E H Carr Studies in Revolution

#.
/'SAINT-SIMON
PLEKHANOV
E. H. CARR
STUDIES
IN
REVOLUTION
The Universal Lbrary

GROSSET & DUNLAP
NEW YORK
ilt
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BY
PUBLISHED
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ARRANGEMENT
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EDITION,
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LTD.,
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AMERICA
CONTENTS
PACE
1. S a in t -S im
on
2. T h e
m u n is t
Gom
3. P r o u d h o n :
4. H
erzen
5. L
assalle
6. S ome N
: A
8. T
he
9. L
e n in
11. M
12 . T
radle
(19 4 7)
of
-C e n tu r y R
F ath er
P h il o s o p h e r
aster
r. G a lla c h e r
of
(19 4 7)
38
e v o l u t io n a r y
(19 4 7 )
56
e v o l u t io n
and
( 1947)
h in k e r s
a r x is m
(19 4 8 )
(19 4 8 )
S y n d ic a l is m
of
th e
th at
(19 4 7)
to
14 . S t a
(2 ) T
he
D ia l e c t ic s o f
18 1
P o w e r (19 4 6 )
S t a l in is m
152
16 6
F a il e d (19 4 9 )
R oad
10 5
134
C P G B (1 9 4 9 )
he
88
120
B u il d e r (1 9 4 7 )
( i) T
72
u s sia n
13. S t a l i n :
u n
15
S o c ia l is m
u s s ia n
B o l s h e v ism
of
B ism a r c k (19 4 6 )
he
rusoe
Intellectual R
r el
he
a n if e s t o
o b in s o n
in e t e e n t h
lekh anov
10. S o
P r e c u r so r (19 4 9 )
he
m eets
7. P
20 0
(19 4 9 )
2 11
PREFACE
articles out o f w hich this book has been m ade
appeared in the Literary Supplement o f The Times and
I am indebted to the E ditor o f the Supplement for
kind permission to republish th e m : I have also
incorporated in T h e R evolution that Failed
some passagcs from a talk given in the T h ird Pro
gram m e o f the British Broadcasting Corporation.
A few topical references have been adjusted, a few
cases o f overlapping rem oved, and a few corrections
m ade to m eet criticisms, public or private. O th er
wise the articles appear substantially unchanged ,*
the year o f original publication is appended to each
in the list o f contents. O f the two articles on Stalin
w ith w hich the volum e ends, the first was the earliest
tem in the collection to be written, the second the
last.
E. H . C A R R
T he
1
S A IN T -S IM O N :
TH E
PRECU RSO R
e n r i d e S A I N T - S I M O N was an intellectual
eccentric. H e was a m em ber o f an aristocratic fam ily w ho abandoned his title o f Comte with
a dram atic gesture in the French R evolution and
spent most o f his life in p e n u ry ; a rationalist and
a m o ra list; a m an o f letters who never succeeded
in w riting or com pleting any coherent exposition
o f his id e a s ; and, after his death, the eponymous
father o f a sect devoted to the propagation o f his
teaching, w hich enjoyed a E uropean reputation.
Saint-Sim on lacked most o f the traditional attributes
o f the great m an. It is never easy to distinguish
between w h at he him self thought and the much
more coherent body o f doctrine, some o f it astonishingly penetrating, some not less astonishingly silly,
w hich the sect built up round his name. It is certain
that posterity has read back into some o f his aphorisms a greater clarity and a greater significance than
he him self gave to them. But the study o f SaintSim on often seems to suggest that the great French
Revolution, not content w ith the ideas w hich in
spired its leaders and w hich it spread over the
contem porary world, also projected into the future
Studies in Revolution
a fresh ferment o f ideas which, w orking beneath the
surface, were to be the main agents o f the social
and political revolutions o f one hundred years to
come.
O f these ideas Saint-Sim on provided the first
precipitation on the printed page. N o one who
writes about him can avoid applying to him the word
precursor . H e was the precursor o f socialism,
the precursor o f the technocrats, the precursor o f
totalitarianism all these labels fit, not perfectly,
but, considering the distance o f time and the
originality o f the conceptions as first form ulated,
w ith am azing appositeness. Saint-Sim on died at the
age o f sixty-five in 1825, on the eve o f a period o f
unprecedented m aterial progress and sweeping social
and political c h a n g e ; and his writings again and
again gave an uncanny impression o f one who ha.s
had a hurried preview o f the next hundred years o f
history and, excited, confused and only h a lf under
standing, tried to set down disjointed fragments o f
w hat he had seen. H e is the type o f the great man
as the reflector, rather than the makcr, o f history.
T h e approach o f Saint-Sim on to the phenomenon
o f man in society already has the modern stamp. In
1783, at the age o f twenty-three, he had recorded
his lifes a m b itio n : Faire un travail scientifiquc
utile rh u m a n it . Saint-Sim on marks the transition
from the deductive rationalism o f the eighteenth to
the inductive rationalism o f the nineteenth cen tury
from metaphysics to Science. H e inaugurates the
cult o f Science and o f the scientific method. H e
rejects equally the divine order o f the theo-
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
logians and the natural order o f A d am Sm ith

and the physiocrats. In his first published writing,
Leltres dun habitant de Genve, he enunciated the
principie that social relations must be considered
as physiological phenom ena
O r again : T h e
question o f social organization must be treated
absolutely in the same w a y as an y other scientific
question
T h e term sociology was apparently
the invention o f Saint-Sim ons most famous pupil,
once his secretary, A uguste Com te. But the idea
carne from the master him self and was the essence
o f his philosophy.
Another o f Saint - Sim ons pupils, Augustin
T hierry, was to becom e a famous h isto rian ; and
there is in Saint-Sim on not only an em bryonic
sociology, but an em bryonic theory o f history which
looks forward to a whole school from Buckle to
Spengler. H istory is a study o f the scientific laws
governing hum an developm ent, w hich is divided
into poques organiques and into poques
critiques ; and the continuity o f past, present and
future is clearly established.
H istory is social
physics. N o doubt later nineteenth-century and
twentieth-century theories o f history owe more to
H egel than to Saint-Sim on. But they owe most o f
all to K a rl M arx, who com bined the m etaphysical
historicism o f H egel w ith Saint-Sim ons sociological
utilitarianism .
But perhaps Saint-Sim ons most original insight
original enough at a mom ent when the French
R evolution had consecrated the em ancipation and
enthronem ent o f the individual after a struggle o f
three centuries was his visin o f the com ing
resubordination o f the individual to society. SaintSim on, though no partisan o f revolution in principie
(he once said flatly that dictatorship was preferable
to revolution), never abated his enthusiasm for the
revolution w hich had overthrown the ancien rgime.
L a fodalit was always the enem y ; incidentally,
it m ay w ell be due, directly or indirectly, to SaintSim on that feudalism becam e M a rx s chosen
label for the pre-bourgeois order o f society. N early
all Saint-Sim ons contemporaries, and most western
E uropean thinkers for at least two generations to
com e, took it for granted that liberalism was the
natural antithesis, and therefore the predestined
successor, o f feudalism
Saint-Sim on saw no
reason for the assumption. He was not a reactionary,
nor even a co n servative; but he was not a liberal
either. H e was something different and new.
It was clear to Saint-Sim on that, after Descartes
and K a n t, after Rousseau and the D eclaration o f
the R ights o f M an, the cult o f individual liberty, o f
the individual as an end in himself, could go no
farther.
T h ere are some astonishingly modern
echoes in a collection o f essays under the title
LTndustrie, dating from 1816 :
T h e D eclaration o f the R igh ts o f M a n w h ich has been
regarded as the solution o f the problem o f social liberty
was in reality only the statem ent o f the problem .
A passage o f Du systme industriei, in w hich SaintSim on a few years later sought to estabhsh the new
historical perspective, is worth quoting in f u ll:
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
The maintenance o f liberty was bound to be an

object o f primary attention so long as the feudal and
theological system still had some power, because then
liberty was exposed to serious and continuous attacks.
But to-day one can no longer have the same anxiety in
establishing the industrial and scientific system,, since
this system must necessarily, and without any direct
concern in the matter, bring with it the highest degree
o f liberty in the temporal and in the social sphere.
O r again, and more em phatically :
The vague and metaphysical idea o f liberty in circulation to-day, if it continues to be taken as the basis of
political doctrines, would tend pre-eminently to hamper
the action o f the mass on the individual. From this
point o f view it would be contrary to the development
o f civilization and to the organization of an ordered
system which demands that the parties should be firmly
bound to the whole and dependent on it.
T h e individual, as Saint-Sim on puts it elsewhere,
depends on the mass , and it is the relations o f
each individual w ith this progressively active,
expanding and overwhelm ing mass w hich have
to be studied and organized . E ven the word
liberty , in the first two passages quoted above,
has the question-begging adjective social quietly
appended to it. T h e proper study o f mankind is no
longer m an, but the masses.
In short, Saint-Sim on stood at the point o f
transition from feudal to industrial civilization.
H e perceived the nature o f the transition more
clearly than his contem poraries, and read more o f
its im plications. H ow far he him self foresaw the
practical application o f Science to industry cannot
be ascertained. It was his disciples who hailed the
building o f railw ays w ith an almost religious fervour
as the sym bol and instrument o f social progress
(one recalls L en in s definition o f socialism as the
Soviets plus electrification ), and other disciples
w ho in the 1840S founded the Socit d tudes du
C a n a l de Suez. But Saint-Sim on insisted it
becam e more and more the leitmotiv o f everything
he wrote that industrial production was hence
forth the m ain function o f society. Industry ,
production , organization these were the
key words in the Saint-Sim onist vocabulary.
L o gically enough, therefore, Saint-Sim on appears
as one o f the founders o f the nineteenth-century cult
o f work. T h e beginnings o f it are in Rousseau and
B a b e u f; but it was Saint-Sim on who placed it in
the very centre o f his system. T h e conception o f
Icisure and contem plation as the highest state o f
m ankind died w ith the last vestiges o f the m edieval
order. A ll men w ill w ork, wrote Saint-Sim on in
the Lettres dun habitant de Genve, where so m any o f
his ideas appear in their prim ary and simplest form ;
the obligation is imposed on every man to give
constantly to his personal powers a direction useful
to society . Indeed, in a later D eclaration of
Principies , he defines society as the sum total
and unin o f men engaged in useful work . W ork
is no longer a necessity but a virtue. T h e new
principie o f m orality is man must work ; and
the happiest nation is the nation in w hich there
are the fewest unem ployed . Saint-Sim on provided
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
the moral foundation for the labour theory o f value

w hich was being w orked out at the same period in
E ngland b y R icard o. H e also looked forward to
the prom inence given one hundred years later in
the new Soviet gospel to the p re c e p t: H e that
does not work neither shall he eat
T h e generation w hich followed Saint-Sim on was
fruitful in the creation o f U topias ; and his views on
the organization o f society and the State, though
there is no systematic exposition o f them , were am ong
the most popular o f his speculations. It need hardly
be said that the liberal conception o f politics and
economics, introduced into France b y A d a m Sm iths
disciple J . B. Say, was anathem a to Saint-Sim on,
for whom politics is the Science o f production
B ut the identification is achieved b y the subordination o f politics to economics, not o f economics to
politics. This is lo g ic a l; for since society rests
w h olly on industry , w hich is the sol source o f
all riches and all prosperity , it follows that the
State o f things most favourable to industry is for
that very reason most favourable to society .
G overnm ent in the old sense is a necessary evil. Its
sol purpose is to put and keep men at w o rk ; for,
unhappily, there are fainants, that is to say,
thieves .
But this is a m inor and subsidiary
function. T h e supreme authority w ill be an eco
nom ic parliam ent (a notion w hich still had its
attractions more than a century later), divided into
three chambers concerned respectively w ith invention, exam ination and execution.
B ut Saint-Sim ons city o f the future presents
other features still more curious. T h e divisin o f
functions is precise. T h e artists w ill appeal to the
im agination o f the worker and excite the appropriate
passions. T h e men o f learning w ill establish the
laws o f health o f the body social . (Incidentally
these provisions show that the marshalling o f art and
Science in the service o f the State is neither new nor
peculiar to ahy one part o f Europe.) T h e indus
triais (in w hich term Saint-Sim on includes producers o f all kinds and even traders) w ill legislate
and issue adm inistrative orders. Fin ally the executive it is an unexpected clim ax w ill be composed o f bankers. It was the age o f the great
private banks ; and the pow er o f credit in the affairs
o f governm ent and o f business was ju st becom ing a
current topic. F or Saint-Sim on, as for Lenin nearly
a century later, the banks were the hidden hand
that made the wheels o f production go round. It
was as logical for Saint-Sim on to give them a central
place in his adm inistrative scheme as for Lenin to
treat the nationalization o f the banks as the key
measure necessary to destroy the econom ic stranglehold o f the bourgeoisie. But w hat is interesting is
to find an em bryonic philosophy o f planning built
up b y Saint-Sim on round this central executive
function o f the banks :
T h e present an arch y o f production, w h ich corresponds to the fact th at econom ic relations are bein g
developed w ith out uniform regulation, must give w a y
to the organization o f production. Production w ill not
be directed b y isolated entrepreneurs independent o f each
other and ignorant o f the needs o f the people ; this task
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
will be entrusted to a specific social institution. A

central committee o f administration, being able to
review a broad field o f social economy from a higher
point o f vantage, will regaate it in a manner useful
to the whole society, will transfer the means o f pro
duction into hands appropriate for this purpose, and
will be specially concerned to maintain a constant
harmony between production and demand. There are
institutions which include among their functions a
certain degree o f organization o f economic work : the
banks.
Lenin, who quotes this passage at second-hand and
is, perhaps, a little jealous for M a rx s priority, calis
it a guess o f genius, but still only a guess
M ore directly fruitful than these visions o f a
distant future was the conception, running through
Saint-Sim ons w riting about the State, o f a distinction between governm ent and adm inistra
tion
It recurs in m any shapes. Form erly there
were spiritual and tem poral powers ; to-day
these have given place to scientific and industrial
capacities
Power, w hich is an absolute o f
governm ent, is an oppressive forc exercised b y men
over m e n ; and the action o f m an on m an is in
itself always harm ful to the species
O n the other
hand, the only useful action exercised by m an is
the action o f m an on things
T his is adminis
tration ; and an enlightened society needs only
to be administered
Society is destined to pass
from the governm ental or m ilitary regim e to the
adm inistrative or industrial regim e after having
m ade suficient progress in positive Sciences and in
industry . Saint-Sim on does not, like Engels, say that
9
the State w ill die aw ay. Even Engelss phrase that
the governm ent o f men will be replaced b y the ad
ministra tion o f things has not been traced textually
to the works o f Saint-Sim on and his disciples. But
the idea is borrowed direct from him. T h e influence
o f Saint-Sim on on Proudhon and on the developm ent
o f French syndicalist thought w ith its contem pt for
the politics o f governm ent is not less obvious.
H o w far should Saint-Sim on be called, not m erely
a precursor o f socialism, but him self a Socialist ?
T h e w ord had apparently not been coined in his
lifetime. It cannot be traced back farther than 1827,
when it appeared in England in an O w enite publi
cation. Its first recorded use in French is in an
article o f 1832 in Le Globe, a newspaper edited
b y Saint-Sim ons disciples after his death. Nous
ne voulons pas sacrifier , remarks the article, la
personnalit au socialisme, pas plus que ce dernier la
personnalit. In this sense o f placing the stress on
society rather than on the individual, Saint-Sim on
was a Socialist. But in the more political modern
sense m any doubts arise. T h e only occasion when
Saint-Sim on placed a label on his own political
opjnions was when he said that he belonged neither
to the Conservative Party nor to the L ib eral Party
but to the parii industriei; and w hile it m ay be mis
leading to transate industriei b y industrial , it
can hardly be m ade to mean Socialist or even
L ab o u r . His legislature o f industrieis and execu
tive o f bankers carne nearer to a benevolent despotism o f technocrats or to the m anagerial society o f
later speculations.
10
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
O n the other hand, Saint-Sim on was constantly

preoccupied w ith the w ell-being o f those whom he
called, in a m uch-quoted phrase, la classe la plus
nombreuse et la plus pauvre
H e stood in prin
cipie for equality o f distribution ( lu xu ry Vvill
become useful and m oral w hen the w hole nation
enjoys it ), though he did not m ake this square
with his desire to adjust rewards to capacities. H e
believed that the existence o f society depends on
the conservation o f the right o f property
But he
added that every society must decide for itself w hat
things could becom e objects o f private property and
on w hat conditions they m ight be h e ld ; for the
individual right o f property can be based only on
the com m on and general utility o f the exercise o f
this right a utility w hich m ay v a ry with the
period
N ot only is the priority o f the claims o f
society over those o f the individual once more
unequivocally asserted, but the idea o f historical
relativism is introduced to bar any absoluto right.
R ejection o f the feudal conception o f property as
the absolute right on w hich society rests is funda
m ental to Saint-Sim ons thought. T h e society o f
the future w ill be not a society o f proprietors but a
society o f producers.
A fter Saint-Sim ons death his disciples systematized his vague and inchoate pronouncements on this
question as on o th ers; and current opinin moved
more decisively along lines w hich he had dim ly adumbrated. Le Globe carried for some time at the head o f
each num ber a set o f aphorisms w hich were supposed
to sum up the essentials o f the masters te a ch in g ;
II
A ll social institutions should have as their aim the
moral, intellectual and physical improvement o f the
most numerous and poorest class.
All privileges of birh are abolished without exception.
From each according to his capacity, to each capacity
according to its works.
T h e Communist Manifest sets Saint-Sim on side by
side w ith Fourier and O w en as critical-U topian
Socialists , who attacked existing society on valid
grounds but prescribed U topian remedies. M ore
specifically, they are accused o f failing to appreciatc
the role o f the proletariat in the class struggle or to
countenance violent methods o f changing the estab
lished order. Y e t it is fair to recall Engelss handsom e
tribute though Saint-Sim on w ould not have liked
to be excluded from the scientific thinkers
nearly thirty years la t e r :
Germn theoretical Socialism will never forget that
it stands on the shoulders of Saint-Simon, Fourier and
Owen three thinkers who, however fantastic and
Utopian their teachings, belong to the great minds of
all times and by the intuition o f genius anticipated an
incalculable number o f the truths which we now demn
strate scientifically.
It was at the very end o f his life, and after the
failure o f an attem pt at suicide, that Saint-Sim on
w rote a book under the title Le Nouveau Christianisme,
w hich was the first o f several nineteenth-century
attempts to create a secular religin on a basis o f
Ghristian ethics. A t an early stage in his career,
w hile professing b elief in G od, he had declared that
12
Saint-Sim on:
T he Precursor
the idea o f G od cannot be em ployed in the physical

Sciences (in w hich the social Sciences were for
Saint-Sim on included), adding, however, a little
enigm atically that it is the best m ethod yet found
to m otvate high legislative decisions
This pragm atic basis was evidently not lacking in Le Nouveau
Christianisme, though it purported to be the expression
o f certain m oral absolutos, including the brotherhood o f man and the universal obligation to work.
T h e C ath olic system , Saint-Sim on had discovered, was in contradiction w ith the system o f
the Sciences and o f modern industry . Its downfall was inevitable. Saint-Sim ons am bition was
nothing less than to provide a substituto for it.
I t is not, however, quite fair to la y at SaintSim ons door all the absurdities afterwards perpetrated in his nam e b y the Saint-Sim onist sect. T h e
literary propagation o f his doctrines led to the
investment o f the master w ith a spurious halo o f
sanctity; and from this it was a short step to the
creation o f a church with priesthood and ritual and
o f a secular monastery at M nilm ontant, in the
suburbs o f Paris, in w hich forty o f the faithful at
one m oment secluded themselves. T h e high priest
o f the order, Enfantin, was a colourful and masterful
figure whose writings were admitted into the canon,
but whose unorthodox indulgences led to the dissolution o f the order b y the authorities.
A fter
serving a prison sentence Enfantin m igrated to
E gypt. B ut the sect survived for thirty or forty
years in France and had some follow ing even in
foreign countries, though in England it was soon. to
*3
be eclipsed b y the more sober and reputable ritual
o f Com te and the Positivists; and it is an odd irony
o f history that this posthumous apotheosis should
have aw aited one who strove so earnestly to establish
a secular science o f society.
*4
2
TH E
G O M M U N IST M ANIFESTO
1 H E winter o f 1847-48 (it is difficult to f i x a more
precise date for the celebration o f the centenary)

saw the birth o f one o f the capital documents o f the
nineteenth century the Gommunist Manifesto. In
the summer o f 1847 a group consisting m ainly o f
G erm n craftsmen in London held the first congress
o f a new Gommunist L eague
T h e y had been
in touch with M arx, then living in Brussels, for some
tim e ; and Engels attended the congress, w hich adjourned to a future congress the drafting o f a pro
gram m e for the League. Inspired b y this prospect,
Engels tried his hand and produced a catechism in
twenty-five questions, w hich M a rx and he took with
them to the second L eague congress in London at
the end o f N ovem ber.
T h e congress thereupon
charged M a rx and Engels to draft their program m e
for th e m : it was to take the form o f a manifesto.
M a rx w orked aw ay in Brussels through D ecem ber
and Jan u ary.
T h e M anifesto o f the Gommunist
Party was published in London in G erm n in
F ebruary 1848, a few days before the revolution
broke out in Paris.
T h e Gommunist Manifesto is divided into four parts.
15
T h e first reviews the rise o f the bourgeoisie on the
ruins o f the feudal system o f property relations,
governm ent and m orality which it destroyed ; shows
how the powerful and colossal productive forces
w hich the bourgeoisie itself created have now grown
to a point where they are no longer com patible with
bourgeois property relations and bourgeois suprema c y ; and finally demonstrates that the proletariat
is the new revolutionary class w hich can alone
master the forces o f modern industry and end the
exploitation o f m an by man. T h e second part
proclaim s the policy o f the Com m unist Party, as
the most progressive and resolute section o f the
working class o f all countries , to prom ote the
proletarian revolution w hich w ill destroy bourgeois
pow er and raise the proletariat to the position o f
the ruling class . T h e third part surveys and
condemns other recent and existing schools o f
socialism ; and the fourth is a b rief tactical postscript on the relations o f Comm unists to other leftw ing parties.
A historie docum ent like the Communist Manifesto
invites exam ination from the point o f view both o f
its antecedents and o f its consequences. O n the
former count the Manifest owes as m uch to prede
cessors and contem poraries as most great pronounce
ments ; and the worst that can be said is that M a rx s
sweeping denunciations o f predecessors and contem
poraries sometimes mask the nature o f the debt.
Babeuf, who also called his proclam ation a m ani
festo , had announced the final struggle between
rich and poor, between a tiny m inority and the
i6
T he
Communist M anifesto
huge m ajority
Blanqui had anticipated the class
interpretation o f history and the idea o f the dictator
ship o f the proletariat (the phrase was not used b y
M a rx him self till 1850). Lorenz von Stein had
written that the history o f freedom, society and
political order was essentially dependent on the
distribution o f econom ic goods am ong the classes o f
the population. Proudhon also knew that the laws
o f political econom y are the laws o f history and
measured the progress o f society b y the develop
ment o f industry and the perfection o f its instru
ments ; and Pecqueur had predicted that, w ith the
spread o f com m erce, the barriers between nation
and nation w ill be broken down until the d ay when
every m an becomes a citizen o f the world
Such
ideas were current coin in advanced circles when
M a rx wrote. But neither such borrowings, nor
M a rx s overriding debt to H egels immense synthesis,
detract from the pow er o f the conception presented
to the world in the Communist Manifesto.
T o -d a y it is more appropriate to study the famous
manifesto in the light o f its hundred-year influence
on posterity. T h o u gh written when M a rx was in his
thirtieth year and Engels two years younger, it
already contains the quintessence o f M arxism .
Beginning w ith a broad historical generalization
( the history o f all hitherto existing society is the
history o f class struggles ) and ending w ith an
inflam m atorv appeal to the workers o f all countries
to unite for the forcible overthrow o f all existing
social conditions , it presents M arxist m ethodology
in its fully developed form an interpretation o f
*7
history w hich is at the same time a cali to action.
Som e passages in M a rx s writings, especially at the
revolutionary criscs o f 1848 and 1871, appear to
com m end revolutionary action as a good thing in
itself. Som e passages, both earlier and later, appear
to dw ell on the iron laws o f historical developm ent
in such a w a y as to leave little place for the initiative
o f the hum an will. But these m om entary shifts o f
emphasis cannot be taken to im pair the dual ortho
doxy established by the Gommunist Manifest, where
interpretation and action, predestination and free
w ill, revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice
m arch trium phantly hand in hand. It propounds a
philosophy o f history, a dogm a o f revolution, belief
in w hich w ill take the spontaneous form o f appropri
ate action in the believer.
T h e Gommunist Manifesto is thus no broadsheet
for the hoardings or the hustings.
M arx and
m an y others w ho are not M arxists would deny
the possibility o f any rigid separation o f emotion and
in te lle ct; but using the terms in a popular sense,
it is to the intellect rather than to the emotions that
the Manifesto makes its prim ary appeal. T h e over
w helm ing impression w hich it leaves on the readers
mind is not so m uch that the revolution is desirable
(that, like the injustice o f capitalism in Das Kapital,
is taken for granted as som ething not requiring
argum ent) but that the revolution is inevitable. F or
successive generations o f M arxists the Manifesto was
not a plea for revolution that they did not need
but a prediction about the w a y in w hich the revolu
tion w ould inevitably happen com bined w ith a
18
T he
prescription for the action required o f revolution

aries to m ake it happen. T h e controversies o f a
hundred years ranged round the questions as to
w hat M arx actually said or m eant and how w hat
he said should be applied to conditions diverging
w idely from those o f his ow n time and place. O n ly
the bold offered openly to revise M a rx ; the
sagacious interpreted him. T h e Communist Manifesto
has thus rem ained a livin g docum ent. T h e centenary o f the Communist Manifesto cannot be cele
brated otherwise than in the light, and in the shadow,
o f the Russian revolution w hich was its culm inating
em bodim ent in history.
T h e Communist Manifesto sets out a coherent
scheme o f revolution. T h e history o f all hitherto
existing society is the history o f class struggles. In
modern times M a rx detects two such struggles
the struggle between feudalism and the bour
geoisie, ending in the victorious bourgeois revolution,
and the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat, destined to end in the victorious pro
letarian revolution. In the first struggle a nascent
proletariat is m obilized b y the bourgeoisie in support
o f bourgeois aims, but is incapable o f pursuing inde
pendent aims o f its own : every victory so obtained
is a victory for the bourgeoisie . In the second
struggle M a rx recognizes the presence o f the low er
m iddle class the small m anufacturer, the shopkceper, the artisan, the peasant w hich plays a
fluctuating role between bourgeoisie and prole
tariat, and a slum proletariat w hich is Hable
to sell itself to reactionary forces
But these
*9
com plications do not seriously affect the ordered
sim plicity o f the m ain pattern o f revolution.
T h e pattern had been fram ed in the light of
M a rx s reading in modern English and French
history and in the works o f French and British
economists, and o f Engelss study o f factory conditions
in E ngland.
T h e English bourgeois revolution,
w inning its victory in the seventeenth century, had
fully Consolidated itself by 1832.
T h e French
bourgeois revolution, more suddenly and dram atica lly trium phant after 1789, had succum bed to
reaction only to re-emerge once more in 1830. In
both countries the first revolutionary struggle o f the
m odern age, the struggle between feudalism and
bourgeoisie, was virtually o v e r; the stage was set
for the second struggle, between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
T h e events o f 1848, com ing hard on the heels of
the Aanifesto, did much to confirm its diagnosis and
nothing to refute it. In England the collapse of
Chartism was a set-back w hich none the less marked
a stage in the consolidation o f a class-conscious
workers m ovem ent.
In France the proletariat
m arched shoulder to shoulder w ith the bourgeoisie
in February 1848, as the Manifesto had said it would,
so long as the aim was to consoldate and extend
the bourgeois revolution. But once the proletariat
raised its own banner o f social revolution the line
was crossed. Bourgeoisie and proletariat, allies until
the bourgeois revolution had been com pleted and
m ade secure, were now divided on opposite sides o f
the barricades b y the cali for proletarian revolution.
20
The
Gommunist M anifesto
T h e first revolutionary struggle was thus o v e r : the

second was im pending. In Paris, in the June days
o f 1848, C avaign ac saved the bourgeoisie and staved
o ff the proletarian revolution by massacring, executing and transporting the class-conscious workers.
T h e pattern o f the Gommunist Manifesto had been pre
cisely followed. A s Professor N am ier, who is no
M arxist, puts i t : T h e working classes touched off,
and the m iddle classes cashed in on it .
The June revolution [as M arx wrote at the time] for
the first time split the whole o f society into two hostile
camps east and west Paris. The unity o f the February
revolution no longer exists. The February fighters are
now warring against each other something that has
never happened before; the former indifference has
vanished and every man capable o f bearing arms is
fighting on one side or other o f the barricades.
T h e events o f February and Ju n e 1848 had provided
a classic illustration o f the great g u lf fixcd between
bourgeois and proletarian revolutions.
Farther east the pattern o f England and France did
not fully apply, as the concluding section o f the Mani
festo adm itted almost by w ay o f an after-thought.
In G erm any the bourgeois revolution had not
yet begun. T h e G erm n bourgeoisie had not yet
won the fundam ental political rights w hich the
English bourgeoisie had achieved in i68g and
the French a hundred years later. T h e task o f the
G erm n proletariat was still therefore to support
the bourgeoisie in the first revolutionary struggle
against feudalism ; in G erm any, in the words o f the
Manifesto, the Gom m unist Party fights w ith the
21
bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary
m anner against the absolute m onarchy, the feudal
landlords and the petty bourgeoisie
But it could
not be argued that G erm any w ould sim ply follow the
same path as England and F rance at a greater or
less distance o f time. T h e G erm n revolution would
occur under the most advanced conditions o f European civilization w hich w ould give it a special
character. W here the proletariat was already so
advanced, thought M arx, the bourgeois revolution
can only be the im m ediate prelude to the pro
letarian revolution
W h en M a rx, in the b rief concluding section o f
the Manifest, devoted to Com m unist Party tactics,
thus announced the prospect in G erm any o f an
im m ediate transition from bourgeois to proletarian
revolution w ithout the intervening period o f bour
geois rule, he showed a keen historical perception,
even at the expense o f underm ining the valid ity o f
his own theoretical analysis. T h e events o f 1848
in the G erm n-speakin g lands confirm cd M arx's
intuition o f the impossibility in G erm any o f a period
o f established bourgeois suprem acy com parable with
that w hich has set so strong a m ark on English and
French history. T his im possibility was due not so
m uch to the strength o f the G erm n proletariat,
w hich M a rx perhaps exaggerated, as to the weakness
o f the G erm n bourgeoisie. W h atever the prospects
o f an eventual proletarian revolution in midnineteenth-century G erm any, the m aterial for a
bourgeois revolution such as England and France
had long ago achieved was still conspicuously absent.
22
The
Indeed, the bourgeoisie, far from bidding for pow er

for itself, was plainly ready to ally itself with the
surviving elements o f feudalism for defence against
the proletarian m enace. It need hard ly be added
that the same symptoms, in a still more pronounced
form, repeated themselves in Russia more than h a lf
a century afterwards.
T h e problem , therefore, w hich G erm any pre
sented in 1848 to the authors o f the Communist
Manifesto was the same w hich Russia w ould one
d a y present to the theorists o f her revolution.
A ccording to the revolutionary pattern o f the Com
munist Manifesto, the function o f the bourgeoisie was
to destroy feudal society root and branch preparatory to its own destruction in the final phase o f the
revolutionary struggle b y the proletariat. But w h at
was to happen i f the bourgeoisie through weakness
or cowardice or perhaps through some untim ely
prem onition o f its own eventual fate was unable or
unw illing to perform its essential function ? M a rx
never provided a categorical answer to this question.
B ut his answer was im plicit in the doctrine o f
perm anent revolution , w hich he propounded in
an address to the Com m unist L eague in 1850:
While the democratic petty bourgeoisie wants to end
the revolution as rapidly as possible . . . our interests
and our task consist in making the revolution permanent
until all the more or less possessing classes are removed
from authority, until the proletariat wins State power.
T h e responsibility was thus placed on the proletariat
to com plete the task, w hich the bourgeoisie had
failed to perform , o f liquidating feudalism.
23
W h at form the liquidation was to take when the
proletariat found itself directly confronted b y a
feudal society w ithout any effective and independent
bourgeoisie was not altogether clear. But i f one
insisted as M a rx apparently did, and Engels
continued to do down to the end o f his life that
our party can come to pow er only under some such
form as a dem ocratic republic , then the conclusin
followed that the im m ediate aim o f the proletariat
must be lim ited to the establishment o f a political
dem ocracy in w hich it was interested only as a
necessary stepping-stone to the proletarian social
revolution. T h is was, however, a theoretical con
struction unlikely to be realized in practice as the
experience o f both the G erm n and the Russian
revolutions was one d ay to show. M a rx never really
fitted his analysis o f revolution to countries where
the bourgeoisie was incapable o f m aking its own
revo lu tio n ; and acrimonious controversy about the
relation between bourgeois and proletarian revolu
tions continued to divide the Russian revolutionaries
for several decades.
T h e econom ic corollary o f this conclusin was
still more startling. I f the establishment o f a dem o
cratic republic was a prerequisite o f the proletarian
revolution, so also was the full developm ent o f
ca p ita lism ; for capitalism was the essential expression o f bourgeois society and inseparable from it.
M arx certainly held this view as late as 1859 when
he w rote in the preface to the Critique o f Political
Economy. N o social form perishes until all the
productivo forces for w hich it provides scopc have
24
T he
been developed
It appeared to follow, paradoxi
cally enough, that in backw ard countries the interest
o f the nascent proletariat was to prom ote the most
rapid developm ent o f capitalism and capitalist ex
ploitation at its own expense.
Such was the view seriously propounded by
Russian M arxists, Bolshevik and M enshevik alike,
down to 1905 perhaps even dow n to 1917.
M eanw hile, how ever, in the spring o f 1905, L en ins
practical m ind w orked out a new schem e under
w hich the proletariat was to seize pow er in conju n ctio n w ith the peasantry, creating a dem ocratic
dictatorship o f workers and peasan ts; and this
becam e the official doctrine o f the O cto b er revolu
tion. T h e M ensheviks stuck to their guns, and their
survivors and successors to-day attribute the short
comings o f the Russian revolution to its failure to
pass through the bourgeois-dem ocratic, bourgcoiscapitalist phase on its w a y to the achievem ent o f
socialism.
T h e issue is not to be settled by
reference to M arx, who can hard ly be acquitted o f
inconsistency on this point.
E ither he m ade a
mistake in suggesting, in the last section o f the
Communist Manifesto, that G erm an y m ight pass
im m ediately from the bourgeois to the proletarian
revo lu tio n ; or he failed to fit this new conception
into the revolutionary fram ework o f the earlier part
o f the Manifesto.
M arx was to encounter sim ilar difficulties in
applying the generalizations o f the Communist Mani
festo about nationalism, w hich were also based on
British and French experience, to central and eastern
25
I, F
M ESTR m C j
c.
H.
So :
G ' ':
u- F
H.
g
' 0 Te c A
E urope. T h e charge often brought against M a rx o f
ignoring or depreciating national sentiment rests
indeed on a misunderstanding. T h e famous remarle
th at the workers have no country , read in its
context, is neither a boast nor a p ro g ra m m e; it is a
com plaint w hich had long been a com m onplace
am ong socialist writers. B a b eu f had declared that
the m ultitude sees in society only an enem y, and
loses even the possibility o f having a country ; and
W eitlin g had connected the notion o f country w ith
th e notion o f p ro p e rty :
He alone has a country who is a property owner or
a t any rate has the liberty and the means o becoming
one. He who has not that, has no country.
In order to rem edy this State o f affairs (to quote
once m ore from the Manifesto) the proletariat
m ust first conquer political power, must rise to be
the dom inant class o f the nation, must constitute
itself the nation, so that the proletariat is so far
national itself, though not in the bourgeois sense .
T h e passage o f the Manifesto in w hich these
sentences occur is not free from am biguities. But
the thought behind it is clear. In M a rx s view,
w h ich corresponded to the facts o f English and
French history, nationalism grew up as an attribute
o f bourgeois society at a time when the bourgeoisie
was a revolutionary and progressive forc. Both in
England and in France the bourgeoisie, invoking
the national spirit to destroy a feudalism w hich was
at once particularist and cosm opolitan, had through
a period o f centuries built up a centralized State on
a6
T he
Gommunist M anifesto
a national basis, But the advance o f capitalism was

