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What Is 'Makhaevism'? Author(s): Paul Avrich Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jul., 1965), pp.

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WHAT IS 'MAKHAEVISM'?
WHEN the ShortCourse history of the Communistparty was published in Pravdain 1938, it was accompaniedby a decree which emphasized

the role of the intelligentsiain the constructionof Soviet society. The belief that the intellectuals decreebitterly condemned the 'Makhaevist' farm managers,army officers,technical -party officials,factory and an of self-seekingmen who had alien breed scientists-were specialists, in the bench or the peasant common with worker at the nothing behind the plough. This hostile attitude towards the intelligentsia, declaredthe decree,was 'savage,hooligan and dangerousto the Soviet State'.1 A number of Pravdareaders, puzzled by the strange expression 'Makhaevism',wrote to the editors asking them to explain it. (Some readers,it seems, confused 'Makhaevism'with 'Machism', the philosophy of the AustrianphysicistErnstMach, which Lenin had severely criticized thirty years earlier.) In a scathing polemic, Pravdareplied the intelligentsia that 'Makhaevism' was a crudetheory which slandered the and peasants; of workers them as the new by branding exploiters its adherentswere 'aliens, degenerates, and enemies', whose slogan was 'Down with the intelligentsia!'. Vehemently denying that the Pravda assertedthat intelligentsiaconstituteda new classof oppressors, the intellectuals and the toiling masseswere 'of one bone and one flesh'.2 Yet Pravda'sbarrage of vituperation merely thickened the mist of confusion surroundingthe term 'Makhaevism',which, by the I930s, had become little more than a convenient epithet for intellectualWho was its originator, baiting. But what, in fact, was 'Makhaevism'? and what influencedid he have during his lifetime? Jan Waclaw Machajskiwas born in i866 in Busk, a small town of some two thousand inhabitants,situated near the city of Kielce in RussianPoland. He was the son of an indigent clerk, who died when Machajskiwas a child, leaving a large and destitutefamily. Machajski attended the gimnaziyain Kielce and helped support his brothersand sisters by tutoring the schoolmates who boarded in his mother's apartment.He began his revolutionarycareerin i888 in the student circlesof Warsaw University,where he had enrolledin the facultiesof naturalscienceand medicine.Two or threeyearslater,while attending the University of Zurich, he abandonedhis first political philosophy (a blend of socialism and Polish nationalism) for the revolutionary
1

Pravda, 15 November 1938, p. 2. 2 'Chto takoye "makhayevshchina" ?', ibid. I8 November

'O postanovkepartiinoipropagandyv svyazi s vypuskom "Kratkovokursaistorii VKP(b)"',


I938, p. 2.

67

internationalism of Marx and Engels. Machajskiwas arrestedin May I892 for smuggling revolutionary proclamations from Switzerland into the industrialcity of Lodz, which was then in the throes of a general strike. In 1903, after a dozen years in prison and Siberian exile, he escapedto western Europe,where he remaineduntil the outbreak of the I905 revolution.3 During his long term of banishment in the Siberian settlement of Vilyuisk (in Yakutsk province), Machajski made an intensive study of

