin and Marx.
However, Lenin does not dispute his secondary nature. He is a Marx apologist. In the battle of ideologies, he is the foremost fighter of Marx’s army, a defender of the interests of the proletariat. Against who? Ulyanov accused Mikhailovsky of being a philistinist, not at all embarrassed by the fact that the pragmatism of the philistine is much closer to the logic of economic determinism, condemned by the theorist of populism, than the ethical subjectivism of Mikhailovsky. In order to somehow justify his characterization, Ulyanov qualifies as a tradesman (but not a peasant) a small producer operating under a commodity farming system. But then it is Ulyanov himself.
Ulyanov looks down on the enemy. Later, in exile, Ulyanov wrote: “the populist throws overboard all historical realism, always comparing the reality of capitalism with the fiction of pre-capitalist orders.” Here the young Marxist clearly confused populism and Slavophilism. And then he refers to the works of the populist A. Engelhardt, who described the petty-proprietary behavior of the peasants. It turns out that the populist is not always engaged in “false idealization” (Ulyanov’s expression) of the Russian village. Ulyanov admits that earlier populism is closer to his position in its revolutionary nature and frankness (like the same Engelhardt). So this means that the point is not in populism, but in the current era of social calm, when the most prominent theorists of both the populists and the Marxists are legalists. But if legal Marxists are close to fatalism and prefer an alliance with liberalism, then legal populists, although they gravitate towards some Slavophile ideas, do not at the same time deny the importance of modernization and are ready to take it into the future positive features, but at the same time they strive to preserve those institutions of society that will mitigate the costs of modernization and prepare the ground for socialism. Mikhailovsky does not idealize the community so much as to consider it a commune. But he considers village self-government useful and therefore defends it.
The work of Ulyanov, a still inexperienced publicist, is very disorderly. He jumps from topic to topic, mixes arguments with abuse, so that from his text it is difficult to understand what this same Mikhailovsky asserts so maliciously. But Ulyanov’s plan is grandiose - to defend Marxism from attacks by populist ideologists on all counts of their criticism. In the distorting mirror of Ulyanov’s article, Mikhailovsky appears to be an even greater fool than the caricatured Proudhon from Marx’s book “The Poverty of Philosophy.” But, having come to power, Lenin ordered to carve the name of Mikhailovsky on the obelisk with a list of the largest socialist thinkers. This is no coincidence - as research into the problems posed to Ulyanov Mikhailovsky, Lenin’s attitude towards them changed.
Mikhailovsky argues that with the help of economic materialism it is impossible to understand the role national question. Instead of a clear explanation of what the Marxist explanation of the national question is, Ulyanov sets out a Marxist plan for solving the problem: “unity of the oppressed class against the oppressor class” in each country, regardless of national differences, and also the unification of these class parties into an international organization.
It was in vain that Ulyanov did not heed Mikhailovsky’s warning: “The international society of workers, organized for the purpose of class struggle, did not prevent the French and German workers from slaughtering and ruining each other at the moment of national excitement.” Mikhailovsky’s correctness became finally clear during the collapse of the Second International in August 1914. Mikhailovsky’s thought became a statement of the problem, a program for studying the national question by Lenin, who, on the eve and during the First World War, finally found his explanation of the connection between national and socio-economic factors.
Mikhailovsky’s demand “not to knock heads against the working strata of society” will also become Lenin’s research program. Lenin will not abandon the idea of the superiority of the proletariat over the peasantry, but will look for opportunities to create a workers' and peasants' union.
Mikhailovsky’s pointing out that the concentration of production in itself does not eliminate the disunity of workers will also become a program for Lenin’s research. The experience of the twentieth century confirmed that the dominance of industrialism leads to the atomization of human relations. Moreover, concentration in itself does not lead to the development of a psychology of class solidarity and social liberation. This requires educational influence from the outside, which Mikhailovsky associated with the situation of political freedoms. Lenin, at the end of his life, would also put educational goals at the forefront of his strategy for moving towards socialism.