already m aking nations obsolete.
N ation al diffcrences and antagonism s are to -d ay
vanishing ever m ore and m ore w ith the developm ent o f
the bourgeoisie, free trade in the w orld m arket, the uniform ity o f industrial production and the conditions o f
life corresponding thereto.
W ith the victo ry o f the proletariat th ey w ill vanish
still faster. . . . W ith the disappearance o f classes
w ithin the nation the state o f enm ity betw een nations
w ill com e to an end.
H enee the first step was for the proletariat o f every

country to settle accounts w ith its ow n bour
geoisie . T h e w a y w ould then be open for a true
international communist order, L ike M azzin i and
other nineteenth-century thinkers, M a rx thought o f
nationalism as a natural stepping-stone to internationalism.
U nfortunately the national pattern o f the Mani
festo, far from being universal, proved difficult to
extend beyond the narrow limits o f the place
(western Europe) or the time (the age o f Gobden)
in w hich it was dcsigned. Beyond western Europe
the same conditions which preventcd the risc o f a
powerful bourgeoisie also prevented the developm ent
o f an orderly bourgeois nationalism. In central
E urope (the H apsburg Em pire, Prussia) as well as
in Russia the centralized State had been brought
into being under pressure o f m ilitary necessity by
feudal overlords indifferent to national fe elin g ; and
when in the nineteenth century, under the mpetus
o f the French revolution, nationalism becam e for
27
the first tim e a force to be reckoned w ith in central
and eastem Europe, it appeared not as in England
and France as an attribute and com plem ent o f
the State bu t as a sentiment independent o f any
existing State organization.
M oreover, the relation o f nation to State worked
itself out in different ways and sometimes involved
even the same national group in inconsistent attitudes. T his was particularly true o f the H apsburg
Em pire. T h e grow ing national consciousness o f the
G erm an-Austrian bourgeoisie did not diminish its
support o f im perial u n ity ; the bourgeoisie o f the
other constituent national groups sought to destroy
that unity or at least to dissolve it into a federation.
T h e H ungarians asserted the rights o f the M a g y ar
nation against the Germ an-Austrians, but denied
the national rights o f Croats and Slovaks.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that
M a rx and Engels never succeeded in w orking out,
even for their ow n d a y and generation, a consistent
theory o f nationalism w hich w ould hold good
throughout Europe.
T h e y supported the Polish
claim to national ind ep end ence; no revolutionary,
no liberal, o f the nineteenth century could have
done otherwise. But Engels, at an y rate, seemed
m ainly concem ed that this claim should be satisfied
at the expense o f Russia rather than o f Prssia,
proposing on one occasion to offer the Poles R ig a
and M itau in exchange for D an zig and E lb in g ;
and in the candid outburst o f a private letter to
M a rx he referred to the Poles as une nation foutue,
a serviceable instrument only until Russia herself is
28
T he
swept into the agrarian revolution , In the same

spirit he rejected outright the national aspirations
o f the Slavs o f the H apsburg Em pire, whose trium ph
would be, in his eyes, a subjugation o f the civilized
west b y the barbarie east
In these judgm ents, from w hich M a rx is not
known to have dissented, Engels was indubitably
swayed b y national prejudice and in particular by
hostility to R ussia as the most reactionary Pow er o f
the day. But he was also m oved b y the recognition
that these nationalisms o f central and eastern
Europe, whose econom ic basis was agrarian, had
little or nothing to do w ith the bourgeois nationalism
o f w hich M a rx and he had taken cognizance in the
Communist Manifesto. It was not only a question o f
the civilized west and the barbarie east : it
was a question o f the subjugation o f town b y the
country, o f trade, m anufacture and intelligence b y
the prim itive agriculture o f Slavonic serfs . O n
the presuppositions o f the Manifesto, this seemed
necessarily a retrograde step. T h e failure o f M a rx
and Engels to take account o f agrarian nationalism
was one aspect o f the other great lacuna o f the
Manifesto the question o f the peasant.
If) however, the theory o f nationalism propounded
in the Communist Manifesto could not be transplanted
from western to central and eastern Europe, it
equally failed to stand the test o f time. T h e Mani
festo contains indeed one reference to the exploita
tion o f one nation by another and declares, by
w hat seems a tautology in one sense and a non sequitur
in another, that it w ill end when the exploitation
29
o f one individual b y another ends. B ut M a rx has
little to say (nothing at all in the Manifesto itself)
about the colonial question, touching on it in detail
only in the case o f Ire la n d ; and here it is perhaps
significant that, w hile in 1848 he was prepared to
sacrifice the Irish in the same w a y as the Austrian
Slavs, he had becom e convinced b y 1869 that the
direct absolute interest o f the English working class
dem ands a rupture o f the present connexion w ith
Ireland
M a rx did not, however, live to see the
full developm ent o f the process b y w hich the great
nations, alread y victim s o f the contradictions o f
capitalism , vied w ith one another in bringing the
w hole world under their yoke in a desperate attem pt
to save.them selves and the capitalist system the
process w hich L enin was afterwards to analyse in
his famous w ork on Imperialism as the Highest Stage
o f Capitalism', nor could he foresee that rise to
national consciousness o f innum erable unhistorica l nations o f w hich the Austrian Slavs had been
the harbingers. T h e Soviet theory o f nationality,
in w hich the colonial question and the question o f
sm all nations divide the honours between them, can
derive only a pal and faltering light from the simple
and far-aw ay form ulation o f the Communist Manifesto.
B u t critics o f the national theories, w hether o f M arx
or o f the Bolsheviks, m ay do w ell to reflect that
bourgeois thinkers and statesmen have also not been
able to form late, and still less to apply, a consistent
doctrine o f national rights.
M a rx s attitude to the tiller o f the soil is m ore
seriously open to criticism. H ere too there is a
30
T he
foretaste o f subsequent controversy both the M en

sheviks and T rotsky w ere accused, rightly from
L en ins point o f view , o f underestim ating the
p e a sa n t; and here too M a rx ran into trouble
because his initial theories had been prim arily
fram ed to fit western conditions, T h e Communist
Manifesto praised the bourgeoisie for having, through
its developm ent o f factories and towns, delivered
a great part o f the population from the idiocy o f
country life ; and it classed peasant or peasant
proprietor w ith handicraftsm en, sm all traders and
shopkeepers as members o f the petty bourgeoisie
an unstable and reactionary class, since it struggled
against the greater bourgeoisie, not for revolutionary
ends, but only in order to m aintain its own bour
geois status.
In England, in F rance (which in
revolutionary circles was generally thought o f as
Paris w rit large) and in G erm any, the Communist
Manifesto upheld the strict pattern o f successive
revolutions o f w hich the bourgeoisie and the prole
tariat w ould be the respective d riving forces, and
reserved no independent place for the peasant,
Events were soon to show up the lacuna left b y
this scheme o f things even in western Europe. T h e
French peasants were unm oved when the revolu
tionary workers o f Paris were shot down in June 1848
b y the agents o f the bourgeoisie, and voted sohdly
for the bourgeois dictatorship o f Louis N apolen.
In fact they behaved exactly as the Communist
Manifesto expected them to behave (which did not
save them from incurring some o f M a rx s fiercest
invective in The Eighteenth Brumaire o f Louis Napolen);
d '
but in so doing they showed how far things would
h ave to travel before the French proletariat w ould
be able to m ake another French revolution.
In Prussia and throughout G erm any the revolu
tion o f 1848 was in the hands o f intellectuals who
thought as little o f the peasants as M a rx him self;
and the peasants failed to move. In A ustria the
peasants did move. T h e y rose in G alicia against
the landlords and w ould have risen elscwhere with
the right leadership. T h e y formed a large and
vocal group in the new dem ocratic Reichstag. But
the claim s o f the peasant cncountered the hostility
o f the bourgeoisie and the indiffcrence o f the urban
workers. Peasantry and proletariat were crushed
separately in the absence o f a leader and a pro
gram m e to unite th e m ; and in central Europe the
surest m oral o f 1848 was that no revolution could
succeed w hich did not w in the peasant and give a
high priority to his concerns.
In eastern Europe this was still more abundantly
clear.
A s regards Poland, even the Communist
Manifesto declared that the Com m unists support
the party that sees in agrarian revolution the means
to national freedom, the party w hich caused the
C racow insurrection o f 18 4 6 . But this passage,
which occurs in the tactical postscript, is the only
incursin o f the Manifesto into eastern Europe and
the only reference to agrarian revolution ; and even
here agrarian revolution is regarded as the ally o f a
bourgeois revolution leading to national freedom ,
not o f a proletarian revolution.
Spending the rest o f his years in E ngland, where
32
T he
there was no peasantry and no agrarian question,

M arx never felt any strong im pulse to fill this lacuna
in the Communist Manifesto. In 1856, draw in g a
m oral from the failure o f 1848 in G erm any, he
spoke casually o f the im portance o f backin g up the
future proletarian G erm n revolution w ith some
second edition o f the Peasants W a r , B ut even
here only a subsidiary role was assigned to the
peasantry. It was towards the end o f his life that
M a rx was called on to pass ju d g m en t on a contro
versy ju st opening in far-aw ay Russia. T h e leading
Russian revolutionaries, the Narodniks, regarded the
Russian peasant com m une w ith its system o f com m on
tenure o f land as the seed-bed o f the future Russian
Socialist order. O n the other hand, the first Russian
M arxists were already beginning to argue that the
w ay to socialism could only lie, in R ussia as else
where, through a developm ent o f capitalism and the
proletariat.
F our times did the M arx-E ngels partnership
attack this ticklish issue. In 1874, before the Russian
M arxists had raised their head, Engels had recog
nized the possibility in favourable conditions o f the
direct transformation o f the com m unal system into
a higher form , avoiding the interm ediate stage o f
individualized bourgeois property . In 1877, in
reply to an attack in a Russian jo u rn al, M a rx con
fined him self to a doubtful admission that Russia
had the finest chance w hich history ever presented
to a nation o f avoiding the up-and-downs o f the
capitalist o r d e r . In 1881 M a rx gave a more
positive response to a direct personal inquiry from
33
V e ra Z a s u lic h ; and in the follow ing year the last
and most authoritative pronouncem ent appeared in
the preface to a Russian translation o f the Communist
Manifesto, signed jo in tly by both its authors :
I f the Russian revolution is the signal for a workers
revolution in the west so that these complement each
other, then the contemporary Russian system of communal ownership can serve as the starting-point for a
Communist development.
Russian Social-D em ocrats o f a later generation, both
Bolshevik and M enshevik, looked askance at this
quasi-N arodnik deviation, and returned to the purer
theoretical pattern o f the Manifesto w ith its clear-cut
dialectic o f bourgeois and proletarian revolution s;
and Lenin himself, not less than the Mensheviks,
sternly m aintained the paradox that the further
developm ent o f capitalism in Russia was a necessary
prelude to social revolution. Nevertheless, Lenin,
like M a rx in his later years, recognized that no
revolution, and no revolutionary, in eastern Europe
could afford to ignore the peasant and his demands.
A fter 1905 and before and after 1917 the
Bolsheviks were obliged to devote an immense
am ount o f energy and controversy to the task o f
fitting the Russian peasant into the western form ulae
o f the Communist Manifesto.
Franz M ehring, M a rx s best and most sym pathetic biographer, remarks o f the Communist Manifesto
that in m any respects historical developm ent has
proceeded otherwise, and above all has proceeded
more slowly, than its authors expected . T his is
true o f the expectations o f the tw o young men who
34
T he
composed the Manifesto. B ut how far were these

expectations m odified? A s regards pace, M a rx in
later life certainly no longer believed in the imminence o f the proletarian revolution w ith all the eager
confidence o f 1848. B ut even the Manifesto in one
o f its more cautious passages had predicted tem po
rary successes follow ed b y set-backs and a slow process
o f grow ing unity am ong the workers before the
goal was achieved. M a rx carne, w ith advancing
years, to accept the necessity o f a long course o f
education for the proletariat in revolutionary prin
cip ies; and there is the fam ous obiter dictum in a
speech o f the 1870S, w h ich adm its that in certain
advanced countries the victory o f the proletariat
m ay be achieved w ithout revolutionary violence.
A s regards the schem e o f historical developm ent,
it w ould be difficult to prove that M arx, speaking
theoretically and ex cathedra, ever abandoned the
strict analysis o f revolution w hich he had worked
out in the Communist Manifesto. B ut he was not a
pure theorist. H e was w illy-nilly the leader o f a
political p a rty ; and it was w hen he found him self
com pelled to m ake pronouncements in this capacity
that he sometimes appeared to dergate from his
principies. T h us in the last section o f the Manifesto
itself he had already foreseen that in G erm an y the
bourgeois revolution w ould be the im m ediate
prelude o f the proletarian revolution, thus skipping
over the period o f bourgeois su p rem acy; in the
next few years he was draw n into some uncomfortable compromises and inconsistencies on the national
qu estio n ; and towards the end o f his life he was
35
constrained to adm it that a predom inantly peasant
country like Russia had the chance o f achieving the
social revolution without passing through the bour
geois capitahst phase at all, thus not m erely modifying but side-tracking altogether the revolutionary
analysis o f the Manifesto.
It is curious and significant o f the vitality o f
M a rx s thought to w atch how accurately this
evolution was repeated in the Russian SocialD em ocratic Party. Its first leaders Plekhanov and
A xelrod, L enin and M arto v accepted without
question the scheme o f the Gommunist Manifesto.
A fter 1903 the M ensheviks, rem aining consistent
w ith themselves and w ith the M arxist schem e, ended
in bankruptcy because they could find no w a y o f
applyin g it to Russian conditions. T h e more flexible
L enin took the scheme and brilliantly adapted it to
those co n d itio n s; and the adaptations w hich he
m ade followed in broad outline, though not in
every detail those w hich M a rx him self had admitted in his later years. T h e process can be justified.
M arxism was never oflered to the w orld as a static
body o f doctrine ; M a rx him self once confessed that
he was no M a r x is t; and the constant evolution o f
doctrine in response to changing conditions is itself
a canon o f M arxism .
It is on such grounds that the Russian revolution
can claim to be a legitm ate child o f the Gommunist
Manifesto.
T h e Manifesto challenged bourgeois
society and oflered a revaluation o f bourgeois vales.
T h e Bolshevik revolution, w ith all its deviations, alJ
its adaptations to specifically Russian conditions and
36
T he
all the impurities w hich always disfigure practice as

opposed to theory, has driven hom e the challenge
and sought to a p p ly the revaluation. T h a t bour
geois society has been put progressively on the
defensive in the past hundred years, that its fate
still hangs in the balance, few to-day w ill d e n y ; and
unt that fate is settled, until some new synthesis has
been achieved, the Communist Manifesto w ill not have
said its last word.
37
PROUDHON;
OF
ROBINSON
CRUSOE
SOCIALISM
A M A N o f paradoxes Proudhon called him self

JLx. in one o f his earliest extant letters in that
challenging, defiant m anner w hich is characteristic
o f his personality and o f his style. It was no em pty
boast. It is the same man w ho can proclaim that
G od is E vil and that Christianity has no ethic
and cannot have one , but that atheism is even
less logical than faith and that Catholicism is the
unique rcfuge o f m orality and beacon o f conscience .
It is the same m an who declared that he voted
against the constitution o f 1848 not because it was
a good or bad constitution, but because it was a
constitution, and who praised the V ien n a settlement
o f 18 14 -15 as the real starting-point o f the consti
tutional era in Europe . It is the same m an w ho
argued that w ar was irrelevant because it did nothing
to solve essential econom ic problems, but declared
that m an is above all else a w arrior anim al and
that it is through w ar that his sublim e nature
becomes manifest .
Proudhons writings are difficult o f access ow ing
both to their incoherence and to their enormous
38
Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

extent. Editors and publishers have, on the whole,
been kind, and most o f his m ajor works are readily
available, though a m am m oth com plete edition re
mains unfinished. T h e fourteen volum es o f the farfrom -com plete collection o f his correspondence have
been conveniently reduced for the ordinary reader
to a single volum e o f selections ; * but the mass has
received a fresh accretion from the recent publication
o f a series o f im portant and characteristic letters from
the last years o f his life to his friend Rolland.^
T h ere is thus am pie evidence that Proudhon has
retained his fascination for his countrym en, i f only
as a vast storehouse o f ideas from w hich nuggets o f
any quality and com plexin can be draw n. M an y
years ago Bougl, who remains the most satisfactory
o f a host o f commentators, neatly but inadequately
ticketed him as an analyst o f the social forces o f
revolution. T o -d a y a volum e o f carefully chosen
extracts from his works,* the tendency o f w hich is
indicated b y the interlarding o f the text w ith passages from Pguy and by a quotation from G eneral
de G au lle on the title-page, calis for a return to
Proudhon as the antidote to the poisons o f capital
ism, dem ocracy and socialism, and as the sym bol o f
a recall to religin. M eanw hile an ingenious A m eri
can professor, using m any o f the sam e texts and
taking the hint from a eulogy o f Proudhon w hich
appeared in the French collaborationist Press under
> P . J . P roudh on , Leltres choisies el annotes, p ar D an iel H a l v y
e t L ouis G uilloux.
* P . J . P roudh on , Leltres au citoyen Rolland.
P roudh on , Textes choisis, par A lexan d re M a rc.
39
the G erm n occupation, depicts him w ith skill and
plausibility as the first progenitor o f Hitlerism.*
M ore ju d icia l than either o f these, M lle. A m oudruz
has produced a scholarly m onograph ^ which, while
professedly confined to Proudhons views on Inter
national affairs, necessarily touches on the w ider
ground o f his w hole political creed.
T h e elem ent o f incoherence in Proudhon derives
largely from the character o f the m an. H e had a
passion for contradiction, and contradicted himself
alm ost as read ily as he contradicted others. Som etimes, especially in the letters, one suspects the
practical joker. W h en he explains his hostility to
the N orth in the A m erican civil w a r b y his dislike
o f so-called liberal and dem ocratic States he m ay
be nine-tenths serious (though that was not the
fundam ental reason for his attitude). W h en he adds,
J ai en horreur la lib e rt , he is manifestly putting
out his tongue a t his correspondent and at him
self. B ut there was in Proudhon a profound and
unresolved contradiction between revolutionary
opinions w h ich expressed, in part, at a n y rate, his
resentments against a cram ped, poverty-stricken
and persecuted life and the passion o f the selfeducated peasant for bourgeois respectability. H e
m ight, in theory, reject G hurch and State, authority
and property.
B ut anything that touched the
sanctity o f the fam ily aroused his instinctive fury.
I t was this th at led him into his last and most
* J . S clw y n Sch ap iro , F ierre Josep h P ro u d h on , H arb in ger o f
F ascb m {American Historical Review, V o l. L , N o . 4, J u ly 1945.)
* M ad clein e A m o u d ru z, Proudhon ti VEurope.
40

grotesque self-contradiction. T h e m an w ho had
started his career (and m ade his name) b y declaring
that property is theft, ended it b y denouncing a tax
on inheritance on the ground that it destroyed the
fam ily b y transferring its property to the State.
T h e question o f the influence o f the H egelian
doctrine o f thesis and antithesis in form ing Proudhons thought has been frequently canvassed. N o
thinker o f the d a y could escape H e g e l; and H erzen
tells a pleasant story o f Bakunin expounding to
Proudhon through the w hole o f one night, b y the
embers o f a d ying fire, the mysteries o f the H egelian
dialectic. Proudhon even w rote a long and com
plicated w ork entitled Systme des contradictions
conomiques ou philosophie de la misre, in w hich
he proved that the soundest econom ic principies
had the most evil consequences, though all led
ultim ately to the goal o f equality. B ut M arx, who
indited an angry retort entitled La Misre de la
philosophie, was probably right in alleging that
Proudhon never understood H egel. A superficial
d abblin g in the dialectic provided a respectable
cloak for the Proudhonian passion for paradox
but little more.
T h ere is, how ever, another element in Proudhons
self-contradiction w hich is missed b y those editors
and critics unfortunately, a m ajority o f them
w ho fail to place him against the rapidly changing
background o f his period. I mistrust an author
w ho pretends to be consistent w ith him self after
tw enty-five years interval , wrote P ro u d h o n ; and
the plea is incontestably valid for the generation
4*
(Proudhons dates are 1 8 0 9 -6 5 ) whose careers were
split in tw o b y the historical watershed o f 1848.
H is first prolific years as a w riter w ere passed am id
the generous revolutionary enthusiasms o f the 1840S
a period fertile in ideas so simple, so noble and
so U to p ian that it seems difficult to take them
seriously to-day, yet the seed-bed o f nearly all
p o litical thought for the rest o f the century. E very
thing that was radical and subversive in Proudhons
th ou gh t grew out o f this congenial soil. D estruam
e t A ed ificabo was the m otto w hich he prefixed to
one o f his early works. I t w ould have been repre
sentativo o f his attitude at this tim e i f he had been
content to plead, like Bakunin, that the passion
for destruction is also a Creative passion .
F o r the visionaries o f the 1840S, the year 1848
carne as a bitter disillusionment. T h e great u p
h eaval w hich was to com plete the w ork o f the French
R evo lu tio n and usher in the age o f social equality
and the brotherhood o f m an had ended, in the very
ca p ita l o f revolution, w ith the shooting dow n o f the
workers b y C av aig n a c am id the approbation of
th e self-satisfied bourgeoisie and its representative
assembly. T h e split had com e betw een the m iddle
class and the workers, betw een bourgeois dem ocracy
and social dem ocracy , alias Com m unism . T his
was the lesson and the consequence o f 1848. M a rx
drew the necessary conclusin and invented the
doctrines o f the dictatorship o f the proletariat
and perm anent revolution .
T h e proletariat
m ust now take matters into their ow n hands and
b rin g to full fruition the revolution w h ich the bour42

geoisie had failed to consum m ate. From this tim e
forward the bourgeoisie becam e the target o f all the
worst insults o f the revolutionaries. T h e revolt
against bourgeois dem ocracy, due to the disillusionments o f 1848 and after, still determ ined the antipolitical bias o f the French syndicalist m ovem ent
fifty years later.
T h e rcaction against 1848, intersecting the
U topian idcalism o f his earlier years, governed the
self-frustrating course o f all Proudhons subsequent
thought. L ike M a rx, he turned violently against
bourgeois dem ocracy, and pursued its leaders into
exile Louis Blanc, L ed ru-R ollin and the rest
w ith some o f his most venom ous sallies. D em oracy , he writes in La Solution du probUme social,
composes its ruling class {son patriciat) o f m ediocrities. Pages m ight be filled w ith argum ents
or sheer abuse from his later writings against
universal suffrage, the surest means o f m aking the
people lie , A n extract from Les Confessions d'un rvolutionnaire echoes precisely the fam iliar M arxist th esis:
H o w could universal suTrage reveal the thought, the
real thought, o f the people, w hen the people is divided
b y ineq uality o f fortunes into elasses subordinate one to
the other and vo tin g either through servility or through
h a te ; w hen this sam e people, held in restraint b y authority,
is in cap able notw ithstanding its sovereignty o f expressing
its ideas on a n y th in g ; and w hen the exercise o f its rights
is lim itcd to choosing, every three or four years, its chiefs
and its impostors ?
But M a rx was, after all, right in describing

Proudhon as a petit bourgeois-, and he had all the
43
petit bourgeois fear of, and contem pt for, the pro
letariat (a notew orthy anticipation here o f the ideo
lo gical foundations o f N ational Socialism ). Picking
up Saint-Sim ons form ula o f la classe la plus
nom breuse et la plus pauvre , he declared that
this class is, b y the very fact o f its poverty, the
most ungrateful, the most envious, the most im m oral
and the most cow ard ly ; and later he was to speak
the stupidity o f the proletariat content to work,
to hunger and to serve, provided its princes grow
fat and glorious .
F o r Proudhon, therefore, there was no escape
after 1848, as there was for M arx, into the ideology
o f the proletariat as the bearer o f the revolutionary
faith. Proudhon becam e a revolutionary w ithout
a party, w ithout a class, w ithout a creed, the
Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism , as T rotsky called
h im ; and the position suited, and intensified, the
w ayw ard individualism o f his tem peram ent. T h e
most significant analogies that can be found for his
developm ent are the Russian revolutionaries, H erzen
and Bakunin. Several curious letters to H erzen
appear in Proudhons correspondence o f the eighteenfifties. L ike him , H erzen had lost faith in western
dem ocracy w ithout acquiring faith in the pro
le ta ria t; and after 1855 H erzen sought to build his
hopes short-lived, indeed on the liberal aspirations o f the young T sa r A lexan d er II. M eanw hile
Bakunin had w ritten from a R ussian prison his
famous Confessions to N icholas I ; and in Siberia he
toyed w ith the potentialities o f enlightened despotism in the person o f the G overnor-G eneral,
44

M uraviev. I t can hard ly be m ere coincidence that
Proudhon should have follow ed the same path. His
one contact w ith the Legitim ists perm its o f a fairly
innocent explanation, w hich is given at length in
one o f the new ly published letters to R o llan d . B ut
his enthusiastic w elcom e o f the coup d'tat o f D ecem
ber 2, 1 8 5 1 , as the em bodim ent o f social revolution,
his appeal to all republicans and socialists to rally
to the banner o f the Prince-President, and his
subsequent flirtations w ith the Second E m pire
punctuated, after Proudhons usual m anner, b y
periods o f vituperation cannot be so ligh tly dismissed. These political rom antics o f the 1840S,
nourished on visions o f a better w orld o f the future,
but disillusioned after 1848 both about the means o f
attaining this better w orld and about the hum an
beings w ho were to inhabit it, strayed along some
strange by-w ays in the attem pt to recapture their
lost ideal.
Such were the conditions in w hich Proudhon
becam e the founder o f the political doctrine o f
anarchism , i f anything so inchoate as anarchism
not a program m e, it has been ap tly said, but a
critique o f society can be held to constitute a
doctrine, and i f so radical an iconoclast as Proudhon
can be said to have founded anything. In the
theory o f anarchism Proudhon had W illiam G odw in
for his ancestor; in its practical ad vocacy he was
preceded b y W ilhelm W eitling, the w andering
tailor from M agd eburg who, though only a few
years older than Proudhon, started his missionary
career at an earlier age. But it was Proudhon w ho
45
first gave anarchism its place and its influence
in nineteenth-century though t; for Bakunin, who
m ight have ranked as a co-founder, gallantly
aw arded him the priority. Proudhon and Bakunin
stand side b y side as men who seem to have believed
in revolution as a good in itself (though Proudhon,
as usual, sometimes denounced even revolution),
and felt it unnecessary, perhaps because they felt
themselves unable, to fiirnish any positive definition
o f their goal. In this respect the successor who
stands nearest to them is the syndicalist Sorel, who
held that the business o f doctrine is to provide an
appropriate m yth, whether true or not, to inspire
and stim ulate the forces o f revolution.
Y et, notwithstanding all that has been said and
righ tly said about the self-contradictions o f
Proudhon and about the mood o f frustration and
disillusionm ent in w hich his teaching was rooted,
the immense impression w hich he m ade on his
contem poraries and on posterity bears witness to the
vitality and sincerity o f his thought. H e gave to
nineteenth-century political thinkers and political
program m e-m akers som ething w hich they needed
and w hich they greedily devoured.
O u t o f the
w elter o f Proudhons writings there rem ain two fixed
points round w hich he gravitates and to w hich he
returns again and again w ith all his wonted pertin acity and w ith an unw onted consistency. These are
his rejection o f the State and o f political pow er as a
principie o f evil, and his ad vocacy o f federalism
(w hatever precisely th at m ight m ean) as a form of
com m on organization for social and national groups.
46

T h e conception o f political pow er as a necessary
evil called into existence b y m ans sinful nature is
rooted in the Christian tra d itio n ; and the belief in
an era o f prim itive bliss before the form ation o f
States is common, am ong other thinkers, to Rousseau
and Engels.
But nineteenth-century anarchism ,
which first received form and content from Proudhon,
is no mere visin o f a golden age in the past or in the
future. It is a creed o f active rebellion against the
State, w hich it seeks to destroy, i f necessary by forc.
Proudhon begins in 1847 b y dem anding la R publique, anarchie positive ; and in the last year o f
his life he defines anarchy more concretely as
a form o f governm ent or constitution in w h ich the public
and private conscience, formed b y the developm ent o f
Science and right, is sufficient by itself for the m aintenance o f order and the guarantee o f all liberties, and
where consequently the principie o f authority, plice
institutions, the m eans o f prevention or repression,
bureaucracy, taxation, etc., are reduced to their simplest
e.xpression.
Between these dates Proudhons pages pullulate w ith

denunciations o f the State.
It is the consti
tutional m uzzling o f the people, the legal alienation
o f its thoughts and its initiative . It is that
fictitious being, w ithout intelligence, without passion,
without m orality, w hich we cali the State ; and
w hoever lays hands on me to govern me is a
usurper and a tyrant . Proudhon rejects altogether
this. fatal theory o f the com petence o f the State .
But w hat is to be put into the void thus created ?
Proudhon has two answers to this question. T h e
47
first derives from a fruitful inspiration o f that queer
genius Saint-Sim on. H ere was a man w ho was not an
anarchist but to use an anachronistic piece o f
ja rg o n a technocrat, believing that les indus
trieis (by w hich he m eant all concem ed in the
productive or distributive processes) w ere destined
to control the State, that political pow er w ould be
succeeded b y econom ic pow er and governm ent
be replaced b y adm inistration
In a phrase
apparently not used b y Saint-Sim on himself, but b y
his disciples, the State w ould becom e an association o f workers
T his visin, like A uguste
C o m tes surrealist plan for the m anagem ent o f
the hum an planet b y 14,000 bankers, seemed
to presage the eventual elim ination o f the S ta te ;
an d it had the fortune to be adopted b y both
Proudhon and Engels, b y both syndicalists and
Bolsheviks. Proudhon attem pted to give shape to
the tem pting prospect b y outlining a scheme for a
free credit bank based on the principie o f m utualism ; but neither contem poraries nor posterity
have been induced to treat this seriously. I t is only
necessary to record on Proudhons b eh a lf this further
claim to originality as one o f the first crank financial
reformers.
Proudhons second answer, given in the last w ork
published in his lifetime, w hich he called D u principe
fdrateur et de la ncessit de reconstituer le parti de la
Rvolution, is that sovereignty rests w ith the com
m u n e the local unit w hich has, in Proudhons
eyes, as natural a basis as the fam ily. T his unit he
w ould allow to govern itself, to im pose taxes on
48

itself and perhaps even to legislate for itself. I f
D r. Thom son, in his book on Democracy in France,
is right in describing the French political ideal as
ranging from an extrem e individualism w h ich is
tantam ount to anarchism to a respect for sm all and
intense hum an communities w h ich are bu t the
individual w rit large , then Proudhon was the very
em bodim ent o f the French ideal.
T h e Pars Com m une reflected Proudhons ideas
and term in ology; and the anarchists continued to
uphold the tradition o f the sm all com m unity.
Bakunin thought in terms o f the Russian peasant
com m une, K ropotkin o f the village com m unity o f
the M id d le A ges. Anarchism thus becam e a protest
against the mass civilization o f the industrial age. Its
strength la y am ong the small craftsmen in countries
w here large-scale industry had not yet m ade im
portant inroads in Italy, in France, and above all,
in Spain. In the First International it was the dele
gates from the L atin countries w ho were Proudhonists or Bakuninists and a constant thorn in
M a rx s side. M a rx and the M arxists were, on the
whole, right in affixing to anarchism and anarchosyndicalism w h at was to them the derogatory petit
bourgeois label.
I f the com m une bears the w eight o f Proudhons
protest against the centralized State, it also opens
the w ay to his other principie federalism. H e
predicted that the twentieth century w ould be the
age o f federations. W h at precisely he m eant b y the
term remains more than ordinarily vague. Bakunin
regarded a free federation o f communes as the
49
only legitm ate form o f political organization.
Proudhon, w ith his usual inconsistency, took existing
States as his starting-point and approached the issue
from the angle o f current international affairs. H e
w anted federation as the basis o f relations between
States. But he perceived that one o f the difficulties
was the existing inequality between Slates, and
thought that this, too, m ight be got over b y the
application o f the federal principie, nam ely, b y an
interior distribution o f sovereignty and govern
m ent . Federalism , in both senses, was the alpha
and om ega o f m y policy
H ere it becomes necessary to say something on
the vexed question o f Proudhons attitude to nationality and nationalism. In his earlier life he was
influenced b y the ffam ing patriotism o f M ichelet.
But he afterwards reacted strongly both against the
m an and against his work, and denounced the
fashionable ad vocacy o f self-determ ination and o f
the rights o f nations to unity and independence.
T hose who speak so m uch o f re-establishing these
national unities , he wrote w ith a certain am ount
o f prescience, have little taste for individual
liberties. T h e South in the A m erican civil w ar
had his enthusiastic support against the N orth
because the Southerners were federalists seeking
to break up an artificial U nion.
A lone am ong
advanced thinkers o f the period, Proudhon was
bitterly opposed both to the liberation o f Poland
and to the unification o f Italy. Poland has always
been the most corrupt o f aristocracies and the
most indisciplined o f states ; w h at she needs is a
50
I. F C. H.
l!. F R, . K.
05-vi'tme*r,w ti? C t n ca * f ocni
MESTRAGO Oc SOCiOLGEiA 6
B I Lj L 5 C T f ^
PO lifrC A

radical revolution w hich w ill abolish, w ith the
great States, all distinctions o f nationality, w hich w ill
henceforth have no foundation
A s for the
present em ancipation o f Ita ly b y the Gavours, the
Victor-Em m anuels, the Bonapartes, the SaintSimonians, the Jews, the G aribaldis and the M azzinis (a characteristic Proudhonian catalogue o f
anathem as), it is nothing but a hideous mystification
W ritin g in 1861, Proudhon breaks a lance
w ith H erzen on the su b je ct:
D o yo u suppose that it is through French egoism,
hatred o f liberty, or contem pt for the Poles and Italians
that I despise an d distrust this com m onplace o f nationality
w h ich is go in g the rounds and m akes so m an y rascals
and so m an y honest m en talk so m uch nonsense ? For
heaven s sake, m y dear Bell [the nam e o f H erzens
jo u rn al], d o n t be so touchy.
O therw ise I shall be
obliged to say o f y o u w h at I said six m onths ago o f your
friend G a r ib a ld i: great heart, b u t no head. . . . D o n t
talk to U S o f these reconstitutions o f nationalities w hich
are at bottom pur retrogression and, in their present
form, a p la yth in g used b y a p a rty o f intriguers to divert
attention from the social revolution.
Y e t the charge o f French egoism w hich