socialistliteratureand came to the conclusionthat the SocialDemocrats did not really champion the cause of the manualworkers, but that of a new classof'mental workers'engenderedby the rise of industrialism. reflected in his majorwork, Umstvenny rabochi, Marxism,he maintained the interestsof this new class, which hoped to ride to power on the shouldersof the manual workers. In a so-called 'socialist'society, he declared, private capitalists would merely be replaced by a new aristocracyof administrators,technical experts, and politicians; the manuallabourerswould be enslavedanew by a ruling minority whose In evolving his anti-Marxist theories, Machajski was strongly influencedby Mikhail Bakunin and by the 'economists'of the I890s. A generation before the appearanceof Umstvenny Bakunin rabochi, had denounced Marx and his followers as narrow intellectualswho, living in an unreal world of musty books and thick journals, understood nothing of human suffering. Although Bakunin believed that intellectuals would play an importantpartin the revolutionarystruggle, he warned that his Marxist rivals had an insatiablelust for power. In 1872, four years before his death, Bakunin speculatedon the shapethe
3 Machajski'swife, Vera, has left a handwrittenaccount of her husband'slife up to the time of his escapefrom Aleksandrovskprison in 1903. The manuscriptis in the private collection of Max Nomad in New York City. On Machajski'slife, see also Nomad, Dreamers, Dynamiters, and Demagogues (Moscow, 1929) (New York, I964) p. Io4; Bolshayasovetskaya entsiklopediya vol. XIII, pp. 64-6; A. Shetlikh, 'Pamyati V. K. [Vatslav Konstantinovich] Makhaiskovo', Izvestiya, 24 February 1926, p. 4; and P. A. [Petr Arshinov],'Pamyati V. K. Makhaiskovo', Delo truda, no. II, April 1926, pp. 5-8. 4 A. Volski [pseudonym of Machajski], Umstvenny rabochi (3 vols. in I, Geneva, I904-05) vol. II, pp. 41-2. The best exposition of Machajski's ideas is presentedin Max Nomad, Aspects (New York, 1932)pp. 206-8. Another of Revolt(New York, I959) ch. 5, and RebelsandRenegades able summary is MarshallS. Shatz, 'Anti-Intellectualism in the Russian Intelligentsia:Michael Bakunin, Peter KropotkinandJan Waclaw Machajski',unpublishedessay(The Russian Institute, Columbia University, 1963)pp. 52-81. See also Ivanov-Razumnik, Chtotakoyemakhayevshchina? (St. Petersburg,1908); N. Syrkin,Makhayevshchina (Moscow and Leningrad,1931); P. A. Berlin, Apostolyanarkhii: Bakunin-Kropotkin-Makhayev (Petrograd,n.d. [I917]) pp. 28-3I; D. Zaitsev, 'Marksizmi makhayevshchina', . Utechin, 'Bolsheviks I9o8, no. 3, pp. 35-71; S V. Obrazovaniye, and their Allies after 1917: The Ideological Pattern', Soviet Studies,October 1958, pp. I2I-2; V. Bazarov, Anarkhicheski kommunizm i marksizm (St. Petersburg,1906); B. I. Gorev, 'Apoliticheskiyei antiparlamentskiye gruppy (anarkhisty, maksimalisty,makhayevtsy)',Obshchestvennoye XX-vo veka (4 vols., St. Petersburg,I909-14) vol. III, pp. 523-33; dvizheniyev Rossii v nachale and L. Kulczycki,Anarkhizm v Rossii(St. Petersburg,i907) pp. 80-go.There is a brief but interesting summary of Machajski'sviews by his wife: 'Yan-VatslavMakhaiskii, 1866 27/xii-I926 I9/ii', manuscriptin the Nomad collection.

'capital', so to speak, was education.4

68

WHAT IS

Marxist 'dictatorshipof the proletariat' ,would assume if ever inaugurated:


That would be the rule of scientific the most autocratic,the most despotic, intellect, the most arrogant,and the most insolent of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of genuine or sham savants,and the world will be divided into a dominant minority in the name of science, and an immense ignorant majority.5

i anarkhiya, In one of his most important works, Gosudarstvennost Bakunin elaborated the upon this dire following year, published
prophecy in a most striking passage:
According to the theory of Mr. Marx, the people not only must not destroy [the state]but must strengthenit andplace it at the complete disposalof theirbenefactors, guardians,and teachers-the leaders of the Communist party, namely Mr. Marx and his friends,who will proceed to liberate[mankind]in their own way. They will concentratethe reins of government in a strong hand, becausethe ignorant people require an exceedingly firm guardianship;they will establisha single state bank, and even scientific concentratingin its handsall commercial,industrial,agricultural, production, and then divide the massesinto two armies-industrial and agricultural -under the directcommand of stateengineers,who will constitutea new privileged scientific-politicalestate.6

