The Relationship of Bolshevism to Marxism - Maximilien Rubel

My subject, the relationship of Bolshevism to Marxism, can be understood in three ways: (1) as the study of the relationship of Bolshevism and its various factions to the other Russian Marxist currents, for instance, to so-called Legal Marxism and Menshevism; (2) as the confrontation of Bolshevism with Western Marxism as it evolved from the intellectual heritage of the founders of "scientific socialism"; and (3) as the examination of the relationship of Bolshevism to "original Marxism," that is, to the teachings of Marx and Engels.

Although I shall concentrate on this last topic, I will have to deal, at least in passing,with the two others as well. Let me proceed to the central topic of my paper: Did the Bolsheviks, in 1917, act in accordance with the social theory of Marx and Engels? In order to answer this question, we must define Marx's theory and compare it, not only with Bolshevik Marxism as revealed mainly in Lenin's theoretical writings, but also with the policies followed by the Bolshevik party in 1917.

In my view, the theoretical position taken by Marx and Engels with respect to the social future of tsarist Russia is a perfect illustration of their general conception of historical evolution. For this reason, it may be useful to begin by recalling their attitudes toward Russia—attitudes strongly influenced by a burning hatred for autocracy, of which tsarist Russia was then the most advanced example, as compared to Prussian monarchism and French Bonapartism. Marx was almost pathological in his distrust of Russians, a fact that did not prevent Russian liberals and revolutionaries alike—as he later complained—from singling him out for special attention. During a quarter of a century, he had never ceased to warn about Russia's messianic striving for world domination. In 1856-57, he had published in the Free Press, the journal of the notorious russophobe David Urquhart, a historical study written in purest Urquhartian style. To sum up the essential elements of this work (Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century), one could not do better than cite some of Marx's own comments on Russia's early and modern history:

The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery, not the rude glory of the Norman epoch, forms the cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy .. . It was Ivan Kalita, the Mongolian slave who elaborated all the cunning of the most abject slavery into a system, and his policy remained the policy of Ivan the Great as well as of Peter the Great! Peter the Great, the creator of modern Russia, divested the old Muscovite system of encroachment of its purely local and generalized its purpose by exalting its object, which is unlimited power. Modern Russia's drive for Constantinople is but the continuation of the policy of the Rurik dynasty which transferred its capital from Novgorod to Kiev, in order to be nearer to Byzantium.
Byzantium became the model of Russian religion and civilization, as well as the aim of Russia's everlasting aspirations. [1]

In a more positive vein, Marx saw the beginning of a social revolution in Russia, in the emancipation of the peasants after the Crimean War and in tsarist policy toward the peasantry in the 1860's. But it was only when he came into contact with Russian revolutionaries that his attention turned seriously toward Russian economic and social problems. Could this nation escape the destiny of Western Europe—capitalism, private ownership, the bourgeois state? Could it perform the fundamental task of creating a new society founded on communal property and cooperative production of the peasant commune (obshchina)?

Stimulated by the economist N. F. Danielson, who translated Capital, Marx immersed himself in the study of archaic and Asiatic forms of property holding. He concluded, in agreement with the populists, that under certain conditions the Russian peasant commune offered a possible starting point for the coming social and socialist revolution in Russia, enabling the country to bypass the capitalist stage of development. At Marx's urging, in 1875 Engels published an answer to the criticisms of P. Tkachev, a Russian follower of Auguste Blanqui. In an open letter to Engels, Tkachev had reproached him for his ignorance of Russian social conditions and revolutionary prospects. According to Tkachev, Russia was the chosen land of socialism because it had neither a bourgeoisie nor a proletariat, but was based, instead, on communal institutions such as the artel and the mir. There remained, however, the political problem: the overthrow of tsarism and the conquest of the state by a revolutionary minority. Here, very briefly, is Engel's answer: a social revolution is certainly brewing in Russia, but it will not have a socialist character because of the absence of a strong urban proletariat and of a powerful capitalist bourgeoisie; in other words, because of the insufficient development of Russia's productive forces, which requires both capital and a bourgeoisie. According to Engels, there was no doubt that the presence in Russia of communal forms of labor and property demonstrated the deep desire of the Russian people for a cooperative mode of production, but it did not in the least prove its messianic drive for socialism, nor its independence of Western movements. Although it was menaced by the progress of capitalism, the mir could become the basis of Russian socialism. It could help this function only on one condition: the previous triumph of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe. Until that time, Russian (and the European) revolutionaries must mobilize all the popular forces to overthrow tsarism. [2]