H erzen had evidently brought against him is not
altogether etisy to refute. Proudhons applications
o f his principies, i f not the principies themselves, are
always cap ricio u s; and his applications o f the federal
principie are not above suspicion. Proudhon had
as large a measure as most Frenchm en o f local
patriotism : to the end o f his days he liked to remember, and to rem ind the world, that he was a FrancCom tois. But the suggestion o f distributing French
3*
sovereignty in the nam e o f federalism does not occur
to him . O n the contrary, Proudhon sometimes gave
offence to foreigners - including his Belgian hosts
during his period o f exile in Brusscls b y speaking
too freely o f the advantagc o f federation between
F rance and her smaller neighbours. His desire to
prevent the unification o f Italy and to bring about
the federalization o f A ustria-H ungary f tted in too
com fortably w ith French national inttv'sts and
French national prejudices to inspire une le confidencc in the objectivity o f his argum ent.
T h e case o f Poland is less straightforward. It
w ould be unfair to doubt the sincerity o f Proudhons
conviction that an independent Poland would be a
bulw ark o f opposition to the social revolution.
Poland has never had anything to offer the world
bu t her Catholicism and her aristocracy. H e can
hard ly have foreseen Russias future role as an ally
o f F ra n ce; for he died without having become
conscious o f the m enacing prospcct o f G erm n unity.
B ut he had an illogically persistent sym pathy for
Russia, whicr. m ay perhaps be explained b y his
tem peram ental leaning towards autocracy or b y a
com m on hatred o f dem ocratic liberalism .
Be that as it m ay, and even if one dismisses as a
passing aberration, or explains aw ay as a confusin
o f thought, his panegyric on w ar in La Giierre et la
paix, a disconcerting streak o f self-assertive national
ism is constantly getting in the w a y o f Proudhons
federalism. T h o u gh an enem y o f the State, one
whose loyalties should in theory have been bounded
b y the limits o f his own Franche-Com t, Proudhon
52

was a good French patriot. H e was one o f the first
socialists to illustrate in his person the impossibility,
at an y rate in western Europe, o f a consistenty
international socialism.
M a rx constantly complained o f the national prejudices o f the English
trade unionists and the French Proudhonists in the
First In tern ation al; and in G erm any Lassalle had
already laid the foundations o f a G erm n national
socialism. A ll m y faith, all m y hope, all m y love ,
wrote Proudhon, are in L iberty and la Patrie ; and
there is a paean o f praise addressed to la patrie,
patrie franaise, patrie de la libert , w h ich must
not be exposed to the ordeal o f translation, but goes
far to explain w h y Proudhon has had admirers on
the extrem e R ig h t o f French politics as w ell as on
the extrem e L e f t :
Commence ta nouvelle vie, la premlre des imrnortelles; montre-toi dans ta beaut, Vnus U ranie;
rpands tes parfums, fleur de rhumanit !
Et rhumanit sera rajeunie, et son unit sera cre
par t o i: car lunit du genre humain, cest lunit de
ma patrie, comme l esprit du genre humain nest que
l esprit de ma patrie.
I t is a sobering thought that these words were
penned to celbrate Louis N apoleons coup d'tat
w hich extinguished the Second R epublic.
It is as difficult to assess the influence o f Proudhon
as to define the content o f his thought. H e poured
out ideas in an unceasing flo w ; m any o f them were
original, m any o f them were silly, some o f them were
brilliantly inspired. T h o u gh he had disciples, he
cannot be said to have founded a sch ool; for
53
anarchism is, in Burkes phrase, the dissidence o f
dissent , and is, in its nature, recalcitrant to the idea
o f a school. Bakunin com m itted the superficial
inconsistency o f com bining anarchist doctrine with
the fruitful idea o f a conspiratorial party, highly
organized and disciplined from a b o v e ; and from
that mom ent anarchism and terrorism carne to be
associated in the public mind. T his com bination
was perhaps defensible so long as the targets o f
attack were the agents o f the detested State. But,
later on, the anarchists in the Spanish civil w ar were
to prove ju st as ruthless as other parties in their
denial o f liberty to any political opinin other than
their own, nnd ju st as confident o f their right and
duty to elim inate opponents w ith the knife or the
bullet. A s Dostoevsky once said, the end o f unlim ited liberty is unlim ited despotism.
Y e t it was not so m uch this inner inconsistency
as the w hole social and industrial developm ent o f
the period w hich condem ned anarchism to sterility.
N ineteenth-century anarchism was the philosophy
o f the isolated intellectual or o f the sm all group,
peasant or artisan, not o f the industrial masses. A t
its best it was a noble and salutary protest against
the centralizing and standardizing tendencies o f
mass civilization w ith its progressive encroachm ents
on individual freedom and individual eccentricity.
A t its worst it was a futile and aimless quest for
desperate remedies against symptoms w hich it failed
to diagnose or understand. Both these elements,
nobility and futility alike, were present in Proudhons
career and in Proudhons thought. In the history
54
r
o f ideas, as in his ow n life, Proudhon remains a
lonely figure an isolated eccentric. His visin o f
a world o f independent self-assertive individuais,
each seeking and striving in perfect liberty to realize
his own conception o f justice, belonged to an age
which was rapidly passing aw ay. T h e big battalions
o f the industrial revolution were on the side o f M arx.
55
HERZEN: AN
IN TELLECTU A L
R E V O LU TIO N A R Y
A L E X A N D E R H E R Z E N claim s attcntion in m any

j T x capacities. H e is not one o f the m ajor figures
o f w orld literature, but certainly a distinguished
m inor figure one o f the select com pany o f diarists
and m em oir writers who continue to be read long
after their own tim e. His autobiography and the
abundant store o f his surviving correspondence reveal
him as a slightly incongruous and uncom fortable
m em ber o f the generation o f nineteenth-century
rom antics w ho worshipped at the shrine o f G eorge
Sand. But his m ain title to fam e must be as a
publicist in the broad sense, a significant figure in
the developm ent both o f Russian and o f European
political thought, a link between western Europe and
the Russian revolution. T h o u gh he foreshadowed
m uch that was to come, H erzen him self rem ained
essentially a nineteenth-century intellectual. Born in
M oscow in the yea r o f N apolen F s invasin o f
Russia, he died in Pars in the year o f N apolen I IF s
downfall. T h e dividing-line in his life was the year
1847, when he left Russia w ith his fam ily, never to
return. T h e dividing-line in his thought, as in that
56
H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

o f so m any o f his contem poraries, was the year o f
revolution, 1848,
H erzen was the illegitim ate son o f a Russian
aristocrat and a bourgeois G erm n mother, though
his upbringing was less unconventional than the
bare statement o f his origin suggests. From his
mother he m ay have derived his understanding o f
western thought and idiom . H e remains the most
western and in m any respects, notwithstanding his
detestation o f the western bourgeoisie, the most
bourgeois o f distinguished Russian writers.
His
paternal origin m ade him the first and most distin
guished representative o f the class known in Russian
revolutionary history as the conscience-stricken
gentry . H erzen was thirteen at the time o f the
so-called Decem brist conspiracy the first
chapter in the long story o f revolutionary m ove
ments in nineteenth-century Russia. T h e work o f a
handful o f officers and small land-owners, it was
crushed w ithout difficulty and five o f the ringleaders
were executed. H erzen relates how, when the news
o f the execution reached M oscow, he stood w ith his
friend N ick O garev, two years his jun ior, on Sparrow
Hills, and the pair swore to devote their lives to
the cause in w hich the Decembrists had suffered.
N ot every oath taken b y schoolboys has been so
accurately fulfilled.
A lexan d er H erzens father, like most Russian
aristocrats o f his day, was a good V oltairean , a
rationalist in the French eighteenth-century m ould.
A lexander kept throughout life the strong stamp
o f his fathers influence. H e continued to profess
57
him self a rationalist, even a c y n ic ; and the profession was perfectly sincere. But this stratum was
overlaid in him b y a characteristic nineteenthcentury vein o f sentimental romanticism , both
personal and political. T his dual Outlook m ade him
a com plex character. H e was incapable o f those
straightforward enthusiasms w hich carne so naturally
and easily to his friend O garev or to Bakunin. H e
was capable though he never quite recognized it
h im self o f a naive political romanticism . But the
approach to it always la y through disillusionment
w ith current re ality ; and w ith H erzen the dis
illusionment generally seemed stronger than the
belief. T h e history o f his developm ent m ay be read
as a series o f disillusionments.
T h e first o f these disillusionments was w ith
the Russia o f Nicholas I. W hen H erzen entered
the U niversity o f M oscow in 1829 the dreary and
iron-handed repression o f N icholass regim e was at
its height, and the university was one o f the few
places where hot-headed and intelligent young men
still found an opportunity to indulge in dangerous
thoughts. A dvanced circles am ong the students fell
into two groups those who drew their revolution
a ry sustenance from G erm n metaphysics and the
teachings o f H egel, and those w ho sat at the
feet o f French political thinkers from Rousseau
to the U topian Socialists. H erzen, though he afterwards coined the famous aphorism w hich described
H egel as the algebra o f revolution , was never
a good H egelian. T h e political influences that
m ouldcd him were predom inantly F r e n c h : he
58

was the political offspring o f the ideas o f 1789.
These ideas m ade young H erzen a political
radical rather than a social reform er. It was the
political oppression o f the regim e o f N icholas I, not
the incqualities o f the social and cconom ic system,
whieh shocked and disillusioned him and led him
to idealize the liberal institutions o f the west. From
the vantage ground o f M oscow it was not so difficult
to sce in the bourgeois m onarchy o f Louis-Philippe
an exem plar o f freedom and dem ocracy. H erzens
disillusionment w ith his nativc land was com pleted
when the Tsarist plice pounced on the group o f
politically m inded students o f w hich he was a
m em ber and expelled them from the universi y and
from M oscow. H e spent the next three years in
the provincial town o f V lad im ir. It was during this
time that he m arried his first cousin N atalie, the
illegitim atc child o f one o f his fathers brothers.
T h ro u gh his fathers influence, A lexan d er was
evcntually rcinstated in the favour o f the authorities
and obtained a post in the M inistry o f the Interior.
But his politieal inclinations and freedom o f speech
again proved his undoing. In 1841 he was dismissed
from his post and exiled from the capital for a year
this time to N ovgorod. This experience was H erzens
final break w ith Russian reality. In 1846 his fathers
death left him the possessor o f an am pie fortune.
In Jan u ary 1847 he collected his wifc and three
children, his m other and several nurses, retainers
and dependants a party o f thirteen in all and
left M oscow for Paris.
H e travelled as fast as two post-chaises carryin g
59
thirteen people could be expected to travel, and was
in Paris b y the m iddle o f M arch, after seven weeks
on the road. T h e spirit o f 1789 lived on in the Paris
o f Louis-Philippe. It was still the home o f revolution
and the M ecca o f advanced political thinkers from
all over E u ro p e ; it played m uch the same role as
M oscow played in the 1920S and 1930S for the intel
lectuals o f western Europe. H erzen has left in his
memoirs an account o f his emotions when he first
stood on this holy ground :
We had been accustomed to connect the word Paris
with memories of the great events, the great masses, the
great men of 1789 and 1793, memories o f a colossal
struggle for an idea, for rights, for human dignity. . . .
The name o f Paris was closely bound up with all the
noblest enthusiasms of contemporary humanity.
I
entered it with reverence, as men used to enter Jerusalem
and Rome.
It was the first, and not the last, enthusiasm in
H erzens career bred b y rejection o f a repellent
reality.
It did not take H erzen m any weeks to becom e
disillusioned w ith the bourgeois m onarchy. In the
place o f revolution aiy ardour and passion for liberty
he found in it only a seventeen-year-old creed o f
crude egoism, o f the unclean worship o f m aterial
gain and tranquillity . Even before leaving Russia
he had described the m ercantilism and industrialism o f western Europe as a syphilitic growth
infecting the blood and bone o f so ciety . T here
was now an open clash between the spacious tradi
tions o f Russian life as lived by the well-to-do Russian
60

gentry and the narrow, com m ercial, self-seeking
habits o f the liberal bourgeoisie; and this clash cut
right across the neat picture w hich H erzen brought
with him in his m ind o f western freedom as the
antithesis o f Russian despotism.
I t was at this
moment o f his first contact w ith the west that
H erzen conceived that hatred and contem pt o f
bourgeois dem ocracy w hich played so capital a
part not only in his own developm ent, but in
the whole developm ent o f Russian revolutionary
thought.
But it was the revolution o f 1848 w hich finally
shaped H erzens political course. H e was in Ita ly
when it b e g a n ; and the despair o f the past tw elve
months gave w a y to a short-lived mood o f enthusi
asm. B y the time he got back to Paris early in M ay,
however, the laurels o f the revolution were already
bedraggled.
O n M a y 15 a dem onstration o f
workers at the H tel-de-V ille was dispersed and its
leaders, including Blanqui and Barbs, arrested.
F rance , com m ented H erzen bitterly, is already
asking for slavery. L ib erty is burdensom e.
He
was the first observer to diagnose that strange
political m alad y w hich E rich From m has analysed
under the title The Fear o f Freedom and described as
the psychological foundation o f Fascism.
It is
significant that the country in w hich H erzen
diagnosed it was on the w a y to w h at m ay w ell be
called the first Fascist dictatorship the em pire o f
N apolen II I .
O n June 23 riots occurred in Paris. T h e
Assem bly proclaim ed m artial law , and C avaign ac
61
crushed the workers.
T h e sequel provoked the
most famous passage in H erzens m em oirs:
O n the evcning o f June 26, after the victory over Pars,
we heard regular volleys at short intervals. . . . We
all looked at one another, our faces were green, . . .
Those are the cxecution squads we said with one
voice and turned away from one another. I pressed my
forehead to the window-pane and was silent: such
minutes descrve ten years o f hate, a life-time o f vengeance.
T h e year 1848 was the dividing-line in more than
H erzens life and thought. It was the moment
w hen the bourgeoisie, having, in alliance w ith the
nascent proletariat, got w hat it wanted, turned in
fear against its allies, and passed over from the
revolutionary to the conservative side o f the barrcades. It was the same story w hich was repeated,
though w ith a different ending, in that other
F ebru ary revolution o f 1917.
T his was the turning-point w hich was responsible
for H erzens last great political disillusionment and
last great act o f faith. A fter 1848 he shed altogether
his belief in the political institutions o f the west.
D em ocratic liberties w ere a sham, universal suffrage
a trck to deceive and cajole the masses. W estern
society was rotten to the core. T h e last word o
civilization , he w rote to M azzin i, is revolution.
So far H erzen, after 1848, followed the same road
as M arx, Proudhon and Bakunin. A ll four shared
the same attitude towards bourgeois d em o cracy;
none o f them had a n y words for it other than those
o f hatred or contem pt.
62

But w h at was to fill the void ? H erzen, com ing
from a country w here industry scarcely yet existed,
could not take refuge w ith M a rx in an all-sufficient
and all-conquering faith in the proletariat. H e was
too rational and too criticai, too orderly and too
sensible, to travel the anarchist path w ith Proudhon
and Bakunin. H e could thus find no positive hope,
and fell into a mood o f sincere, though rather
m elodram atic, despair o f civilization. H e reverted
to his discovery that men do not really w ant freedom,
and offered a pungent com m ent on Rousseaus
dictum that m an is born to be free and he is
every where in chains :
W hat would you say to a man who sadiy shook his
head and remarked that fishes are born to fly and yet
they eternally swim ?
These were the years o f H erzens bitterest and
profoundest disillusionment. T h e y coincided w ith
the years o f his great personal traged y the unfaithfulness o f his wife, the quarrel w ith H erw egh,
the death o f his wife the period o f storm and stress
w hich ended only w ith his m igration to E ngland in
the summer o f 1852.
But, though capable o f
nursing a rom antic m elancholy, he still needed a
rom antic faith in the future. In a visin w hich a
century later has a prophetic ring he saw the torch
o f civilization being taken over b y tw o yo u n g
n a tio n s:
I do not believe that the destinies o f humanity and
its future are fixed and nailed to western Europe. I f
Europe does not succeed in recovering herself by a
63
social transformation, other countries will transform
themselves. There are some already prepared for this
movement, others which are preparing. One is known
I mean the States of North A m erica; the other, full o f
vigour, also full o f barbarity, is known little and badly.
H erzen s thoughts turned often at this time to
the U n ited S ta te s:
This young and enterprising people, more active than
intelligent, is so much occupied with the material
ordering o f its life that it knows none o f our torturing
pains. . . . The sturdy race o f English colonists multiplies exceedingly; and if it comes to the top, the people
belonging to it will be, I will not say happier, but more
contented. Their contentment will be poorer, more
commonplace, more sapless than that which was dreamed
o f in the ideis o f romantic E urope; but it will bring
with it no Tsars, no centralization, perhaps no hunger.
He who can put ofF the od European Adam and put on
the new Jonathan, let him take the first steamer to
somewhere in Wisconsin or Kansas. He will be better off
there than in decaying Europe.
B ut in the end it was not to A m erica but to his
ow n country that H erzen turned for salvation. I
have never felt more clearly than now , he writes
to his Russian friends in 1851, how Russian I
am .
A n d , looking back m any years later, he
records that faith in Russia saved me when I was
on the verge o f m oral ruin . T his belief in Russia
did not take the place o f the od belief in revolution :
it blended harm oniously w ith it. Russia, like the
U n ited States, was a country w ithout a history (all
the Slavs, except the Poles, belong to geography
rather than to history ) ; and nations w ithout a
64

history are potentially revolutionary.
M oreover,
Russia is not only revolutionary but essentially
socialist. T h e two pledges o f her future greatness
are her socialism and her youth . H erzen is not
disturbed by the fact that social revolution is a
European idea .
It does not follow that the western peoples alone are
destined to realize it. Christianity was only crucijied in
Jerusalem.
A n d there is an odd obiter dictum about com
munism a word w hich M arx was ju st bringing
into use for the more systematic and authoritarian
brand o f socialism :
I think there is a certain basis of truth in the fear
which the Russian Government is beginning to have o f
communism; communism is Russian autocracy turned
upside down.
Such was the position w hich H erzen had reached
when N icholas I died in 1855, in the m iddle o f the
C rim ean W ar. In Russia the restraints and repressions o f the thirty years reign o f an unim aginative
and bureaucratic despot seemed suddenly relaxed.
T h e first task o f A lexander II was to w ind up a
disastrous and discreditable war. D efeat in w ar has
often bred am bition for reform, T his was the mood
w hich prevailed in Russia during the first years o f
the new r e ig n ; this was the mood in w hich Herzen
launched his new journalistic venture in London.
T hose who reproach H erzen as he was afterwards
reproached
w ith having believed in the possi
bility o f a reform ing T sar m ight recall how Proudhon
6.5
hailed the em pire o f N apolen I I I as the harbinger
o f social revolution ; how Bakunin in captivity saw,
or professed to see, visions o f an enlightened and
Progressive despotism even under Nicholas I ; and
how Lassalle was later to m ake terms with Bismarck.
H erzens illusion that A lexander I I could be impelled
b y public opinin to inaugrate in Russia an era o f
w hat he called peaceful hum an progress , though
equally vain, was on the whole less ignoble.
The Bell was a m onthly, or later a fortnightly,
Journal published in London in Russian, price sixpence, under the jo in t editorship o f H erzen and
O garev, H erzen being throughout the dom inant
partner and the driving forc o f the concern. Its
first num ber appeared on J u ly i, 1857;
its
circulation in its best period sometimes reached
from 4000 to 5000, a phenom enal success at that
time. It was the first uncensored Russian Journal
that had ever been published. Lenin, when he
wrote a laud atory article on the centenary o f
H erzens birth in 1912, praised H erzen for having
been the first to raise the standard o f battle by
turning to the masses with the free Russian word .
It sounds odd to suggest that The Bell was addressed
to the masses. H erzen was, and always rem ained,
an intellectual speaking to intellectuals, and he
belonged to an age when politics were still the prerogative and m onopoly o f the well-to-do. But he
was the first Russian public m an to use the appeal
to public opinin and the w eapon o f propaganda as
instruments o f political reform. T h a t was the perm anent significance o f The Bell in Russian history.
66
H erzen: A n Intellectual Revolutionary

F or a tim e The Bell succeeded in pleasing nearly
everyone. It pleased the westerners the radicais
o f H erzens ow n generation w ho saw in it a
striking exam ple o f progress along western lines and
o f the successful introduction o f dem ocratic methods
o f publicity and agitation into Russian political life.
It pleased the Slavophils b y its profession o f faith
in the Russian people. It pleased the now influ
ential reformist w ing o f the official classes in Russia
b y strengthening their hand against the reactiona rie s; and b y that kind o f unavow ed toleration
which sometimes m itigated the absurdities o f the
Russian bureaucracy, copies o f The Bell found their
w a y through the censorship into high places in
Russia itself. It even pleased the Em peror, who
was flattered b y the portrait o f him self as an ardent
reformer endeavouring to carry out an enlightened
program m e in the teeth o f obstruction from oldfashioned bureaucrats.
T h e creation o f The Bell was H erzens m ajor
achievem ent. It w ould be agreeable to attribute
some share in it to the country where he had taken
up his abode. But the evidence reveis little trace
o f English influence in H erzens life and thought.
V ictorian E ngland treated the political refugee from
Europe w ith com plete toleration so long as he did not
break the law , but also w ith com plete indifference.
H erzen appreciated the toleration, and was even
able to praise w h at he called the rude strength
and unbending obstinacy o f the English char
acter. H e liked C olm an s m ustard and English
pickles; and a recent Russian w riter on H erzen
67
notes his adm iration for Punch as a satirist o f English
bourgeois life, and records some hitherto undetected
borrowings.
B ut he found nothing to stim ulate him, and
never revised the verdict, penned three years after
his arrival in London, that life here is about as
boring as that o f worms in a cheese
In a period
o f thirteen years he made one or two English political
acquaintances C arlyle am ong them but no
English friends. T h e role o f E ngland in his political
developm ent was purely negative. A s in his youth
he had lived in Russia and believed passionately in
the freedom and dem ocracy o f the west, so now, in
his m aturity, residence in England nourished a
fervent faith in the political destinies o f a regenerated
Russia. H erzens enthusiasms always flourished in
isolation from the realities to w hich they related.
T h e liberation o f the serfs in 1861 was a Russian
landm ark com parable to the landm ark o f 1848 in
western Europe, and had similar results. B y liquidating the system o f feudal ownership it brought
Russia ostensibly into line w ith the west and paved
the w a y for industrialization.
B y satisfying the
aspirations o f the Russian liberis, it turned them
into conservatives; and it created a new generation
o f irreconcilable revolutionaries who w ould have no
truck w ith mere reformers. The Bell could no longer
hold a m iddle course. H erzen faltered and was
caught between the two fires. Both extremes seemed
to him w ro n g ; he becam e, as M a rx said o f the
Prussian bourgeoisie, revolutionary against the
conservatives, but conservative against the rcvolu-
68
H erzen: A n Intellectual Revolutionary

tionaries
Stultified b y this uncertainty, The Bell
declined rapidly from the high-w ater m ark o f 1861.
T h e Polish insurrection o f 1863 was its death-blow.
H erzen had already antagonized the revolution
aries. H e now antagonized the rem aining moderats b y espousing the Polish cause. In 1865 he
m oved The B ell to G en eva w ithout revivin g its
fortun es; and it expired in 1868. H erzen him self
died in Paris, a tired and for the last tim e
disillusioned m an, in J an u ary 1870.
I f it is necessary to define in a single phrase
H erzens place in the history o f the Russian revolu
tion, he m ay be called the first N arodnik . T h e
N arodniks form ed the first generation o f active
Russian revolutionaries w ho, before M a rx had made
any im pact on Russia, proclaim ed the revolutionary
potentialities o f the downtrodden Russian peasant
and sought salvation in the m ovem ent w hich carne
to be known as going to the people ; and they
w ere the direct ancestors o f the Social-R evolutionaries who becam e the revolutionary rivais o f the
M arxist Social-D em ocrats. H erzen was the inventor
o f the N arodnik belief that the traditional Russian
peasant com m unity, w ith its undivided com m unal
property, was a p ro o f o f the socialist character o f the
Russian tradition. A s early as 1850 he attacked the
view o f the Prussian traveller H axthausen, w ho had
described the com m une as being despotically ruled
b y its prcsident and as an instrument o f the im perial
authority.
I t was this allegedly dem ocratic and socialist
character o f the Russian com m une w hich helped
69
H erzen to rationalize his faith in Russia as the
pioneer o f social revolution. T hanks to this, Russia
could achieve socialism v/ithout havin g to pass
through the repulsive stage o f bourgeois capitalism
w hich had w rought such havoc in western Europe.
H erzen was the progenitor o f the w hole N arodnik
(and afterwards Social-R evolutionary) doctrine, o f
w hich the cult o f the Russian people, hatred o f the
western bourgeoisie and contem pt for the western
proletariat were the distinguishing features. Even
M a rx towards the end o f his life cautiously adm itted,
under pressure from the N arodniks, th at the existence
o f the Russian com m une m ight, in certain circumstances, enable Russia to m ake the direct transition
from feudalism to socialism w ithout the intervening
capitalist stage.
If, how ever, the N arodniks owed m uch to H erzen
in the shaping o f their doctrine, they em phatically
rejected his belief in the possibility o f peaceful
evolution. T h is belief H erzen also justified on the
ground o f the socialist character o f the Russian
co m m u n e; for what in the west can be achieved
o n ly through a series o f catastrophes can develop
in Russia on a basis o f w h at alread y exists . His
last political utterance is a series o f open letters
To an Od Comrade, w ritten in 1869. T h e od
com rade was Bakunin. Bakunin in his later years
idealized the Russian peasant as rom antically as
H erzen him self and believed as firm ly as H erzen in
the socialist tradition o f the Russian peasant com
m une. B ut Bakunin was a lifelong believer in
revolution b y v io le n c e ; and it is on this ground
70

that H erzen now takes him to task.
H erzens
condem nation o f violence and terrorism was the
dividing-line w h ich separated him from the younger
revolutionary generation and ranged him more and
more during his last years in the conservative cam p.
Before H erzen died, the cause w hich he had so
brillian tly sustained in The B ell was irretrievably
lost.
In his ow n country the prospects o f the
revolution b y persuasin w hich had seemed possible
in the first years o f A lexan d er I I had faded a w a y ;
the revolutionaries and the governm ent were equally
com m itted to policies o f violence. T h e ineffectual
conclusin o f H erzens career reflected, as L en in
said, that w orld historical epoch when the revolutionism o f bourgeois dem ocracy was already d ying
and the revolutionism o f the socialist proletariat had
not yet ripened . T h e revolution o f the intellectuals
in w h ich H erzen believed had alread y exhausted
itse lf; the revolution o f the masses w hich was about
to begin was one that he neither believed in nor
understood. H e was a revolutionary only in ideas,
not in action. B ut his thought was a necessary step
in the developm ent o f the Russian revo lu tio n ; and
it is pleasant to record that his qualities have lately
received full and w ide recognition in his ow n
country, w here the seventy-fifth anniversary o f his
death was com m em orated b y a spate o f articles and
other publications in 1945.
LASSALLE
Ge o r g
M EETS B ISM A R CK
b r a n d e s opens his essay on Lassalle,
originally published in the 1 8 7 0 S , w ith some

reflections on the surprise and astonishment
provoked b y the process b y w hich the G erm any o f
H egel was transform ed into the G erm an y o f Bis
m arck , and notes the strongly m arked figure
o f Lassalle as one o f the significant features o f the
transformation, Ferdinand Lassalle lived for less
than forty years ; o f his writings only the letters and
diaries now possess more than an antiquarian
in terest; and the G eneral G erm n W orkers Association, w hich he founded, was reshaped after his
death b y rivals eager to-consign his nam e and tradi
tion to oblivion. Y e t his career touched history at
so m any points, reflected and transm itted so m any
influences and foreshadowed so m uch that la y in the
future that it rem ains one o f the most rew arding
quarries for the student o f nineteenth-century
political and social evolution in western Europe.
But that is not all. E ver since M eredith m ade
a dram a out o f his sensational death, Lassalle has
been m ore often rem em bered, at an y rate in this
country, for his vivid and tempestuous personality
72
Lassalle meets Bism arck

than for his political achievem ent. M r. Footm ans
book, as its needlessly ban al title suggests,* belongs
to the personal rather than to the political school
o f biography.
It is m ore concerned to portray
Lassalle the m an than to determ ine his place in
history. It is none the less a scholarly work, written
with scrupulous regard to the evidence and with
a restraint w hich enhances its interest. I t is also
the first English life o f Lassalle, though there is an
English translation o f the standard G erm n bio
graphy b y O ncken, unfortunately abridged as well
as m ade from an early and now out-dated edition.
Born in Breslau in 1825, son o f a fairly prosperous
Jewish m erchant one generation rem oved from the
Polish ghetto, Ferdinand Lassai (the longer form
o f the nam e was an elegant invention o f his own,
dating from a visit to Paris) entered the U niversity
o f Berlin at the age o f nineteen, soon after M arx,
Engels and Bakunin had left it. It was still in
the full glow o f that rem arkable period when philo
sophy was the only study for an intelligent and
ambitious you n g man, and H egel (who had died in
1830) the only philosopher. A lre a d y at Breslau
young Ferdinand had becom e a H egelian. B y this
conversin he had been born again ; and, as he
explained in a long epistle to his father, this second
birth gave me everything, gave m e clarity, selfassurance . . . m ade o f me self-containing intellect,
that is self-conscious G od .
T h e hyperbole is characteristic o f the w riters
D a v id F o o tm a n , The Prinirose Palh.
Lassalle. T h e Cresset Press. 155.
73
L ife o f F erdin an d
tem peram ent. B ut it is characteristic also o f the
age. I f the standard o f measurement be the weight,
the breadth and the duration o f the influence w hich
he exercised, H egel was beyond question the most
im portant o f m odern philosophers. H e m oulded
the thought o f more than one generation, and his
teaching was the, philosophical eradle o f every
significant political theory for a century to come.
It was his astonishing achievem ent to provide within
the limits o f a single coherent system both a creed
o f State worship and an algebra o f revolution .
From 1840 onwards the H egelian L eft had taken
the b it between its teeth and, b y a strictly logical
process o f interpretation, m ade o f the master
w h at he him self had certainly never dream ed o f
a revolutionary standard-bearer. It was prim arily
in this sense that the you n g Lassalle becam e a
H egelian. B ut he lacked M a rx s rigid consistency
and (after his early student years) M a rx s applica
tio n ; he was an agitator and pam phleteer rather
than a thin ker; and, as his later developm ent
showed, he had im bibed elements o f the H egelian
doctrine w hich w ere anathem a both to M a rx and to
Bakunin.
M a n s tem peram ent is his fate , quotes M r.
Footm an from his hero on the title-p age; and
beyond doubt Lassalles career ow ed m ore to his
tem peram ent than to his philosophy. A t the beginning o f 1846 he fell in love w ith the beautiful but
im pecunious Countess Sophie von H atzfeldt, long
separated from a w ealth y bu t m ean husband and
in the throes o f a perennial dispute w ith him about
74
Lassalle meets Bismarck

m oney matters. Lassalle was tw enty, and she was
just tw ice his age. H e becam e her m entor, legal
adviser, knight errant and lo v e r ; for, even i f docum entary evidence is lacking, it is surely pedantic to
observe M r. F ootm ans cautious suspensin o f ju d g
ment on this last point. T h e Countess H atzfeldt
was the m ain form ative and stabilizing influence in
Lassalles life, and emerges as perhaps the one
w holly sym pathetic figure in his biography. She
is m y own re-em bodied E go , he w rote fifteen
years later to one o f his m any m istresses; she is
part o f all m y trium phs and perils, fears and toil,
sorrows, strains and victories, p art o f all the emotions
I have ever had. She is the first and essential
condition o f m y happiness.
T h e course o f the H atzfeldt affair was od d ly
intertwined w ith the 1848 revolution.
A t the
m oment when Louis-Philippe was being driven from
France, Lassalle was arrested on the charge o f
instigating the theft o f a casket supposed to contain
vital papers belonging to the Count, and rem ained
in prison till his trial in A ugust. H e used the dock
for an eloquent recital o f the Countesss grievances
against her husband. B y skilfully identifying her
cause w ith that o f liberty and dem ocracy he w on
from a p olitically m inded ju r y his own acquittal,
w hich was not unjustly hailed as a trium ph o f the
L eft. H e plunged into political agitation, and was
arrested in N ovem ber on a charge o f inciting to
violence. H e did not em erge again until J u ly 1849
(this time after a six months sen ten ce); and b y
then the revolution was over.
75
T h e indirect result o f Lassalles prison experiences
was to keep him out o f any direct participation
in revolutionary disturbances.
H e was the one
Prussian revolutionary o f any consequence w ho was
not seriously cornpromised, and was able to rem ain
on Prussian soil after the dbcle o f 1 8 4 9 . Thus,
through the reactionary period o f the 1 8 5 0 S , he was
uncontested leader o f w hat rem ained in G erm any of
a workers m ovem ent. W hen the political ice began
to m elt in the next decade, he becam e the founder
in 1 8 6 3 o f the first em bryonic G erm n L ab o u r
Party the G eneral G erm n W orkers Association.
T h e last tw o years o f his life m ade Lassalle a political
figure o f the first im portance.
T h a t such a m an should clash w ith M a rx for the
headship o f the G erm n workers m ovem ent was
inevitable. Personal rivalries and tem peram ental
incom patibility counted for m uch. H ere sympathies
w ill not be w h olly on the side o f M a rx. M a rx was
an intensely jealous m an, and Lassalles relative
affluence, his eloquence and the m agnetic personality w hich w on him so large a personal following,
were all more than his rival could stom ach. Lassalle
was capable o f an impulsivo generosity o f thought
and deed w hich was not in M a rx s n a tu r e ; and he
never bore m alice or nourished personal enmities.
T h a t Lassalle found time for w id e hum an and
intellectual interests including the w riting o f a
five-act historical dram a in blank verse was not
as serious a blemish on his character as it seemed to
M a rx s one-track mind.
O n the other hand, it could not be denied that,
76

as a leader o f the workers, Lassalle was highly
vulnerable and that m any o f M a rx s shafts were well
aim ed. T h e intim ate connexion betw een the wrongs
o f the proletariat and the H atzfeldt cause clbre was
less apparent to others than to Lassalle and the
Countess. W hen at last in 1854, through Lassalles
pcrsistence, the C ount was partly brow beaten, p artly
blackm ailed, into m aking a favourable settlem ent on
the Countess, Lassalle received out o f the proceeds
(he tidy pensin o f 4000 thalers a year, and thereafter, w ith a sumptuous flat in Berlin, com bined the
life o f a proletarian leader w ith th at o f a D on Juan
and man about town. T h e second role often seemed
nearer to his heart than the first. H e confessed to
a horror o f workers deputations w here I always
hear the same speeches and have to shake hard, hot
and moist hands . M a rx m ight have said the same ;
but w hat w ould have been intellectual fastidiousness
in M a rx was a cultivated social snobbishness in
Lassalle. T h e crow ning tragedy in which, in his
fortieth year and at the height o f his political reputation, he was killed in a duel at G en eva b y a young
W allachian count, his rival for the hand o f a girl
o f 17, was the culm inating instance o f this constant
intrusin o f disreputable m elodram a into his politi
cal ambitions.
O thers besides M a rx found L as
salles behaviour incongruous and distasteful; the
reader o f M r. F ootm ans unim peachably im partial
story w ill have am pie m aterial on w hich to base his
own jud gm ent.
I t m ay, o f course, be said that Lassalles flamboyant tem peram ent, for all its restlessness and
77
rebelliousness, had in it a m arked conservative
streak. C ertain ly he had a sense o f personal property
and o f the valu o f m oney (he was a constant speculator on the stock exchange) w hich was unthinkable
to M a rx or Bakunin. In the affair w ith the Countess
H atzfeldt he revealed both a keen eye to the m ain
chance and an unconcealed liking for high so c ie ty ;
and neither o f these tastes altered w ith advancing
years. These things are not com m only associated
w ith a revolutionary outlook. F ew o f those w ith
w hom he associated in his later years shared his
proletarian sym pathies. M ore im portant was the
d ictatorial strain in Lassalles character. His selfassurance, his am azing vitality, his lust for pow er
and fam e, his contem pt for the com m on m an all
these seemed, at the period o f history to w hich he
belonged, to deny him an y natural affinity w ith the
political Left.
It w ould, how ever, be superficial to dismiss the
rift between M a rx and Lassalle as an affair o f
personal or political rivals between w hom tem pera
m ent and circum stance had fixed an unbridgeable
g u lf o f incom patibility. T o take such a view w ould
be to underestim ate Lassalles influence and signifi
cance a mistake which, incidentally, M a rx him
self did not m ake. I t m ay w ell be argued th at
in the history o f nineteenth- and tw entieth-century
G erm any Lassalle proved eventually a more potent
forc than M a r x ; and the conceptions for w hich he
stood m ade their w ay, even in countries w here he
exercised no direct influence at all. H e was one o f
the first protagonists and instruments o f a historical
78

