The Development of the Monist View of History
But did these illusions really bring no benefit to the German people? In the economic sense, absolutely none -or, if you require a more exact expression, almost none. All these bazaars for selling handicraft goods, and all these attempts to create producers’ associations, scarcely eased the position of even a hundred German producers. But they promoted the awakening of the self-consciousness of those producers, and thereby did them a great deal of good. The same benefit, but this time directly and not in a roundabout way, was rendered by the educational activity of the German intellectuals: their schools, people’s reading rooms, etc. The consequences of capitalist development which were harmful for the German people could be, at every particular moment, weakened or eliminated only to the extent to which the self-consciousness of the German producers developed. Marx understood this better than the Utopians, and therefore his activity proved more beneficial to the German people.
The same, undoubtedly, will be the case in Russia too. No later than in the October issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo for 1894, Mr. S.N. Krivenko “worries” – as we say – about the organization of Russian production. [30*] Mr. Krivenko will eliminate nothing and make no one happy by these “worries.” His “worries” are clumsy, awkward, barren: but if they, in spite of all these negative qualities, awaken the self-consciousness of even one producer, they will prove beneficial - and then it will turn out that Mr. Krivenko has lived on this earth not only in order to make mistakes in logic, or to give wrong translations of extracts from foreign articles which he found “disagreeable.” It will be possible in our country, too, to fight against the harmful consequences of our capitalism only to the extent that there develops the self-consciousness of the producer. And from these words of ours the subjectivist gentlemen can see that we are not at all “crude materialists.” If we are “narrow,” it is only in one sense: that we set before ourselves, first and foremost, a perfectly idealistic aim .
And now until we meet again, gentlemen opponents! We taste beforehand all that greatest of pleasures which your objections will bring us. Only, gentlemen, do keep an eye on Mr. Krivenko. Even though he doesn’t write badly, and at any rate does so with feeling, yet “to put two and two together” – that has not been vouchsafed him!
Appendix 1
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1. Die Helden des deutschen Kommunismus , Bern 1848, p.12,
2. Ibid. , p.22.
3. “Disciples” was the “Aesopian” word for Marxists. – Ed.
4. Die Helden des deutschen Kommunismus , Bern 1848, S.22.
5. Russkoye Bogatstvo , December 1893, Part II, p. 189.
6. In this draft unfinished sketch of a letter, Marx writes not to Mr. Mikhailovsky, but to the Editor of Otechestvenniye Zapiski . Marx speaks of Mr. Mikhailovsky in the third person.
7. There is a well-known Russian story of the man who went to the zoo and “didn’t notice” the elephant. – Tr.
8. See the article, Karl Marx before the Judgement of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky , in Otechestvenniye Zapiski for October 1877. “In the sixth chapter of Capital there is a paragraph headed: The so-called primitive accumulation . Here Marx had in view a historical sketch of the first steps in the capitalist process of production, but he provided something which is much more-an entire philosophical-historical theory.” We repeat that all this is absolute nonsense: the historical philosophy of Marx is set forth in the preface to the Critique of Political Economy , so incomprehensible for Mr. Mikhailovsky, in the shape of “a few generalizing ideas, most intimately interconnected.” But this in passing. Mr. Mikhailovsky has managed not to understand Marx even in what referred to the “inevitability” of the capitalist process for the West. He has seen in factory legislation a “correction” to the fatal inflexibility of the historical process. Imagining that according to Marx “ the economic ” acts on its own, without any part played by men, he was consistent in seeing a correction in every intervention by men in the course of their process of production. The only thing he did not know was that according to Marx that very intervention, in every given form , is the inevitable product of the given economic relations, Just try and argue about Marx with men who don’t understand him with such notable consistency!
9. Der Gesellschafts-Spiegel , Vol.I, p.78. A letter from Westphalia.
10. Ibid. , p.86. Notizen and Nachrichten , ( Notes and News – Ed. )
11. See the article by Hess in the same volume of the same review; p.1 et seq. See also Neue Anekdoten, herausgegeben von Karl Grün , Darmstadt 1845, p. 220. In Germany, as opposed to Prance, it is the educated minority which engages in the struggle with capitalism and “ ensures victory over it .”