The author of the most detailed modern biography of Lenin V.T. Loginov states: “in contrast to Mikhailovsky, who proposed to educate first, and only then fight, Ulyanov believed that in Russian conditions, wait until, with the help of self-development circles, Sunday schools, special books and lectures will achieve the proper (??) level of consciousness and organization - it’s pointless.” It is characteristic that, giving the palm of theoretical primacy to Ulyanov, V.T. Loginov does not provide a single quote from Mikhailovsky. Mikhailovsky does not define what level of consciousness is “should”; he simply sees that without purposeful work to raise the level of culture of workers, the wave of class struggle will lead to pogroms and massacres. Lenin was able to verify the seriousness of this warning in 1918-1922.
V.T. Loginov continues to reproduce the logic of Lenin’s reasoning: “Meanwhile, the experience of the 90s showed that nothing has such a powerful organizational and educational impact on the mass of workers as the struggle itself, and in particular such a form as a strike.” A strike organizes workers, but a strike that develops into a riot and pogrom can make it easier for the authorities to destroy the already established structure of the labor movement. Mikhailovsky also warned about this. There is one more circumstance that will come as a surprise to Lenin and to most Social Democrats after 1917 - the most organized workers who rallied in the fight against the old system are not at all ready with the same zeal with which they fought against capitalist employer, work for a new, “communist” one.
And even more so, industrial culture does not prepare the proletarian to manage society. Industrial development contributed to the growth of the general culture of the population, which is a prerequisite for socialist development. However, accumulation cultural potential was one-sided - growth technological culture obviously ahead of general humanitarian and democratic cultural development. And this was not only a specific Russian feature. An industrial system based on specialization, strict execution of management commands, and instrumentalization of humans requires technological literacy, not humanitarian literacy, without which a competent solution to social problems is impossible.
V. Ulyanov, in polemics with the populists, exaggerated the degree of development of capitalism in Russia. A continuation of this line of his reasoning was the book “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” which was precisely dedicated to proving the significance of the successes of capitalism in the countryside. This study still retains scientific value, although it has been rightly criticized for exaggerating the extent of capitalist development in the book's conclusions. Ulyanov's scientific merit is that he listed everything that could then be found capitalist in the countryside. But could this enumeration prove that capitalism in Russia is “developed”? Somehow developed, but less developed than in Germany (where the Social Democrats did not find sufficient prerequisites for socialism in 1919).
Has Russia followed the path of capitalist modernization, has this process become irreversible? Marxists claim that it has become. But Lenin goes further than his more moderate colleagues. Since capitalist development has gone so far, then it is time to set new, socialist tasks. And here Lenin unexpectedly finds himself on the side of the populists, who also propose to set socialist tasks, even if capitalism is not sufficiently developed. From this it will follow Lenin's limited rapprochement with populism, when the Marxist constructive model of a socialist and communist society will be implemented based on the Russian social soil - not only on the proletariat, but also on the peasantry.
Lenin, like Marx in his time, is looking for a social army to implement a social project. First it is the proletariat. But when, in the course of revolutionary actions, it becomes clear that this army is too small and not yet sufficiently developed, Lenin will invite the Social Democrats to enter into an alliance with the revolutionary part of the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. Accordingly, power in Lenin’s understanding will become not purely workers’, but workers’ and peasants’ (in reality, as Bakunin showed, the “workers’ and peasants’ bodies of power will consist of former workers and former peasants, as well as former burghers, nobles, and intelligentsia and other layers of the collapsing society of the former Russian Empire).
All political biography Lenin is accompanied by oscillations between the use of populist “know-how” (peasant revolution in the interests of socialism) and the Marxist social project, in the interests of which Lenin tries to use both the workers’ and peasant movements. These fluctuations became one of the reasons for the sharp change in Lenin's policy in 1918 from supporting the spontaneous movement of the masses to suppressing it.