process w h ich has not yet fu lly w orked itself out
the alliance betw een socialism and nationalism .
A n y serious analysis o f the clash between Lassalle
and M a rx or o f the ultim ate significance o f Lassalle
as a representative historical figure must start from
the divergent strands in the H egelian system, which,
from the earliest m om ent, appear side b y side in
Lassalles thought. T h e historical process, ever in
flux and continually advancing through a dialec
tical series o f contradictions resolving themselves in
a new syn thesis all this young Lassalle eagerly
digested and, like his contemporaries, m ade it the
basis o f a passionate belief in the social revolution.
A lread y as a student in Berlin he was exposing
the form al and individual character o f the
liberties w on b y the French revolution and asserting
the necessity o f a new revolution to overthrow
capitalism and the com petitive system as the road
to the liberation o f the w orking class, T his path he
travelled as w hole-heartedly, and as early, as M arx
himself.
But, equally at this early stage, w e find in Lassalle
unm istakable traces o f the H egelian doctrine o f the
State as the foreordained institution through w hich
alone the individual can achieve the rational
developm ent o f personality and freedom .
The
socialist tradition, handed dow n from M ore through
G odw in to Saint-Sim on, and thence to M a rx as well
as to Proudhon and Bakunin, to L enin as well as to
K ropotkin, was fundam entally hostile to the State.
T h e only difference on this point between M a rx
and L enin on the one hand and the anarchists on
79
the other was that the form er accepted the State (in
the form o f the dictatorship o f the proletariat) as a
tem porary, bu t necessary, evil until the communist
society had been fully established, w hile the anar
chists w ould not agree to palter even tem porarily
w ith the iniquities o f State power.
F or this tradition, w ith its belief in the dying
a w a y o f the State as the ultim ate goal, Lassalle was
too good a H egelian to have any sym pathy w h at
ever ; and as the years went on he carne more and
more to regard the State as the potential instrument
through w hich the wrongs o f the workers could be
redressed and the aims o f socialism attained. H e
attacked the bourgeois State not, like M arx, because
it was strong and oppressive, but because it was weak
and futile. His was the famous phrase o f contem pt
for the night-w atchm an State , coined in a speech
o f 1862 w hich he published as The Workers^
Programme:
T h u s the m id dle class conceives the m oral object o f
the State.
T h is object consists sim ply and solely in
securing the personal freedom o f the in d ivid u al and his
property. T h is is the n igh t-w atch m an theory, for this
conception can regard the State only under the form o f
a n igh t-w atch m an whose duties are confined to preventin g bu rglary an d theft.
A n d a little later he was inform ing an audience o f

w orking men in terms w hich were the very negation
o f all that M a rx had ever ta u g h t: T h e State
belongs to you, the needy classes, not to us the wellto-do, for the State consists o f you .
Lassalles view o f the State is refiected in his
80

view o f law , to w hich he devoted intensive, though
interm ittent, study. H e defined la w in H egelian
terms as an expression o f the national consciousness
o f right. Since that consciousness varies from tim e
to time, so also the la w must v a r y ; and on this
thesis Lassalle founded a som ewhat perverse argum ent to justify retroactivo legislation. B ut national
consciousness also varies from nation to nation, and
this consideration brings Lassalle near in spirit and
intention to the famous G erm n school o f jurisprudence. Indeed, the most significant aspect o f
Lassalles acceptance o f the State was th at it
involved him, perhaps un w ittin gly at first, in the
acceptance o f orthodox national patriotism , o f
lo yalty to the national State. It is not w ithout
im portance that Lassalle, almost alone am ong the
revolutionary leaders o f the nineteenth century, was
never an exile and spent the whole o f his w orking
life in his own country.
Be this as it m ay, Lassalle b y the last few years
o f his life had achieved an unexpected, and at this
time highly original, synthesis between his socialism
and his feelings as a good Prussian. T h e w a r o f
1859 between France and A ustria had led him to
dem and that Prussia should seek com pensation b y
annexing Schleswig-Holstein. In the early i86os
he hoped and believed that externai factors,
e.g. w ar , w ould bring about the nationalpolitical revolution o f the unification o f G e rm a n y;
but he added that the bourgeoisie was incapable o f
realizing this revolution, w hich w ould only be
effective i f driven on b y a solid and class-conscious
81
workers party
In 1862 he delivered in Berlin,
at the celebration o f the Fichte centenary, a laudatory lecture on Fichte as a great G erm n patriot
and the prophet o f G erm n unity.
T h e stage was now set for the final episode o f
Lassalles political career his meetings w ith Bis
m arck. A certain piquancy is added to the situation
by a letter o f some two years earlier to the Gountess
H atzfeldt, in w hich Lassalle had called Bism arck
a reactionary Junker from w hom one can only
expcct reactionary measures , a m an who would
rattle his sword to get the m ilitary budget through
on the pretence that w ar is im m inent . U ntil the
1 9 2 0 S the principal authority for these meetings was
a statem ent m ade in 1878 by Bism arck him self in
response to an interrogation in the R eichstag. This
statem ent left it in doubt exactly w hen they took
place and on whose initiative. Letters and other
docum ents now available date the first m eeting in
M a y 1863, at the mom ent when the G eneral Germ n
W orkers Association was being constituted, and
show that the invitation carne direct, without any
prelim inary contacts, from Bism arck himself. This
discovery p artially relieves Lassalle o f the charge
afterwards levelled at his m em ory b y his rivals o f
h avin g deliberately sought to ingratiate him self with
the ruling powers. But it also assigns to Bism arck
rather than to Lassalle the stroke o f genius w hich
perceived a bond o f com m on interest between them
capable o f being exploited to their m utual advantage. It m ay also be recalled that when, some years
later, M a rx received similar, though less direct,
82

approaches from Bismarck, he rcfused to be drawn
into the net.
T h e outw ard link between Bism arck and Lassalle
was their com m on hostility to the Progressives
the Prussian L iberal Party. Bism arck, w ho still
feared them as his ch ief opponents, w ould gladly
have seen their more rad ical elements attracted
aw ay from them b y a new party o f the L e f t ; Lassalle
nourished the same am bition. But the more intimate link o f a com m on outlook on political realities
drew the tw o m en together and gave them at any
rate an intellectual respect for each other. Both
despised the flab b y idealism and constitutional
word-spinning o f the Progressives ; both understood
that politics m ean pow er, and they could measure
their forces against each other in the same terms.
Both had a fundam ental contem pt for dem ocratic
methods, and believed firm ly in efficient dictator
ship as a principie and in their ow n cap acity to
exercise it. A letter from Lassalle in the last year
o f his life on the affairs o f the G eneral G erm n
W orkers Association shows that he had nothing to
learn from Bism arck about the imposition o f his w ill
on his subord in ates:
Branch representatives are there to direct their
branches as instructed b y headquarters not to take
orders from the branches. . . . W h en ever I attended
branch m eetings there was never an y idea o f the branch
passing a resolution unless I m yself took the initiative. . . .
W h y is it b ein g allow ed to h appen otherwise in Berlin ?
I suppose because there one is nearer to the heart o f
parliam entarianism .
83
O u t o f the soil prepared b y these coincidences
o f interest and outlook grew that w orking alli
ance betw een Bism arcks nationalism and Lassalles
socialism the social-service State or State
socialism w hich was Bism arcks specific contri
bution to dom estic policy. E xactly w h at passed
between them when they met, exactly how m uch
Bism arck was influenced b y w hat did pass, cannot
be know n.
E ven the num ber o f meetings is a
m atter o f guesswork : Bism arck himself, fifteen years
later, m entioned three or fo u r , the Countess
H atzfeldt tw enty .
T h e records show that
Lassalle pressed for universal suffrage; and Bis
m arcks subsequent adoption o f it can h ard ly be
dissociated altogether from his pleadings.
It is
certain that, at Lassalles instigation, Bism arck
caused the K in g to receive a deputation o f Silesian
weavers and to promise them consideration o f their
grievances. Lassalle was acute enough to guess that
Bism arck w anted to put through the social part
o f our program m e, but not the political part .
W h at he did not foresee was that Bismarck, having
been astute enough to dish the socialists b y
stealing the m ore harmless and practical trappings
o f their program m e, w ould one d a y be strong
enough to take repressive measures against the p arty
itself.
W h atever their im m ediate influence, the meetings
were a historical landm ark. T h e com ing together
o f the masterful Prussian Prim e M inister and the
headstrong socialist agitator sym bolized the new and
pregnant alliance between nationalism and socialism.
84

Lassalle w as b y this tim e a patriotic Prussian as
well as a sincere socialist; and it was a result o f
his policy that henceforth and not in Prussia
alone a m an could profess him self a good socialist
and a good patriot. T h e national State was to
become an instrum ent prom oting, w ithin the limits
o f the capitalist system, the welfare o f the m asses;
in return the masses w ould becom e im bued w ith
patriotic lo yalty to the national State. Both these
unspoken terms o f the alliance were significant. I f
the Bism arck-Lassalle conversations foreshadowed
the social-service State, they also foreshadowed the
birth o f j i n g o i s m (the word was coined in the
1870S) and sharpened the edge o f nationalism b y
m aking it an interest o f the masses as w ell as o f
the m iddle class. T h e field o f international discord
was now conterm inous w ith the whole nation. T h e
w ay was open for the com ing not only o f the totali
tarian State, but o f total war.
T h e creation o f national, as opposed to inter
national, socialism was, w hether he consciously
sought it or not, Lassalles m ain historical achieve
ment. B ut other striking pointers to the future
m ay be found scattered throughout his writings and
speeches. In one o f his early letters to his father
he foretold that the grow th o f industry must entail
the negation o f the principie o f property and the
m erging o f m ans subjective individuality in the
organized State. H e m ay w ell have been the first
to use at a n y rate, he used it in the early sixties
the now w ell-w orn argum ent that, since the State
knows no financial lim it to w h at it can spend in
85
w ar, it can afford to spend w ithout lim it fo r social
purposes in peace. His proposal to organize, in the
p lace o f trade unions, productive unions supported b y the State, was a foretaste o f the alm ost
exactly sim ilar proposal w hich was m ade b y T rotsky
in the early 1920S and which, though then rejected,
helped to m ould the future shape o f the Soviet trade
unions and perhaps o f others. Lassalle was not
a profound or system atic thinker. H is treatises on
la w and economics, for all their prctentiousness, are
the w ork o f a clever dettante, not o f a master o f his
subjects. B ut he had an uncanny aplitude for
discerning the significant developm ent o r the signifi
cant idea o r rather the developm ent o r idea
w hich w ould one d a y becom e significant. In m an y
respects it is easier to-d ay than it w ould have been
fifty years ago to recognize how fa r he was in advance
o f his tim e..
T h e period follow ing Lassalles death seemed to
spell thedefeat o f nearly everything for w h ich he stood.
S ix weeks after the fatal duel in G eneva, M a rx
brought to birth in L ondon the International W orking
M en s Association the First International. In
G erm an y M a rx s followers steadily underm ined
the Lassallean trad itio n ; and w hen the U nited
Social D em ocratic P arty was at length founded
in 1875, Lassalles G eneral G erm n W orkers
Association was m erged in it w ith out leaving
more than superficial traces on its program m e
and leadership. Socialism had been established
on a solid international basis; an d Bism arcks
legislation against the socialists seemed to m ark the
86

final breakdow n o f the alliance w hich he and
Lassalle had once conspired to forge. Y e t the sequel
showed that, beneath all these appearances, Lassalle
had builded better than he knew and that history
was on his side. In i g i q it was national, not inter
national, socialism w hich em erged trium phant in
every E uropean country except Russia. In G erm any
it was not only Bernstein the revisionist but
K a u tsk y the renegade w ho showed, when the
test carne, that they were successors o f Lassalle
rather than o f M a r x ; and w ithout seeking to saddle
the J ew from Breslau w ith responsibility for H itlers
particular brand o f national socialism , the curious
m ay still speculate how far socialism in one
country is not, in another context, an unconscious
tribute to the vitality o f the Lassallean conception.
87
SOM E N IN E T E E N T H -C E N T U R Y
R U SSIA N TH IN K E R S
u s s i a n social and political thought in the nine. teenth century is o f high interest and im portance
on tw o counts. It inspired one o f the great Creative
periods o f m odern lite ra tu re ; and it forms the
backgrdund o f the Russian revolution o f 1917. Its
significance in the second context has been increased
b y the recent tendency to dwell on the continuity
o f Russian history before and after the revolution
rather than on the break in continuity w hich was
the them c o f the first revolutionary writers and
historians.
Shordy before the first world w ar T . G . M asaryk,
the future president o f the Czechoslovak R epublic,
published a detailed survey o f Russian ninetcenthcentury thought w hich was translated into English
in 1919 under the title The Spirit o f Russia. But,
w hile numerous articles have been written about
individuais or particular movements, no further
synoptic view o f the w hole field seems to have
been attem pted in any language till the publication
in Paris in 1946 o f B erd yacvs The Russian Idea,
w hich has since appeared in a w cicom e English
88
Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

translation. B erdyaev was one o f a group o f young
Russian intellectuals who, h avin g passed through
the school and discipline o f Russian M arxism , w ent
over about 1908 to the O rth od ox C h urch. Some
time after the Bolshevik revolution he em igrated
to Paris where he died in 1948. His book is slighter,
more personal and more dogm atic than that o f the
liberal M asaryk. But, like all his work, it displays
an always fresh and acute, though sometimes rather
w ilfully one-sided, insight into Russian conditions
and ways o f thought, past and present.
Russian nineteenth-century thought revolves unceasingly round the central idea o f revolution. It
was Nicholas I so far as responsibility can be
assigned to any one person who, b y virtually
proscribing all forms o f political, social and philo
sophical speculation, threw the w hole intellectual
movement o f three generations into a revolutionary
mould. T h e first overt act was the trivial Decem brist conspiracy o f 1825 a sort o f oficers
m u t i n y ; its promoters were the first representatives
o f the so-called conscience-stricken gentry , who
illustrated the perennial truth that the seeds o f
revolution are sown when a ruling class loses its
belief in its right to rule. T his stage o f the m ove
ment developed under the predom inant influence o f
Hegel. It culm inated in the Torties in the brilliant
figures o f Bakunin and H erzen, the first Russian
revolutionary migrs, who not only mediated western
ideas to Russia, but also, though somewhat later,
broke fresh ground by introducing Russian ideas
to the revolutionary movements o f western Europe.
89
In Russia itself Belinsky was the most signifi
can t representative o f the men o f the forties .
Belinsky shifted the focus o f the revolutionary m ove
m ent from the conscience-stricken gentry to the
middie-class intelligentsia o f which he was the forerunner and creator. T h o u gh m uch o f his com paratively b rief period o f literary activity was occupied
b y incessant controversy about the interpretation o f
H egel (one o f the guises in w hich political specula
tion m ight still hope to escape the censors vigilance),
he m ade the transition from the idealism o f H egel
to the m aterialism o f Feuerbach. H im self dying
in 1848 in his thirty-seventh year, he paved the
w a y for the new generation o f the sixties and set
the revolutionary m ovem ent on a m aterialist basis
w hich was not thereafter challenged.
I t was the m en o f the sixties Chernyshevsky, D obrolyubov and Pisarev are generally
nam ed as the most im portant and typical o f them
w ho began to give to the revolution the shape in
w hich it ultim ately trium phed. L ike Belinsky, they
were obliged to couch their ideas in the form o f
philosophical or literary criticism, and were contributors to those solid advanced periodicals to
w hich the relaxed censorship o f A lexan d er II offered
a tem porary and m uch qualified licence o f opinin,
Chernyshevsky, who w on laudatory appraisals both
from M a rx and from Lenin, has been m uch studied
in revolutionary Russia. A collected edition o f his
works in ten volum es appeared before the w a r ; and
his novel What is to be Done? published in 1864, the
yea r in w hich he was condem ned for subversive
90
Soine Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

activities and sent to Siberia, is still a revolutionary
classic. D obrolyubov, a collaborator o f Chernyshevsky who died prem aturely in 1861, was noted
for his attacks on the liberal bourgeoisie, w ho hoped
that reform m ight provide an alternative to revolu
tion (Ghernyshevsky and his foliowers afterwards had
a famous quarrel w ith H erzen on this issue). Pisarev,
the third and most daring o f the trio, w on his spurs
b y a striking review o f T u rg en evs Fathers and Sons.
W hile other advanced critics denounced its nihilist
hero B azarov as a m alicious caricature, Pisarev
hailed him as the true prototype o f the modern
revolutionary m aterialist. A vigorous and considering that m ore than four o f his tw enty-eight
years were spent in prison in cred ibly prolific
publicist, Pisarev has been m ade the subject o f an
im m ensely detailed m onograph b y a French critic,
M . A rm and C oquart. T his is one o f those meritorious and valu able works w hich, being devoted to
a m inor writer, w ill henceforth save all but the most
m eticulous from the labour o f Consulting the original
texts, and which, once done, need never be repeated.
T h e men o f the sixties opened the w a y for
the active revolutionaries o f the follow ing decade.
Ghernyshevsky was the first revolutionary publicist
to particpate actively in one o f the new secret
societies ju st beginning to spring up. In the seventies
the m ovem ent passed from the sphere o f philo
sophy and literature to that o f action, w hether in
the form o f missionary w ork am ong the peasants
(the so-called going to the people ) or o f terrorist
conspiracies. T h e latter policy reached its clim ax
9*
w ith the assassination o f A lexand er II b y Z h elyabo v
and his group in 1881.
T h e revolutionary m ovem ent was now ripe for
its last stage. H itherto every Russian revolutionary
had assumed that, in an agricultural country like
Russia, the peasantry must ultim ately be the back
bone o f the revolution. But b y the beginning o f the
1880S the cam paign o f going to the people had
failed to stir the peasant, and terrorism had been
defeated b y popular apath y and plice repression.
A new start was required. It was tw enty years since
the em ancipation o f the serfs had started the process
o f the industrialization o f Russia w ith foreign capital.
In 1883 Plekhanov founded the first Russian M arxist
group and planted the roots o f M arxism in the new
industrial proletariat o f Russia. T h e last consider
able social and econom ic essay o f the century was
L en in s m aiden work, On the Development o f Capitalism
in Russia, w hich set out to prove that R ussia was
treading the western path o f bourgeois capitalism
on the w a y to proletarian revolution.
Independent Russian thought , writes Ber
dyaev, was aw akened b y the problem o f the
philosophy o f history.
It had reflected deeply
upon w h at the thoughts o f the C reator w ere about
Russia, about w h at Russia is and about w h at sort
o f destiny it has. Such passages, as w ell as the very
title o f his book, show that B erdyaev em braces a
kind o f national mysticism a sense o f the destiny
o f Russia as the explanation o f her history w hich
seems to be bound up w ith his acceptance o f O rth o
d ox Christianity. H e does not even eschew the
92

cruder forms o f national determinism, as when he
describes Lenin as a characteristically Russian
m an w ith an adm ixture o f T a rta r traits
T his
approach w ill invaldate some o f his conclusions for
those w ho do not share it, b u t does little to detract
from the value o f his searching analysis o f the main
issues w hich exercised Russian nineteenth-century
thought.
T h e issue w hich la y beneath all others and was,
in some sense, the distillation o f them all was the
question o f Russia and Europe, o f east and west,
o f Slavophils and westerners. A fter Peter the G reat
no Russian thinker could evade this issue.
In its
nineteenth-century form it was posed b y Chaadaev,
who declared that Russia had neither history nor
tradition nor civilization o f her own. Russia formed
a blank in the m oral w orld order .
W e belong to the num ber o f nations w h o so to speak
do not enter into the fram ew ork o f m ankind an d exist
o n ly in order to give the w orld some serious lesson.
T h e men o f the forties all assumed w ithout

question that salvation could be found b y Russia
only through borrow ing and assim ilating from the
w e s t ; nor did the men o f the sixties differ from
them on this vital point.
T h e Slavophil m ovem ent started in the forties
as a reaction against the prevailing orthodoxy o f the
westerners. It indulged in an unhistorical idealization o f the past, and had puerilities and affectations,
extending even to matters o f dress. But in the hands
o f K ireevsky and K h om yakov, its ablest and most
93
consistent expositors, it becam e a pow erful bod y o f
doctrine. Its essential tenets were that Russia had
a tradition and civilization o f her own cntirely
independent o f those o f the w e s t ; that Russia was
called on to follow her own line o f de\ elopment, not
to borrow from the west; and that the future
belonged not to decadent Europe but to young and
unspoiled Russia, w h at was com m only referred to as
R ussias backwardness thus becom ing a positive
asset.
A mistake com m only m ade about the controversy
between westerners and Slavophils is to equate
westerners w ith radicais and revolutionaries and
Slavophils w ith conservatives and reactionaries.
T h e re was a western conservative, as w ell as a
western radical, tra d itio n : C h aad aev, for exam ple;
though an out-and-out westerner, was not in an y
sense a radical. N or did those Russians who looked
for enlightenm ent to the west necessarily accept
existing western institutions. H erzen, a professed
westerner and dem ocrat, had little use for the
dem ocratic institutions w h ich he found at w ork in
western E u ro p e; and the Russian M arxists, w ho
must be classified as westerners, none the less
denounced the bourgeois d em ocracy o f the west.
O n the other hand, the first Slavophils, scarcely
less than the westerners, w ere in revolt against the
repressive officialdom o f N icholas I. It is true that
they purported to seek their ideal in an im aginary
Russian past.
B ut Slavophilism (w hich Pisarev
called a psychological phenom enon duc to unsatisfied needs ) had even less to do w ith the facts
94

o f that past than had the ideal o f the westerners
w ith the existing facts in western Europe. T h e
original Slavophils w ere not cham pions o f the
R om anov a u to cra cy; nor, when they spoke o f
Russias mission to Europe, w ere they thinking in
terms o f political pow er. It was only in the second
Slavophil generation o f the eighteen-seventies,
m arked b y D anilevskys Russia and Europe and the
later political essays o f Dostoevsky, that Slavophilism degenerated into a crude form o f Russian
nationalism and provoked the challenge o f the philo
sopher S o lo v ie v : W h a t East do yo u w an t to be,
the East o f X erxs or the East o f Christ ?
N o r did the dichotom y o f east and west w h olly
coincide w ith the other vital issues w h ich torm ented
Russian nineteenth-century thinkers. In the grand
debate between society and the individual, between
authority and freedom , betw een the cternal
harm ony and the sacrifice o f the innocent, w hich
was pursued in one form or another throughout the
great literature o f the period, it w ould be m isleading
to assign the conflicting roles to the protagonists o f
east and west. It is true that westerners like Belinsky,
H erzen and M ikhailovsky w ere particu larly prone
to assert the claim s o f the individual, and that
K hom yakov the Slavophil im ported into the debate
the ecclesiastical w ord Sobornost (notoriously untranslatable, but m eaning something rather more precise
and m ore authoritative than com m unity-m indedness ). B ut it was T u rgen evs nihilist B azarov a
westerner i f ever there was one w ho m aintained
that it was as unscientific to study individual m en
95
I I
and wom en as to study individual birch trees. T h e
typical westerner Belinsky was as conscious o f the
underlying dilem m a as the typical Slavophil (so far
as concerns his later years) Dostoevsky and expresses
it in strikingly sim ilar terms.
H egel opened the debate. His immense influence
in Russia was beyond doubt due to the faet that he
represented a reaction against the individualism
o f the Enlightenm ent, a victory, in B erdyaevs
words, o f the general over the particular, o f
the universal over the individual, o f society over
personality . In the Russian argum ent over H egel,
Belinsky carne to occupy the central place. H e
ran through the w hole gam ut o f experience and
changed his attitude to the extent o f i8o degrees
between the article on G riboedov, in w hich he
cxclaim ed that society is always juster and higher
than the private person , and the letter to Botkin
in w hich he declared that the fate o f the subject,
o f the individual, o f the personality is more im portant
than the fate o f the w hole w orld
T h e second
position was that in w hich he ultim ately found
anchor. It was as a disciple o f Belinsky that Ivan
K aram azo v was presently to s a y : I renounce
altogether the higher h a rm o n y ; it is not w orth the
smallest tear o f one torm ented child .
Belinsky found his w a y out o f the dilem m a in
the conception o f a new society based on respect for
the individual personality, on truth and justice
that is to say, in a socialism w hich was U topian not
so m uch in its organization as in its m ajor premise.
Dostoevsky sought his solution in a new synthesis
96

o f freedom and authority through O rth od ox Christianity : the C ath olic synthesis he rejected as incom
patible w ith freedom . B ut some critics have felt that
Dostoevsky was more convinced o f the logical
necessity o f his solution than o f its cogency, and that
he rem ained to the end a dual and divided person
ality.
It w ill be read ily conceded that Russian
thinkers o f the nineteenth century have plum bed
these deep waters more profoundly than any o f
their predecessors; it w ill be less readily conceded
that they have found firm ground on w hich their
successors can build.
A n outcrop o f this controversy was the struggle
to find a rational, utilitarian basis for m orality and
for art. R ationalism , said K h o m yak ov the Slavophil, was the m ortal sin o f the west , and had
infected Catholicism as m uch as other forms o f
western life. Dostoevskys Man from Underground
w anted to free hum anity from the tyrann y o f two
plus tw o equals fo u r ; and the Slavophil poet
T yu tch e v declared, in a couplet w hich rem ained
famous, that it was impossible to com prehend Russia
w ith the mind, it was possible only to believe in her.
T h e conception that faith, and therefore m orality, la y
altogether beyond reason was rooted in O rthod ox
Christianity and in Russian thought.
T h e first westerners believed, b y im plication, in a
rational m orality. But it was Ghernyshevsky who,
substituting Feuerbach and Com te for H egel as his
masters in philosophy, im ported into Russia the
utilitarian philosophy o f Bentham and M ill, whose
Principies o f Political Economyh. translated into Russian.
97
His ciiorm ously popular novel What is to be Done?
depicted a set o f young people actuated b y w hat
were supposed to be the purest principies o f rational
egoisin which, illogically enough, did not exelude
the duty, eagerly recognized and accepted, o f sacrificing ones im m ediate interest to those ultim ate
principies.
Pisarev, as usual, was responsible for the systematization and reductio ad extremum o f the doctrine :
T h e m orality o f m en does not depend on their
qualities o f heart or nature, on abundance o f virtue or
absence o f v i c e : words o f this kind have no tangible
m eaning. T h e m orality o f this or th a t society depends
exclusively on the question to w h at degree the members
o f the society are conscious o f their ow n interests.
M o re o v e r:
In order to b e a m oral m an it is indispensable to be
to a certain degree a thinking m an : bu t the facu lty of
thinking only becom es strong and w ell developed w hen
the in dividual succeeds in escaping from the yoke o f
m aterial necessity.
H ere already are the solid foundations o f class

m orality on w hich Engels was presently to build.
B u t more interest was excited b y the controversy
about art in w hich Pisarev was once more the
protagonist. As B erdyaev points out, the west has
never been conscious o f a need to ju stify culture
as such.
T h e western w orld, including western
Catholicism , has assimilated w ithout question GrecoR om an culture and G reco-R om an hum anism and
com bined it w ith the Christian tradition.
The
O rth o d o x C h urch, p rim arily eschatological in out98
Some JVineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

look and severed from the traditions both o f the
R om an E m pire and o f the Renaissance, has always
been im plicitly hostile to the culture o f this world.
It was lo n g before Russia acquired a secular litera
ture or a secular art. In the nineteenth century
tw o great writers, as far rem oved from each other
in tim e and in point o f view as G ogol and T olstoy,
both renounced and condem ned their ow n artistic
creation a scarcely thinkable phenom enon in an y
western country.
Russian tradition was, then, less openly affronted
than western tradition w ould have been when the
young materialists o f the sixties raised the question
o f the utility o f art. Chernyshevsky, like Belinsky
before him , frankly ju d g e d literary works b y their
content and was unconcerned w ith style. But his
prim ary interest was not in literary criticism, and
he form ulated no very clear aesthetic theories.
D obrolyubov m ore b old ly called literature a sub
ordnate force , declaring that its im portance
resides in propaganda, and its m erit is determ ined
b y the content o f this propaganda and the m anner
in w hich it is done . Pisarev and a colleague
nam ed Zaitsev carried these views to their logical
conclusin. Zaitsev, w ho seems to have anticipated
H ousm ans discovery that artistic creation is accom
panied b y the physical sym ptom o f a titillation o f
the spine, declared that an y artisan is m ore useful
than a n y poet to the extent to w h ich any positive
num ber, how ever sm all, is greater than zero . In
an essay called The Annihilation o f Aesthetics, w hich
appeared in 1865, Pisarev described a famous
99
Petersburg ch ef as a m ore useful m em ber o f society
than R ap h ael, and added that he him self would
rather be a Russian cobbler than a Russian R aph ael.
Stated in this extrem e form, such views ended b y
refuting themselves. But it w ould be rash to pretend
that the utilitarian view o f art was ever seriously
supplanted b y the opposition w hich Pisarevs chal
lenge excited. T h e glorification o f Pushkin b y the
Slavophils was an answer to Pisarev. B ut it was an
answer on his own ground. Pushkin was not, as
Pisarev had pretended, useless to society: on the
contrary, he was highly valuable to it because he
inculcated and encouraged a right view o f m ans
place in it. N either side denied that content was
w h at ultim ately m attered, or had a n y truck w ith
anything that sm acked o f art for arts s a k e ; not
until the symbolist m ovem ent appeared at the turn
o f the century was this view seriously contcsted.
or did anything happen to shake the conviction o f
the sixties that art was an essentially aristqcratic
and conservative phenom enon, w hile Science was
dem ocratic and progressive. Such prejudices died
hard in nineteenth-century Russia. It is not certain
that they are dead to-day.
It remains to consider Russian nineteenth-century
thought in its relation to the State. B erdyaev is
hard ly correct in claim ing anarchism as the
creation o f Russians . T h e genealogy o f anar
chism goes back to W illiam G odw in, if not farther :
it was firm ly em bedded in the incipient socialist
movements o f western Europe before it established
itself in Russia. B ut the significant point is that a
too
I. ^ c. H.
~ . F n. a. fs
M ESTfAi;0 Z E vX ',. : AoiA
C l IC .A POLlfiCA
CibLlCT(. A

doctrine, w h ich in western E urope was specifically
socialist and revolutionary, coloured in Russia the
thinking o f the w hole intelligeitsia o f w hatever
political com plexin.
Political thought in nineteenth-century Russia,
w hether o f westerners or o f Slavophils, began in
opposition to the burcaucratic State o f N icholas I.
T h e first westerners, such as H erzen, were at best
grud gin g advocates o f the western dem ocratic
S ta te ; from the first, as B erdyaev says, the Russian
idea o f freedom was bound up, not w ith liberalism
but w ith anarchism .
T h e first Slavophils unreservedly treated the State an y State as an
evil. D ostoevsky passed, in his later years, for a
fervent upholder o f the autocracy.
Y e t the
L egend o f the G rand Inquisitor , though osten
sibly directed against the secular arm o f Catholicism, is in fact valid against any attem pt to set up
a kingdom o f this w orld . Tolstoy, in theory,
rejected not only the State but every exercise o f
power.
T h e struggle between M a rx and Bakunin thus
acquires fresh significance as a struggle between
western and eastern conceptions o f revolution,
between the Jaco b in conception o f revolution
through the State b y seizing and using State pow er
and the anarchist conception o f revolution through
the people b y destroying the pow er o f the State.
M arx, it is true, paid tribute to socialist freedom
b y postulating the eventual dying a w ay o f the State.
B ut his im m ediate concern was w ith the dictatorship
o f the proletariat. T h e essence o f Bakunins case
lOI
against M a rx was that M a rx was a believer in State
p o w er w hich the Russian anarchist regarded as a
characteristically G erm n trait.
W h en L enin, steeped as he was in Russian as
w ell as in M arxist thought, carne to expound his
view o f the State in State and Revolution, at the
criticai m om ent o f 1917, w h at he did was to refurbish
the old western socialist tradition o f hostility to the
State, w hich rem ained em bedded and h a lf buried in
classical Mai-xism, in order to convict the Germ n
Social-D em ocrats o f a State worship incom patible
w ith the fundam ental tenets o f M a rx. Beelzebub
was invoked to cast out Beelzebub.
State and
Revolution, w ith its double insistence on the im m ediate
dictatorship o f the proletariat and ultim ate dying
a w a y o f the State, is a characteristic synthesis o f
west and east, o f Jacobinism and anarchism . I t is
a striking exam ple o f L en ins superlativo skill in
rooting western revolutionary doctrines in congenial
Russian soil.
M asaryk, the western liberal, who com pleted his
survey o f Russian thought before the revolution at a
tim e when m any western observers still believed in
the prospect o f a liberal and dem ocratic evolution
o f Russian society, regarded the choice before
Russia as one between theocracy and dem ocracy.
B erdyaev, the O rth o d o x philosopher, has a double
advantage o f standpoint. H e writes as a Russian
w ho understands as no western liberal, how
ever acute his perceptions, could ever understand
the lack o f an y foundation in R ussian thought
and tradition w h ich could have carried the elabrate
102
Some Jfineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

and delicate structure o f liberal d e m o cra c y ; and
he writes after a revolution w hich, w hile it has
provided no final synthesis for the contradictions
o f Russian nineteenth-century thought, has carried
the debate a stage farther and, so to speak, shifted
it on to another plae.
W hatever else m ay have changed, the funda
m ental theme o f east and west has not ceased to
play its custom ary p art in the Russian politics and
Russian thought o f the last thirty years. Bolshevism
is prim arily a creation o f western thought and
experience. B ut the eastern elem ent in it, and the
grow th o f that influence in recent years, w ill not be
seriously contested. It is possible to read the whole
story o f the defeat o f T rotsky and the old Bolshe
viks , w ho had spent their form ative years in
Europe and whose revolutionary outlook was predom inantly western, b y Stalin and a group whose
background and training were m ainly Russian and
non-European, as a re-em ergence in Russian history
o f the ezistern factor tem porarily cclipsed b y its
western counterpart.
Indeed, no understanding is possible o f m any o f
the outstanding characteristics o f the Soviet regim e
w ithout some study o f the background o f nineteenthcentury Russia.
T h e com bination o f a rigidly
m aterialist outlook w ith a cali, w id ely and fervently
accepted, for self-sacrifice in the revolutionary
cau se; the dem and for the liberation o f hum an
beings from exploitation through the pursuit o f
collective good, w hich in its turn threatens to becom e a new source o f oppression ; the dcm nd for
X03
a philosophy w h ich em braces politics, society and
art and uses them as the expression o f its purpose
a ll these are the direct legacy to Bolshevism o f
R ussian rad ical thinkers o f the nineteenth century,
T h e debt to the Slavophils, though in some
respects paradoxical, is unm istakable. T h e rejection
o f bourgeois dem ocracy, o f bourgeois individualism ,
o f bourgeois notions o f property (Berdyaev him self
rem arks that the Soviet constitution o f 1936
enacted the best legislation in the w orld about
property ) links Soviet theory and practice w ith a
long line o f Russian thinkers. T h e Russian messianism o f the Slavophils, philosophical rather than
political in its origin but susceptible o f political
perversions, reappears in the form o f a messianism
o f the proletariat.
Com m unism , writes Ber
d yaev, is a Russian phenom enon in spite o f its
M arxist ideology. Com m unism is Russian d e stin y;
it is a m om ent in the inner destiny o f the Russian
people. T his is an exaggeration o f the specifically
Russian aspects o f Bolshevism, w h ich m ay be
dangerous i f it induces the belief that Com m unism
has no m ore than an exten ial and episodio interest
for other nations. B ut no student o f Russian history
w ill be tem pted to ignore the grain o f truth which
it contains.
104
PLEKHANOV:
FA TH ER OF R U SSIA N
M A R X ISM
U S T thirty years after G eorge Plekhanovs death,
w hich occurred in Fin land on J u n e 12, 1918, an