12. There were many N. —ons in Germany at that time, and of the most varying tendencies. The most remarkable, perhaps, were the conservatives . Thus for example, Dr. Karl Vollgraf, ordentlicher Professor der Rechte , in a pamphlet bearing an extremely long title ( Von der über und unter ihr naturnothwendiges Mass erweiterten und herabgedruckten Concurrenz in allen Nahrungs- und Erwerbszweigen des bürgerlichen Lebens, als der nächsten Ursache des allgemeinen, alle Klassen mehr oder weniger drückenden Nothstandes in Deutschland, insonderheit des Getreidewuchers, sowie von den Mitteln zu ihrer Abstellung , Darmstadt 1848) ( On the Competition Extended Over and Depressed Below Its Natural Level in All Branches of Trade and Industry in Civil Life, as the Immediate Cause of the Depression Affecting More or Less All Classes in Germany, Particularly of the Usurious Trade in Corn; and on the Measures for Ending the Same – Ed. ) represented the economic situation of the “German Fatherland” amazingly like the way the Russian economic situation is represented in the book Sketches of Our Social Economy since the Reform . [29*] Vollgraf also presented matters as though the development of productive forces had already led, “under the influence of free competition,” to the relative diminution of the number of workers engaged in industry. He described in greater detail than Buhl the influence of unemployment on the state of the internal market. Producers in one branch of industry are at the same time consumers for products of other branches, but an unemployment deprives the producers of purchasing power, demand diminishes, in consequence of it unemployment becomes general and there arises complete pauperism ( völliger Pauperismus ). “ And as the peasantry is also ruined owing to excessive competition, a complete stagnation of business arises. The social organism decomposes, its physiological processes lead to the appearance of a savage mass, and hunger produces in this mass a ferment against which public penalties and even arms are impotent .” Free competition leads in the villages to reduction of peasant holdings to tiny dimensions. In no peasant household do the working hands find sufficient employment all the year round . “Thus in thousands of villages, particularly those in areas of poor fertility, almost exactly as in Ireland, the poor peasants stand without work or employment before the doors of their houses. None of them can help one another, for they all have too little, all need wages, all seek work and do not find it.” Vollgraf for his part invented a number of “measures” for combating the destructive operation of “free competition,” though not in the spirit of the socialist journal Der Gesellschafts-Spiegel .
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Editorial Notes
1*. Engels characterizes Karl Heinzen as follows: “Herr Heinzen is a former liberal small official who as early as 1844 dreamed of progress within the framework of the law and of a paltry German constitution.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Gesamtausgabe , Section 1, Vol.6, pp.282-98.)
2*. Here Plekhanov has in mind articles by Marx and Engels against Heinzen published in 1847 in the Deutsche-Brüsseler Zeitung . The paper carried two articles by Engels: The Communists and Karl Heinzen , and one by Marx: Moralizing Critique and Critical Morals .
3*. The words of Engels quoted are in the following text: “Herr Heinzen imagines, of course, that one can arbitrarily change and adapt the property relations, the law of inheritance, and so on. Herr Heinzen, one of the most ignorant people of this century, may, of course, not know that the property relations of each epoch are the necessary results of the mode of production and exchange of that epoch.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Gesamtausgabe , Section 1, Vol.6, pp.298-328.)
4*. The liberal Narodniks accused the Marxists of being glad of the capitalization of the countryside, of welcoming the painful separation of the peasants from their lands and of being ready to promote this process by all means at their disposal, hand in hand with the country kulaks and plunderers, the heroes of “primitive accumulation,” the Kolupayevs and Razuvayevs depicted in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satirical work The Refuge of Mon Repos .
5*. Molchalinism —from Molchalin (see Note 252), synonymous of servility and adaptability.
6*. Plekhanov here refers to the preface of V.V. (V.P. Vorontsov) to the collection of his articles Destinies of Capitalism in Russia , published in 1882. In that preface Vorontsov gives as the reason for reprinting his articles the fact that he wishes “to stir our learned and sworn publicists of capitalism and Narodism to study the laws of Russia’s economic development, the basis of all other phenomena in the life of the country. Without knowledge of this law, systematic and successful social activity is impossible.” (p.1.)