Ulyanov criticizes the voluntarism of the populists, who perceive themselves as a subject influencing the people's environment. But later, he too will argue in a similar way, recognizing that revolutionary theory arises outside the working class and is brought into it by social democracy. Moreover, no matter how strange it may seem for a radical materialist, Ulyanov believes that Russia lacks the ideological prerequisites socialist revolution– the working class has not yet assimilated social-democratic ideas: “when the advanced representatives” of the working class “assimilate the ideas of scientific socialism, the idea of the historical role of the Russian worker, when these ideas become widespread, and strong organizations are created among the workers, transforming the present disparate economic struggle into a conscious class struggle - then the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (along with the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) on the straight road of open political struggle to the VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.” This idea "straight road" formed the basis of Lenin’s strategy, which he would continue to profess in 1917. A strong idealistic element is noticeable in it - for victory there are not enough ideological-organizational, subjective, rather than socio-economic prerequisites. Social Democrats must devote themselves to ensuring these tasks. After all, ensuring the socio-economic tasks of expanding capitalist relations lies with the bourgeois class and the ideologists of capitalism - liberals. The concept of the “straight road” brings Lenin closer to the populists, who in turn accepted many ideas of Marxism.
As a creative thinker and Russian revolutionary, Lenin was influenced by populism. However, with all this influence, he remained within the framework of Marxism, accepting only those populist ideas that did not directly contradict Marx’s position. Critics of Lenin are trying to find in populism the origins of its “deviations” from Marxism, including not only the search for an alliance with the peasantry and “petty-bourgeois parties,” but also ... political centralism. Populism, of course, has nothing to do with it - federalism in it prevailed over centralism. But Marx had nothing against organizational centralism. Populism here is clearly an unnecessary link. As a Marxist, one does not need to study Tkachev to become a supporter of centralism.
Some convergence of the positions of the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries on certain issues does not mean that Lenin, and then Stalin, the communists, pursued a neo-populist, “Socialist Revolutionary” course. Both Lenin and Stalin proceeded from the Marxist communist ideal and remained consistent centralists. They remained Marxists. But, realizing this ideal in practice in a single country that had not gone through the stage of industrial modernization, they, even in order to stay in power and preserve the opportunity to carry out anti-capitalist policies, were forced to adopt some populist ideas, in particular about the uniqueness of ways to socialism in different countries, about an alliance with the peasantry. As we have seen, Marx was inclined to a certain flexibility in these matters. But at the same time, the communists denied the core of “communal socialism” - its constructive program.
However, as we have seen, Marxism took a lot from its opponents, and in this regard, elements of anti-authoritarian socialism could find many footholds in the official Marxist-Leninist ideology of the USSR. Connected with this is the “emergence” of elements of populism into Soviet culture, including contrary to Leninism. But there are also deeper reasons for this phenomenon. Marxism (including Leninism) is a socialist movement that is most adequate to industrial society, and therefore to the modernization tasks facing the country. Populism was a trend of socialism that was most adequate to the traditions of the country. To the extent that modernization was carried out in Soviet society, the Marxist project was being implemented; To the extent that the people forced the regime to take into account the country’s traditions that were beneficial to socialism, elements of populism were reproduced.
Mikhailovsky also closely followed the development of Western countries, where capitalism developed faster, quickly exposed the acute conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but by the end of the century began to reveal the ability for new integration, which later received the name of the social state. He has a positive attitude towards these trends: “free thought and, in accordance with its instructions and under its control, the ongoing government intervention in the form of satisfying the masses - this, according to the instructions of European experience, is the framework that should be clothed with the “flesh and blood of a political form”.”
The smoothing out of social antagonism brings satisfaction to Mikhailovsky, but he does not experience Bernstein’s optimism about the prospects of the West. The proletariat, despite the contradictions of class interests, became involved in the cultural work of the West. However, alarming trends are emerging - the disintegration of society into lumpen-proletarian atoms. Mikhailovsky also considers anarchism to be a manifestation of this, which he interprets, however, incorrectly, on the basis of external terrorist manifestations and therefore is almost identified with Nietzscheanism. Anarchism here is synonymous with extreme individualism, and if we understand Mikhailovsky this way, then we have before us a picture of the atomization of personality, characteristic of Western societies of the second half of the twentieth century.
How to counter this trend? What did the Narodnik strategy objectively lead to? They defended a diverse society that was developing towards democratic socialism. In the complex social structure of Russia, the populists sought to preserve everything that could contribute to the socialization of the individual, his protection in the face of the capitalist Moloch. Was this aspiration utopian?