English translation o f his princip al philosophical
essay has appeared under the title In Defence o f
Materialism.^ Plekhanov was a prolific w riter. B ut
the tw enty-four volum e edition o f his works, p u b
lished in M oscow in the nineteen-twenties, is no
longer easy to com e b y ; and only a few o f his essays
and articles had hitherto been available in English.
T h e present translation has been entrusted to the
safe hands o f M r. A n d rew R othstein. It is preceded
b y an introductory sketch w hich is as accurate and
m asterly an account as could be desired o f Ple
khanovs career and significance.
T h e text-book labei for Plekhanov is the father
o f Russian M arxism . In the words o f one enthusiast, he brought dow n the ten com m andm ents o f
M a rx from Sinai and delivered them to the youth o f
R ussia . H e was L en in s acknow ledged teacher in
G . V . P lekh an o v, In Defence o f Materialism. T h e D evelo p m en t
o f the M o n ist V ie w o f H isto ry. T ra n sla ted b y A n d re w R o th stein .
L a w re n ce an d W ish a rt. i8s.
105
M arxism , and laid the foundations o f Russian SocialD em ocracy. Born in 1856, he graduated as a revolu
tion ary in the N arodnik m ovem ent, breaking w ith
it in 1880 on the issue o f individual terrorism, which
he rejected as fu tile and irrelevant. T h e assassination o f A lexander II in 1881 led to a general round-up
ofrevolutionaries ; and Plekhanov was already abroad.
T h e next tw o years were decisive. T h e break
w ith the N arodniks on the policy o f terrorism, and
the manifest bankruptcy o f that p olicy after 1881,
led Plekhanov to re-exam ine the basic tenets o f the
N arodnik philosophy the belief that the peasantry
was the com ing revolutionary forc in Russia. T his
belief, attested b y a long tradition o f peasant revolts
and revolutionary peasant leaders, from Stenka R azin
to Pugachev, was universally held in the west as in
the east. M a rx him self had encouraged the favourite
N arodnik speculation that the Russian peasant
com m une was destined to evolve into a socialist
society without an intervening capitalist stage.
Plekhanovs claim to an outstanding place am ong
the makers o f the O cto b er revolution is the insight,
brilliantly original in the early eighteen-eighties,
that capitalism was already in the process o f striking
roots in Russia, that its developm ent w ould create
a Russian proletariat, and that it was this Russian
proletariat, and not the Russian peasantry, w hich
w ould provide the driving-force and the ideological
justification o f the Russian revolution. T h ere was
thus no rcason to place Russia outside the orthodox
M arxist scheme. T h e trend o f Plekhanovs thinking
was apparent in 1882 w h en he published a Russian
106
Plekhanov: Father o f Russian M arxism

translation o f the Communist Manifesto, though the
preface shows th at he was not yet a M arxist. In
the follow ing year, w ith tw o o f his close associates in
exile. Paul A xelrod and V e r a Zasulich, he founded
a group under the nam e T h e Liberation o f L ab o u r
w ith a M arxist program m e. Plekhanov was the
undisputed ancestor o f R ussian Social-D em ocracy,
both as a doctrine and as an organization.
T h e ten years that follow ed w ere occupied b y
incessant controversy w ith the N arodniks.
Plekh anovs position was defined in tw o essays dating
from 1883 and 1884 respectively, Socialism and the
Political Struggle and Our Diferences; and the broad
lines o f p o licy here laid dow n w ere not seriously
am ended or added to for tw enty years. Plekhanov
asserted th at the R ussian peasantry was fundam entally non - re vo lu tio n ary; that the peasant
com m une could evolve only into petty bourgeois
capitalism , not into socialism ; that the revolution
w ould culm inate in the seizure o f pow er b y the
industrial workers ; but that this final step could be
taken only under conditions o f bourgeois dem ocracy,
the achievem ent o f w hich was therefore the first
and im m ediate revolutionary goal. T o count on a
peasant revolt as the source o f revolution was tantam ount to a n a rch ism ; to advcate an im m ediate
seizure o f pow er b y the workers was Blanquism .
But these ideas m ade such slow h ead w ay that, when
Plekhanov appeared in Paris in 1889 at the founding
congress o f the Second International and announced
that the Russian revolution w ill trium ph as a
proletarian revolution, or it w ill not trium ph
107
at all , he was uttering a bold paradox.
Such was the picture when L en in entered the
lists w ith a vigorous polem ic against the Narodniks,
in 1894. B y this time Russian capitalism , under the
pow erful im pulse o f W itte, was grow ing b y leaps
and bounds; the first serious strikes and demonstrations o f workers had occurred in P etrograd ;
and the views o f Plekhanov were com ing into their
own.
Sm all M arxist groups sprang up in the
principal Russian cities. O n the other hand, the
authorities still saw revolution in terms o f N arodniks
and terrorists; and they were not displeased w ith
the appearance o f this new sect w h ich was splitting
the revolutionary m ovem ent, w hich did not appear
to be preaching im m ediate action and w hich was
m ainly occupied in analysing the grow th o f Russian
capitalism . F or a few years the writings o f the
M arxists, provided they were couched in learned
and not openly provocativo language, received the
imprimatur o f the censors. It was the period o f w hat
carne to be known as legal M arxism .
T his curious circum stance explains w h y Ple
kh anovs c h ie f philosophical w ork was also the only
one o f his writings legally published in Russia before
the revolution. H e com pleted it in L ondon in 1894.
I t was copied out b y an enthusiastic young Russian
M arxist nam ed Potresov, who carried the m anuscript back w ith him to Petrograd and secured a
publisher for it. T h e conditions o f its publication
also explain w h y the title originally chosen for it b y
Plekhanov (which has been restored in the present
translation) was abandoned in favour o f the m eaning108

less and therefore harmless circum locution, On the
Question o f the Development o f the Monist View o f History.
It appeared in the last days o f 1894, bearing the date
1895, and was at once read b y Lenin, w ho expounded
it w ith enthusiastic approval to the M arxist circle
in Petrograd. It had an im m ediate and lasting
success. Len in afterwards said that it had reared
a w hole generation o f Russian M arxists
In Defence o f Materialism (followed a yea r later b y
Essays in the History o f Materialism, o f w hich an
English versin is available) is a systematic, orderly
and effective presentation in an historical setting
o f the M arxist doctrine o f dialectical m aterialism.
Starting from French eighteenth-century m aterial
ism, w hich he traces back to Locke, Plekhanov then
illustrates how the idea o f the class struggle passed
into French thought in the half-century after 1789,
turns from this to the U to p ian socialists and to
G erm n idealist philosophy, and finally shows how
the modern m aterialism o f M a rx springs from
all these diverse sources. A p a rt from some unduly
lengthy polemics against contem porary Russian
subjectivists , all this wears rem arkably well.
T h ere is no better exposition available o f w h at M arx
(and Lenin) m eant b y dialectical m aterialism .
T h e essence o f dialectical, as opposed to metaphysical , or static, m aterialism is to introduce the
elem ent o f opposition, struggle and m ovem ent into
the explanation o f reality. T his relieves materialism
o f the determ inism im plicit in the more rigid forms
o f the doctrine, but puts a question m ark against
the nature o f the forces generating the dialectical
109
process. In postulating that the ultim ate source is to
be found in changes in m aterial conditions o f production, M a rx does not pretend that these oprate
autom atically or without the conscious intervention
o f free hum an w ill. In a famous letter w ritten in
the last years o f his life, Engels goes so far as to adm it
that he and M a rx m ay sometimes have overstated
the role o f the econom ic factor and neglected the
o th er factors in the reciprocai interactions o f the
historical process .
T h e doctrine o f dialectical
m aterialism thus gains in subtlety w hat it loses in the
false sim plicity sometimes attributed to it.
T ranslated (as all M arxist philosophy must be)
into concrete political terms, the M arxist doctrine o f
m an and m atter raises the issue o f the respective
roles in revolutionary policy o f the spontaneous
action o f the masses, w hich is dependent on objective
m aterial situations, and o f conscious leadership,
w hich is based on a study and grasp o f revolutionary
theory. T h e balance is so nice that writcrs and
actors in the revolutionary dram a are in constant
danger o f tipping it over on one side or the other.
Plekhanov, w hile stating the doctrine fairly enough,
leans on the w hole towards those w ho count on the
ripening o f objective conditions to produce spon
taneous action as the m ain revolutionary forc.
H istory is m ade b y the masses , he wrote in a
famous passage. . . . W hile w e are preparing the
leaders o f the revolutionary arm y, the officers and
non-commissioned officers o f the revolutionary arm y,
that arm y itself is being created b y the irreversible
m arch o f social developm ents.
lio

Lenin, on the other hand, sometimes notably
in his famous pam phlet o f 1902, What is to be Done?
w ent rather uncom fortably far in preaching the
need o f conscious leadership w orking from w ith
out on the otherwise inert masses, T h is idea
dictated L en ins conception o f the Russian SocialD em ocratic Party as a small highly disciplined group
o f professional revolutionaries. O n ly thus could the
masses be m ade ripe for revolution : T h ere is n a
conscious activity o f the workers w ithout social
dem ocracy
It was this attitude w hich exposed
L enin from time to time to charges o f Blanquism
and Bakuninism
A ccordin g to present interpretations, L en in s and Stalins m ain contribution
to the theory o f dialectical m aterialism has been to
reveal the active role o f consciousness.
T his divergence was the basis o f the rift, doctrinal
and tem peram ental, w hich was presently to open
between Plekhanov and Lenin, But for the m oment
all was well. W hen Lenin visited the older m an in
G eneva on his first jo u rn ey abroad in the sum m er of
1895
relations were still those o f revered master
and brilliant disciple. O n L en ins return to Russia
he was arrested in D ecem ber 1895, and spent the
next four years in prison or in Siberia, H e was,
however, able to follow and applaud Plekhanovs
vigorous polemics against the legal M arxists and
the economists , who were trying to em pty
M arxism o f its revolutionary content b y treating it
as a pur theory o f econom ic evo lu tio n ; and he
hailed w ith enthusiasm the first attem pt in 1898 to
create a Russian Social-D em ocratic Party.
III
W hen L enin em erged from exile in 1900 he met
Potresov and another young revolutionary called
M arto v, and between them the three hatched a
project to found a popular revolutionary Journal and
a solid M arxist periodical, to be called Iskra ( T h e
S p ark ) and Z^rya ( T h e D aw n ) respectively,
a n d to be issued somewhere in Europe. It was
Potresov w ho, having well-to-do relations, furnished
the funds and seems at the outset to have been the
m oving spirit in the enterprise. M r. Rothstein, who
od d ly refers to Potresov as Plekhanovs publisher ,
ignores altogether Potresovs role in the foundation
o f Iskra, w hich he ascribes to Lenin alone. It is true
that Potresov becam e a M enshevik in 1903, a
defencist in 1914 and a bitter enem y o f the
Bolshevik revolution after 1917. But these subsequent falls from grace need not depose him from his
distinguished niche in the pre-history o f the revolu
tion. Be this as it m ay, the three young men
proceeded, one b y one, to Sw itzerland to la y the
scheme before Plekhanov and his group.
N ot
without difficulty, agreem ent was reached.
The
journals were to be published w ith an editorial
board consisting o f Plekhanov, A xelrod and Zasulich, Lenin, Potresov and M artov.
T h e possibilities o f friction were soon apparent.
Plekhanov, the snior m cm ber and undisputed doyen
o f the group, rem ained in his own eyes and in those
o f others the presiding genius o f the enterprise. Lenin
q uickly em erged head and shoulders above his fellow
editors b y his energy, b y the clarity o f his ideas, and
b y his determ ination to establish both a bod y o f
112

revolutionary doctrine and an organized revolutionary
party. T h e first o f these aims required, in addition
to filling the columns o f Iskra, the prom ulgation o f a
party program m e ; the second, the sum m oning o f a
party congress to take up the work begun and aban
doned in 1898.
Plekhanov sym pathized w ith both these aims.
H e drafted a program m e on the lines o f those pre
pared fifteen and tw enty years ago for the L ibera
tion o f L ab o u r group. T his was criticized b y
Lenin, and out o f the subsequent discussions carne
the draft program m e w hich was published in Iskra
in the summer o f 1902. Plekhanovs prestige was
stiU g re a t; and almost for the last tim e in his life
Lenin was prepared to bow to superior authority,
or at any rate to compromise w ith it. A significant
concession secured b y Lenin in these discussions
was the inclusin in the program m e o f the M arxist
doctrine o f the dictatorship o f the proletariat ,
w hich had characteristically found no place in
Plekhanovs draft. O n e o f the charges brought b y
Lenin against Plekhanov m any years later was his
failure to deal w ith the relation o f the revolution to
the State.
T h e party congress, w hich met in Brussels and
then in London in the summer o f 1903, was more
troublesome. It adopted the program m e w ithout
difficulty, but split on the party rules. H ere Lenin
proposed a form ula for party m embership designed
to cover his conception o f the party as a disciplined
arm y o f trained and active revolutionaries. T h e
prestige o f the master had hitherto w eighed with
the d iscip le ; but now the determ ination and forcefulness o f the disciple carried a w a y the master
himself.
Plekhanov supported L en in throughout
the congress. T his did not save L enin from being
defeated on the issue o f the rules. B ut b y a turn o f
the wheel, his group secured a m ajority in the
elections o f p arty officers. T his victory had two
results. Lenin and his supporters are know n to
posterity as Bolsheviks or m ajority-m en, leavin g
the title o f M en sh evik s to the m in o rity; and
L enin and Plekhanov were left in undisputed
control o f Iskra, the organ o f p a rty policy.
Plekhanov had now reached the sum mit and
turning-point o f his career.
M a n y explanations
m ight be suggested o f the next phase. T h o u gh he
was not yet fifty, com plaints about his health began
to be heard at this tim e ; he m ay have lacked the
physical strength and endurance to cope w ith the
younger rival w ho was driving him w here he did
not w ant to go. Plekhanov was b y character a m ild
m an a man o f the pen rather than o f action. In
words he could be trenchant enough.
A t the
congress he had shocked the delegates, and provoked
some hisses, b y proclaim ing, w ith a logic less faulty
(unless the reporters have traduced him) than his
L a t in : salus revolutiae suprema lex. B ut in practice
the cloak and dagger were antipathetic to him.
N ature had fitted him to theorize about revolution,
not to m ake it. Stalin rather unkindly lum ps him
w ith K a u tsk y am ong the theorists whose role is
finished as soon as revolution a ctu ally begins.
A noth er cause o f the split was diagnosed by
114

K rupskaya w hen she rem arked that after the turn
o f the century Plekhanov had lost the cap acity for
understanding Russia
Like all the early revolu
tionaries he had always been a westerner in
terms o f Russian nineteenth-century th o u g h t; and
by 1901 he had lived continuously in western
Europe for tw enty years. H e had im bibed the softer,
as w ell as some o f the more arid, traits o f western
rationalism and western radicalism its humanitarianism, its belief in ordered progress, its dislike of
violence and o f abrupt or catastrophic change. H e
had incapacitated him self to understand the Russian
revolution or to understand Lenin.
In essence the rift between Plekhanov and Lenin
was the same w hich divided M ensheviks from
Bolsheviks. Both accepted the ordered sequence
laid dow n in the Communist Manifesto according to
w hich bourgeois dem ocratic revolution was to be
followed b y proletarian socialist revolution. Both
agreed that Russia was as yet only on the threshold
o f the bourgeois revolution, whose advent was being
inevitably hastened b y the developm ent o f Russian
capitalism . Plekhanov, the theorist, in com m on w ith
the M ensheviks, rem ained content w ith this tidy
scheme. Lenin, the practical revolutionary, becam e
from 1901 onwards increasingly im patient o f a policy
which, until some undefined date in the future, left
the proletariat w ith little to hope for and little to
do except, perhaps, to further the progress o f
capitalism , its ow n greatest enem y and oppressor.
It was when L en in tried to escape from this dilem m a,
to hasten the bourgeois revolution b y an alliance
"5
betw een the proletariat and the peasantry and to
carry it forw ard a t the earliest m om ent to the
socialist stage, that he encountered the stern opposi- _
tion, in the am e o f M arxist orthodoxy, o f Plekhanov
and the Mensheviks.
Psychologically and politically the break was
overdue when Plekhanov and L en in celebrated
their jo in t victo ry at the 1903 congress. Plekhanov
was quickly shocked b y the ruthless consistency w ith
w h ich L en in proposed to exploit the victory. T h e
M ensheviks, w hom L enin wished to excom m unicate,
included most o f Plekhanovs old friends and associates. T h e rigid p arty discipline in matters o f opinin
as w ell as o f organization w h ich L en in wished to
enforce was alien to Plekhanovs western notions o f
political organization and agitation. U n th in kab ly
for Lenin, Plekhanov began to advcate reconciliation w ith the dissidents. Before the end o f 1903
L en in had resigned from the editorial board o f
Iskra; Plekhanov had co-opted on to it the form er
members rejected b y the congress, M ensheviks a l l ;
Iskra had becom e a M enshevik o rg a n ; and L en in
had been left to organize his Bolsheviks as an
independent faction.
T h e next tw elve months saw a series o f scathing
articles from Plekhanovs pen against L en in and
the Bolsheviks. L en in s What is to be Done? was
answered b y Plekhanovs What not to Do. L enin
was declared gu ilty o f fostering a sectarian spirit
o f exclusin , o f claim ing to act in obedience to
an infallible class instinct , o f confusing the
dictatorship o f the proletariat w ith the dictatorship
116

over the proletariat
Plekhanov was a learned
controversialist. W ith a w ealth o f quotation he
proved that L enin, b y his insistence on conscious
ness , was revivin g the idealistic heresy o f the B auer
brothers w hich M a rx had denounced in the eighteenforties, and that, b y his ad vo cacy o f an arm y o f
professional revolutionaries, he was a disciple not o f
M arx but o f Bakunin. I t is perhaps significant
(though there was provocation for this on the other
side) that Plekhanovs argum ents turn alw ays on
the issue o f conform ity w ith M arx, never on that o f
the practical utility o f the courses o f action proposed.
Plekhanov rem ained te the end doctrinaire and
academ ic.
T h e rest o f his career was one o f w avering and
frustration. H e never becam e an orthodox M enshevik, and in the party controversies o f the follow ing
years occasionally even found him self in L en in s
cam p. T h e last m eeting between the tw o men
happened after the outbreak o f w ar in 1914. Ple
khanov, ten years earlier, at the time o f the RussoJapanese w ar, had ardently preached defeatism
and the class w ar, and had written that inter
national social-dem ocracy cannot help rising in
revolt against international wars
H e now ap
peared as an advcate o f national defence on a
Socialist platform at Lausanne, and found him self
suddenly and unexpectedly confronted b y an angry
Lenin.
K rupskaya, w ho relates the incident,
admit's that a m ajority o f the audience was on the
side o f Plekhanov.
In the spring o f 1917 the F ebruary revolution
117
allow ed Plekhanov to return to Russia after an
in terval o f thirty-six years. H e took part in the
famous dem ocratic conference in M oscow in
A ugust, and denounced the Bolsheviks both before
and after the O cto b er revolution. F or a reissue o f
his thirty-four-year-old essay on Socialism and the
Political Struggle he wrote a postscript (it has not been
reprinted in the collected edition), in w hich he
accused Lenin o f reviving an old N arodnik heresy b y
supposing that the introduction o f socialism could
be m ade to coincide w ith the overthrow o f the old
regim e, and predicted fearful harm from the
attem pt to telescope the bourgeois and proletariat
revolutions. W hen over-zealous R ed G uards ransacked the house in Tsarskoe Selo w here Plekhanov
la y sick, his friends protested to Lenin ; and an order
was issued in the nam e o f the C ouncil o f Peoples
Commissars to protect the person and property o f
Citizen Plekhanov
T h e m aterial guarantee was
thus accom panied b y a verbal insult. Plekhanov
was no longer a socialist com rade bu t a bourgeois
Citizen ,
Plekhanov was now in an advanced stage o f
tuberculosis, and died before the revolution was a
year old. A t his own request he was buried in
Petrograd near the grave o f Belinsky. T h e request
was significant o f Plekhanovs political affinities in
his later years. Belinsky the typical m an o f the
forties had evolved from the position o f a
H egelian conservative to that o f a H egelian political
radical. H e ended where M a rx began, and, d ying
young, was always in the vanguard o f his ow n conii8

temporaries. Plekhanovs m ain w ork o f providing a
M arxist foundation for the revolutionary cause o f
Russia was done b y the tim e he was fo rty ; and
though he lived on to recede to a position not far
from that w here Belinsky had ended, his achieve
ment gives him a lasting place am ong Russian
thinkers. H e is perhaps the only m an who, having
crossed swords w ith L enin in bitter controversy, is
to-day quoted w ith respect in the Soviet U nion.
1*9
8
TH E
A
GRADEE
O F B O L S H E V IS M
T H A T becam e the All-R ussian (afterwards AIl-
VV
Union) Gommunist Party (Bolsheviks) was

founded at M insk fifty years ago, under the nam e o f
the Russian Social-D em ocratic W orkers Party ,
b y a tiny congress o f nine men. T h e y represented
local organizations at Petersburg, M oscow , K ie v
and Ekaterinoslav, and the Jew ish G eneral
W orkers U nion in Russia and Poland , com m only
called the Bund
T h e congress lasted three
days M arch 13-15 (M arch 1-3, O .S .), 1898. It
authorized the publication o f a manifesto (which
was drafted b y Peter Struve, a M arxist intellectual),
appointed a central com m ittee and decided to issue
a p arty organ. B ut before anythin g else could be
done, the plice arrested all the principal participants, so that virtu ally nothing rem ained o f this
initial effort save a com m on nam e shared b y a
num ber o f local com m ittees and organizations
w hich had no central rallyin g point and no other
connexions w ith one another.
T h e manifesto, after referring to the life-giving
hurricane o f the 1848 revolution , w hich had
blow n over Europe fifty years before, noted that the
120
T he Oradle o f Bolshevism
Russian working-class was entirdy deprived of
what its foreign comrades freely and peacefully
enjoy a share in the administration o f the State,
freedom of the spoken and written word, freedom
of organization and assembly
These were neces
sary instruments in the struggle for its final liberation, against private property, for socialism
In
the west the bourgeoisie had won these freedoms.
In Russia conditions were different.
The farther east one goes in Europe, the weaker,
meaner and more cowardly becomes the bourgeoisie in
the political sense, and the greater the cultural and
political tasks which fali to the lot of the proletariat.
On its strong shoulders the Russian working class must
and will carry the work of conquering political liberty.
This is an essential step, but only the first step, to the
realization of the great historie mission of the proletariat,
to the foundation of a social order in which there will
be no place for the exploitation of man by man.
In western democratic terms, the programme was
extreme but constitutional.
In Tsarist Russia it
was unconditionally revolutionary; the intention to
throw off the yoke o f the autocracy was specific
ally proclaimed.
Nearly three years later a fresh start was made
when the three young revolutionary Marxists
Lenin, Potresov and Martov who had just served
sentences in Siberia for illegal activities met the
Liberation o f Labour group in Switzerland.
Lenin was then thirty.
Since 1894, when his
first political writing had been circulated in hectograph form, he had been known as an able and
I2Z
vigorous disciple o f Plekhanov; and he had been,
before his arrest in December 1895, ^ leading spirit
in one of the groups represented at the 1898 conr
gress. He now showed himself the most energetic
member of the Iskra board. It was he who drafted
the manifesto announcing the new Journal, and who
was its steadiest and most prolific contributor. It
was he who led the agitation for a second party
congress to take up again the work begun and interrupted at Minsk. The congress, which opened
in July 1903, was the real founding congress of the
party not the less because its concluding stage
also produced the epoch-making split between
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
T he breach was
intensified when, three months after the congress,
the wavering Plekhanov went over to the M en
sheviks, Lenin resigned from the board and Ishra
became a Menshevik organ.
The party thus founded in 1898, refounded in
1903 and (so far as its Bolshevik wing was concerned)
remodelled by Lenin after the split, became the
directing instrument of the revolution o f October
1917. The congress of 1903 was the crucial turningpoint in its history, the focus round which all the
main party controversies, both earlier and later,
revolved.
Some understanding o f these contro
versies is essential to any judgment on the revolu
tion itself and on the events which issued from it.
The English reader can find an account o f them
in the unsatisfactory official short History o f the Gom
munist Party o f the Soviet Union, published in 1938, or
in Popovs less cursory Outline History o f the Gommunist
123
Party o f the Soviet Union, published five years earlier.
T h e Russian reader is em barrassed only b y the
mass o f often indigestible and unreliable m aterial.
A n im portant recent accession to the Russian
sources o f p arty history is The Origin o f Bolshevism,
b y F. I. Dan,* the form er M enshevik leader, who
died almost at the m om ent o f its publication in
N ew Y o rk.
T h e last chapter contains w h at is
virtually a recantation o f D a n s previous attitude,
and the book represents a sincere, though not
uncritical, acceptance o f L en in s views. It bears
some o f the marks o f a w ork o f old age, but is full
both o f know ledge and o f penetration. N o more
objective account o f early party history has been
w ritten b y any o f those w ho participated in it.
W hen the 1903 congress met, three ideological
battles had been fought and w o n ; and these three
victories form ed the basis o f the p arty program m e
unanim ously adopted b y the congress. A s against
the N arodniks, the Russian Social-D em ocratic
W orkers P arty regarded the proletariat and not the
peasant as the bearer o f the com ing revo lu tio n ; as
against the legal M arxists , it preached revolu
tionary action and no com prom ise w ith the bourgeoisie ; as against the economists , it emphasized
the essentially political character o f the p arty pro
gram m e.
T h e cam paign against the N arodniks had been
conducted b y P lekhanov in the eighties and
early nineties.
T h e Russian revolution , ran
Plekhanovs famous aphorism, w ill trium ph as
* F . I . D a n , Proiskhozhdenie Bolshevizma.
123
a proletarian revolution, or it will not triumph at
all. This clearly meant that the way to revolution
in Russia would be paved by industrial developm en t; and in the last decade of the century Witte
and foreign capitalists were busy fulfilling this
requirement.
Lenin, in the writings against the
Narodniks which opened his polemicai career, had
little to do but to drive home Plekhanovs arguments
and to point tellingly to what was happening in
Russia before the eyes of all. The star of the indus
trial worker was rising, the star of the backward
peasant waning, in the revolutionary firmament. It
was not until 1905 that the problem of fitting the
Russian peasant into the revolutionary scheme
again became a burning party issue.
The struggle against the legal Marxists ,
whose views, expressed in slightly cryptic language,
were allowed by the censorship to appear in learned
journls, was more complicated. The ablest member
of the group was Peter Struve, author of the mani
festo o f the Minsk congress; and Bulgakov and
Berdyaev, who later joined the Orthodox Ghurch,
were at one time members of it. Lenin welcomed
the temporary alliance of the legal Marxists
against the Narodniks.
They accepted without
qualification the Marxist view of the development
of capitalism as a first step towards the eventual
achievement of socialism, and believed that in this
respect Russia must tread the western path. So far
Lenin agreed with them. But insistence on the
necessity of the capitalist stage led them to treat
this development as an end in itself and to substituto
124
reform for revolution as the process out o f w hich
socialism w ould eventually g ro w ; and it was on
this point that Lenin attacked legal M arxism as
tantam ount to dem ocratic liberalism and the enem y
o f the proletariat.
This attitude towards the legal M arxists was
sym ptom atic o f a dilem m a w hich pursued the party
for m any years. M arxist theory from the Communist
Manifesto onwards m ade it clear that, so long as
political freedom had not been achieved, the pro
letariat shared w ith the bourgeoisie the same interest
in w inning it. In pursuance o f this theory the p arty
program m e adopted b y the second congress laid it
down that the p arty supports every opposition and
revolutionary m ovem ent directed against the existing
social and political order in Russia
It was a
rather undistinguished delegate to the congress who
pointed out that o n ly tw o contem porary m ovem ents
answered to this description the Social-R evolutionaries (who were the heirs o f the Narodniks) and
the legal M arxists and that the congress had
passed resolutions specifically condem ning both o f
them. N o read y reply was forthcom ing. W h atever
M arxist theory required, co-operation between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie for a specific end,
com m on to both, could never be free from em barrassment so long as the destruction o f the bourgeoisie
rem ained the ultim ate goal o f the proletarian revolu
tion.
T h is inherent contradiction, and not the
intolerance o f L enin or his successors, was responsible
for a long-standing crux.
T h e economists , against w hom the third
125
ideological battle o f these years was fought, were
a group o f M arxist intellectuals who in the autum n
o f 1897 started in Petersburg a jo u m a l called .
The Workers' Thought. L ike the legal M arxists ,
they rem ained within the constitutional fram ework,
eschewed revolution and treated socialism as a
distant ideal. U nlike the legal M arxists , w ho
confined themselves to theory, they had a program m e
o f action. T h e advance to socialism must be b y
stages. A t the present stage in Russia, the classconsciousness o f the worker could be stim ulated
b y encouraging him to concntrate on econom ic
dem ands for econom ic ends, to better his condition b y trade-union organization, m utual aid, selfeducation and so forth.
M eanw hile, political action must be reserved for
the in tellectu als; and, since there was as yet no
basis for a M arxist political program m e, that action
could only take the form o f supporting the liberal
bourgeoisie in their dem and for political freedom.
In the words o f the docum ent w hich served as the
manifesto o f the group :
Discussions about an independent workers political
party are nothing but the result o f transferring foreign
problems and foreign Solutions to our soil. . . . For the
Russian Marxist there is one way o u t : to help the eco
nomic struggle o f the proletariat and to particpate in
the activity o f the liberal opposition.
In other words, the im m ediate objective in Russia

could only be to reach the position lon g ago estab
lished in the west b y the bourgeois revolution.
E conom ism received a forceful im pulse from the
126
wa.ve of industrial strikes which began to sweep over
Russia in 1896, and it was for five years an influential movement, perhaps the most influential
movement, among Russian Marxists. But it was at
once denounced by Plekhanov in Switzerland and
by Lenin and his fellow-exiles in Siberia as a denial
of the essence of Social-Democracy. The controversy
was carried on into the Iskra period; and a good
part of Lenins first major work, What is to be Done ?
published in 1902, was devoted to a polemic against
the economists
Political as well as economic
agitation was needed to arouse the class-consciousness of the masses.
The ideal of the Social-Democrat must be not a
trade-union secretary, but a tribune o f the people. . . . A
trade-union policy for the working class is simply a
bourgeois policy for the working class.
When the second party congress met in 1903,
the three tendencies represented by the Narodniks,
the legal Marxists and the economists ap
peared to have received their death-blow, being
almost unanimously denounced by the delegates
by future Mensheviks as well as by future Bolsheviks.
Yet it was a Pyrrhic victory. The Social-Revolutionaries took up the unanswered challenge o f the
Narodniks; and the Mensheviks carne to occupy
positions scarcely distinguishable from those o f the
legal Marxists and of the economists . Nor
was this an accidental perversity. The issue of fitting
the Russian peasant into the Marxist scheme of
proletarian revolution had not yet been faced; and
the tragic contradictions of the attempt to make a
127
socialist revolution in a country where no bourgeois
revolution had yet occurred to win political freedom,
had not been resolved.
It was against the background o f these controversies that Lenin built up the future A ll-U n ion
Com m unist P arty (Bolsheviks) . H e accused the
Mensheviks,
as
he
had once
accused
the
economists , o f lack o f p rin c ip ie ; opportunism m eant for Lenin not a shifting o f ground
for tactical reasons (this he adm itted and advocatcd
freely enough) but a postponem ent o f revolutionary
work on the pretext that conditions were not ripe.
B ut most o f all he accused them o f lack o f organ
ization, o f amateurishness, o f sm all-scale craftsmanship
T h e most significant divisin at the
second congress was not the criticai vote or the
elcctions but the divisin on the party statute. W as
the party, like western political parties, to be a mass
organization o f supporteis and sym pathizcrs ? O r
was it to be a disciplined arm y o f active revolution
aries ?
T h e c|uestion o f organization thus raised a vital
question o f principie. E verything that has been
most controversial in the history o f the Russian
revolution was involved in it. In the M enshevik
view , the socialist revolution could be achieved only
as the sequel o f a bourgeois revolution and through
a political party o f the kind w hich had em erged
from the bourgeois revolutions o f the west. In the
Bolshevik view , the Russian socialist revolution
must carry w ithin itself the bourgeois revolution
w hich the Russian bourgeoisie had failed to a c h ie v e ;
128
and this called for a special form of party organiza
tion unknown to the west. In a sense both were
right.
Lenin, with his unerring perception of
realities, knew the only way in which the Russian
revolution could be led to victory. But if the survivors of Menshevism were to-day to retort that
this is not the socialist revolution as understood by
them or by the world in the early igoos it would be
difficult to prove them wrong. History disappoints
the programme-makers as often as it refutes the
prophets.
It must then be confessed, if justice is to be done,
that Lenins conception of the party, which he
drove home after 1903 with all the ruthlessness of
extreme consistency and unshakable conviction,
owed much less to theory than to his own intuition of
Russian requirements. I f he accused the economists of exaggerating the case for spontaneity
in the workers movement, and declared that the
class-consciousness of the workers could be developed
only from without by an organized party of
revolutionary intellectuals, the argument, however
theoretical and general in form, was a faithful
record of particular observed facts of Russian
society. Lenins conception o f the party had at
least the empirical justification that it was the kind
of party required to make the revolution triumph
in Russia. His opponents were prescribing for
conditions which did not exist.
Lenin had two essential prerequisites for a
revolutionary p a rty : it must be small in numbers
and disciplined and conspiratorial in character.
129
While Plekhanov and Lenin both preached that
history is made by the masses , both recognized
that the main business of the party was to train the
officers and non-commissioned officers of the revo
lutionary army
Social conditions would provide
the rank and file when the moment arrived. For
Lenin the party was always a minority and its
backbone would always be a group o f professional
revolutionaries. The 1905 revolution for the first
time brought a significant number of workers into
the party; and from that time Lenin began, for
tactical reasons, to emphasize the importance o f the
role of the workers in the party. But it was not until
some years after 1917 that workers began to form
more than a small minority of the delegates to party
congresses or o f the members o f party committees.
Lenins second prerequisite for the party its
disciplined and conspiratorial character derived
even more directly from Russian conditions. Iso
lated revolutionary groups o f workers and students
in Russia, well-meaning amateurs, quickly fell
victims to the pohce, as Lenin himself had done. In
order to maintain secret revolutionary groups and
conduct secret revolutionary propaganda in Russia
itself, organization and discipline were paramount.
While the principies of democracy were professed
within the party, the necessities of the case precluded,
as Lenin explicitly recognized, anything like public
and open discussion or the election of leaders. Russian
conditions dictated a form of organization utterly
alien to the political parties o f the west.
The attempt to execute a western political
130
T he Cradle o f Bolshevism
program m e for such M arxism essentially was
in the conditions o f the autocratic plice State o f the
Rom anovs created a series o f contradictions w hich
were the tragic dilem m a o f the Gom m unist Party
and o f the Bolshevik revolution. It was impossible
to attain a congruence o f means and ends where
the indispensable means belonged to a different
order o f society from that in and for w hich the
ends had been conceived. It was impossible to
establish a stable or rational relation w ith the bour
geoisie, domestic or foreign, since the doctrine
appeared to impose two contradictory attitudes,
alliance being alternately sought and spurned.
F in ally it was impossible to create in terms o f men
and wom en that basis o f dem ocratic ad m inistraron
on w hich socialism o f the kind contem plated in the
M arxist tradition could alone rest.
A ll these dilem m as emerge clearly from the bitter
debates w hich accom panied the founding o f the
p arty and its initial steps in organization forty and
fifty years ago. T h e party m oved forw ard on the
course set b y L enin inexorably, in spite o f every
set-back, through an ever-tightening discipline and
an ever-narrow ing circle o f authority and power.
In the 1890S it had already been established that
the proletariat must lead the re v o lu tio n ; the
dictatorship o f the proletariat was naturalized in
Russia. In 1903 it becam e accepted doctrine that
the party must lead the p ro le ta ria t; and the
dictatorship o f the p a rty was a phrase lo n g in use.
T h e n carne the phase o f the leadership o f the party
b y its central co m m ittee; this was the period o f the
revolution itself. After the introduction of the New
Economic Policy in 1921 Lenin himself tightened
the reins once more; and for a time the Politbureau
o f the party was the decisive organ, taking precedence over all other party and State institutions.
Finally, when the restraint o f Lenins personal
prestige was withdrawn, leadership passed to an
inner group whose composition was never certainly
known and which had no constitutional standing
even within the party.
The process had been
precisely foreseen by Trotsky (of all people since
none was more dictatorial than he by temperament
and ambition), who in a brilliant pamphlet pub
lished in 1904 predicted a situation in which the
party is replaced by the organization of the party,
the organization by the central committee, and
finally the central committee by the dictator .
It would be difficult to pretend that Lenin in
these early years of the partys history saw clearly
whither the demand for rigid organization and
discipline would lead.
It would be even more
difficult to pretend that, had he seen, he would have
recoiled from the choice. His mind and heart were
set on the revolution, in which he saw the crowning
necessity for Russia and for the world. He would
reject or neglect nothing that could contribute to its
consummation.
Yet the unresolved dilemma remains.
Dan
brilliantly diagnoses the immanent contradiction
in Russias social development: its retarded char
acter , which had brought it to the point o f revolu
tion only when socialism was already knocking at
132
the door and dem ocracy could no longer be realized
w ithout socialism, and its backwardncss , w hich
prevented the realization o f socialism in free dem o
cratic forms . T h e words com e from D a n s concluding chapter, w hich is, in efec, a renunciation o f
his former M enshevism and an acceptance o f L en in s
conclusions and policy. Precisely because he recognizes the tragedy and the contradictions which,
how ever inescapable they m ay have been, lay behind
that policy, D a n s book constituios a more powerful
apologia for the party and for the revolution than
the stereotyped official histories.
133
9
L E N IN :
TH E
M ASTER
B U IL D E R
e w great men have so quickly won so secure and