7*. Krivenko, Sergei Nikolayevich (1847-1907) – liberal Narodnik, publicist. He was one of the first Narodniks to come out against Marxism in the legal press.
8*. Struve, Pyotr Bernhardovich (1870-1944), prominent exponent of “Legal Marxism” – a liberal-bourgeois trend that appeared in the 90s and was, in fact, a distortion of Marxism. Struve finished up as a monarchist and white-guard emigré.
“ Legal Marxists ” – they were called “Legal Marxists” because they published their articles in legal periodicals, i.e., periodicals licensed by the tsarist government-had their own methods of fighting against the Narodniks, seeking to subjugate the working-class movement to the interest of the bourgeoisie. At one time Marxists entered into an alliance with “Legal Marxists” in combating the Narodniks.
9*. Quotation from S.N. Krivenko’s article In Connection with Cultural Recluses ( Russkoye Bogatstvo , December 1893, Section II, p.189).
10*. In 1884 Engels sent V.I. Zasulich a copy of Marx’s letter. (The latter had not been dispatched by Marx.) “I enclose Marx’s manuscript (copy),” he wrote to her on March 6, “which you may make use of as you judge necessary. I don’t know whether it was in Slovo or in Otechestvenniye Zapiski that he found the article Karl Marx before the Judgement of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky . He wrote this answer, apparently intended for publication in Russia, but he did not send it to St. Petersburg for fear of his name alone imperilling the existence of the paper in which his answer would be published.”
( Correspondence of K. Marx and F. Engels with Russian Political Figures , Russ. ed., 1951, p.306.)
11*. This and a number of the following quotations are from Marx’s letter to the editorial board of Otechestvenniye Zapiski .
12*. On the substance of the question Marx’s thought comes to this: the village community “may be the starting point of the communist development” if “the Russian revolution serves as a signal for the proletarian revolution in the West.” Marx and Engels also expressed this thought in 1882 in the Preface to the first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party . Still earlier Engels expressed the same thought in his article Soziales aus Russland printed in 1875 in Volksstaat in reply to P.N. Tkachov’s Open Letter . (Cf. F. Engels, On Social Relations in Russia , in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works , Vol.II, Moscow, 1958, pp.51-58.) By the nineties, however, it was already clear to Engels that the village community in Russia was rapidly disintegrating under the pressure of developing capitalism. He mentioned this in a number of his works of that time: The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism (1890), Socialism in Germany (1891), Can Europe Disarm? (1893), and others. Finally, in 1894, in his Afterword to Reply to P.N. Tkachov , he wrote: “Has this village community still survived to such an extent that at the required moment, as Marx and I still hoped in 1882, it could, combined with a revolution in Western Europe, become the starting point of communist development—of this I will not undertake to judge. But of one thing there is no doubt; for anything at all of this community to survive, first of all tsarist despotism must be overthrown, there must be a revolution in Russia.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence with Russian Political Figures , Russ. ed., 1951, p.297.)
13*. K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy .
14*. Chernyshevsky developed his view on the concreteness of truth in Sketches of the Gogol Period in Russian Literature . (N.G. Chernyshevsky, Collected Works , Vol.III, Goslitizdat Publishing House, 1947.)
15*. Marx says this in his letter to the editorial board of Otechestvenniye Zapiski . (Cf. K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence with Russian Political Figures , Russ. ed., 1951, p.221.)
16*. Plekhanov does not quote the exact words of K. Marx. Below we give the French original and the exact translation of this passage:
“Si la Russie tend à devenir une nation capitaliste, à l’instar des nations de l’Europe occidentale – et pendant les dernières années elle s’est donnée beaucoup de mal dans ce sens – elle n’y réussira pas sans avoir préalablement transformé une bonne partie de ses paysans en prolétaires; et après cela, une fois amenée au giron du régime capitaliste, elle en subira les lois impitoyables, comme d’autres peuples profanes. Voilà tout.” Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Ausgewählte Briefe , Berlin 1953.
(“If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of West European countries—and during the last few years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction—she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all.” K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence , Moscow 1955, p. 379.)
17*. One of the most popular Russian proverbs: “The nightingale is not fed on fables” – “fine words butter no parsnips.”