Two years later, Marx himself entered the discussion. In answering the Russian publicist Ν. K. Mikhailovskii, who had criticized his "philosophical system" for presenting capitalism as an inevitable stage that no country could avoid, Marx objected to this improper interpretation of his thought. He asserted that his explanation of Western capitalism did not by any means claim to be a "historical and philosophical theory of the general advance necessarily imposed upon all peoples." Historical understanding could be obtained only by an empirical and comprehensive analysis of the evidence and not by a particular and philosophical theory, "the supreme virtue of which is to be supra-historical." As for Russia's social future and the hopes that the populists placed in the rural commune, Marx expressed the following opinion, based, as he wrote, on a long study of Russian and other documentary materials:

If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a people and undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of a capitalist regime .. . If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the 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 into the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. [3]

Marx retained his sympathy for the populists' aspirations until his death, even after serious theoretical and political disagreements had developed between them and the first Russian Marxists. He spoke sarcastically of those Russian revolutionaries

who left Russia voluntarily and ... in order to carry on propaganda in Russia—moved to Geneva! What a quid pro quo. These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action. Russia is to make a somersault into the anarchist-communist-atheist millennium! Meanwhile, they are preparing for this leap with the most tedious doctrinairism, whose so-called principles are being hawked about the street ever since the late Bakunin. [4]

It must be noted that this criticism by Marx was directed against the Russian socialists in Geneva grouped around the journal Chernyi Peredel (The Black Repartition) after the split of the Narodnaia Volia (People's Will). G. Plekhanov, P. B. Akselrod, and Vera Zasulich, who would soon become the "Nestors" of Russian Marxism, belonged to this group. Marx considered them "anarchists" and Utopians, while admiring the terrorist faction of the Narodnaia Volia whose members were risking their lives in Russia against tsarism. Before her flight to Geneva, Vera Zasulich had made an attempt on the life of the prefect of Petersburg and had been acquitted by a jury. She joined the Chernyperedeltsy in Geneva and from there, in February 1881, she addressed a letter to Marx in the name of her group in which she asked his opinion on a major political disagreement among the Russian revolutionaries for whom it was "a matter of life and death": either the rural commune would be able to develop in a socialist direction, in which case, the revolutionaries should devote all their forces to the emancipation and development of the commune; or, it was meant to disappear, leaving the Russian socialists to speculate on the swiftness of Russia's capitalist development and restricting their activity to propaganda among the city workers. Vera Zasulich asserted that the second thesis as that of the "Marxists." But was it that of Marx himself? [5]

Marx tried to outline his views in several drafts that contain a tentative sociological analysis of the institution of the obshchina. Because he confined himself to a short answer, we may assume that his illness prevented him from completing his project—he was to die two years later. Rejecting the idea of the "historical necessity" of capitalism for all the countries of the world, Marx declared in his answer to Vera Zasulich:

The analysis developed in Capital gives reasons neither in favor of nor against the vitality of the rural commune, but a special study I made on it, searching for the materials in the original sources, convinced me that this commune is the basis of Russia's social regeneration. But so that it may act as such, the deleterious influences which assault it on all sides should first be eliminated, and then the normal conditions of a spontaneous development should be guaranteed it.[6]

With this interpretation, Marx decided against his Russian disciples; that is, against those Marxists who no longer accepted any alternative to the development of capitalism in Russia. Capitalism in Russia was for him only one possibility: socialism could develop either through the peasant commune or through capitalism. About a year after his answer to Vera Zasulich, he signed, with Engels, the preface to a Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto in which the following statement appears: "If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for a workers' revolution in the West, so that both revolutions complete each other, the present Russian commune property can become the starting point of a communist revolution." [7]

After Marx's death, Engels continued the discussion with the Russian populists and Marxists, without, however, risking a definite judgment that would have decided in favor of either group.

It is no exaggeration to say that the views expressed by Engels on the early intellectual manifestations of Russian Marxism are a thorough criticism (if not a condemnation) of the political strategy advocated by the first Russian followers of Marx as well as of all political tactics adopted after his death by the new generation of Russian Marxists. Given the relevance of Engels' statements and the almost complete silence with which contemporary Marxists treat it—particularly in the "socialist" countries—it is necessary to quote some essential passages.