uncontestcd a place in history as Lenin. Even
those w ho most hated L en ins work have praised
his com parativo m oderation and statesmanship as a
foil to the blacker villainy, first o f his colleagues,
then o f his successors. D eath rem oved him at a
m om ent when the clouds o f contem porary calum ny
had begun to disperse and before he had tim e to
becom e involved in the em bittered controversies
w hich generally attend the consolidation o f a
revolution. F or his own generation he stood out
head and shoulders from his contem poraries b y the
length and devotion o f his Service to the cause, b y
the clarity and forcefulness o f his ideas, and b y his
practical leadership in the criticai moments o f 1917.
For the next generation he becam e the em bodim ent
o f the victorious revolution, his writings its sacred
text.
L enin, for all his fam e as a revolutionary leader,
was a creator rather than a destryer. H e played
no personal part in the events o f 1905 or in the
F ebru ary revolution o f 1 9 17 ; nor were Bolshevik
ideas an im portant contributory factor.
W h at
134
L en in :
The M aster B uilder
Len in achieved in O cto b er 1917 was not the over

throw o f the provisional governm ent that followed
lo gically from all that had gone before, and was
bound to happen but the construction o f some
thing to take its place. T h e decisive m om ent o f the
revolution carne when, at the first congress o f Soviets
in June 1917, an orator rem arked from the platform
that there was no revolutionary party w illing to
take over the responsibilities o f governm ent, and
L enin, am id m ocking laughter, retorted from his
place in the hall, T h ere is such a p arty . O n ly
when the new regim e had taken over did Lenin rise
to his full stature as adm inistrator, head o f govern
ment, organizer and suprem e political tactician.
L en in was also a builder, or re-builder, o f his
countrys international status and authority. T h e
great Russian Em pire, when the Bolsheviks took
possession o f it and for some tim e after, was in a
process o f rapid disintegration the result o f
internai turm oil and o f defeat in w ar. T h e BrestLitovsk treaty o f M arch 1918 lopped o ff not only
those western appendages o f the form er Tsarist
realm whose independence the Soviet G overnm ent
had spontaneously recognized, but a large slice o f
predom inantly Russian territory. T h e sum m er o f
1918 saw the beginning o f civil w a r and British,
French, Japanese and A m erican intervention, which
long outlasted the G erm n collapse, and for more
than two years forcibly divided the country between
several conflicting authorities. M eanw hile Bolshe
vik acceptance o f the right o f self-determ ination
and secession for all nations and national groups
135
appeared to favour the process o f dispersai and to rule
out anything like a reconstitution o f former unity.
Y e t b y the end o f 1922, little more than two years
after the victorious conclusin o f the civil w ar, the
diverse units had been gathered into the fold o f the
new ly established U nion o f Soviet Socialist R epublics
(the form al incorporation o f the two C entral Asian
republics was delayed till 1924) ; and the cohesin
o f the new federation was destined to prove at least
as strong and enduring as that o f the defunct empire.
T his consum m ation, w hich few could have foreseen
in the dark days o f 1918 or 1920, was not the least
rem arkable o f L en in s achievements. In the eyes o f
history he appears not only as a great revolutionary,
but as a great Russian.
Public interest in Lenin, in his own country and
elsewhere, shows no signs o f abating. T h e second
and third editions o f his com plete works (really
two issues in different form at o f the same edition)
were published between 1926 and 1932. Shortly
before the w ar a fourth edition was decided on, and
its publication is now in progress. T h e copious
additional m aterial appearing in these volum es
had for the most part been published in the Leninskii
Sbornik or other periodical publications, so that it is
not, strictly speaking, n e w ; but its inclusin in a
new edition o f the works makes it, for the first time,
convcniently accessible.
O n the other hand, the lengthy and valuable
expository notes and the appcndices o f documents
(often convenient, even if the documents could be
found elsewhere) have disappeared.
A n official
136
f
>
i
'i
(
L en in :
T he M aster B uilder
pronouncem ent o f 1938 had alread y condem ned

crude political errors o f a dam aging character in
the appendices, notes and commentaries to some
volumes o f the works o f L enin ; and the M arxEngels-Lenin Institute has evidently shrunk from
the task o f revising them in the light o f more recent
inform ation and a more up-to-date orthodoxy. T h e
new edition appears w ith a slender and quite
inadequate apparatus o f n o te s; for this purpose the
student w ill still have to use the earlier editions.
M eanw hile English students o f L enin w ill be
assisted b y tw o new publications.
A com plete
English translation o f L en ins works, started in the
thirties, has apparently been abandoned. But The
Essentials o f Lenin, translated from a Russian twovolum e edition o f his principal works, includes some
w hich have not before appeared in English.* T h e
volum es are large, the price lo w ; and, w hile there
are omissions to be regretted (including all but a
few o f L en in s speeches and reports to congresses), the
m ain corpus o f L en in s writings is now easily accessible to the English reader. T h e other new book is
a short popular biography b y M r. Christopher H ill ^
w hich easily outdistances any o f its predecessors
except that o f D . S. M irsky, now nearly tw enty
years old.
M r. H ill, whose m ndate from the series in w hich
the book appears is to open up a significant theme
* The Essentials o f Lenin.
In tw o volum es.
L aw ren ce and W ishart.
I2S. 6 d .'ca ch .
* C h ristop her H ill, Lenin and the Russian Revolution.

S to u gh ton . 5s.
137
H o d d er and
b y w a y o f a biograph y o f a great m an , has obviously been cram ped b y lim itations o f space. A p a rt
from the usual biographical details and a concluding
chapter o f appreciation, he has chosen to concn
trate on a few essential topics L en in s conception
o f the party, his agrarian policy, his philosophy o f
the State, his view o f the relations o f the revolutionary
republic w ith the outside w orld and his econom ic
policy. T h e choice o f topics is judicious, and the
handling sensible and accurate. T h e non-specialist
reader, for whom the book is designed, w ill obtain
from it a very fair and readable presentation o f the
main problems Lenin had to face and o f his methods
o f solving them.
T h e central focus o f L en in s thought and
action was his theory o f the State, w hich found its
most m ature expression in State and Revolution,
written on the eve o f the O cto ber revolution and
published in the spring o f 1918.
T h e socialist
tradition from G odw in onwards had been almost
unreservedly hostile to the State. M arx, especially
in his early works, repeatedly denounces the State
the form o f organization adopted b y the bour
geoisie for the guarantee o f its property and
interests . T h e Communist Manifesto, truc to this
tradition, looked forward to the d ay when, differences between classes having been wiped out,
social pow er w ill lose its political ch aracter .
But the Manifesto also concerned itself w ith the more
im m ediate practical step o f w inning the revolution ;
and for this purpose it was necessary that the
proletariat should establish its suprem acy by
138
L en in :
overthrow ing the bourgeoisie and the State be

come identical w ith the proletariat organized as
the ruling class
T his was the idea w h ich M arx
crystallized a few years later into the famous slogan
o f the dictatorship o f the proletariat
T h e doctrine o f the State, as it em erged from the
writings o f M a rx and Engels, was tw ofold. In the
long run the State, being a product o f class contra
dictions and an instrum ent o f oppression, w ould die
a w ay and have no place in the com m unist order o f
the future. In the short run, the proletariat, having
destroyed the bourgeois State instrum ent b y revolu
tion, w ould have to set up a tem porary State instru
m ent o f its ow n the dictatorship o f the proletariat
until such tim e as the classless society had been
achieved. T h e reconciliation o f the tw o points o f
view was not always easy. O rthod oxy, when Lenin
first began to consider the m atter, had to steer a
careful course betw een the Scylla o f anarchism ,
w hich rejected the State so vehem ently as to exclude
also the dictatorship o f the proletariat, and the
C harybdis o f State socialism, especially dangerous
in G erm any, w here the Lassallean tradition en
couraged the b elief that socialism m ight trium ph,
not b y destroying the bourgeois State, but b y allying
itself w ith the existing State power.
Lenin, when he w rote State and Revolution, was
still sm arting from the treachery o f the G erm n
Social-D em ocrats in em bracing the national cause
in 1914, and was therefore m ore impressed b y
the dangers o f State worship than b y those o f anar
chism. T his makes the work a little one-sided. T h e
*39
argument against the anarchists in defence of the
dictatorship o f the proletariat occupies only a few
hurried paragraphs; the bulk of the pamphlet is
an assault on those pseudo-Marxists who refuse to
recognize, first, that the State is a product of class
antagonisms and an instrument of class domination,
doomed to disappear with the disappearance of the
classes themselves, and secondly, that the immediate
goal is not the taking over of the bourgeois State
machine, but its destruction and the substitution o f
the dictatorship o f the proletariat.
For the student of history the most important
passages in State and Revolution are those which show
how Lenin at this time conceived the dictatorship
of the proletariat. It is something which is no
longer properly a State ; it is already a transitional State, no longer a State in the proper sense
It will begin to die away immediately after its
victory . M arx and Engels believed themselves to
have discovered the prototype of the dictatorship of
the proletariat in the Pars commune o f 18 71; in
April 1917 Lenin eagerly transferred the discovery
to the Soviets. The point of the discovery was that
neither the commune nor the Soviets were a State
in the proper sense . Both had the same exclusively
working-class representation and the same basis of
voluntary self-organization, and stood for the same
kind of loose federation of like-minded autonomous
units in place o f the sovereign authority of the
bourgeois State. Both were to exercise administrative as well as legislative functions, and the evils
both of regular armies and o f a regular bureaucracy
140
L e n in :
were to be superseded. A m ili tia o f workers was

to displace the arm y. M ost o f the adm inistration
w ould be m anaged b y the workers themselves in
their spare time.
Under socialism [wrote Lenin] much of primitive
democracy will inevitably revive, since for the first time
in the history of civilized societies the niass of the population will be raised to independent participation not only
in voting and elections, but in day-to-day administration.
Under socialism all will administer in turn and will
quickly become accustomed to nobody administering.
It is often said that these som ewhat U topian
projects applied only to the coercive organs o f
adm inistration, not to the econom ic and financial
apparatus. But this is not altogether true. L enin
at first believed that the tasks o f business m anagement and accounting, like those o f adm inistration,
could be carried out by ordinary citizens. H e observed that these tasks have been extraordinarily
sim plified by capitalism and reduced to uncom m only simple opcrations o f checking and registration w ithin the reach o f every literate person,
to a know ledgc o f the four rules o f arithm etic
and to the handing out o f correct receipts
W h at was w rong about these aspirations was in
part, no doubt, an over-optim istic estimate o f
hum an nature, but most o f all a failure to under
stand that the dictatorship o f the proletariat, or any
form o f socialist society, would involve not a reduction, but an immcnse incrcase, both in the numbcrs
o f those engaged in administration and in the
com plexity o f their work.
141
In three years L enin leain ed m uch. O n the eve
o f the introduction o f N E P in the spring o f 1921 he
dismissed as a fairy tale the idea that every
w orker could know how to adm inister the State
H arsh necessity forced the Soviet adm inistration
into the traditional State m ould w hich Lenin had
never intended for it. Y e t, so long as L enin lived,
som ething rem ained o f the large-m inded distrust o f
the State w hich he had expressed in State and Revolu
tion. T h e Soviets, and especially the local Soviets,
retained a w ide measure o f autonom y and initiative,
even i f their com petence did not stray far from the
parish p u m p ; and Lenin continued w ith his last
official breath to preach the need for untiring vigilance in curbin g and controlling bureaucracy. N ot
till m any years after L en in s death did the inexorable
tide o f events re-establish a degree o f State worship
w hich w ould have seemed unthinkable to the men
who m ade the revolution.
L en in s personal share in m oulding the foreign
policy o f the new regim e was even more im portant
and decisive than in shaping its domestic p o lic y ;
and here, too, the same flexibility, the same readiness
to study and follow the dynam ic o f events, is equally
conspicuous.
T h e foreign policy o f the young
Soviet G overnm ent was m ade up o f three distinct
strands o f radical pacifism, o f w orld revolution
and o f national or State interest. T h e three strands
sprang from different origins and could rarely be
isolated in practice : the subtle w eb into w hich they
were deftly w oven was m ainly L en in s own work.
T h e motif o f radical pacifism was particularly
142
I^ n in :
strong during the first weeks and months of the

revolution for two reasons. In the first place the
Bolshevists were still vitally dependent, in the Soviets
and elsewhere, on the support of the peasants and
o f their Social-Revolutionary leaders. The peasant
masses, including the mobilized masses, were wholly
indifferent, after more than three years of war,
either to the defence o f national interests or to the
spread of world revolution. Their unconditional
demand for peace was refiected in the ideology of
those radical democrats who proclaimed without
qualification or analysis that peace was always in
the interest of the people everywhere, and that to
follow and carry out the will of the people was the
sure way to peace. Secondly, this radical pacifism
was the basis of the political thinking of Woodrow
Wilson and of those Left-wing circles in other coun
tries where alone the Soviet regime might still hope
to find friends. It was thus essential to dwell on
the one point of view which seemed to provide a
bridge between the regime and these potential supporters rather than on those aspects of Soviet policy
which would inevitably divide them.
Such was the principal inspiration o f the famous
decree on peace which was the first public act
o f Soviet foreign policy. Its language is not Marxist
but Wilsonian. It must be interpreted, not as some
remte descendant of the Gommunist Manifesto, but
as the forerunner of the Fourteen Points issued just
two months later.
What is demanded is not a
socialist but a just, democratic peace a peace
without annexations or indemnities , a peace
143
based on the right o f self-determ ination for all
nations b y a free vote
T h e decree declares
secret diplom acy abolished and announces the
intention w hich was prom ptly carried out to
publish the secret treaties o f the p a s t: future negotiations were to be conducted and this too was
carried out at Brest-Litovsk com pletely openly
before the w hole people
N othing is said, in the decree, o f capitalism as
the cause o f w ar or o f socialism as its cure. T h e one
hint o f world revolution occurs in the final injunction
to the workers o f England, France and G erm an y to
assist their Russian comrades to bring to successful
conclusin the w ork o f peace and also the w ork o f
liberating the labouring and exploited masses o f the
population from every kind o f slavery and exploita
tion . T h e decree reflects, above all, that radical
belief in the rightness and efficacy o f mass opinin
w hich was so deeply rooted in nineteenth-century
dem ocratic doctrine the appeal from xvicked
governments to enlightened people, w hich had been
a com m onplace o f W ilsons utterances. T his note
was echoed m uch later, though w ith rapidly diminishing sincerity, in Soviet pronouncem ents about
disarm am ent.
T h e second strand in Soviet foreign policy the
prom otion o f w orld revolution did not, however,
long rem ain in the background. Peace at any price,
how ever deep the psychological roots o f its appeal and
how ever great its political expediency at this jun eture, was dificult to reconcile w ith fundam ental
Bolshevik d o ctrin e ; and the policy o f transform ing
*44
L en in :
the imperialist war in all belligerent countries into

civil war for the overthrow of capitalism had been
too assiduously proclaimed to be discarded overnight.
During the first weeks o f the revolution
enormous importance was attached to the spread of
propaganda in the Germn arniies by fraternization
and by the distribution of literature; and less suc
cessful attempts were made to set propaganda on foot
in the allied countries. For a brief moment this
mood was all-powerful and all-pervading. Trotsky,
on the testimony of his autobiography, went to the
Commissariat o f Foreign Affairs believing that his
task was to publish the secret treaties, issue a few
revolutionary proclamations and then shut up shop.
World revolution would take care of the rest. Foreign
affairs in the accepted sense would cease to exist.
But the third strand in Soviet foreign policy
national interest was not slow to assert itself.
Lenin, with his sense of realism, was the first to
perceive that a Soviet republic, living even for a
limited period in a world of States, would be com
pelled in many respects to behave like any other
State. In an article in 1915, which afterwards did
manful service in the controversy about socialism
in one country , Lenin had pointed out that the
country or countries in which socialism was first
victorious would have to stand up for a time against
an agglomeration of hostile capitalist States; and
in 1917, when some stalwart internationalist put up
the slogan Down with frontiers , Lenin sensibly
replied that the Soviet republic, coming into exist
ence in a capitalist world, would necessarily have
*45
State frontiers, as well as other State interests, to
defend. I f the rest o f the world was organized on a
system of States, it was not open to a single regin
to contract out o f the system by an act of will.
It would, however, be rash to deduce from all
this either a theoretical or a practical clash in Soviet
foreign policy between the claims o f world revolu
tion and those o f national interest. It was this clash,
and the priority given to national interest, which
had in Lenins view destroyed the Second Inter
national.
No such clash could occur in Soviet
policy for the simple reason that all the Soviet
leaders were agreed in believing that the survival of
the Soviet regime in Russia was bound up with the
success o f the revolution in the rest of the world, or
at any rate in Europe.
Mr. Hill, in common with most recent writers,
cxaggerates the difference between Lenin and Trot
sky on this point, and makes one of his few serious
mistakes when, having quoted Trotskys remark that
either the Russian revolution will cause a revolu
tion in the west, or the capitalists of all countries
will strangle our revolution , he adds that Lenin
would never have committed himself to such a
statement. H alf a dozen statements of the same
tenor can be fotind in Lenins works, of which one,
precisely contemporaneous with that of Trotsky,
may be quoted as a sample :
Anglo-French and American mperialism will in
strangle the independence and freedom of
Russia unless world-wide socialism, world-wide Bolshev
ism triumphs.
evitably
146
L en in :
A n d in the purely hypothetical event o f a clash,

Lenin gave the same answer as T rotsky and in no
less categorical terms. H e is no socialist , Lenin
wrote after Brest-Litovsk, w ho w ill not sacrifice
his fatherland for the trium ph o f the social revolu
tion.
T h e debate between L enin and T rotsky over
Brest-Litovsk turned therefore on a question o f
tim ing and tactics rather than o f principie, since the
same premise was com m on to both. B itterly as it
was contested, it led im perceptibly to a kind o f
synthesis between national and international aspects
o f Soviet p o lic y ; for w hile T rotsky supported his
case for staking everything on w orld revolution (or,
more specifically, on revolution in G erm any) b y the
argum ent, w hich L enin at this time fully accepted,
that without such a revolution the Soviet regim e in
Russia could not survive, Lenin, on his side, argued
that nothing w ould be so certainly fatal to the cause
o f revolution in G erm an y as the overthrow o f the
Soviet republic b y G erm n im perialism , and that to
defend and strengthen the Soviet regim e b y a
prudent national policy was the surest ultim ate
guarantee o f international revolution. L en in was
right. But the iron y o f the situation is that he was
right for a reason w hich contradicted the premise
accepted both b y T rotsky and by h im self nam ely,
the dependence o f the survival o f the regim e in
Russia on revolution elsewhere.
T h e synthesis established at the tim e o f BrestLitovsk between national and international policy,
between the interests o f the Soviet republic and those
*47
o f world revolution, proved lasting.
A whole
generation o f communists Russian and foreign
was nurtured on the dual conception of the promotion of world revolution as the ultimate and
necessary crown and reinforcement o f the Soviet
republic, and of the strengthening of Soviet power
as the immediate and necessary spearhead o f world
revolution. The attempt to drive a wedge between
these two facets of policy and exalt Lenins realism
in foreign policy at the expense o f his loyalty
to world revolution is misleading and mistaken.
After Lenins retirement from the scene, when it
became clear that the prospects o f the world revolu
tion were, to say the least, far more remte than
Lenin or any o f his colleagues had dreamed,
fresh strains were put on the synthesis. But though
the balance was disturbed it was never broken. It
remained reasonably possible nearly thirty years
later to arge, as Lenin had argued over BrestLitovsk, that the survival and strength o f the Soviet
State were the best pledge for the socialist revolution
in other countries.
It has become a commonplace to praise Lenins
realism, his flexibUity, his practical common sense
in judging what could and what could not be done
at the given moment; and all these qualities he
possessed in a pre-eminent degree. But perhaps the
most vivid impression left by a re-reading of his
major works is of the amazing intellectual power
and consistency of purpose which runs through them.
His tactical readiness to compromise, to tack, to
retreat when it became necessary was an enormous
148
L en in :
asset to the politician. But w h at is infinitely more

striking is that he seems to have known from the first
where he was going and how he intended to get
there, and that when he died in 1924 the revolution
was firm ly established on foundations w hich he had
begun to dig thirty years before.
L enin was clear from the outset that to make
the revolution it was necessary to m ake a party.
V irtu a lly the w hole o f his active life before 1917
was devoted to this task. T h ere can be no revolu
tionary a c tio n , he wrote in What is to be Done?
w ithout a revolutionary theory ; and revolu
tionary theory dictated the character o f the revolu
tionary party. A s against the N arodniks the party
was conceived b y Lenin as a party o f the p ro le ta ria t;
as against the legal M arxists as a party o f action
as well as o f th e o ry ; as against the economists
(the Russian counterpart o f the syndicalists in
the \vcst) as a party with a political as well as an
econom ic program m e. A b o ve all, it must be a party
w ith a single mind and purpose : i f unity o f view
collapses, the party collapses .
It was in the light o f this doctrine that Lenin
split the party, almost at the m om ent o f its birth,
b y separating Bolsheviks from Mensheviks ,
and was prepared again and again during the next
tw enty years to sacrifico numbers to rigid discipline
and unity. T h e only im portant com prom ise adm ittcd by L enin
his concession to the peasants
was dictated b y the need o f adapting w hat was
originally a western doctrine to an eastern country
where the peasantry formed more than 80 per cent
149
o f the population. But even this policy bore the
marks of a strict and unbending consistency. It
first took shape at the Stockholm congress o f the
party in 1906, when Lenin found it tactically
necessary to retreat from the logical programme of
nationalization and large-scale cultivation o f the
land. It continued in 1917, when Lenin took over
the programme of the Social-Revolutionaries and
made it the basis o f the agrarian decree of the Soviet
Government. It was carried to its logical conclusin
in 1921, with the New Economic Policy. But, for all
these compromises, Lenin never abandoned the two
essential points that the leadership of the revolution
rested with the proletariat (and this, among other
reasons, presupposed a policy of industrialization as
the sine qua non of a socialist order), and that the
revolution could be carried into the countryside
only by splitting the peasantry and raising the
potentially revolutionary poor peasant against
the petty bourgeois kulak. Gollectivization was the
logical and ultimate triumph of Lenins agrarian
policy, which he did not live to see.
O f the founder of every great religin, philosophy
or political movement it is customary to say that
he would have been horrified by much that was
done by his disciples in his name. The statement
is usually made meaningless in its application to a
dynamic world by the assumption that the ideas of
the founder remain static at the point where he left
them. The curious compound o f consistency and
flexibility or, as the critic might put it, of dogmatism and o f opportunism which marks Soviet
150
L en in :
The M aster B uilder
history is already inherent in the thoughts and

writings o f Lenin. But m uch has happened since
L enin died in 1924 in his fifty-fourth year and with
his work only h a lf d o n e ; and when M r. H ill says,
in his concluding chapter, it is L en in s words,
L enins ideas, w hich are really authoritative in the
Soviet U nion to-day , he raises the w hole contro
versy that centres round the nam e and achievem ent
o f Stalin.
*5 *
10
SOREL:
PHILOSOPHER
OF
SYNDICALISM
orn
at Cherbourg on November 2, 1847,

Georges Sorel was, from the early twenties to the
age of forty-five, a blameless ingnieur des ponts-etchausses. Then in 1892 he abandoned his profession to devote himself to his newly found hobby
o f writing about socialism. He helped to found
two reviews and contributed to many more, wrote
several books (of which one, Reflections on Violence
the only one of his works to be translated into
English enjoyed a succis de scandale) and became
the recognized philosopher of the French trade-union
or syndicalist movement. He died in August
1922 at Boulogne-sur-Seine, where he had spent the
last twenty-five years o f his uneventful life.
Sorel wrote or at any rate published nothing
till he was in the forties; his masterpiece was
written at fifty-nine, and he wrote with undiminished
vigour till well on in his sixties. His late maturity
gives a peculiar shape to his career. His formative
years covered two intellectual generations; he
wrote primarily for a third. He stands, a solitary
and daring pioneer, at the most important cross-
152
|
*
|
1
*
Sorel: Philosopher o f Syndicalism

roads o f modern social and political thought. Born
a few weeks before the Communist Manifesto and
livin g on till the eve o f the m arch on R om e , he
looks back to M a rx and N ietzsche (o f the great
thinkers w ho, more than anyone, underm ined the
foundations o f bourgeois society and bourgeois morality M a rx, N ietzsche and D ostoevsky Sorel
missed only the third) and forw ard to L enin, to
the neo-Catholicism o f B lo y and Pguy, and to
M ussolini. T h ere is no conceivable parallel in any
other country to Sojel, except perhaps Bernard
Shaw , ten years his ju n io r in age, his contem porary
in literary apprenticeship. But this parallel breaks
dow n in at least one re sp e c t: Sorel was no artist
and not even a very good writer.
M a rx was Sorels first master. H e states in his
Confessions th at he was an orthodox M arxist till
1897 ; and this is as nearly true as it could be o f one
w ho was tem peram entally incapable o f bow ing the
knee to an y orthodoxy. His starting-point, accord
in g to his ow n statem ent, was to discover h ow the
essential o f the M arxist doctrines could be realized .
H e drew largely from Nietzsche, in part directly, in
p a rt through Bergson, the philosopher o f UEvolu
tion cratrice and the lan vital.
T h e other,
though less im portant, literary influence was R enn.
Sorel w ittily describes R en n as one o f those French
writers he also counts M olire and R acin e am ong
them w ho have eschewed profundity for fear o f
being excluded from the salons o f their fem alc admirers. B ut it was from R en an s b elief in religious
dogm a as a necessary im posture that he derived
*53
his famous conception o f the socialist m yth
T h e study o f Sorel reveis unexpectedly numerous
points o f contact between M a rx and N ietzsche. It
is often puzzling w hether Sorcls thought should be
described as M a rx refiected through a Nietzschean
prism, or vice \'ersa. But the dual influence, blended
w ith an extreme subtlety, is always there, and colours
all Sorels fundam ental beliefs.
T h e first article in Sorels corrosive creed is
derived equally from both his masters his convic
tion o f the decadence o f bourgeois society. Sorel,
one o f his com m entators has said, was literally
haunted w ith the idea o f decadence. La Ruine du
monde antique was his first m ajor work. T h e persistent attfaction o f Ghristianity for him is its dogm a
o f original sin. T h e princes o f secular thought ,
from D idcrot onwards, are philistines ; they
bear (like M a rx s vu lgar economists ) the hallm ark o f bourgeois culture the b elief in progress.
Les Illusions du progrs, published in the same year
as Rjlexions sur la violence, is the most clearly and
closely reasoned o f his books.
Secondly, the rejection o f the bourgeoisie and
o f bourgeois philosophy carries w ith it a revolt
against the intellect. Sorels earliest literary essay.
Le Procs de Socrate, denounces Scrates for having
corrupted civilization through the false doctrine that
history moves forward through a process o f intel
lectu al in quiry and persuasin. T his is the essence
o f the bourgeois h e re sy : Est bourgeois , in
A la in s well-known aphorism, tout ce qui vit
de persuader.
Like M arx, Sorel beheves in
*54

N ietzsch e s (or ra th er, P in d a rs) ctern al strifc,
fath er o f a ll things
S tru g g le a n d p ain are the
realities o f life. V io le n c e is the o n ly cu re for the
evils o f bourgeois civiliza tio n .
T h ii'd ly , S orel shares th e co m m o n co n tem p t o f
N ietzsch e a n d M a r x for bourgeois pacifism .
In
his specific g lo rifica tio n o f w a r he harks b a c k to
P ro u d h o n ra th e r th an to M a r x (th o u gh M a r x , in
p re a ch in g class Avar, d id n o t co n d em n n a tio n a l w ars
p ro vid ed th e y w ere th e righ t ones).
N ever, he
rem arks in La Ruine du monde antique, w as there
a g rea t S ta te so averse from w a r as the R o m a n
E m p ire in its d eca d en ce. In E n g la n d the pacifist
m o vem en t is closely con n ected w ith the ch ron ic
in tellectu a l d eca d en ce w h ich has o \crta k e n th at
c o u n try .
T h e surest sym p to m o f the d e ca y o f
the E n glish bourgeoisie is its in a b ility to take w a r
se rio u sly ; E n glish ollicers in S outh A fric a (the date
is 1 9 0 0 - 0 1 ) go to w a r like gen tlem eii to a footb all
m a tch . T h e o n ly a ltern ativo to a p ro letaria n
re vo lu tio n as the cre a to r o f a n ew an d h ea lth y
society w o u ld be a g rea t E u ro p e a n w a r ; and this
seem ed to S orel in the e a rly 1 9 0 0 S a solution
sca rce ly to b e h o p ed for.
T h e fo u rth ta rg e t o f S o rels an im osity is b o u r
geois d em o cra cy. T h e case against bourgeois d em o
c r a c y has been so a m p ly de\'eloped b y others from
the o rig in al M a rx ist premisos th a t S o rels contributions, th o u g h copious, are no lo n g er sp ecially
s ig n ific a n t:
Governm ent by the mass o f the citizens has never yet
been anything but a fietio n : yet this fiction was the
155
last word of democratic Science. N o attempt has ever
been made to justify this singular paradox by which the
vote o f a chaotic majority is supposed to produce what
Rousseau calis the general will which is infallible.
Sorels bitterness against democratic politics and

democratic politicians was further sharpened by the
affaire Dreyfus, when what had started as a noble
campaign to vindcate justice was exploited for the
mean ends of party or personal ambition. It was
an error to look for noble aims in the masses. The
majority, he had already declared in Le Procs de
Socrate, cannot in general accept great upheavals ;
they cling to their traditions . The audacious
minority is always the instrument of change.
Sorel does not, however, remain merely destructive. His pessimism, he insists, is not the barren
pessimism of the disillusioned optimist but the
pessimism which, by accepting the decadence of the
existing order, already constitutes a step towards
deliverance . Yet while the goal is the goal of
Marx, the voice is the voice of Nietzsche:
Socialism is a moral question in the sense that it

brings into the world a new way o f judging all human
actions or, following a famous expression o f Nietzsche,
a transvaluation o f all vales. . . . T he middle classes
cannot find in their conditions o f life any source of
ideas which stand in direct opposition to bourgeois
ideas; the notion o f catastrophe [Nietzsche called it
tragedy ] escapes them entirely. T he proletariat, on
the contrary, finds in its conditions o f life something to
nourish sentiments o f solidarity and revo lt; it is in daily
warfare with hierarchy and with property; it can thus
conceive moral vales opposed to those consecrated by
156

tradition. In this transvaluation o f all vales by the
militant proletariat lies the high originality o f contemporary socialism.
T h e tw o moralities o f M a rx (proletarian m orality
and bourgeois m orality) have od d ly blended w ith
the tw o moralities ( m a ster and s la v e m oral
ity) o f Nietzsche. Sorel preached a m orality
o f producers (am ong w hom intellectuals were
apparently not in c lu d e d ); and in a further echo
o f the G erm n philosopher he branded Ghristian
m orality as a m orality o f m endicants . Curiously
enough it was Jaurs, a favourite target o f Sorels
ridicule, w ho m ade the apt rem ark that the pro
letarian was the contem porary superm an.
Such is the basis o f Sorels cult o f revolutionary
syndicalism . Syndicalism is, in Sorels eyes, the
true heir o f M arxism . It is anti-political in tw o
senses, both o f them M arxist. In the first place it
rejects the State, as M a rx did and as most contem po
rary M arxists did n o t ; it seeks not to capture the
m achinery o f the State m uch less to find places
for socialist ministers in bourgeois governm ents
b u t to destroy it. Secondly, it asserts, as M a rx did, the
essential prim acy o f economics over politics. Political
action is not class action : only econom ic action cart
be truly revolutionary.
T h e syndicats, the trade
unions, being not political parties but organizations
o f the workers, are alone capable o f such action.
R evolution ary syndicalism, the econom ic action
o f the workers, can take the form only o f the strike,
and o f the most absolute form o f strike, the general
strike, w hich had been a central point in the French
*57
syndicalist program m e since 1892. A sworn enem y
o f all U topias, Sorel refuses to draw an y picture at
all o f the social order w hich w ill follow this healthgivin g outburst o f proletarian violence. H e borrows
a phrase from Bernstein, the G erm n revisionist
who, from a different point o f view , also laboured
to purge M arxism o f its U to p ian in gred ien ts:
T h e end is nothing, the m ovem ent is all
And
i f critics drew attention to the motivelessness o f
the general strike so conceived. Sorel bold ly re
je cte d this excursin into rationalism . T h e general
strike was not a rational construction, but the
m yth o f socialism, necessary like the dogm as o f
the Christian G hurch and, like them, above rational
criticism .
T h is famous Sorelian concept o f the m yth involves two significant consequences. T h e first is a
purely relativist and pragm atic view o f truth w hich
in his earlier writings he had vigorously rejected.
T h e m yth is not som ething w hich is true in any
abstract sense, but som ething in w hich it is useful to
believe : this is indeed the m eaning o f truth. From
the im plied pragm atism o f Bergson Sorel went on to
the avow ed pragm atism o f W illiam Jam es and the
A m erican school. T h e last o f all his writings was
De Vutilit du pragmaiisme, published in 1921.
T h e other consequence, w hich Sorel faced less
clearly, was an aristocratic view o f the m ove
m ent w hich was asked to accept this philosophy.
T h e syndicalist m ovem ent was to be based on a
m yth devised and propagated b y an lite o f leaders
and enthusiastically accepted b y the rank and file.
158