V.A. Tvardovskaya and B.S. Itenberg are confident: “The embodiment of Mikhailovsky’s cherished demands would really mean development along the path of capitalism, that is, the path outlined by Marx. But this was the path of “democratic” capitalism, the least painful and painful path to civilization for the masses, in which the torments of the new system were softened and reduced.” The strength of Marxism also lies in the fact that even those authors who in recent years have moved to criticize Marxist teaching continue to think in Marx’s system of coordinates. They identify with capitalism not only industrial society and market relations, but also civilization itself. Meanwhile, after the emergence of the social state, capitalist relations are not the only dominant socio-economic development even in the West. The path that the populists proposed included a struggle for a multi-structure, where capitalism would develop within a framework limited by state and civil structures that are not capitalist in nature, even if they are involved in market relations. Both German Social Democrats and Populists contributed to the advancement of society towards social state. But the orthodox social democrats were champions of industrial unification, and the populists sought to preserve the diversity of the social system, to democratize social structures as much as possible in order to facilitate the further movement of society beyond the horizon of the social state.
Mikhailovsky did not become a social liberal; he denied that the hierarchical government system can act for the benefit of the whole society. This caused indignation among Marxists. Mikhailovsky argued: “In a society with a pyramidal structure, all kinds of improvements, if they are aimed not directly at the benefit of the working classes, but at the benefit of the whole, lead exclusively to strengthen the upper layers of the pyramid" Plekhanov, “clinging” to the careless word “exclusively,” declared that he had managed to refute this rule. “We celebrated the victory and still remember it with fair pride.” It is a pity that Mikhailovsky did not notice this victory. However, if you replace the word “exclusively” with “primarily”, then the task of refutation becomes much more difficult, as follows from Plekhanov’s further reasoning. He perceives Mikhailovsky's law as a poorly, one-sidedly stated “doctrine about the opposition of interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.” One could thank Mikhailovsky, who managed to short formula to present what constitutes a whole teaching among Marxists. But Plekhanov is not inclined to see any theoretical achievements of populism in the 70s and 80s. Marx has already explained everything using the example of Western workers: “Marx once wrote that the German working class suffers not only from the development of capitalism, but also from the lack of its development.” But the populists wrote not about Germany, but about Russia, which has its own characteristics that Plekhanov now does not want to take into account. Back in 1882, he wrote to Lavrov: I “do not see any significant differences in Russian history from the history of the West.”
However, Mikhailovsky’s formula is not directly related to the debate about the proletariat and capitalism. It is formulated in a more general form. How correct is it, taking into account the amendments we made? This is not an idle question. Plekhanov remembers democracy. Both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat need democracy. This means that Plekhanov, like Kautsky, considers the liberal state to be “democracy”. But it is precisely here that Mikhailovsky is right - the introduction of democracy for the elite, which is a parliamentary republic, strengthens the position of the social elite to a greater extent than the proletariat, which does not have funds for the press, which cannot force even social democratic parliamentarians to obey itself, not to mention other government officials. The working class and other “lower classes” benefit from democratic changes only insofar as the “democratic” state is dedicated to improving their situation. As for real democracy, that is, democracy, it is beneficial to the “bottom” of the pyramid, but not beneficial to the “top,” including the bourgeoisie.
All this does not mean that Mikhailovsky is against liberal freedoms - he fought for them too. At this time, they were needed not by “the whole society,” but mainly by the middle strata. But the populist theorist warns against illusions about the struggle for the interests of “society”, structured like a pyramid. Even if the state is called “democratic”, “proletarian” or “workers’ and peasants”, its pyramidal organization predetermines the predominant benefit of the “tops” who implement social and “national” projects supposedly conceived in the interests of the whole society.
At the end of the century, it was Mikhailovsky, despite all the attacks of the Marxists, who became the leader of the opposition social movement, and not only the socialist one. On this basis, he is sometimes called the leader of “liberal populism.” This term is obviously incorrect - Mikhailovsky is a socialist, not a liberal. The word “liberal” can also be used in the meaning of “less authoritarian” (for example, “liberal communists” of the 80s of the twentieth century), but since the majority of populists do not share authoritarian ideas, this term is not applicable to them in any way. what meaning? Mikhailovsky is a legal populist. The word “legal” does not indicate his principles (we have seen that he also collaborated with the underground), but the situation in which his social activities unfolded.