18*. Plekhanov wanted to make the following addition to this passage: “Here I have in mind the activity of the Social-Democrats. It has promoted the development of capitalism by removing antiquated modes of production, for instance home industry. The attitude of Social-Democracy in the West to capitalism is briefly defined by the following words of Bebel at the Breslau Congress of the Party (1895): ‘I always ask myself whether a given step will not harm the development of capitalism. If it will, I am against it ...’” ( The Literary Legacy of G.V. Plekhanov , Coll. IV, p. 229.)
19*. Suzdal – from Suzdal locality in Russia where icon painting was widespread. Icon prints produced in suzdal in great quantities were cheap and unartistic. Hence the adjective Suzdal has come to denote something that is cheap and unartistic.
20*. In G. Uspensky’s tale Nothing , from his series Living Figures , a peasant who pays “for nothing,” i.e., pays tax on land he does not cultivate, is quite convinced that to pay “for nothing” is far better than to cultivate his allotment.
21*. P.Y. Chaadayev said this in his first Philosophical Letter . (P.Y. Chaadayev, Philosophical Letters , Russ. ed., Moscow 1906, p.11.) – Chaadayev, Pyotr Yakovlevich (1794-1856) – Russian idealist philosopher. He became known in 1836 when he published his Philosophical Letter – a sharp criticism of the backward and stagnant system of serfdom in Russia. He hoped that the West, in particular Catholicism, would help to destroy serfdom and ensure progress.
22*. Yuzhakov, Sergei Nikolayevich (1849-1910) – publicist, ideologist of Liberal Narodism.
23*. From Nekrasov’s poem Meditations at the Main Entrance .
24*. In Tolstoi’s War and Peace .
25*. Moskovskiye Vedomosti – a reactionary and monarchist newspaper published in Moscow from 1756 to 1918 (except the years from 1779 to 1789 when it was produced by N.I. Novikov, a progressive publisher).
26*. Plekhanov intended to give the following explanation of these words: “i.e., I mean socialist .” ( The Literary Legacy of G.V. Plekhanov , Coll.IV, p.230.)
27*. Friedrich List, a German economist, and ideologist of the German industrial bourgeoisie when capitalism was still weak in Germany, put special emphasis on the development of the productive forces of the separate national economies. For this he considered it necessary to have the co-operation of the state (e.g. protective tariffs on industrial goods).
28*. Plekhanov has the following remarks on this passage: “Concerning N. —on. What was his principal mistake? He had a poor understanding of ‘the law of value.’ He considered it statically , not dynamically ... What Engels said on the possibility of error in Struve and N. —on.” ( The Literary Legacy of G.V. Plekhanov , Coll.IV, pp.230-31.)
On February 26, 1895, Engels wrote to Plekhanov: “As for Danielson (N. —on), I’m afraid nothing can be done with him ... It is absolutely impossible to argue with the generation of Russians which he belongs to and which still believe in the elemental communist mission which is alleged to distinguish Russia, the truly holy Russia , from other, non-believing peoples.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence with Russian Political Figures , Russ. ed., 1951, p.341.)
29*. Danielson’s book Sketches of Our Social Economy Since the Reform appeared in 1893. It expounded the economic views of the Narodniks.
30*. Plekhanov here refers to S.N. Krivenko’s article On the Needs of People’s Industry , the end of which was printed in No.10 of Russkoye Bogatstvo , 1894.
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Once Again Mr. Mikhailovsky, Once More the “Triad”
MIA > Archive > Plekhanov > Monist View
G.V. Plekhanov
The Development of the Monist View of History
Appendix I
Once Again Mr. Mikhailovsky,
Once More the “Triad” [1*]
In the October issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo , Mr. Mikhailovsky, replying to Mr. P. Struve, again has made some observations on the philosophy of Hegel and on “economic” materialism. [2*]
According to him, the materialist conception of history and economic materialism are not one and the same thing. The economic materialists draw everything from economics.