Such a view accorded well w ith Sorels long-standing
rejection o f dem ocracy and belief in audacious
minorities
But it was not an easy view to fit into
the principies and program m es o f the C G T . T h e
rift between the syndicalist m ovem ent in France and
syndicalist philosophy elaborated for it b y Sorel and
his disciples was never really bridged.
It was perhaps some dim consciousness o f the
unreality o f his position w hich brought Sorel to an
intellectual crisis in 1910. It was a lean year in the
history o f socialism. It marked the nadir o f the
fortunes o f Bolshevism ; and even L en in fell a prey
to some discouragem ent.
W h at is more to the
present point, it was in this year that Benedetto
C roce, who had hailed syndicalism as a new form
o f M a rx s great dream , dream ed a second time by
Georges Sorel , declared that socialism, w hether in
its old M arxist or its new Sorelian form, was dead .
Sorel, in his sixty-third year but still at the height o f
his powers, was too restless a spirit to resign him self
to defeat. His m ain work had been done. But the
turn w hich he now took is o f immense significance
in assessing his ultim ate influence. O f the three
paths w hich led forward from the cross-roads at
w hich Sorel stood N eo-Catholicism , Bolshevism
and Fascism a ll were tentatively cxplored by
Sorel himself. But he followed none o f them to the
end.
O n e o f the more baffling by-products o f the
affaire Dreyfus had been the form ation o f a tiny group
o f w hich the m oving spirit was a young D rcyfusard,
the self-taught son o f a peasant. Charles Pcguy. It
159
centred round a modest periodical, Les Cahiers de la
Quinzaine, edited, and for the most part written, b y
Pguy himself, C ontrary to all the traditions o f the
affaire, P guy was strongly nationalist, pro-Catholic,
anti-dem ocratic and a hater o f the bourgeoisie.
Since 1902 Sorel had written occasional papers for
the Cahiers, had attended the w eekly Thursdays o f
the group, and had been accepted as its eider
statesm an and mentor. T h ro u gh this group Sorel
elaborated the idea o f a reconciliation between
French syndicalism and French nationalism . His
first contribution to the Cahiers had borne the signifi
cant title, Socialismes nationaux : its them e was
th at there are at least as m any socialisms as there
are great nations
French nationalism was at this tim e scarcely
thinkable outside the fram ework o f Catholicism ,
and it was therefore logical, though surprising, that
Sorel and his syndicalist disciple Berth should in
1910 have form ed, in alliance w ith three members
o f the Action Franaise, a group w h ich they called
La Cit Franaise, to publish a periodical under the
title LTndpendance Franaise; and in the same year
Sorel wrote in xction Franaise (his sol contri
bution to the Journal) an appreciation o f P guys
Mystre de la charit de Jeanne d'Arc. T h e w hole
enterprise, the form o f w hich changed in 1912 to a
C ercle Proudhon , was short liv e d ; the cohabitation was never easy. B ut the break carne in
1913, not from Sorel but from Pguy.
T h e causes o f the rupture are obscure, and P guy
m ay have suffered from persecution m ania. B ut it
160

seems clear that Peguy, young, devout and austere,
could not in the long run accom m odate him self to a
philosophy w hich enthusiastically hailed the dogmas
o f the C h urch as necessary m yths. Nevertheless,
w hen P guy died on the M a m e in Septem ber 1914,
it was in that firm faith in w ar as the means o f salvation for a decadent French society w hich Sorel had
held from the outset o f his career. N o study either
o f the m ovem ent represented b y the Cahiers de la
Quinzaine or o f the revival o f F rench nationalism in
general in the decade before 1914 can ignore the
author o f Rflexions sur la violence. I t is these years
w h ich have led Sorels able G erm n biographer,
M ich ael Freund, to give his book the inept sub-title,
R evolution ary Conservatism .
T h e story o f Sorels affinities w ith Bolshevism is
less com plex and probably less im portant. T h e
documents are at least unequivocal. L enin was a
sworn enem y o f syndicalism, w hich he regarded as
tantam ount to anarchism . H e had no faith in the
all-sufficiency o f the general strike. H e believed
firm ly in political as w ell as econom ic a c tio n ; and,
though he was more deeply com m itted before 1917
than after to the ultim ate denial o f the State, he
was convinced that a political dictatorship o f the
proletariat was the im m ediate goal o f revolution.
H e seems to have m entioned Sorel only once in his
published works, dismissing him cu rtly as m uddleheaded and his writings as senseless . N obod y
fam iliar w ith the clear logic o f L en in s own thought
w ill find the verd ict surprising.
Sorel, on the other hand, welcom ed the O cto b er
161
revolution w ith open arms. F or five years he had
written scarcely anything. T h e w ar, begun as a
w ar for the French nation, w hich he loved, was being
more and more w idely hailed as a w ar for dem ocracy,
w hich he loathed. H ere was a long-aw aited breath
o f fresh air a revolution w hich preaehed and
practised a salutary violence, spat on bourgeois
dem ocracy, cxalted the m orality o f the producer ,
alias the proletariat, and installed Soviets as autono
mous organs o f self-government.
M oreover, the
Bolshevik P arty had Sorel cared to note the fact
- - w a s built up precisely on the Sorelian premises
o f an audacious m inority leading the instinctive
proletarian mass.
Sorel m ade no form al declaration o f adhesin to
the new cause and creed. But he wrote several
articles for the French Revue Communiste; and in
1920, when Bolshevism was at the height o f its
unpopularity in France, he added to the fourth
edition o f Rjlexions sur la violence a plaidoycr pour
Lnine in w hich he hailed the Russian revolution
as the red daw n o f a new epoch .
Before descending into the tomb [concluded the
plaidoyer ] m ay I see the hum iliation o f the arrogant
bourgeois democracics, to-day so cynically trium phant.
Bolshevism was not yet prosperous enough to ignore

its few distinguished friends, even i f they were not
w h olly orthodox. A fter Sorel died the Gommunist
International, the official Journal o f Gom intern, opened
its columns to a lengthy, i f critieal, appreciation o f
this reactionary petty-bourgeois Proudhonist and
162

anarcho-syndicalist who had rallied to the defence
o f the proletarian revolution.
Sorel [concluded the article] for all his mistakes has
helped, and w ill continu to help, the developm ent o f
the w ill to revolution, rightly understood, and o f pro
letarian activity in the struggle for Communism.
T h e facts o f Sorels relations w ith Fascism are

also beyond dispute. Ita ly always held a special
place in his a e ctio n s; in no other foreign country
were his works so w idely read, adm ired and trans
lated. T h e shabby treatm ent o f Ita ly by the peacemakers at Versailles had deepened his resentment
at the trium ph o f bourgeois dem ocracy.
His
writings teem with anticipations o f Fascist doctrine.
W h at I am , said Mussolini himself, I owe
neither to Nietzsche nor to W illiam Jam es, but to
G eorgcs Sorel. Georges Valois, one o f the Action
Franaise group which collaborated w ith Sorel in
ig io , called him adm iringly the intellectual father
o f Fascism ; and his first biographer was Lanzillo,
the Italian Fascist. H e praised the first achieve
ments o f Fascism. But when the Fascist revolution
brought Mussolini to R om e, Sorel was already dead.
W h at Sorel would have thought o f the Fascist
regim e in power is an unprofitable, though inevitable,
speculation. W h en he praised the first Fascists in
a letter to C roce it was because their violence is
an advantageous substitute for the m ight o f the
State a modern equivalent o f the M afia and the
Cam orra, whose extra-legal activities and organ
ization had alw ays fascinated him .
H e saw in
163
Fascism a realization o f the syndicalist dream o f
an adm inistrativa pow er independent o f the State.
T h e question w hich Sorel died w ithout h avin g to
answer was that o f his attitude to the totalitarian
State. A ll his life he had been a strong, almost
violent, in d iv id u a list; all his life he had fought, not
for the concentration o f pow er but for its dispersai
and decentralization to the very lim it o f anarchism .
A t the v e ry end o f his life he argued against any
absoluta religious b elief on the ground that it could
not be successfully propagated w ithout restoring the
Inquisition. It w ould have been disconcerting
to say the least to find Sorel as a prophet o f
totalitarianism . B ut his thought contains too m any
inconsistencias, his career too m an y unexpected
turns, for anyone to pronounce w ith assurance on
this hypothetical question.
B ut the most interesting point raised b y Sorels
career is that o f the resemblances and diferences
betw een Bolshevism and Fascism. I f Sorel stands
on the com m on ground w here M a rx and N ietzsche
meet, this is also the com m on ground from w hich
Bolshevism and Fascism diverge.
M a rx and
N ietzsche, Bolshevism and Fascism, both deny
bourgeois dem ocracy w ith its bourgeois interpretations o f liberty and e q u a lity ; both reject the bour
geois doctrines o f persuasin and com prom iso; both
(though this is w here Sorel held a lo o f from both)
proclaim absolutas w h ich com m and the obedience
o f the ind ivid ual at the cost o f all else.
T h ere was, how ever, an essential difference.
T h e absoluta o f Nietzsche and o f Fascism ends
164

w ith the super-m an or the supcr-nation or sim ply
w ith pow er as a good in itself and for its ow n sake.
M a rx and Bolshevism propound a universal end in
the form o f the good o f the proletariat o f all countries,
in w hich the w hole o f m ankind is ultim ately m erged ;
and the ideal stands, w hatever shortcomings m ay be
encountered in the pursuit o f it. Sorel, w hile clear
enough about w h at he rejected, never com m itted
him self on the positive side. T h a t, am ong other
reasons, is w h y he has left no school or party, even
am ong the syndicalists w hom he sought to serve and
teach. H e cannot be assigned either to Bolshevism
or to Fascism (and still less to the Catholics). Sorels
thought is not a beacon or even a candle
throw ing a steady beam w ithin a defined ra d iu s; it
is rather a prism reflecting, fitfully but brilliantly,
the most penetrating political insights o f his d ay and
o f our own.
165
11
MR. G A LLA CH E R
AND
TH E
CPGB
and accident have com bined to m ake

M r. W illiam G allach er the most representative
British Com m unist. H e was in the thick o f all the
frays out o f w hich the Com m unist P arty o f G reat
Britain (C P G B ) was b o r n ; he was a delegate at the
second congress o f the Com m unist International in
M oscow in the sum m er o f 1 9 2 0 , when the m ain
lines o f guidance for the then em bryonic C P G B
w ere laid d o w n ; he has been a regular m em ber
o f the central com m ittee o f the p arty and o f its
P o litb u rea u ; and he was an M .P . for three or
four times as long as any other m em ber o f the
party, having sat for W est F ife as a Com m unist
for 1 5 years. It is not, therefore, surprising that he
should h ave been invited to w rite a com panion
volum e in the Penguin series to the recent
volum es on the L ab o u r and Conservative Parties,
The Case fo r Communism. His previous writings
consist o f two volum es o f reminiscences, Revolt on
the Clyde, published in the 1 9 3 0 S , and The Rolling o f
the Thmder, published in 1947.*
e s e r t
' W illia m G alla ch e r, The Casefo r Communism. (P enguin Sp ecial.)

P en guin Books. is. 6d. The Rolling o f the Thunder. Seco n d Im pression. L aw rcn ce an d W ish art. 5S.
166
M r . Gallacher and the C P G B

T h e C P G B was the product o f a m arriage
between haphazard British initiative and strict
Leninist discipline. T h e first w orld w ar multiplied and stim ulated the various groups o f the
extrem e Left, especially on the C lyde, always the
hom e both o f Left-wingism s and o f stubborn and
u n ruly labour movements.
T h e first Russian
revolution o f F eb ru ary 1917 evoked a w ave o f
enthusiasm.
R am say M acD o n ald and Philip
Snow den were am ong the sponsors o f a famous
m eeting at Leeds in the sum m er o f 1917, w hich
decided to establish W orkers and Soldiers Councils
throughout G reat Britain and appointed a com m ittee
to carry out the decisin. T h e O cto b er revolution
further stim ulated the left w ing o f the L ab o u r
m ovem ent, but drove a w edge betw een it and the
centre, especially as the anti-w ar attitude o f the
L eft becam e more pronounced, agitation for social
revolution to stop the w ar took the place o f the
vagu e pacifist idealism o f earlier pronouncements.
R e a lity was given to this agitation b y industrial unrest, o f w hich the C lyd e was once more the centre.
A fter the armistice it flared up on R ed F r id a y ,
J an u ary 31, 1919, when there was a battle between
strikers and plice in G eorge Square, Glasgow , and
a red flag was run up on the city flag-pole. M r.
G allach er and M r. Shinwell were am ong those who
w ere arrested and received sentences o f imprisonm ent for their share in these proceedings.
O u t o f the anti-w ar m ovem ent two m ain parties
w ith m ore or less openly revolutionary program m es
had em erged the British Socialist P arty and the
167
Socialist Labour Party; other groups o f a similar
character flourished in particular localities. The
strongly pacifist Left wing of the IL P contained many
fellow-travellers; and the Plebs Lcague, a group of
intellectuals interested in the education of the
workers in Marxist doctrine, formed the theoretical
spearhead of the movement. O n another front the
rapidly developing shop-stewards movement had a
marked revolutionary colour. It was opposed both
to the old trade-union leadership and to parliamentary action in general; though varying in Out
look from place to place and from time to time, it
was syndicalist in character and tended to advcate
direct action without any very clear definition
o f political purposes. It was with this movement,
collectively known as the Workers Committee
Movement, that Mr. Gallacher was at this time
primarily associated.
The funding of the Third or Communist Inter
national in Moscow in March 19 ig had little
immediate impact on these groups.
It was the
second congress of Gomintern in July 1920 which
proved the decisive force in the creation o f the
British party. The party was officially founded in
London on July 31, 1920, while the Moscow con
gress was actually in progress. But the real arguments which moulded its shape and destiny were
conducted in Moscow, where Lenin presided over a
commission to advise on the afairs of the new party.
The British Left was more amply represented at this
than at any other congress of Gomintern; and in
those formative years a latitude and diversity of
168
M r . Gallacher and the C P G D

Opinin was still tolerated. Q u e lch and M acL ain e,
both o f the British Socialist Party, representad a
jo in t provisional com m ittee for the creation o f
a British Gom m unist P a r t y ; M urp hy, the Socialist
L ab o u r P a r t y ; G allacher, T an n er and R am say, the
shop-stewards m o vem en t; and S ylvia Pankhurst a
small independent group w hich had tried to get in
first b y appropriating the am e o f British G om
munist Party
L en ins policy at this tim e was to rally all the
forces o f the extrem e Left against the orthodox
parties o f Social-D em ocratic or L a b o u r com plexin
w hich had supported their respective national
Governm ents during the w ar, and could therefore be
considered as having sold themselves irretrievably
to the bourgeoisie. Thus, w hile opposed to an y
co-operation w ith such parties, he was tolerant o f
the m any diferences dividing the extrem e L eft and
anxious only to bring them together in united
Gommunist parties. M r. G allacher begins the second
instalm ent o f his autobiography w ith the story how ,
on arriving in Petrograd on his w a y to the second
congress o f the Gom m unist International, he had
thrust into his hand the English edition o f L en in s
new ly published pam phlet, The Infantile Disorder o f
Leftism in Communism, and found him self indicted
b y am e as a victim o f this disease on the ground o f
his opposition to parliam entary action.
A t the congress itself Lenin was ranged w ith the
two delegates o f the British Socialist Party, who
formed the R ig h t w ing o f the British group, against
M r. G allach er and the other British delegates in
169
su p p o rt o f the thesis th a t the fu tu re C om m u n ist
P a rty o f G r e a t B rita in sh ould tak e p a r t in p arlia m c n ta ry elections an d seek alilia tio n to th e L a b o u r
P a rty . I t is p iq u a n t th a t B rita in s fu tu re C om m u n ist
M .P . sh ould h a v e gon e on record as d e cla rin g th at
C om m un ists h a v e so m cth in g b c ttc r to do than
w aste tim e o v e r p a rlia m e n ta ry elections
B iit M r.
G a lla c h e r, h a v in g becn ou t-voted , a llo w ed h im self
to b e w on o v e r b y L c n in s persuasivo p erso n ality,
a n d W'ent h om e p rom isin g not o n ly to c a rry ou t the
m a jo rity p o lic y b u t to dissuade his S cottish friends
fr o m in d u lg in g th eir n atio n alist feclings so fa r as to
fo u n d a sep rate Scottish C o m m u n ist P a rty . T h e
new s o f the fo u n d a tio n o f the C P G B re ach cd M o sco w
w h ile th e congress w as in progress. I t w as d u e in
p a r t to M r . G a lla c h e r s cforts th a t it secured the
adhesin o f all the m ain L e ft-w in g groups north and
South o f the B o rd er. T h e form al co nstitution o f the
p a r ty w as ap p ro ved at a con feren ce a t L eeds in
J a n u a r y 1921.
A rth u r M a cM a n u s w as elected
president (a post w h ich has lo n g since d isa p p e a re d );
M r . G a lla c h e r w as th e ru n n er-u p .
T h e h istory o f the first years o f the C P G B has y et
to b e w ritten . In th e 1 9 3 0 S an a ttem p t w as m a d e
b y one o f its founders a n d its first n a tio n a l org an izer.
T o m B ell. B u t his w o rk w as su b jccted in p a rty
circles to charges, not u n fo u n d ed , o f in a c c u ra c y and
d is to r tio n ; a n d n o b o d y has since been b o ld enough
to rep eat the cxp erim en t. T h e a u th o r o f The Rollinp,
o f the Thunder has no claim to b e a h istorian. B ut
as a p a rticip a n t in e ve ry stage o f p a r ty h istory he is
a n im p o rta n t witness. H is p a rtic u la r co n trib u tio n
170

is to fit party affairs into the fram ew ork o f British
L ab o u r and trade-union history during this period,
and thus to rebut the stereotyped charge that party
policies were dictated from M oscow . M r. G allacher
is a sturdy Scot, and nobody w ill suspect him o f
taking orders or o f allow ing him self to be persuaded
against his w ill. But the founding o f the party in
1920 was not the only occasion on w hich the casting
vote o f M oscow was decisive in divisions and dis
putes between British Com m unists.
T h e very
weakness o f the party m ade the tutelage o f M oscow
inevitable, even w here it was not deliberately
imposed or consciously accepted.
T h e initial dilem m a w hich faced the C P G B
faced virtu ally every other Com m unist party
throughout the tw enty years after 1919, and was
indeed the fundam ental problem o f Gom intern.
W as the party to rem ain small, highly organized
and disciplined, and doctrinally im peccable as
L en in s Bolsheviks had been bcfore 1917 even at
the cost o f exercising no prcscnt influence on national
afairs and becom ing, if ncccssary, an illegal and
persecuted sect ? O r was it to seck to becom e a
mass party playing an active role in national
politics, even at the cost o f loosened discipline and
organization and a certain measure o f doctrinal
eclecticism or, at any rate, toleration ? N either
Lenin or the other Bolshevik Icadcrs cvcr fully
understood the dilem m a confronting the C om
munists in the western democracies a dilem m a
w hich had no counterpart in Russia. Thus the
Gom intern resolutions o f 1920 enjoined the nascent
171
Britsh Gom m unist P arty to p lay an active part in
British parliam en tary dem ocracy and to seek affiliation to the L ab o u r Party. B ut they also imposed
on it, in com m on w ith other Gom m unist parties, a
rigid organization subject to iron discipline and
periodical purges o f the unruly, as w ell as to acceptance o f all decisions o f the Gom m unist In te rn a tio n a l;
and th ey required it not only to conduct propaganda
for the establishment o f the dictatorship o f the
proletariat but to create an underground organ
ization in preparation for civil w ar. N o b o d y in
M oscow seems to have realized th at these were
incom patible alternatives.
O f all the Gom m unist parties the G P G B was the
o n ly one w hich, thanks in p art to peculiar British
conditions, in p art perhaps to its share o f the famous
British genius for com prom ise, seriously attem pted the
impossible. T h e mem bership o f the G P G B after its
congress o f J a n u a ry 1921 am ounted to not m ore than
2000 or 2500; the total o f 10,000 announced at the
third congress o f G om intern that yea r and repeated
b y M r. G allach er was obtained, as Bell admits, b y
adding up the wishful estimates o f half-organized
branches. O n the other hand, the H ands o ff
Russia m ovem ent and the Gouncils o f A ction in
the last stages o f the Russian civil w a r had revealed
a vast mass o f vague sym pathy w ith Soviet Russia
and her institutions. T his sym pathy was strongly
tinged w ith pacifism and hostility to w ar in general,
and did not betoken revolutionary convictions.
B ut few and, least o f all, the Gommunists
recognized these lim itations; and to create a dis172

ciplined Com m unist P arty on M oscow lines w ith a
mass follow ing did not seem a hopeless task.
T h e first blow was the blank rejection b y the
L ab o u r P arty o f the application for affiliation a
rejection three times repeated and endorsed b y an
enormous m ajority at the annual conference in
1921.
T h e C P G B showed apparen tly sincere
surprise at the decisin, and expressed a keen sense
o f grievance, w h ich is refiected in M r. G allach ers
pages, at the unfriendly L ab o u r attitude. B ut this
was surely an inevitable result o f the equivocai
position o f the Com m unists themselves. I t was at
the second congress o f the Com m unist International
that L en in coined the famous recom m endation to
support the L ab o u r P arty as the rope supports the
m an w ho is being hanged an aphorism w hich
an English Com m unist is said to have translated as
takin g them b y the hand as a prelim in ary to
taking them b y the throat . A llia n ce w ith the
L ab o u r P arty could never be more than a tactical
device, a stage on the road to the dictatorship o f
the proletariat. A t the m om ent w hen the alliance
was being offered, the Com m unists w ere alread y
seeking to underm ine L ab o u r authority in the trade
unions through such organizations as the M inority
M ovem ent and the N ational U nem ployed W orkers
M o v e m e n t; and it was not surprising th at the alli
ance should have been consistently rejected b y the
L ab o u r P arty leadership. Indeed, the Com m unist
assault from the L eft was one o f the factors w hich
drove m odrate L ab o u r parties to seek an open or
covert bourgeois alliance.
*73
These inconsistencies w ithin the C P G B were,
how ever, com plicated b y violent zigzags o f policy
in Gom intern itself. D elays in the realization o f
European revolution, the introduction o f N E P , the
opening up o f trade relations w ith the capitalist
world, all brought a certain m itigation o f M oscow s
uncom prom ising hostility to the non-com m unist
w orld.
In D ecem ber 1921 the E xecutive C o m
m ittee o f Gom intern (E C C I) for the first time
issued the slogan o f a United front w ith other
working-class parties and support for L abo u r
Governm ents ; and three months later the C P G B
was specifically instructed to establish relations
w ith the G eneral C ouncil o f the T U C and to a p p ly
once m ore for admission to the L ab o u r Party.
T h is blind persistence m erely courted another snub.
T h e 1922 conference o f the L ab o u r P arty at Edinburgh produced more plain speaking at the expense
o f the Com m unists than ever before. T his tim e the
p arty could not fail to perceive that som ething was
seriously w rong. O n M r. G allach ers proposal a
com m ittee o f three non-oflScial members o f the p arty
M r. H a rry Pollitt, a trade unionist, M r. Palm e
D utt, an intellectual, and H a rry Inkpin, brother o f
the secretary o f the p arty was appointed to report
on its afairs.
T h e results o f this report were far-reaching. T h e
party was reorganized on the m odel o f the Russian
party, discipline was tightened, and it was decided
to refrain from electoral attacks on the L ab o u r
P arty. These changes yielded some dividends. In
1923 two Com m unists, N ew bold and Saklatvala,
174
M r . Gallacher and the G P G B

standing for constituencies where there was no L ab o u r
candidate, were elected to Parliam ent w ith unofficial
L abo u r support.
T his tacit alliance was, however, never welcom ed
or sanctioned b y the L abo u r leaders, and its artificiality was quickly demonstrated. W h at proved
fatal to it was the accession o f L ab o u r to pow er in
J an u ary 1924. T h e G P G B could, at the cost o f
some m utual embarrassment, support a L ab o u r
O pposition ; it could not conceivably support a
L abo u r Governm ent. Relations were soon worse
than ever. T h e London conference o f the L ab o u r
Party in 1924 took steps to exelude Gommunists
from individual m embership o f any branch o f the
party, though they could still com e into it as members
o f affiliated trade unions. T h e ultim ate crisis arse,
logically enough, out o f the British general strike.
This was the parting o f the ways between those who
wanted revolution and those who rejected revolu
tion. It quickly becam e clear that the m ajority o f
those who had em barked on the general strike were
not prepared to cross the R ubicon w hich separates
strike from revolution, even if b y holding back they
brought about the defeat o f the strikers.
T h e Gommunists, applauded and backed up b y
M oscow, denounced the retreat as treachery to the
working class, but thereby only revealed their own
isolation. T h e prestige o f the G PG B , as well as that
o f the Soviet Governm ent, underw ent a severe
slump. In the early 1 9 2 0 S sym pathy w ith Soviet
Russia am ong the L ab o u r rank-and-file had not
only tem pered official L ab o u r hostility to the Gom -
175
munists bu t had put an effective brake on official
action against Soviet Russia. N o w only the feeblest
o f protests follow ed the Arcos raid and the breaking
ofF o f relations w ith the Soviet U n ion in 1927.
U n d er the first Baldw in Governm ent, w ith Joynson
H icks as H om e Secretary, anti-Com m unist feeling
reached its height. A ccordin g to the figures quoted
b y M r. G allacher, the p arty m embership fell from
11,000-12,000 after the general strike to 5000 in the
follow ing year.
These disasters led to a second reorganization o f
the C P G B in the w inter o f 1927-28. T h e policy
o f supporting the L ab o u r P arty against the bourgeois
parties, equivocai though it was, and inconsistently as
it had been pursued, had been an official plank in
the p a rty platform ever since its foundation and
rested on the m ndate given to the p a rty b y L enin
himself. T h e m ajority o f the central committee,
including M r. G allach er himself, saw no reason to
change this policy. B ut a m inority, led b y M r.
Palm e D u tt and M r. Pollitt, now challenged it as
w rong in principie. T h e y argued that the situation
in G reat Britain had changed rad ically since Len in
m ade his recom m endations o f 1920. T h e econom ic
position o f G reat B ritain was deteriorating and
therefore bringing nearer the objective conditions
for a mass revolutionary m ovem ent; the L ab o u r
P arty had been in office and had revealed itself
as a third bourgeois p arty ; and it had in
effect abandoned the loose and undogm atic federal
structure, w hich had m ade it seem possible for
Com m unists to seek admission to it, in favour o f a
176

centralized organization w hich was being used to
impose the views o f the leadership and to ban the
Comm unists. O n these grounds open opposition to
L abo u r as to other parties was recom m ended as the
right tactics for the C P G B .
T h e split in the central com m ittee was taken to
M oscow for settlement at a m om ent when Com intcrn was being rocked b y a m ajor crisis over the
afairs o f Ch in a. T h e occasion provided an adm ir
able illustration o f the results o f the assumption,
habitually m ade at Com intern headquarters, o f a
doctrinal and tactical uniform ity applicable to all
Com m unist parties. T h e collapse o f the A ngloRussian Join t T rad e U nion C o u n cil in 1926, after
little more than a year o f life, had already caused
perturbation in Com intern circles and prepared the
w ay for a swing to the Left. W hen, how ever, E C C I
m et in F ebru ary 1928 to consider the Br,: ;h issue,
m any other things had happened. T rotsk/ had ju st
been expelled from the party and banished to A lm a
A t a ; and, after six months o f em bittered debate,
the new L eft policy in C h in a o f out-and-out
opposition to C h ian g K ai-shek had ju st been put in
operation. T h u s the views o f M r. D u tt and M r.
Pollitt, and not those o f the m ajority, fitted in w ith
the prevailing tem per at headquarters. T h e ruling
w ent in their favour.
F or tactical reasons, the
C P G B was to m aintain the slogan o f affiliation
to the L ab o u r P arty . In all other respects the
break was to be complete.
This decisin, w hich was general rather than
particular, m arked a fateful new turn in Com intern
177
po licy as a w hole.
From 1 9 2 8 onwards, and
especially after the sixth congress held in A ugust o f
that year, it becam e the fashion to treat L abo u r and
Social-D em ocrat Parties not m erely as declared
enemies, but as the worst enemies, o f the w o rk ers;
and this line, pursued to its logical conclusin, had
fatal consequences in G erm any during the period
o f H itlers ascent to power. M r. G allacher, who is
too good a p arty man to defend his own stand in
1 9 2 7 - 2 8 (he does not even refer to it), admits the
error o f the G erm n Gommunists in the early 1 9 3 0 S ,
though he makes out a case for assigning an equal
share o f blam e to the Social-D em ocrats.
The
dilem m a w hich had dogged the steps o f the G PG B
from the outset proved an equally insuperable
obstacle to the unity o f the G erm n Left.
In Britain the ch ief result o f the 1928 decisin
was the retirem ent o f A lb ert Inkpin, the secretary
o f the party since its inception. H e was succeedcd
b y M r. Pollitt, w ho has been its virtual leader for
the past tw enty years. T h e history o f the G PG B
under M r. Pollitts leadership has been less turbulent
and less eventful than in the preceding eight years
o f its existence. T ech n ica lly the p arty has been
m uch more efficiently run. T h e Daily Worker dates
from 1930. Sharp changes o f policy, even sudden
changes, have occurred. But the party line, how ever
vulnerable, has always been clear and precise, and
has always responded to directives from M oscow.
O n the other hand, thoughts o f a mass p arty have
been abandoned or relegated to an indeterm inatc
future. T h e influx o f members into the party in
178

the United front period o f the m iddle 1 9 3 0 S was
largely unsolicited. T his was no longer the united
front w ith L ab o u r in the od sense, but a diplom atic alliance, irrespective o f opinions, between all
who were w illing to fight H itler. W h at was wanted
was not prim arily converts to Com m unism , but
converts to a policy o f active resistance to Germ n
aggression. T h e same was true o f the period after
1941, when the p arty received another substantial
but transient accession o f membership.
M r. G allach ers autobiography does not throw
much light on events w ithin the p a rty after 1928;
and, though he rem ained a m em ber o f the central
com m ittee and o f its Politbureau, it m ay be inferred
that he took litd e part in shaping policy. H e had
already on several occasions stood as a candidate
for Scottish constituencies and come out at the bottom
o f the p o li; the first was the D undee election of
1922 when M r. C h urchill ran third to E. D . M orel
and Scrym geour, the prohibitionist. In 1935 M r.
G allach er was elected as a Com m unist for the m ining
constituency o f W est Fife, and re-elected ten years
later. In the House o f Com m ons he won popularity
and respect as a good parliam entarian. In the
C P G B he represents, not the esoteric side o f party
life but its link w ith the m asscs; he has been
for the past ten years its most im portant public
face . H e continues, within the limits o f party
discipline, to stand for the conception o f the party
as an extrem e Left w ing w ithin the British parlia
m entary System rather than as an entity standing
outside, and in unqualified opposition to, that system.
*79
Som ething o f this attitude tinges even the
cautious and carefully balanced pages o f The Case
for Communism. A s a popular exposition o f M arxist
theory and o f the econom ic aims, im m ediate and
ultm ate, o f Socialism and Com m unism , this could
not be bettered either in m atter or in style.
But
when it comes to the political Instruments for translatin g theory into practico and realizing econom ic
ends, everything is suddenly vague and blurred.
T h e dictatorship o f the proletariat is lost altogether
in the haze, and does not seem to be m entioned at
all. T h e haze thickens to a fog in the last chapter,
in w hich M r. G allach er returns some bew ildering
answers to questions from an im aginary critic.
H ere and there the reader even catches glimpses o f
an independent versin o f Com m unist doctrine and
Com m unist tactics adapted to the dem ands o f
British politics. B ut this is surely a lost cause. Its
developm ent is inhibited b y the slavish im itation o f
Soviet methods and o f Soviet policies w hich has
becom e endem ic in the C P G B . T h e vicious circle
cannot be broken.
A more independent party
w ould have shown greater health and stre n g th ; a
healthier and stronger party w ould have achieved
greater independence. T h e grow th o f the child has
been fatally stunted b y too successful and too masterful a parent.
i8o
12
TH E
R E V O L U T IO N
TH AT
F A IL E D
1 H E G erm n Gom m unist P arty was one o f the
very few Gom m unist parties other than the

Russian w hich had independent roots o f its ow n
and was not a product o f the Russian revolution or
a child o f the Gom m unist International. Its prehistory began w ith the outbreak o f the first world
w ar. In A ugust 1914 the G erm n Social-D em ocrats,
the largest, most pow erful and best organized
M arxist party in the w orld, were guilty o f the great
betrayal b y voting for the G erm n w ar budget
the Symbol o f support for the G erm n national
cause. A tiny handful o f the party leaders, and
perhaps a larger proportion o f the rank and file,
were against the decisin.
But p arty discipline
dem anded that the m inority should accept the
decisin o f the m a jo rity ; it was not till D ecem ber
1914 that K a rl Liebknecht, and he alone, broke the
p arty unity b y voting against the w ar credits in the
R eichstag.
As the w ar dragged on, opposition grew beneath
the srface ; and in 1916 there was a big break-aw ay
ending in the form ation o f the Independent SocialD em ocratic P a rty the U S P D , to use its G erm n
181
initials w hich was against the w ar. E ven the
U S P D was not really a revolutionary party. It
w anted prim arily to end the w ar, and found room
for elements w hich were pacifist rather than M arxist.
But it was w ithin the U S P D that there arse a group
callin g itself the Spartakusbund, w hich was out-andout M arxist and revolutionary as w ell as anti-w ar,
and carne nearer than an y other group in G erm any
to acceptance o f L en in s slogan o f turning the
im perialist w ar into a civil w ar o f the proletariat
against the bourgeois ruling class. T h e intellectual
driving forc o f the Spartakusbund was R osa Luxem b u rg ; K a r l Liebknecht, w ho was a leader and
agitator rather than a theorist, was also one o f the
leaders o f the group. T h e Spartakusbund and all its
publications and activities were, o f course, highly
illegal in war-tim e G e rm a n y; both L iebknecht and
L uxem burg spent the last months o f the w a r in
prison.
T h e Spartakusbund carne into existence before the
Russian revolution. B ut events in Russia gave its
w ork a fresh mpetus. A t the end o f D ecem ber
1918, in the midst o f the turm oil and upheaval
w h ich followed the armistice in G erm any, a congress
was hcld in Berlin. It was attended b y R ad ek as a
fraternal delegate from the central com m ittee o f
the A ll-R ussian Congress o f Soviets : Zin oviev and
Bukharin were also to have come, but were refused
admission b y the G rm an Governm ent. T h e con
gress decided to found a G erm n Com m unist P arty
(K P D ) ; and for od tim es sake the am e Spartakus
bund was kept in brackets at the end o f its am e,
182
T he Revolution that F a iled

ju st as the Russians afterwards called themselvcs
Russian Com m unist P arty (Bolsheviks)
T h e Spartakusbund had been a sm all group
composed m ainly o f intellectuals and engaged in
propaganda, but not in active preparation for
revolutionary action, w hich w ould indeed have been
scarcely practicable during the w ar. W h en the
K P D was created, the question arose w hether it was
to rem ain a sm all and highly concentrated p arty
for the revolutionary indoctrination o f the masses,
or w hether it was at once to go out for a mass
mem bership and seck to becom e a mass revolu
tion ary party.
L iebknecht w anted the second
course. O u t o f the chaos o f post-armistice Berlin
there had appeared a genuine workers revolutionary
m ovem ent, the shop-stewards organization. I t had,
as yet, not spread beyond the capital. Its positive
aims were not defined in very articlate terms.
B ut it w anted social revolution and the overthrow
o f E berts Left coalition governm ent, did not believc
in parliam entary action and was prepared and
organized to use force to attain its ends. I f this
group eould be m arried to the Spartakusbund, a mass
Com m unist Party, equally qualified for theory and
for practice, was in sight.
T his alliance was, how ever, opposed b y R osa
Luxem burg, who bclieved that the masses were not
yet ripe for a proletarian revolution, that a period
o f education and indoctrination was required, and
that for this purpose a sm all party o f agitators and
propagandists on the m odel o f the Spartakusbund was
the right instrum ent; and the divisin am ong the
183
leaders stultified the negotiations w hich Liebknecht
carried on w ith the shop-stewards m ovem ent during
the founding congress o f the K P D .
T h e shopstewards w ould have com e in on terms, including
p arity o f representation in the organs o f the ncw
party, which, considering the numbers they had
behind them, was not unreasonable. But the od
stalwarts o f the Spartakusbund were obdurate and
negotiations broke down. It was a decisive moment.
W ithin a fortnight the Independent Social-D em o
crats had been ousted from the E bert Governm ent.
Noske had becom e M inister o f W a r w ith a m ndate
to use the R eichsw ehr to restore order in Berlin,
and L iebknecht and R osa L uxem burg had both
been arrestcd and shot while trying to escape
one o f the earliest uses o f this famous euphemism
for the official assassination o f political opponcnts.
T ra g e d y dogged the steps o f G erm n communism
from the very outset.
Just two months after the foundation o f the K P D
in Berlin, the Gom m unist International G om in
tern was born in M oscow . R osa Luxem burg,
w ho had regarded the creation o f a mass G om
munist P arty in G erm an y as prem ature, took the
same view o f the creation o f a Gom m unist Inter
national w ith w orld-w ide pretensions; and this
view was reinforced in G erm n minds b y the wellgrounded fear that, i f a Gom m unist International
were brought into being at a tim e when the G erm n
p arty was still a puling infant and the Russian
p arty was the only one w ith a successful revolution
to its credit, the centre o f gravity w ould inevitably
184
T he Revolution that F ailed