In the 80-90s. the legality of social movements was forced - the authorities learned to quickly suppress underground activity, and there was no revolutionary upsurge in the country. But legal circles, as the situation changed, could become the headquarters of revolutionary armies. This is what will happen in 1905.
Legal forms of polemics imposed obvious limitations on the authors’ thoughts, and only as the discussion unfolded did it become clear that evolutionary views a matter of principle (as in Struve), or a tactical cover (as in Lenin’s economic works). At the same time, there were connections between legal populism and underground populist revolutionary circles. The ideological leader of the legal populists N.K. Mikhailovsky was popular among populist youth as a theoretician; legal populists came to semi-underground discussions in which radicals of both populist and Marxist trends participated.
Modern researcher V. Blokhin claims that in the late 80s - 90s. Mikhailovsky's transition “from socialism to democracy” took place. At this time, the liberal zemstvo community began to show sympathy for Mikhailovsky and his views. But this testifies more to the evolution of the zemstvo intelligentsia than to any revision of Mikhailovsky’s views. In any case, no textual evidence is provided to support Mikhailovsky’s rejection of the socialist position. It is quite natural that in conditions Tsarist Russia Mikhailovsky did not have the opportunity to write regularly about the socialist perspective.
We can agree with V. Blokhin that Mikhailovsky during this period “rightfully becomes the leader of Russian democracy.” But what does the “transition from socialism” have to do with it? The leader of the liberation democratic movement may well be a socialist, and it is generally pointless to contrast the socialism of Mikhailovsky (and the trends of populism close to him) and democracy. This is democratic socialism, which can put forward both strictly socialist and general democratic demands. In the context of the late 80s - 90s. Mikhailovsky concentrated on general democratic tasks. The basic socialist ideas had already been outlined by him, and the political situation required a fight for civil liberties.
Marxist and post-Marxist authors, brought up on the Leninist doctrine of changing stages of the social movement, accept without evidence the fact of the victory of the Marxists over the populists in the polemics of the 90s. “Mikhailovsky did not want to admit that he was being replaced by another doctrine, ideology, and finally, other rulers of thoughts.” And he did the right thing. They did not “come to replace”, but existed along with populism. The scheme according to which populism in late XIX century turned out to be supplanted by Marxism, realized only in the imagination of Marxists. The influence that Marxism had on populism is undeniable, as is the influence of populism on Russian Marxism, and through it on world Marxist thought (however, even earlier, the populist Bakunin also influenced the formulations of Marx and Engels).
Marxists have won for themselves a “place in the sun,” but nothing more. Since the 90s Marxism and populism coexist in the social movement of Russia, now losing sight of each other, now colliding again in complex collisions of rivalry, alliances, and the struggle for destruction. This will continue until the physical destruction of the carriers of opposition ideological movements in the 30s. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, the authorities, anxiously monitoring the growth of opposition sentiments, stated that it was the populists who maintained dominance over Marxism and even over liberalism.
In 1902, fearing a new wave of unrest in connection with the planned public celebrations of the anniversary of Russian journalism, the Minister of Internal Affairs V. Plehve entered into frank negotiations with Mikhailovsky. The minister stated: “this social movement is the fruit of literature.” Addressing Mikhailovsky as “the general of the revolutionary army,” Plehve asserted: “Your magazine is the main headquarters of the revolution, especially now that you have defeated Marxism and are left alone.”
Plehve demanded that Mikhailovsky leave the capital for a while. To this, Mikhailovsky responded with a polite refusal: “Having considered your benevolent advice, I consider it the duty of my conscience to bring to your attention that I cannot follow it... I only consulted with my conscience when making this decision, which threatens me with grave consequences.” Clouds gathered over Mikhailovsky, but in 1904 he died. However, Plehve correctly assessed the threat. A few months later he was defeated by the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were ideological followers of Mikhailovsky, although they adhered to more radical tactics in the fight against the regime.