“Well, but if I seek the root or foundation not only of the legal and political institutions, of the philosophical and other views of society, but also of its economic structure, in the racial or tribal peculiarities of its members, in the proportions of the longitudinal and transverse diameters of their skulls, in the character of their facial angle, in the size and inclination of their jaws, in the size of their thorax, the strength of their muscles, etc.: or, on the other hand, in purely geographical factors – in the island position of England, in the steppe character of part of Asia, in the mountainous character of Switzerland, in the freezing of rivers in the north, etc. – will not this be the materialist conception of history? It is clear that economic materialism, as an historical theory, is only a particular case of the materialist conception of history ...” [1]
Montesquieu was inclined to explain the historical fate of peoples by “purely geographical factors.” To the extent that he consistently upheld these factors, he was undoubtedly a materialist. Modern dialectical materialism does not ignore, as we have seen, the influence of geographical environment on the development of society. It only ascertains better in what way geographical factors influence “social man.” It shows that the geographical environment provides men with a greater or lesser possibility of developing their productive forces, and thereby pushes them, more or less energetically, along the path of historical progress. Montesquieu argued thus: A certain geographical environment determines certain physical and psychical qualities of men, and these qualities bring in their train this or that structure of society. Dialectical materialism reveals that such an argument is unsatisfactory, and that the influence of geographical environment shows itself first of all, and in the strongest degree, in the character of social relations , which in their turn influence the views of men, their customs and even their physical development infinitely more strongly than, for example, climate. Modern geographical science (let us again recall the book of Mechnikov and its foreword by Élisée Reclus) fully agrees in this respect with dialectical materialism. This materialism is, of course, a particular case of the materialist view of history. But it explains it more fully, more universally, than could those other “particular cases.” Dialectical materialism is the highest development of the materialist conception of history .
Holbach said that the historical fate of peoples is sometimes determined for a whole century ahead by the motion of an atom which has begun to play tricks in the brain of a powerful man. This was also a materialist view of history. But it was of no avail in explaining historical phenomena. Modern dialectical materialism is incomparably more fruitful in this respect. It is of course a particular case of the materialist view of history but precisely that particular case which alone corresponds to the modern condition of science. The impotence of Holbach’s materialism showed itself in the return of its supporters to idealism: “Opinions govern the world.” Dialectical materialism now drives idealism from its last positions.
Mr. Mikhailovsky imagines that only that man would be a consistent materialist who explains all phenomena with the help of molecular mechanics. Modern dialectical materialism cannot discover the mechanical explanation of history. This is, if you like, its weakness . But is modern biology able to give a mechanical explanation of the origin and development of species? It is not. That is its weakness . [3*] The genius of whom Laplace dreamed would have been, of course, above such weakness. But we simply don’t know when that genius will appear, and we satisfy ourselves with such explanations of phenomena as best correspond to the science of our age. Such is our “particular case.”
Dialectical materialism says that it is not the consciousness of men which determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness; that it is not in the philosophy but in the economics of a particular society that one must seek the key to understanding its particular condition. Mr. Mikhailovsky makes several remarks on this subject. One of them reads as follows:
“... The negative halves” (!) “of the basic formula of the materialist sociologists contain a protest or a reaction not against philosophy in general, but evidently against that of Hegel. It is to the latter that belongs ‘the explanation of being from consciousness’ ... The founders of economic materialism are Hegelians and, in that capacity, insist so stubbornly ‘not from philosophy,’ ‘not from consciousness,’ that they cannot, and do not even attempt to, burst out of the circle of Hegelian thought.” [2]
When we read these lines we thought that here our author, like Mr. Kareyev, was groping his way to the “synthesis.” Of course, we said to ourselves, the synthesis of Mr. Mikhailovsky will be a little higher than that of Mr. Kareyev; Mr. Mikhailovsky will not confine himself to repeating that thought of the deacon in G.I. Uspensky’s tale The Incurable [4*] , that “the spirit is a thing apart” and that, “as matter has various spices for its benefit, so equally has the spirit.” Still, Mr. Mikhailovsky too will not refrain from synthesis. Hegel is the thesis, economic materialism is the antithesis, and the eclecticism of the modern Russian ‘subjectivists is the synthesis. How could one resist the temptation of such a “triad”? And then we began to remember what was the real relationship between the historical theory of Marx and the philosophy of Hegel.