According to Bakunin, the followers of Karl Marx and of Auguste Comte as well were 'priestsof science', ordainedin a new 'privileged church of the mind and superior education'.7They disdainfully informed the common man: 'You know nothing, you understand nothing, you are a blockhead, and a man of intelligence must put a saddleand bridle on you and lead you'.8 Bakunin maintainedthat education was as great an instrument of dominationas privateproperty. So long as learningwas preemptedby a minority of the population, he wrote in 1869 in an essay entitled it could effectively be used to exploit the majority. Instruction, Integral 'The one who knows more', he wrote, 'will naturally dominate the were eliminone who knows less.' Even if the landlordsand capitalists ated, there was a danger that the world 'would be divided once again into a massof slavesand a small number of rulers,the former working for the latter as they do today'.9 Bakunin's answer was to wrest education from the monopolistic grasp of the privileged classesand make it available equally to everyone; like capital, education must cease to be 'the patrimony of one or of several classes'and become 'the common property of all'.10An integrated education in science
6 M. A. Bakunin, Izbranniye sochineniya (5 vols., Petrograd and Moscow, 7 Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (New York, I960) pp. 432-3.

5 Michel Bakounine, Oeuvres (6 vols., Paris, I895-I913) vol. IV, p. 477.


1919-22)

vol. I, p. 237.

8 (Milwaukee, 1955) p. 14I. Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anarchism of MichaelA. Bakunin 9 Eugene Bakunin, Oeuvres,vol. V, p. I35.
10 Ibid. vol. V, p. I44.

'MAKHAEVISM?'

69

inequality. 'Everyone must work, and everyone must be educated', Bakunin averred, so that in the good society of the future there would be 'neither workers nor scientists, but only men'.'1 The gulf between the educated classes and the 'dark people' of Russia was broader than anywhere else in Europe. During the I870s, when the young Populist students from Petersburg and Moscow went 'to the people' in the countryside, they ran into an invisible barrier that separated them from the ignorant narod. Their pitiful failure to communicate with the rural folk led some disillusioned Populists to abandon the education which they thought was dividing them from the masses. Others wondered whether the education gap could be bridged at all, whether the Populist philosopher Nikolai Mikhailovski was not right when he observed that the literate few must 'inevitably enslave' the toiling majority.12 Nor was the situation greatly improved when the peasants came to the city to work in the factories, for they brought their suspicion of the intellectuals with them. One labourer in St. Petersburg complained that 'the intelligentsia had usurped the position of the worker'. It was all right to accept books from the students, he said, but when they begin to teach you nonsense you must knock them down. 'They should be made to understand that the workers' cause ought to be placed entirely in the hands of the workers themselves.'13 Although these remarks were aimed at the Populist Chaikovski circle in the I870s, the same attitude persisted in succeeding decades towards both the Populists and the Marxists, who were competing for the allegiance of the emerging class of industrial workers. In 1883, Georgi Plekhanov, the 'father' of Russian Social Democracy, felt constrained to pledge that the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat would be 'as far removed from the dictatorship of a group of raznochintsyrevolutionists as heaven is from earth'.14 He assured the workers that Marx's disciples were selfless men, whose mission was to raise the class-consciousness of the proletariat so that it could become 'an independent figure in the arena of historical life, and not pass eternally from one guardian to another'.15 Notwithstanding repeated reassurances of this sort, many factory
11 Ibid. vol. V, p. I45. Arthur P. Mendel, Dilemmas of Progressin Tsarist Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) p. 23. Cf. Richard Pipes, 'Narodnichestvo: A Semantic Inquiry', Slavic Review, September 1964, pp. 449-53. 13 Venturi, op. cit. pp. 539, 8oo. 14 G. V. Plekhanov, Sochineniya (24 vols., Leningrad, 1923-27) vol. II, p. 77. Raznochintsy
12

of religion, metaand handicrafts(but not in the jejune abstractions and would enable all citizens to engage in both physics sociology) manual and mental pursuits, thereby eliminating a major source of

was the term which designatedthe 'men of differentclasses' who made up the Russianintelligentsia in the nineteenth century. 15 Ibid.