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The struggle of populism and Marxism was at one time one of the brightest and necessary pages of our social history. Both directions differed deeply from each other on so many essential points that no reconciliation between them was possible. The fierce controversy that arose from this was quite natural and could not help but attract public attention, since it was a matter of replacing one widely held worldview with another.
About two decades have passed since these disputes, but Marxism and populism still divide our radical intelligentsia among themselves and take in words, if not in deeds, the same irreconcilable position towards each other. But what was correct and inevitable before is becoming more and more in our time, unfounded, a relic of the past.
In fact, in our time there is no longer Marxism as it was ten years ago, nor, especially, populism. The last decade that Russia has experienced has been too significant, too full of events of enormous significance, for any broad social trend not to be influenced by them. In particular, both Marxism and populism experienced such profound transformations that completely new ideological content appeared under the old party flags.
As for populism, in the seventies, when it reached its full development and the apogee of social influence, it was a harmonious and complete doctrine, which was based on the idealization of the conditions of peasant subsistence farming. Of course, populism, represented by its best representatives, was least inclined to idealize the specific conditions in which the economy of the Russian peasant was conducted. The enormous merit of populism was precisely the displacement of all darkness, poverty, all kinds of violence and lawlessness, among which the Russian peasant had to live. But the populists thought that the way out of all this was indicated by the people’s ideal of free and independent peasant farming on their own land. The capitalist economic system was considered by the populists from the point of view of peasant interests as a dangerous enemy, the fight against which is quite possible, although not easy. Not only in the sphere of agriculture, but also in industry, the peasant can defend his economic independence and successfully fight the capitalist, if only “society”—in other words, the socialist intelligentsia—comes to his aid.
On the contrary, the Marxists of the nineties treated peasant farming in all its spheres with unconditional rejection and saw in it the most decisive obstacle to the economic progress of Russia. IN agriculture large-scale capitalist production must supplant small peasant production, just as is observed in the industrial sphere. The class struggle of the proletariat for its interests must appear driving force our social progress, which will move the conservative inertia of the peasant masses.
Such were the mutually exclusive social positions of populism and Marxism before. What is left of them now?
Since we are talking about peasant farming in the field of agriculture, populism has not changed significantly. And now, as before, populism defends peasant agriculture and believes in its viability. But the attitude of populism towards capitalism in general has changed very profoundly. Now none of the populists believe in the possibility of Russian industry forming into a system of artels and, thus, avoiding the capitalist factory. The same V.P. Vorontsov* who in 1882 believed that “there is hope to turn the entire process of development of people’s labor towards the folk way, on the path of the artels,” admitted in 1907 that “Marx’s prediction” had come true: Russia has submitted to the “inexorable laws” of economic evolution and a form of economic life known as capitalist is being established in it.” Young Narodniks do not deny that the development of the factory is a progressive process and that subsistence peasant farming is inevitably being disintegrated by the modern economic system. They insist only that, along with factories, there remains a place for handicraft production, that even within the capitalist system, peasant farming does not die out, and that in agriculture and industry economic evolution has not only a different, but even opposite character: while in industry Large-scale production, factories, are growing uncontrollably; in agriculture, peasant farming is stronger than large capitalist farming and is gradually replacing the latter.
As for Marxism, it experienced an equally profound transformation. The peasantry is by far the dominant class in the Russian population. Therefore, no party based on the popular masses can run counter to the interests of the peasants. Marxists had to be convinced of this at their first contact with practical life. To become a politically influential party, they had to harmonize their social program with the interests of the peasantry. As a result, it turned out that the agrarian programs of the Marxists began to move closer and closer to the agrarian programs of the populists, until, finally, any fundamental differences between them disappeared. Both of them, with almost equal energy, demanded the transfer of land into the hands of the peasantry.
Marxists of the past, who stood firmly on the basis of class struggle, were indifferent or even hostile to cooperation. On the contrary, the Marxists of our time, no less than the populists, sympathize with cooperation and, through their representatives, take an active part in the cooperative movement. Even now, our most prominent co-operators come predominantly from among Marxists.
In this state of affairs, old disputes and disagreements decisively lose their meaning. Life, with its powerful hand, took the soil out from under them.