First of all we “noted” that in Hegel historical movement is not at all explained by the views of men or by their philosophy . It was the French materialists of the eighteenth century who explained history by the views, the “opinions” of men. Hegel ridiculed such an explanation: of course, he said, reason rules in history – but then it also rules the movement of the celestial bodies, and are they conscious of their movement? The historical development of mankind is reasonable in the sense that it is law-governed; but the law-governed nature of historical development does not yet prove at all that its ultimate cause must be sought in the views of men or in their opinions. Quite on the contrary: that conformity to law shows that men make their history unconsciously.
We don’t remember, we continued, what the historical views of Hegel look like according to Lewes [5*] ; but that we are not distorting them, anyone will agree who has read the famous Philosophie der Geschichte ( Philosophy of History – Ed. ). Consequently, in affirming that it is not the philosophy of men which determines their social existence, the supporters of “economic” materialism are not controverting Hegel at all, and consequently in this respect they represent no antithesis to him. And this means that Mr. Mikhailovsky’s synthesis will not be successful, even should our author not confine himself to repeating the idea of the deacon.
In the opinion of Mr. Mikhailovsky, to affirm that philosophy, i.e., the views of men, does not explain their history, was possible only in Germany in the 40s, when a revolt against the Hegelian system was not yet noticeable. We now see that such an opinion is founded, at best, only on. Lewes .
But how poorly Lewes acquaints Mr. Mikhailovsky with the course of development of philosophical thought in Germany is demonstrated, apart from the foregoing, by the following circumstance. Our author quotes with delight the well-known letter of Belinsky, in which the latter makes his bow to the “philosophical nightcap” of Hegel. [6*] In this letter Belinsky says , among other things:
“The fate of a subject, an individual, a personality is more important than the fate of the world and the weal of the Chinese emperor, viz., the Hegelian Allgemeinheit” (Universality – Ed. ).
Mr. Mikhailovsky makes many remarks on the subject of this letter, but he does not “ remark ” that Belinsky has dragged in the Hegelian Allgemeinheit quite out of place. Mr. Mikhailovsky evidently thinks that the Hegelian Allgemeinheit is just the same as the spirit or the absolute idea. But Allgemeinheit does not constitute in Hegel even the main distinguishing feature of the absolute idea. Allgemeinheit occupies in his work a place no more honourable than, for example, Besonderheit or Einzelheit (Individuality or Singleness – Ed. ) and in consequence of this it is incomprehensible why precisely Allgemeinheit is called the Chinese Emperor, and deserves – unlike its other sisters – an attentive and mocking bow. This may seem a detail, unworthy of attention at the present time; but it is not so. Hegel’s Allgemeinheit, badly understood, still prevents Mr. Mikhailovsky, for example, from understanding the history of German philosophy – prevents him to such an extent that even Lewes does not rescue him from misfortune.
In the opinion of Mr. Mikhailovsky, worship of Allgemeinheit led Hegel to complete negation of the rights of the individual . “There is no system of philosophy,” he says, “which treats the individual with such withering contempt and cold cruelty as the system of Hegel” (p.55). This can be true only according to Lewes . Why did Hegel consider the history of the East to be the first, lowest stage in the development of mankind? Because in the East the individual was not developed, and had not up till then been developed. Why did Hegel speak with enthusiasm of ancient Greece, in the history of which modern man feels himself at last “at home”? Because in Greece individual personality was developed (“beautiful individuality” – “ schöne Individualität ”). Why did Hegel speak with such admiration of Socrates? Why did he, almost first among the historians of philosophy, pay a just tribute even to the sophists ? Was it really because he despised the individual?
Mr. Mikhailovsky has heard a bell, but where he cannot tell.
Hegel not only did not despise the individual, but created a whole cult of heroes , which was inherited in its entirety thereafter, by Bruno Bauer. For Hegel heroes were the instruments of the universal spirit, and in that sense they themselves were not free . Bruno Bauer revolted against the “ spirit ,” and thereby set free his “ heroes .” For him the heroes of “ critical thought ” were the real demiurges of history, as opposed to the “ mass ,” which, although it does irritate its heroes almost to tears by its slow-wittedness and its sluggishness, still does finish up in the end by marching along the path marked out by the heroes’ self-consciousness. The contrasting of “ heroes ” and “ mass ” (“ mob ”) passed from Bruno Bauer to his Russian illegitimate children, and we now have the pleasure of contemplating it in the articles of Mr. Mikhailovsky. Mr. Mikhailovsky does not remember his philosophical kinship: that is not praiseworthy.