70

WHAT

IS

workers eschewed the doctrinairerevolutionismof Plekhanov and his and bent their effortsto the taskof economic and educational associates self-improvement.They began to manifesta tendency (in which they were joined by a number of sympathetic intellectuals)which later acquiredthe label of'economism'. The averageRussianworkman was more interestedin raisinghis materiallevel thanin agitatingfor political objectives; he was wary of the revolutionaryslogans floated by party leaderswho seemed bent on pushinghim into political adventuresthat might satisfy their own ambitions while leaving the situation of the workers essentiallyunchanged.Political programmes,wrote a leading spokesmanof the 'economist'point of view, 'aresuitablefor intellectuals going "to the people", but not for the workers themselves.... And it
is the defence of the workers' interests . . . that is the whole content

of the labourmovement'. The intelligentsia,he added, quoting Marx's celebratedpreamble to the bylaws of the First International,tended to forget that 'the liberationof the working class must be the task of the workers themselves'.l6 of the 'economists'was the conUnderlying the anti-intellectualism viction that the intelligentsialooked upon the working class simply as the means to a higher goal, as an abstractmass predestinedto carry out the immutable will of history. According to the 'economists',the intellectuals,insteadof bringing their knowledge to bear on the concrete problems of factory life, were inclined to lose themselves in ideologies that had no relation to the true needs of the workers. Emboldenedby the Petersburgtextile strikesof I896 and I897, which were organizedand directedby local workmen, the 'economists'urged the Russian labouring class to remain self-sufficientand reject the leadershipof self-centredprofessionalagitators.As one bench worker in the capitalwrote in an 'economist' journalin 1897, 'the improvement
of our working conditions depends on ourselves alone'.17 The anti-political and anti-intellectual arguments of Bakunin and the 'economists' made an indelible impression on Machajski. While in Siberia, he came to believe that the radical intelligentsia aimed not at the achievement of a classless society, but merely to establish itself as a privileged stratum. It was no wonder that Marxism, rather than advocating an immediate revolt against the capitalist system, postponed its 'collapse' until a future time when economic conditions had sufficiently 'matured'. With the further development of capitalism and its

16 S. N. Prokopovich, 'Otvet na broshyuruAkselroda"K voprosu o sovremennykhzadachakh i taktikarusskikhsotsial-demokratov" ', in Plekhanov, op. cit. vol. XII, pp. 501-2. 17 Peterburzhets rabochevo peterburzhskovo [K. M. TakhtarevJ,Ocherk dvizheniyago-kh godov (London, 1902) p. 81. On the tensions that existed between labour and the intelligentsia in andthe St. Petersburg LaborMovement,1885St. Petersburg,see Richard Pipes, SocialDemocracy 1897 (Cambridge,Mass., I963).

MAKHAEVISM'