The following is from a letter by H. A. Lopatin, written a few months after the death of Marx, in which Lopatin reports a conversation with Engels:

We spoke a lot about Russian affairs, of the probable course of our political and social rebirth . . . Engels also thinks (as do Marx and I) that the task of a revolutionary party or party of action in Russia at present is not to propagate a new socialist ideal or even to strive to carry out that ideal, which as yet is far from being completely elaborated, with the help of a provisional government consisting of our comrades. It must be to direct all efforts either: 1) to force the tsar to convoke a Zemskii Sobor or, 2) by intimidating the tsar, and so forth, to stir up profound disturbances which would lead in another way to the convocation of a Sobor or something of the kind. He thinks, as I do, that such a Sobor would inevitably lead to a radical, not only politi-
cal, but also social reorganization. He believes in the immense significance of the electoral period, in the sense of the far greater success of propaganda than all booklets and oral information. He considers a purely liberal constitution impossible without profound economic reorganization, and therefore is not afraid of the danger of that. He believes that in the actual conditions of the life of the people enough material for a reorganization of society on a new basis has accumulated. He naturally does not believe in the instant implementation of communism or anything like it, but only of what has already matured in the life and the soul of the people. He believes that the people will manage to find eloquent spokesmen to voice their needs, desires, etc. He believes
that once this reorganization or revolution has started no force will be capable of stopping it. Hence, one thing alone is important: to shatter the fatal forces of inertia, to get the people and society to shake off their sluggishness and inertness and to bring about disturbances which will force the government and the people to set about the interior reorganization, stir the placid ocean of the people and arouse the attention and enthusiasm of the whole nation for a complete social upheaval. The results will come of themselves, whatever results are possible, desirable and realizable for the epoch in question. All this is drastically sum-
marized, but I cannot go into details now. And then perhaps you will not like it all. That is why I am giving you word for word other opinions of Engels' which are very flattering for the Russian revolutionary party: Here they are: "All depends now on what is done in the immediate future in Petersburg, on which are now fixed the eyes of all thinking, far-sighted and penetrating people in the whole of Europe." "Russia is the France of the present century. To her belongs rightfully and lawfully the revolutionary initiative of a new social reorganization." [8]

In February 1885, Vera Zasulich addressed a letter to Engels asking him his opinion of Plekhanov's book Nashi Raznoglasia (Our Differences) . In his answer Engels declared that he had read only the first sixty pages of the book, but that this was enough to acquaint him "more or less with the differences in question." Then he wrote:

First of all I repeat to you that I am proud to know that there is a party among the youth of Russia which frankly and without equivocation accepts the great economic and historical theories of Marx and has decisively broken with all the anarchist and more or less Slavophile traditions of its predecessors. And Marx himself would have been equally proud of this had he lived a little longer. It is an advance which will be of great importance for the revolutionary development of Russia. To me the historical theory of Marx is the fundamental condition of all reasoned and consistent revolutionary tactics; to discover these tactics one has only to apply the theory to the economic and political conditions of the country in question . . .

What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out there in a limited period of time; it may break out any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a match to be applied to it. Especially since March 13 [9] This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., with one little push to cause a whole system, which (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov's) is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and thus by an action in itself insignificant to release explosive forces that afterwards become uncontrollable. Well now, if ever Blanquism—the fantastic idea of overturning an entire society by the action of a small conspiracy—had a certain raison d'etre, that is certainly so now in Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder, once the forces have been released and national energy has been transformed from potential into kinetic (another favorite image of Plekhanov's and a very good one)—the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times as strong as they themselves . . . Suppose the people imagine they can seize power, what does it matter? Provided they make the whole which will shatter the dyke, the flood itself will soon rob them of their illusions. But if by chance these illusions resulted in giving them a superior force of will, why complain of that People who boast that they made a revolution always see the day after that they had no idea what they were doing, that the revolution made does not in the least resemble the one they would have liked to make .. . To me the important thing is that the impulse in Russia should be given, that the revolution should break out. Whether this faction or that faction
gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that matters little to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. There where the situation is so strained, where the revolutionary elements have accumulated to such a degree, where the economic conditions of the enormous mass of the people become daily more impossible. . . where all these contradictions are violently held in check by an unexampled despotism . . . there, when 1789 has once been launched, 1793 will not be long in following. [10]