And so we have suddenly received the elements of a new “synthesis.” The Hegelian cult of heroes, serving the universal spirit, is the thesis . The Bauer cult of heroes of “critical thought,” guided only by their “self-consciousness,” is the antithesis . Finally, the theory of Marx, which reconciles both extremes, eliminating the universal spirit and explaining the origin of the heroes’ self-consciousness by the development of environment, is the synthesis .
Our opponents, so partial to “synthesis,” must remember that the theory of Marx was not at all the first direct reaction against Hegel: that that first reaction – superficial on account of its one-sidedness – was constituted in Germany by the views of Feuerbach and particularly of Bruno Bauer , with whom our subjectivists should long ago have acknowledged their kinship.
Not a few other incongruities have also been piled up by Mr. Mikhailovsky about Hegel and about Marx in his article against Mr. P. Struve. Space does not permit as to enumerate them here. We will confine ourselves to offering our readers the following interesting problem.
We know Mr. Mikhailovsky; we know his complete ignorance of Hegel; we know his complete incomprehension of Marx; we know his irresistible striving to discuss Hegel, Marx and their mutual relations; the problem is, how many more mistakes will Mr. Mikhailovsky make thanks to his striving?
But it is hardly likely that anyone will succeed in solving this problem; it is an equation with too many unknowns. There is only one means of replacing unknown magnitudes in it by definite magnitudes; it is to read the articles of Mr. Mikhailovsky carefully and notice his mistakes . True, that is a far from joyful or easy task: there will be very many mistakes, if only Mr. Mikhailovsky does not get rid of his bad habit of discussing philosophy without consulting beforehand people who know more about it than he does.
We shall not deal here with the attacks made by Mr. Mikhailovsky on Mr. P. Struve. As far as these attacks are concerned, Mr. Mikhailovsky now belongs to the author of Critical Remarks on the Question of the Economic Development of Russia , and we do not wish to aspire to the property of another. However, Mr. P. Struve will perhaps forgive us if we permit ourselves to make two small “observations.”
Mr. Mikhailovsky is insulted because Mr. P. Struve “struck at him” with a question-mark. He is so insulted that, not confining himself to pointing out faults of style in the language of Mr. Struve, he accuses him of being a “non-Russian,” and even recalls the story of two Germans, one of whom said he had “shooted” a crow, and the other corrected him, saying that grammar required “shotted.” Why did Mr. Struve, however, raise his hand, armed with a question-mark, against Mr. Mikhailovsky? It was because of his words: “The modern, economic order in Europe began to come into existence at a time when the science which manages this sphere of phenomena was not yet in existence, etc.” The question-mark accompanies the word “manages”, Mr. Mikhailovsky says: “In German that may not perhaps sound well” (how biting: “ in German ”!), “but in Russian, I assure you, Mr. Struve, it arouses no question in any one, and requires no question-mark.” The writer of these lines bears a purely Russian name, and possesses just as much of the Russian soul as Mr. Mikhailovsky: the most sarcastic critic will not venture to call him a German: and nevertheless the word “manages” arouses a question in him. He asks himself: if one can say that science manages a certain sphere of phenomena, could not one after this promote the technical arts to be chiefs of particular units ? Could not one say, for example: the art of assaying commands alloys? In our opinion, this would be awkward, it would give the arts too military an appearance , in just the same way as the word “ manages ” gives science the appearance of a bureaucrat . Consequently, Mr. Mikhailovsky is wrong. Struve failed to react to the question; it is hard to say how he would have corrected Mikhailovsky’s unhappy expression. Let us assume that he would have “shotted” a crow. But it is unfortunately an accomplished fact that Mikhailovsky has already “shooted” several crows. And yet he does not seem to be a “non-Russian.”