7I

increasingly technology,the 'mentalworkers'would sophisticated

grow strong enough to establish their own rule. Even if the new technocracywere then to abolish private ownership of the means of intelligentsia'would still production, Machajskisaid, the 'professional maintain its position of mastery by taking over the management of production and by establishing a monopoly over the specialized knowledge needed to operate a complex industrialeconomy.18 The managers, engineers and political office-holders would use their Marxist ideology as a new religious opiate to becloud the minds of the labouringmasses,perpetuatingtheir ignoranceand servitude. Machajski suspected every left-wing competitor of seeking to establisha social system in which the intellectualswould be the ruling class.He even accusedthe anarchists of Kropotkin'sKhlebi volyagroup of taking a 'gradualist'approachto revolution no better than that of the Social Democrats, for they expected the coming revolution in Russia not to go further than the Frenchrevolution of 1789 or 1848. In Kropotkin's projected anarchistcommune, Machajskiheld, 'only the possessorsof civilization and knowledge' would enjoy true freehe insisted, was not dom.19The 'social revolution' of the anarchists, a meant to but was in fact to be a be 'workers' really uprising', purely 'revolution in the interests of the intellectuals'.The anarchistswere 'the same socialistsas all the others, only more passionateones'.20 What then was to be done to avoid this new enslavement? In Machajski'sview, as long as inequality of income persistedand the instrumentsof productionremainedthe privatepropertyof a capitalist minority, and as long as scientific and technicalknowledge remained the 'property'of an intellectualminority, the multitudeswould consolution assigneda key tinue to toil for a privileged few. Machajski's role to a secret organization of revolutionariescalled the Workers' zagovor),similarto Bakunin's'secretsociety'21 of Conspiracy(Rabochi revolutionaryconspirators. Presumably,Machajskihimself was to be at the head. The mission of the Workers' Conspiracywas to stimulate the workers into 'direct action'-strikes, demonstrations,and the like with the immediateobjectof winning economic -against the capitalists and jobs for the unemployed. The 'direct action' of improvements the workerswas to culminatein a generalstrikewhich, in turn, would trigger off a world-wide uprising,usheringin an era of equal income and educational opportunity. In the end, the pernicious distinction
18JanWaclaw Machajski,'An Unfinished Essay in the Nature of a Critique of Socialism', unpublishedmanuscript(written in Parisin I9II) pp. I6-I7. 19A. Volski, Bankrotstvo XIX stoletiya sotsializma rabochi, (n.p. [Geneva]1905) p. 30; Umstvenny vol. III,part2, pp. 9-24; Burzhuaznaya i rabocheye delo(n.p. [Geneva]1905) p. 25. revolyutsiya 20
Rabochi zagovor, no. I, September-October 1907, p. 75. 21 M. A. Bakunin, Gesammelte Werke vols., Berlin

(3

I921-24)

vol. III, pp. 35-8, 82.

72

WHA T IS

rabochi were circulatingin Odessa, where 'Makcopies of Umstvenny haevism' was beginning to attracta following. In g905, a small group of Makhayevtsy, calling itself the Workers' Conspiracy, was formed in St. Petersburg.Despite Machajski'scriticism of the anarchists,a number of them were drawn to his creed. For a time, Olga Taratuta and VladimirStriga,leadingmembersof the largestanarchist organization in Russia, the Black Banner (Chernoyeznamya) group, were associatedwith a society in Odessaknown as the Intransigents (NepriandMakhayevtsy; andthe prinincludedboth anarchists mirimiye),which Without Authority (Beznachaliye), cipal anarchistcircle in Petersburg, If some anarchist writerstook containeda few disciplesof Machajski.24 to task of for as a clever seeing everything Machajski plot the intellifound in the doctrinesof 'Makhaevism'a 'fresh and vivifying spirit', in contrastto the 'stiflingatmosphereof the socialistparties,saturated with political chicanery'.26 in Russia in I905, Daniil NovoThe foremost Anarcho-Syndicalist mirski, clearly echoed Machajski's suspicionsof the 'mental workers':
Which class does contemporary socialism serve in fact and not in words? We is not the expression answer at once and without beating about the bush: Socialism or declasse intelliof the interests of the workingclass,but of the so-called raznochintsy,
gentsia.27

betweenmanualand mentallabourwould be obliterated, together with all classdivisions.22 theoriesprovoked passionate discussions within the Machajski's various groups of Russian radicals.In Siberia,where Machajski the firstpartof Umstvenny rabochi in 1898,his critique hectographed of SocialDemocracy 'hada greateffectupon the exiles',as Trotsky, who was among them, recalledin his autobiography.23 By 1901,