Mr. Mikhailovsky in his article raised an amusing outcry about the words of Mr. Struve: “No, let us recognize our lack of culture and go into training by capitalism.” [7*] Mr. Mikhailovsky wants to represent affairs as though these words meant: “ let us hand over the producer as a victim to the exploiter .” It will be easy for Mr. P. Struve to demonstrate the vanity of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s efforts, and it will probably be seen now by anyone who has carefully read the Critical Remarks . But Mr. Struve nevertheless did express himself very carelessly, whereby he probably led into temptation many simpletons and rejoiced the heart of some acrobats. That will teach you a lesson , we shall say to Mr. Struve, and we shall remind the acrobatic gentry how Belinsky, at the very end of his life, when he had long ago said good-bye to Allgemeinheit, expressed the idea in one of his letters that the cultural future of Russia can only be ensured by the bourgeoisie . [8*] In Belinsky this was also a very clumsy threat. But what was his clumsiness aroused by? Generous fascination by the West . It is the same fascination that brought about, we are convinced, the awkwardness of Mr. Struve. It is permissible to make a noise on the subject of that clumsiness only for those who have no reply, for example, to his economic arguments.
Mr. Krivenko too has declared war on Mr. P. Struve. [9*] He has his own cause of offence. He wrongly translated an extract from a German article by Mr. P. Struve, and the latter has exposed him. Mr. Krivenko justifies himself, and tries to show that the translation is almost correct; but his are lame excuses and he still remains guilty of distorting the words of his opponent. But you can’t ask too much of. Mr. Krivenko, in view of his undoubted resemblance to a certain bird, of whom it has been said:
Sirin, that heavenly bird,
Its voice in singing is loudly heard;
When the Lord’s praise it sings,
To forget its own self it begins. [10*]
When Mr. Krivenko is shaming the “disciples,” to forget his own self he begins. Why can’t you let him alone, Mr. Struve?
Appendix II
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1. Russkoye Bogatstvo , October 1894, Part II, p.50.
2. Ibid. , pp.51-52.
Editorial Notes
1*. This appendix ( Once Again Mr. Mikhailovsky, Once More the “Triad” ) was published in the very first edition of the book The Development of the Monist View of History .
2*. In the review Literature and Life ( On Mr. P. Struve and his Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development ), Russkoye Bogatstvo , 1894, No.10. (N.K. Mikhailovsky, Collected Works , Vol.VII, St. Petersburg 1909, pp.885-924.)
3*. Plekhanov’s statement is radically at variance with the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist dialectics. Dialectical materialism has never aimed at reducing all natural and social phenomena to mechanics, at giving mechanical explanations of the origin and development of species and of the historic process. Mechanical motion is by no means the only form of motion. “... The motion of matter,” Engels says, “is not merely crude mechanical motion, mere change of place, it is heat and light, electric and magnetic tension, chemical combination and dissociation, life and, finally, consciousness.” (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature , Moscow 1954, p.51.)
4*. G. Uspensky’s tale The Incurable is from the series New Times, New Troubles .
5*. Lewes, George Henry (1817-1878), English bourgeois philosopher, positivist and physiologist.
6*. Quotation from Belinsky’s letter to Botkin, March 1, 1841, in which Belinsky broke with the philosophical system of Hegel. See Chapter 4, Note 6*.
7*. Struve’s Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development was the object of profound criticism by V. I. Lenin in his Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book published in 1894; Lenin exposed the liberal views of Struve and advanced the viewpoint of the revolutionary Marxism. Struve’s call “to go into training by capitalism” was defined by Lenin as a purely bourgeois slogan.
8*. In a letter to P.V. Annenkov on February 15 (27), 1848, Belinsky wrote: “When, arguing with you about the bourgeoisie, I called you a conservative, I was a real ass and you were a clever man ... Now it is clear that the internal process of Russia’s civil development will not begin before the time when the Russian nobility are transformed into bourgeois.” (V.G. Belinsky, Selected Letters , Vol.2, Goslitizdat Publishing House, 1955, p.389.)
9*. Krivenko wrote about P. Struve’s book Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development which was published in 1894, in the afterword to his article On the Needs of People’s Industry . (Russkoye Bogatstvo , 1894, No.10, pp.126-30.)
10*. The heavenly bird Sirin – an image of a mythical heavenly bird with a woman’s face and breast used in old Russian manuscripts and legends.
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