gentsia,25 more than a few, as one of Kropotkin's followers admitted,

The Social Democratic party, said Novomirski, was infested with

The long-awaited social revolution would prove to be a farce, he warned, should it fail to annihilate,together with the state and private
24Buntar,no. I, I December I906, pp. 30-I; Almanakh:sbornik po istorii anarkhicheskovo dvizheniyav Rossii (Paris, I909) p. 7; Syrkin, op. cit. pp. 7-8, 65; Gorev, loc. cit. vol. II, p. 525; I. Genkin, 'Sredi preemnikov Bakunina', Krasnayaletopis, I927, no. I, pp. I86-90; Genkin, 'Anarkhisty: iz vospominanii politicheskovo katorzhanina',Byloye, 1918, no. 9, pp. 171-2; vol. XIII, p. 66. A few Makhayevtsy were also activein Bialystok, Bolshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, Ekaterinoslavand Vilno. In Warsaw, there was a bandit group which used the label Workers' but was not really a Makhaevistorganization. Conspiracy(ZmowaRobotnicza) 25 Burevestnik, no. io-II, March-AprilI908, p. 31. 26 Novy mir,no. I, I5 October I905, p. 6. Cf. the Makhaevistcritiqueof'intelligentsiasocialism' in Chernoye znamya,no. I, December 1905, pp. 3-6. 28 Ibid.p. I0.
27 Ibid. no. 8, November
I907, 22 Rabochi vol. rabochi, zagovor,no. I, pp. 58-63; Umstvenny 23 Leo Trotzki, Mein Leben (Berlin, I930) p. I25.

'political crooks . . . new exploiters, new deceivers of the people'.28

I, p. 30.

p. 9.

'MAKHAEVISM?'

73

property, yet a third enemy of human liberty: 'That new sworn

action,30he admonishedthe workers not to look for outsidersto save

itsbearer isthe enemyof oursis themonopoly ofknowledge; intelligentsia'.29 that a Novomirski believed 'conscious Although minority'of farwas needed to stir the labouringmassesinto sighted 'pathfinders'

the revolution of I905, the SR-Maximalists.In fact, the chief disseminator of 'Makhaevism'next to Machajskihimself, a man who barely acknowledgedhis master'sexistence,was a Maximalistnamed Yevgeni Yustinovich Lozinski. In his most important book, What,afterall, is Lozinskiparaphrased the centralidea of Machajski's the Intelligentsia?, means of the production liberatesthe intelliphilosophy: 'Socializing from its the subjugationby capitaliststate,but does not liberate gentsia the slaves of manual labour; it leads to the reinforcement of class slavery, to the strengtheningof the workers' bondage'.32 Similarechoes of Machajski's writingswere to be found in numerous Maximalists,and other extreme pamphletsand articlesby anarchists, But with the stern repressionsof Stolypin in the left-wing sectarians. years following the revolution of I905, these echoes rapidly faded away and the men who produced them disappearedinto prison or exile. Machajskihimself, who had returned to Russia in 1905, was compelled to flee again two years later. Russian radicalism,at a low ebb during the next decade, quickly revived with the outbreak of the February revolution. Although neither the Workers' Conspiracy nor any other organization of in I917, the spirit of Makhaevismwas much Makhayevtsy reappeared in evidence witlhin the labour movement. As in 1905, Machajski's andMaximalists. influencewas particularly strongamong the anarchists In September 1917, for example, in phrases evoking Bakunin and Machajski,an anarchistworkman exhorted the delegates at a conference of Petrograd factory committees to launch an immediate generalstrike.There were no 'laws of history'to hold the people back, he declared, no predetermined revolutionary stages, as the Social Democrats maintained.Marx's disciples-both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks-were deceiving the working class with 'promises of God's reign on earth hundredsof years from now'. There was no reason to wait, he cried. The workers must take direct action-not after more
29 D. I. Novomirski,

them. Selfless men simplydid not exist-'not in the darkcloudsof of the tsars,nor in the the empty sky, nor in the luxurious palaces of the wealthy,nor in any parliament'.31 chambers views influenced anotherultra-radical group born of Machajski's

Novy mir, no. I, pp. 4, 10. 31 Ibid. p. 8. 32 E. Lozinski, Chto zhe takoye, nakonets, intelligentsiya? (St. Petersburg, 1907) p. 232.

30

Chto takoye anarkhizm? (n.p., 1907) p. 37.

WHAT' IS 74 centuriesof painful historicaldevelopment, but right now! 'Hail the uprising of the slaves and the equality of income!'33 At a factorycommittee gathering the following month, another anarchistspeaker opposed the approachingConstituent Assembly on the grounds that it was certain to be monopolized by 'capitalistsand intellectuals'. 'The intellectuals',he warned, 'in no case can representthe interests of the workers. They know how to twist us around their fingers, and they will betray us.' The workers, he thundered, can triumph only through 'directcombat' with their oppressors.34 When Machajskireturnedto Russia in 19I7, he made no effort to channel these sentimentsinto a coherent movement. His heyday had passedwith the revolution of I905, and now he was prematurelyold and tired. After the October revolution, he obtained a non-political job with the Soviet government, serving as a technical editor for the organ khozyaistvo), Narodnoye khozyaistvo (later Sotsialisticheskoye of the SupremeEconomic Council.35He remained,however, sharply critical of Marxism and its adherents. In the summer of I918, he in published a single issue of a journal called Rabochaya revolyutsiya, which he censuredthe Bolsheviksfor failing to order the total expro-

the working class.After the February revolution, wrote Machajski,the workers had received a rise in wages and an eight-hour day, but after October, their material level had been raised 'not one whit!'36 The Bolshevik insurrection,he continued, was nothing but 'a counterrevolution of the intellectuals'.Political power had been seized by the possessorsof the knowledge necessaryfor the organization and administrationof the whole life of the country'. And the Marxists, in accordancewith their prophet's religious gospel of economic determination, had chosen to preservethe bourgeois order, obliging themselves only 'to prepare'the manualworkers for their future paradise.37 Machajskienjoined the working classto press the Soviet government to expropriatethe factories,equalize incomes and educationalopporas he tunity, and provide jobs for the unemployed.Yet, as dissatisfied
33

priation of the bourgeoisie or to improve the economic situation of

disciples of Marx, 'the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia . . . the

vol. II, p. 23. Cf. Machajski's notes to his translation of Die Heilige (3 vols., Moscow, I927-29) Familie by Marx and Engels: 'Like all religious and idealist systems, Marxism calls for a superof stitious worship "historical necessity" . . . a socialist Providence which has been preparing, over whole centuries, for an earthly paradise for future generations'. K. Marx and F. Engels, semeistvo Svyatoye (2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1906) vol. II, p. 54. There is a similar passage in i rabocheye delo,pp. 82-3. Burzhuaznaya revolyutsiya

komitetov Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiyai fabzavkomy:materialy po istorii fabrichnozavodskikh

35 N. Baturin, 'Pamyati "Makhayevshchiny" ', Pravda, 2 March 1926, p. 2; Syrkin, op. cit. p. 6. 36 Rabochaya revolyutsiya, no. i, June-July 1918, p. 4. 37 Ibid. pp. 9, I2, 25. Cf. the declaration of the SR-Maximalists in August 1918 that education still remained 'in the hands of the bourgeois and bourgeoisified intelligentsia'. Maksimalist,
no. 2, 25 August
I918,

34Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya ifabzavkomy,vol. II, p. 128.

p. i.

'MAKHAEVISM'?

75

was with the new regime, Machajskigrudgingly accepted it, at least for the time being. Any attempt to overthrow the government, he said, would benefit only the Whites, who were a worse evil than the
Bolsheviks.38

Machajskiremainedat his editorialpost until his death from a heart attackin FebruaryI926, at the age of sixty.39
PAUL AVRICH

QueensCollege,New York

38Rabochaya no. I, p. 6. revolyutsiya, 39Izvestiya,24 February1926, p. 4; Pravda,2 March 1926, p. 2.

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