be in M oscow and not in Berlin. T hus the G erm n
delegate, one Eberlein, appeared in M oscow in
M arch 1919 w ith instructions to oppose the founding
o f the International. H e found him self com pletely
isolated am ong the delegates o f the very real and
active Russian Com m unist P arty and o f rudim entary
and sometimos m ythical communist organizations
in such countries as the U n ited States, Sw itzerland,
H olland, Sweden, N orw ay, H u n gary and A u s tr ia ;
and in the end, having stated his objections, he
abstained from voting in order not to m ar the
universal harm ony. B ut the fact rem ained that the
Com m unist International had been created w ithout
the vote o f the one potentially pow erful Com m unist
P arty outside Russia, and o f the one great industrial
country where M arxist doctrine had a real hold on
proletarian consciousness a country on w hich all
good Bolsheviks, from Lenin downwards, still pinned
their confident hopes o f a E uropean revolution.
For the first eighteen months o f its existence the
K P D rem ained w h at the Spartakusbund had been
during the w ar, a small, illegal, persecuted sect
w ithout any overt influence on events. Its outstanding figure at this time was Paul L evi, a brilliant
and highly cultivated intellectual, but not in the
least a political leader o f the masses. T h e period
after the foundation o f Com intern in M arch 1919
was the time when contacts between Russian and
G erm n communists were at their lowest point.
T h e year 1919 saw Soviet Russia almost entirely cut
ofF from the rest o f the world, and her leaders too
preoccupied w ith the desperate struggle o f the civil
185
w a r to have m uch tim e or thought for anything
not directly concerned w ith it. In G erm any R ad ek
had been arrested and imprisoned b y the G erm n
au th o rities; no other lead ing Bolshevik carne to
take his place.
T h e K P D played no role in the famous B avarian
revolution o f A p ril 1919, though some communists
jo in ed the short-lived Soviet G overnm ent w hich was
set up in M un ich. It had only a w alking-on part in
the first attem pted nationalist com e-back after the
hum iliation o f N ovem ber 1918 the so-called
K a p p p u ts c h o f M arch 1920 w h ich was
defeated, not b y the communists but b y a general
strike organized b y the od trade unions. B ut in the
autum n o f 1920, p artly under Russian pressure, a
split occurred am ong the G erm n Independent
Social-D em ocrats the U S P D . U n d er the combined infiuence o f the prestige o f Gom intern and the
eloquence o f Zinoviev, w ho addressed a party
congress at H alle for four hours on end, a m ajority
o f the U S P D decided to jo in the communists to
form the U nited Gom m unist P arty o f G erm any.
T h ere was thus, at the end o f 1920, a mass G erm n
Gom m unist P arty w ith an effective mem bership o f
over 300,000 and a m uch larger num ber o f fellowtravellers. But the unreality o f the unin between
the intellectuals o f the K P D and the workers o f the
U S P D has been b rillian tly portrayed b y an eyewitness o f the Berlin convention w hich ratified i t :
There was an artistic frame o f classical music and
revolutionary poetry. T h e U S P D delegates, mostly
workers from the bench, were disgusted by the new
186

official pomp : they had looked forward to a sober
analysis o f the Germ n situation, concrete proposals on
w hat to do next. Paul L evi gave them instead a speech
on the economic situation o f the world, in which a
wealth o f statistics was combined with varied news o f
events in Asia and in the A nglo-A m erican world, and
which ended with the bombast, Enter, ye workers o f
Germ any, enter, for here are thy [nV] gods
I watched
workers from Essen and H am burg leaving the conference
h a ll: they could express their disgust with this rhetoric
only by despoiling some o f the nice decorations with
their plebeian spit.
F o r all the spitefulness o f this account, there is truth

in the picture o f failure to unite the masses w ith the
party leadership.
T h e book from w hich this quotation comes was
published in the U nited States in 1948 under the
rather m isleading title, Stalin and Germn Communism.
Its author, R u th Fischer, is an Austrian who join ed
the K P D in 1919 and rem ained one o f its leading
members till her expulsin in 1926. F o r the story
o f the party during that time it is a prim ary source
o f great im portance. It is, however, a source w hich
the historian w ill have to handlc w ith some care.
Mi's. Fischer was in a position to know nearly every
thing that w ent on at this time in the inner counsels
o f the G erm n Com m unist Party, and som ething
though not b y any means all o f w hat w ent on in
the Com m unist International.
H er narrative is
packed w ith d e ta il; but, except where it is actually
docum ented (as m any o f her statemcnts are), it is
often difficult to disentangle w hat rests on personal
know ledge from hearsay and, even more, conjecture.
187
Some o f M rs. Fischers political speculations are not
particu larly convincing. O n e can rarely prove a
negative. B ut it does not seem at all likely that
T rotsky failed to return to M oscow in tim e for
L en in s funeral as the result o f a secret understanding w ith the Politburo ; or that the famous
Z inoviev letter w hich played a part in the
British general election o f 1924 was a forgery o f the
G P U ; or that J . D . G regory, the British civil
servant involved in the case, was in the p a y o f the
G P U ; or that D im itrovs defence in the R eichstag
fire trial was a put-up jo b after a bargain for his
release had been struck w ith his own cognizance
between the G P U and the Gestapo.
T h e other qualification that must be m ade
concerns M rs. Fischers political attitude. A t first
sight her reminiscences invite com parison w ith
those o f another w om an who worked in Com intern
in the early days and was bitterly disillusioned by
the experience. A n glica Balabanoff.
But hey
belong to different worlds.
B alab an off was a
disappointed idealist who apparently did not know
that Com m unist parties, like other political organ
izations, are not run without a great deal o f wirepulling, m anipulation and sordid calculation o f
expediency. M rs. Fischer was, from the outset, a
politician to the finger-tips. I f she becam e embittered, it was because she lost the last move in the
gam e, not because she did not understand the gam e
that was being played. In G erm n p arty affairs she
belonged to the Left, that is to say, to those com
munists who were opposed to tem porary tactical
188
The Revolution that F a iled

co-operation w ith the Social-D em ocrats, and believed
that the workers could be directly organized for
revolution. W riting tw enty-five years later on the
other side o f the A tlan tic, after her opinions have
undergone a com plete transformation, it can hardly
be expected that she w ill have done full justice to her
own position at the time and still less to that o f ad
versarles, who ousted her from the p arty leadership
and against whom she has m any old scores to work off.
T h e split between R ig h t and L eft in the K P D
really dates from the so-called M arch action o f
1921. In M arch o f that year a spontaneous rising
in the m ining area o f central G erm any was followed
b y an attem pted rising organized b y the Gom
munists in the great industrial centres. It seems to
have been poorly prepared, and ended in defeat.
T h e reprisals undertaken b y the plice and the
R eichsw ehr were harsh, and left the p arty crippled,
discredited and discouraged. Recrim inations fol
low ed. A ccord in g to one account, the M arch
action was forced on reluctant leaders b y the
enthusiastic new recruits who had com e into the
p arty in the previous autum n. It is certainly true
that Paul L evi had been forced to resign from the
leadership a few weeks earlier on another issu e;
and his resignation had been w idely interpreted as
a signal for a more active policy. A ccord in g to the
account favourcd b y M rs. Fischcr, who, as a good
G erm n, has the h abit o f blam ing G erm n failures
on the Russians, the M arch action was dictated
from M oscow b y Zinoviev and Bela K u n who, on
the eve o f the K ronstadt m utiny, were desperately
189
anxious to score a G erm n success to counterbalance troubles at home. W h atever the background o f the attem pt, its failure m ade a change of
leadership inevitable. Paul L evi was succeeded as
leader o f the R ig h t first b y Ernst M eyer, another
intellectual, and later b y H einrich Brandler, a
w orker from Saxony, who had all the caution o f the
old trade-union tra d itio n ; M rs. Fischer together
w ith her cise associate M aslow soon em erged as the
leaders o f the Left.
T h e fiasco o f the M a rch rising in G erm any
discredited not only the G erm n com m unist leaders,
but Com intern itself and Zinoviev as its presiding
genius. T his resounding defeat for the cause of
revolution in the country where, b y every token, its
prospects were most favourable, forced on M oscow a
reconsideration o f the w hole tim e-table o f world
re v o lu tio n ; and it carne at a time when L enin had
ju st announced the forced retreat on the hom e front
em bodied in N E P the N ew Econom ic Policy of
lim ited toleration and encouragem ent for prvate
enterprise. It had becom e clear that Soviet Russia
w ould have to go on living in a w orld o f capitalist
States for a m uch longer tim e than had at first been
foreseen. T h e idea o f m arching straight forward to a
w orld-w ide victory o f socialism had to be discarded.
Strategic manoeuvres, tem porary retrcats, political
expedients o f all kinds w ould be required to m ain
tain and increase Soviet pow er until such tim e as
the final goal was in sight. A n d this was ju st as
true o f foreign as o f domestic policy.
In internation al terms it m eant that the star o f N arkom indel
190
T he Revolution that F a iled

was in the ascendant, the star o f Com intern on the
wane. Chicherin began to eclipse Zinoviev.
This change raised an issue w hich has never
ceased to be a source o f em barrassm ent for the com
munist parties o f the great countries other than
Russia.
W ere these parties to pursue policies
calculated to prom ote revolution at the earliest
m om ent in their countries? O r were they, taking
a broader view, to argue that the pow er o f Soviet
Russia, the one communist State, was the m ajor
asset o f com m unism all over the world, and must
therefore be m aintained and supported even at the
cost o f tem porary local sacrifices? T his question
to o k'a particularly acute form in G erm any, because
G erm an y and Russia were linked b y a com m on
interest as the two great dissatisfied powers (though
dissatisfied for different reasons) o f the post-war
settlement, the tw o pariah nations o f E uropean
society. So long as Russia saw prospects o f salvation
in an im m inent G erm n revolution, the role o f
G erm n communists was clear.
But once the
G erm n revolution was not im m inent and Soviet
Russia had her back to the w all, the prudent course
for M oscow m ight well be to stand shoulder to
shoulder w ith the G erm n Governm ent against a
w orld equally hostile to both. In this case the role
o f G erm n communists must be, not to overthrow
the G erm n G overnm ent but to com e to terms w ith
it on the basis o f a policy o f friendship w ith the
Soviet G o ve rn m e n t; and such a policy could
perfectly w ell be defended, even from the standpoint
o f G erm n communism.
*9 *
A cco rd in g to R u th Fischer, whose testim ony does
not stand alone, this idea was first conceived b y
R a d ek when he was in prison in Berlin in the
yea r 1919, and was then laughed out o f court in
M oscow . But after 1921, when N E P was in full
swing and optimism about world revolution was no
longer in fashion, things looked very different. In
the next year the bargain was sealed b y the famous
R a p a llo T rea ty signed b y Chicherin and R athenau
during the G enoa conference. It was about this
time that the secret arrangem ents were started
between the G erm n Reichsw ehr and the R e d A rm y
for the purpose o f evading the m ilitary provisions
o f the Versailles T reaty. In brief, the Reichsw ehr
was to get facilities in Russia to carry out certain
processes o f m anufacture and training, and the R ed
A rm y got in return technical training and equipment. But this new partnership between govern
ments cast som ething o f a blight on the G erm n
Gom m unist Party.
R adek, now ch ief agent o f
Gom intern for G erm any, cast the m antle o f M oscow
over Brandler, w ho wanted no rash revolutionary
ventures and was prepared for tem porary com pro
misos w ith the Social-Dem ocrats, and worked to
oust M aslow and R u th Fischer as the leaders o f the
Left. N atu rally enough, R u th Fischer has no love
for R adek, and still less for Brandler, as every turn
o f her narrativo shows. But the m ain facts here
cannot be challenged.
R a d ek was prepared to
coquet even w ith the extrem e G erm n nationalists,
ju st as they were prepared to coquet w ith Russia,
on the ground o f a com m on hatred o f the western
192
The Revolution that F ailed

allies. M a n y later patterns o f policy can be traced
in outline at this period.
A t this point the destiny o f the G erm n C o m
munist P arty becam e involved not only in the
changes o f Soviet foreign policy, but in the feuds
between Soviet leaders. B y the late summer o f
1923 the G erm n workers were feeling the desperate
pinch o f the French occupation o f the R u h r and
the G erm n passive resistance p o lic y ; and the
G erm n Com m unist Party decided that the time
was ripe for action. A ccordin g to M rs. Fischer, it
was Stresem anns accession to pow er in A ugust 1923
on a^declared policy o f com ing to terms w ith the
western Powers w hich caused a flurry o f alarm in
M oscow and prom pted a decisin b y the Russian
leaders that a G erm n communist rcvolt against
the Stresemann governm ent was urgent. But this
versin, w hich fits in neatly w ith M rs. Fischers
desire to la y every Germ n failure at the door o f
M oscow , does not square w ith the facts. In M oscow
the project o f a G erm n revolution was enthusiastically applauded only b y T rotsky. Zinoviev, as
usual, shilly-shallied; and Stalin preached caution.
These divisions in M oscow m eant that Russian
assistance was half-hearted, and encouraged divisions
and hesitations within the G erm n p arty itself.
Brandler, an excellent party organizer in ordinary
times, was uscless as a leader o f arm ed insurrection.
Elabrate preparations were going quietly forward
when, in O ctober, the Berlin G overnm ent struck
first, sending the Reichsw chr to depose the govern
ment o f Saxony in w hich Brandler and two other
193
communists had seats. T his should have been the
signal for a general rising. But the leaders were not
re a d y ; and, except for an unprem editated outbreak at H am burg w hich was suppressed w ith m uch
bloodshed, nobody m oved. T h e great project o f a
G erm n communist revolution was snuffed out
before it could start. Seen from the inside ,
writes M rs. Fischer o f this experience, the com
munists were an insufficiently organized group o f
panic-stricken people, torn b y factional quarrels,
unable to com e to a decisin, and unclear about
their ow n aim s.
T h a t seems a not unfair
epitaph on the largest Com m unist P arty outside
Russia.
T h e G erm n defcat, like every other failure o f a
m ilitant revolutionary policy, discredited T rotsky
and Z inoviev and, b y the same token, helped Stalin ;
and since it also m eant the downfall o f Brandler in
G erm any, Stalin parad oxically becam e, for the
m om ent, the patrn o f the G erm n Left. M anuiisky,
w ho was a Stalin m an, replaced R ad ek as principal
Com intern agent in G erm any. M rs. Fischer passes
rather ligh tly over the period when the Left com
munists in G erm any hitched their w aggon to S talin s
rising star. A relie o f this period is a vivid and
revealing description o f Stalin in the sum m er o f
1924, when he was ju st em erging into prom i nence
am ong Bolshevist le a d e rs:
A t this Fifth W orld Congress Stalin becam e known
to Com intern delegates for the first time. H e glided
silently, almost furtively, into the salons and corridors
round St. A ndrew s H all. Smoking his pipe, wearing
194

the characteristic tunic and Wellington boots, he spoke
softly and poltely with small groups, assisted by an
inconspicuous interpreter, presenting himself as the new
type of Russian leader. T h e younger delegates were
impresscd by this pose as the revolutionary who despises
revolutionary rhetoric, the down-to-earth organizer,
whose quick decisin and niodcrnized methods would
solve the problems in a changed world.
T h e men
around Zinoviev were old, fussy, out-moded.
M rs. F isch ers n a rra tiv e becom es a little confusing

a t this p o in t ; for, in her a n x ie ty to exon erate h er
p atr n Z in o v ie v an d h erself o f too-p rolon ged colla b o ra tio n w ith the n ow h ated S talin , she has pushed
b a ck the split b etw een Z in o v ie v an d S ta lin a goo d
d e a l earlier th a n eith er evid en ce or p ro b a b ility
allow s.
A t a n y ra te, Z in o v ie v an d S ta lin w ere still on
term s o f friendship an d co -op eratio n , an d M a slo w
a n d M rs. Fischer, n o w the effective leaders o f the
K P D , w ere still in goo d stan d in g at M o sco w , w h en
in A p r il 1925 the R ig h t in G e rm a n y d ecid ed to p u t
forw ard H in d e n b u rg as presiden tial ca n d id a te. T h e
v ie w o f G om in tern , sup ported b y M a slo w an d M rs.
F ischer, w as th a t the G om m unist ca n d id a te , T h lm an n , should be w ith d ra w n in ord er not to split the
a n ti-H in d cn b u rg vo te. A m a jo rity o f the K P D ,
insp ired b y T h a lm a n n , d ccid ed otherw ise, w ith the
result th at H in d e n b u rg was clected . N e ith e r o f M rs.
F isch ers fa vo u rite g cn eralizatio n s th a t the mistaken p olicies o f the K P D w ere im posed on it from
M o sco w , a n d th a t she h erself w as a Cham pion o f
the p a r ty ag ain st the d o m in ation o f M o sco w h eld
195
good on this occasion. It was only at the cnd o f 1925
that M rs. Fischer jo in ed the Z in oviev opposition
against Stalin. B ut b y this tim e her popularity in
the G erm n party had been cclipsed b y that o f
T h alm an n , and in the follow ing year M anuilsky
had not m uch difficulty in bringing about her ex
pulsin from the party as a Trotskyite. It is not
a p articularly edifying story. B ut it is not so simple,
or are the rights and wrongs so clear, as M rs.
Fischers narrative m ight suggest to the uninitiated
reader.
T h e party was now in a tragic decline, numerically, intellectually and as a political forc. D urin g
the spurious prosperity o f the D aw es period there
could be no thought o f a communist c o u p ; and
in the great depression w hich set in in 1929 the
G erm n Com m unist Party fell between two stools.
It allow ed the N azis and the nationalists to m ake
the pace in the cam paign against the ineffective
W eim ar republic. O n the other hand, the principie
o f non-co-operation w ith Social-D em ocrats, w hich
had held ever since the debacle o f 1923, prevented
the communists from form ing a com m on front
against the Nazis. It is these years rather than the
earlier period w hich justify one o f the moris draw n
b y M rs. Fischer : the difficulty 'w h ich any C o m
munist Party outside Russia has in standing up to
the Russian party. A w eak opposition party, often
persecuted in its own country, is clearly no m atch
for a p arty w hich has a victorious revolution behind
it, and Controls the afairs o f a great nation. A cco rd
ing to M rs. Fischer, the influence o f M oscow in the
196

G e rm n p a rty w as la rg e ly e x p lic a b le b y th e n u m b er
o f jo b s w h ic h C o m in te rn w ith ils la rg e funds was
a b le to ofer to those w h o fo llo w ed its lin e. T h is no
d o u b t h ap p en ed .
B u t th ere is also th e su b tler
in flu en ce o f prestige, o f ra tin g in the scale o f c o m
m unist val es. T h e w ca k , unsuccessful foreign p a rty
in e v ita b ly tends to tak e its cu c from th e strong
successful R u ssian p a r t y ; w h e n e ve r a d iferen ce o f
vie w , or a d iferen ce o f interest, m anifests itself,
the w e a k e r yields to th e stronger. H en ee, it is
Only th e e x ce p tio n a lly stron g co m m u n ist parties
a b ro a d w h ic h can h op e to a ch ie v c som e indepen den ce o f M o sco w . O n a lo n g view , it m a y w e ll seem
a disaster th a t the G e rm n com m u n ist m o vem en t
after i g i 8 fa iled to d evelo p its e xp ected s t r e n g t h :
h ad it done so, the one-sided id en tifica tio n o f R u ssia
an d C o m m u n ism w h ic h d om in ates w o rld h istory
to -d a y w o u ld h a v e been avo id ed .
T h e failu re o f G e rm n com m u n ism is a p h en o m enon w h ic h descrves a m ore p ro fou n d analysis
th a n it lias y e t received , o r than it rcceives from
M rs. F ischer, w h o is for the m ost p a rt co n ten t to
evoke the p ersonal eq u a tio n or the b a n efu l in fluen ce
o f C o m in te rn . L e n in , w h en h e lo o k ed ca g e rly to
th e G e rm n re vo lu tio n to save th e re vo lu tio n in
R u ssia, b e lie ve d as M a rx ist d o ctrin e en titled h im
to b e lic v c th a t G e rm n co m m u n ism w as p otcntia lly a fa r m o re p ow erfu l, effective a n d earth sh ak in g force th a n R u ssian com m u nism . W h y did
this n ot h ap p en ? O n e o f the factors w as o b vio u sly
th e une.xpcctcd stren gth o f the n a tio n alist co m e-b a ck
after th e h u m ilia tio n o f V crsa illes. W h a t seem cd
*97
crushed had only been scotched. M oscow was not
alone in the m iscalculation o f supposing that G erm n
nation al resentment could be encouraged up to a
point, utilized and kept within safe bounds. Both
M oscow and the western Powers from their different
points o f view overestim ated the strength o f G erm n
social-dem ocracy. Both failed to take account o f
the absence in G erm an y o f any o f the conditions
or traditions o f western liberal dem ocracy. T h e
attem pt to create a liberal dem ocracy in G erm any
failed in 1848 and again after 19 18 ; the attenjpt to
create a social-dem ocracy on the western pattern
failed e q u a lly ; and extrem e R ig h t and extrem e L eft
confronted one another, ju st as they did in the
Russia o f 1917.
B ut in G erm any, more than in a n y other country, the old pre-bourgeois ruling class, the feudal
order o f society w ith its m ilitary tradition, had
succeeded in capturing and harnessing to its purposes
the modern pow er o f organized large-scale h eavy industry. T his was the achievem ent o f Bism arck who, b y
his brilliant invention o f the social Services, also roped
an influential section o f the workers and the trade
unions into a new pow er com plex. This com bination
w ent into action in 19 14 ; and, after the m ilitary
disaster o f 1918 and the political fiasco o f the
W eim ar republic, it was still strong enough for
H itler to furbish it up once again in a rather more
up-to-date and ostensibly popular guise.
The
strongest impression w h ich the reading o f M rs.
Fischers book leaves on the m ind is the terrifying
pow er w hich the old forces in G erm an y continued
198

to exercise after 19 18 ; and the ch ief reason o f all
for calling it a gloom y book is that it raises the
question how far, in circumstances presenting so
m any analogies to the post-1918 period, these old
forces are still alive and at work in G erm any to-day.
199
N
13
S T A L IN :
(i)
TH E
ROAD
TO
POW ER
N th e S o viet U n io n the n am e o f S ta lin has lo n g

b een ra n g ed w ith those o f M a rx , E ngels a n d L e n in
as a n a u th o rita tive source, or at a n y rate a n auth orita tiv e in terp reter, o f B olsh evik d o c tr in e ; a n d a
co lle cte d ed ition o f his w orks, n o w in course o f
p u b lic a tio n in M o sco w , w as therefore overd u e. I t
is b e in g issued u n d er the auspices o f th e M a rx E n g els-L en in In stitu te a n d w ill be co m p lete in sixteen volum es, the last b e in g d evoted to his w ar-tim e
speeches. T h e first vo lu m e covers the p eriod 1 9 0 1 1907, w h e n S ta lin n ot y e t g e n e rally k n o w n b y this
n am e w as an a ctiv e re vo lu tio n a ry o rg a n ize r in the
C a u ca su s in the in tervals o f im p riso n m en t a n d exile
to S ib ria, M o st o f th e articles it contains w ere
o rig in a lly p u b lish ed in G e o rg ia n in fu g itiv e un derg ro u n d p eriod icals an d are n o w m a d e accessible for
th e first tim e to th e R u ssian read er. T h e ed ito r
cxp lain s th a t n o t a ll o f S ta lin s w ritin gs o f this
p eriod h a v e even n o w been re-discovered,
I t has b ccn cu sto m a ry am o n g S ta lin s enem ies
a n d dctractors, b e g in n in g w ith T ro tsk y , to sp e a k w ith
co n tem p t o f his talcn ts as a theorist. C o m p a re d w ith
m a n y o f the others o f his gen eratio n o f Bolsheviks
200
I.
MESTKAOO
P c. H.
de
U ^
Q, S
SfX lC LO EiA 6 C lt C i A P O U tlC A

e t C L I O T E C A
S ta lin : ( i ) T he Road to Power

not m erely Lenin and T rotsky, but such men as
Bukharin, Zin oviev and R ad ek he has not been
a fluent or prolific writer. N o doubt the later
volum es o f this edition w ill be swelled b y official
pronouncem ents, the drafting o f w hich m ay be
attributed in part to his secretaries and ad visers; it
is even proposed to include the official Short H istory
o f the Russian Com m unist Party published in 1938
which, though prepared under Stalins direction,
certainly did not com e from his pen. T h e pretensin
that Stalin ranks w ith M arx or L enin as a thinker
is exaggerated to the point o f absurdity. Nevertheless the first volum e o f his works goes a long w ay to
refute the legend fostered b y Souvarine and others
that the Soviet leader is a semi-literate ignoram us
who repeats and distorts the alread y hackneyed
ideas o f others a politician or a bureaucrat or an
adm inistrator unconcerned w ith theories and incapable o f understanding them.
N early all the rdeles in this first volum e are
inspired b y local controversies, m ainly w ith the
Mensheviks, w ho in Stalins native G eorgia always
formed the more powerful w ing o f the party. T h e
m ajor items are an article o f 1904 on the national
question w hich foreshadows the famous article o f
1912, both in its general conception and in its empirical conclusions, and invalidates the suggestion
sometimes m ade that the later article was m erely a
transcription o f L en ins v ie w s ; tw o rdeles on the
party diferences between Bolsheviks and M enshe
viks ; and a rather crude exposition o f dialectical
m aterialism in the form o f a defence o f M arxist
201
socialism against anarchism . These writings reveal
Stalin, not indeed as an original thinker, but as an
active and com petent propagandist and popularizer
and as a faithful disciple o f the Bolshevik creed.
L en in is m entioned b y am e only a few times
(Stalins first m eeting w ith him occurred at the end
o f 1 9 0 5 , but is not referred to h e r e ); and, on the
only tw o notew orthy occasions during this period in
w hich L en in s personal opinin was rejected and
overruled b y the m ajority o f the party, Stalin
supported the m ajority. H e w rote in favour o f
boycotting the elections to the first D um a, where
L en in was for p a rticip a tio n ; and he voted at the
fourth p arty congress in 1 9 0 6 for the distribution
o f land to the peasants, w here L en in was for
nationalization.
It is, how ever, apparent that even at this early
period Stalin was, consciously or unconsciously,
m oulded b y Len in and b y a particular aspect o f
L enin. T h e acute and bitter controversics w hich
m arked the form ative years o f the p arty all turned
in one w a y or another on an issue w hich involved
both ideas and organization. W as the workers
m ovem ent to be supplied w ith its philosophy, its
leadership and its initiative b y a sm all and highly
organized group o f determ ined revolutionaries, who
must, in the nature o f things, be draw n m ainly from
the intellectuals ? O r was the p arty to regard itself
as the servant and follow er o f the workers and rcly
for its initiative on the spontaneous urge to
revolution w hich intolerable conditions w ould sooner
or later breed am ong them ? Lenin, the passionate
202
Stalin:
( i ) The Road to Power
protagonist o f the first view, contem ptuously dubbed

the supporters o f the alternative view tail-enders ,
and am id m any backslidings built up the Bolshevik
party almost single-handed on his own narrow but
powerful conception o f the w a y in w hich revolutions
are m ade.
Stalin em erged from the ruck as one o f those who
stood without hesitation for L en in s policy, It was
not for nothing that Lenin in a m uch-quoted letter
referred to him as the wonderful G eorgian and
m ade him , in 1912, a m em ber o f the central com
m ittee o f the party. From the first, Stalin accepted,
perhaps w ith even less reservation than Lenin
himself, the obligation o f the party to lead, to
organize and to fight. O u r party , he says in one
o f these early articles, is not a collection o f indi
vidual chatterers, but an organization o f leaders.
A n d a g a in : O n ly unity o f opinin can unite the
members o f the party into one centralized party.
I f unity o f opinin collapses, the p arty collapses.
L en ins pam phlet What is to be Done ? w hich expresses
these ideas in their clearest and most forcible form
becomes his bible, and the writings o f his early
period bristle w ith praise o f organization and scorn
for those w ho depend on the eicacy o f spontaneous forces w ithin the w orking class. T h e
spontaneous workers m ovem ent , he quotes from
Lenin, so long as it remains spontaneous, so long
as it is not united w ith socialist consciousness,
submits itself to bourgeois ideology and is inevitably
draw n to such submission.
T h e form ula is a
unin o f the workers m ovem ent w ith socialism ;
203
and this can be achieved only b y a sm all organized
p a rty o f high intellectual as w ell as m oral quality,
im bued w ith com plete m astery o f the intricacies o f
revolutionary socialist doctrine.
T h e danger plainly inherent in this doctrine is
the tem ptation to exalt organization as a necessary
means to revolution, and revolution as an end in itself.
F orm ally speaking, the Bolshevik theorists Stalin
perhaps less than Len in guard themselves against
this danger. O n e passage in these early writings
o d d ly recalls the optim istic conviction o f pious
V ictorians that the good, b y some ultim ate la w o f
progress, w ill prevail over the bad.
I f the teaching o f the anarchists represents the truth,
it w ill, o f course, necessarily make its own w ay and
gather the masses round it. I f it is unsubstantial and
built on a false foundation, then it w ill not hold for long
and w ill vanish into the air.
T his optimism is supported elsewhere b y a reference to the fam ous H egelian doctrine in view
o f the recent attitude o f the Russian philosophical
schools to G erm n philosophy in general and
H egel in particular, it is interesting to find Stalin
defending H egel o f the identity o f the real and
the rational. M arxism w ill trium ph, says Stalin
explicitly, because it is ra tio n a l: w h at is irrational
is doom ed to perish. Y e t the first critics o f H egel
perceived clearly the dilem m a o f finding any
criterion o f w hat is rational other than w hat, in fact,
succeed s; and the youthful Stalin is no more
successful than they in resolving it. T h e cause o f
revolution is the rational, and therefore the good,
204
Stalin :
cause, because its inevitability can be scientifically

proved. But the valid ity o f the p ro o f can only be
tested b y the e v e n t; and i f your calculations should
trn out to be wrong, it w ould m ean, not that the
Science was false but that your application o f it was
faulty. T h e door is thus thrown w ide open for sheer
empiricism.
Beyond doubt some distinction, at an y rate o f
emphasis, can be draw n between the em piricism o f
L en in and the empiricism o f Stalin. Proletarian
socialism , writes Stalin at this tim e, is built not
on sentimental feelings, not on abstract ju s tic e ,
not on love for the proletariat, bu t on scientific
principies.
Stalin in his m aturity m ight have
expressed him self more cautiously. Y e t the im pres
sion remains that L en in s dryness concealed a
certain degree o f hum anity, perhaps o f sincere love
for the proletariat , w hich was absent from the
make-up o f his more ruthless disciple.
L en in s
earlier writings are m arked b y a strong tinge o f
Utopianism , w hich was shed slowly and reluctantly
when he was brought into contact w ith the stern
realities and responsibilities entailed b y the exercise
o f power. In State and Revolution, w ritten on the eve
o f O ctober 1917, L enin strongly denounced those
w ho regarded the State as anything but a necessary
evil or sought to obscure the M arxist doctrine o f the
d ying aw ay o f the State as a ccndition o f the communist order. E ven when this dream had to be
relegated to the com paratively remte future, Lenin
continued to insist on the need for direct dem o
cracy , for self-government from below, for the
205
ordinary citizen him self learning to adm inister and
control, as the antidote to State bureaucracy. O f
such visions, unsubstantial ag they proved to be,
there is little or no trace in Stalins speeches or
writings.
Such differences o f doctrine and emphasis as m ay
be detected between L enin and Stalin can, however,
be plausibly attributed not so m uch to personal
divergcnces o f Outlook or tem peram ent as to differ
ences in the historical situation w hich confronted
them. Lenin, for all his insistence on the leadership
o f a highly trained and organized group o f professional revolutionaries, knew that revolutions are
m ade b y the masscs and that to w in the active, or
even the passive, support o f the masses something
more than organization and leadership was required.
H e knew that even discontent w ith existing conditions, indispensable though that was as a startingpoint, was not enough to sustain a revolutionary
ardour. T h e visin o f a new w orld in w hich men,
freed from the oppression o f bourgeois capitalism
and o f the bourgeois State, w ould learn to govern
themselves and to organize the processes o f production and distribution for the com m on good was
necessary to fire the revolutionary im agination.
Lenin inherited the splendid visin from a lon g line
o f nineteenth-century socialists. H e acccpted it,
sincerely believed in it, and justified his policies b y
the prospect o f its realization. If, after the first few
months o f power, the prospect seemed to recede
into a remte future and the difficulties o f its realiza
tion becam e increasingly apparent, there is no
206
S ta lin :
evidence that L en in ever abandoned his faith in it.

Stalins career was diTerent. L enin appraised
his merits as a proessional revolutionary.
His
function was to o rg a n iz e ; and in this he was
supreme. H e never sought to kindle the cnthusiasm
o f the masses ; for he lacked altogether the temperament, and perhaps the convictions, necessary for
such an achievem ent. His stepping-stone to pow er
was an appointm ent that required exactly those gifts
o f organization w hich he possessed the secretaryship o f the p a rty ; and he rose to pow er because,
after 1922, it was no longer revolutionary enthusiasm
but capacity to organize w hich the historical situa
tion dem anded. In this sense Stalin was a product
o f the revolution in its later phase. H e inheritcd it
from its ch ief progenitor, and for m ore than tw enty
years he directed and tam ed and m oulded it. T o
inquire how far he shaped its course b y his personal
intervention and initiative, and how far he was the
agent o f inevitable forces w orking themselves out to
a predestined end, is m erely to raise the eternal
question o f the position o f the great man in history.
O n e o f the most m arked features w hich distinguishes Stalins outlook from L en in s. and gives
Stalin a crucial place in revolutionary history is the
shift from the intcrnational to the national standpoint. H ere, too, diffcrcnccs o f background played
their part. Lenin spent the most form ative years o f
his lifc abroad, and spoke the principal European
la n g u a g es; and his revolutionary doctrine was
International to the core. Stalin knows no language
but Russian and G eorgian and has never left Russia
207
e x ce p t for visits to three or fou r p a rty conferences
before 1 9 1 4 an d for his recen t excursions to T e h e r n
a n d P otsdam . H is G e o rg ia n origin a cco u n ted for
his e a rly sp ecial studies o f nation alism an d for his
ch oice as P e o p le s C om m issar for N ation alities in
1 9 1 7 ; b u t it does n ot seem to h a v e h a d a n y
im p o rta n t in flu en ce on h im unless it w as to g iv e
an alm ost fa n a tica l in ten sity to his S o viet p atriotism .
I t w as thus no a ccid e n t th at m ad e h im th e sponsor
o f socialism in one co u n try in the 1 9 2 0 S , the
an tago n ist o f the in tern a tio n a lly m in d cd T ro tsk y ,
an d the p ro tagon ist o f the reviva l o f R u ssian n a tio n a l
sentirnent, after its re vo lu tio n a ry eclipse, in th e
1930S.
W h e n w a r carne in 1 9 4 1 he w as a lre a d y
th e n a tio n a l ra th er th a n the re v o lu tio n a ry h ero .
H is relation s w ith the a rm y seem from th e outset
to h av e been easy. H e h ad done m u ch , even before
the w a r, to restore its prestige an d to b rin g it b a ck
to its form er p la ce o f h on o u r in the n a tio n a l life.
T h e w a r b ro u g h t his finest qu alities a n d cap acities
to th eir fu ll fruition ; an d his design ation as M a rsh a l
o f the S oviet U n io n in M a rc h 1 9 4 3 could be regard ed
as a n a tu ra l cu lm in a tio n o f his ca reer ra th e r th an
as a m ere conccssion to the exigencies o f w ar.
It is no d o u b t a p a ra d o x th a t one w h o a p p eared
on the scene as a re vo lu tio n a ry con sp irator should be
a cclaim e d to -d a y p rin c ip a lly for his p a trio tic devotion to his co u n try an d for his u n flin ch in g leadership
in tim e o f w a r. T h e frontispiecc to his co llected
W orks sign ifican tly shows h im in his m a rsh als
un iform .
B u t such p arad oxes are n ot w ith o u t
p rc ccd c n t in the h istory o f revolutions ; a n d L e n in ,
208
S ta lin :
( i ) T he Road to Power
th o u g h his re v o lu tio n a ry co n viction s w ere fa r m ore

d eep-rooted th a n S ta lin s, m ig h t w e ll h a v e u n d erg on e som e such tran sfo rm ation , h a d he liv e d lo n g
en ough. T h e criticism s w h ich w ill h a v e to b e taken
in to a cco u n t in the u ltim a te assessment o f S ta lin s
record rela te n o t so m u ch to th e ends w h ic h he
p u rsued and a ch ie v e d as to the m eans b y w h ic h he
p ursued an d a ch ie ve d them . L e n in , in his so-called
testam ent, described S ta lin as too ro u g h an d
referred to h im as deficien t in lo y a lty
H is rise
to p ow er w as b eyo n d d o u b t m arked b y an u n u su al
skill in the less a m ia b le arts o f p o litic a l in trig u e.
H e w o rk ed b en ea th the surface, u n d erm in ed established repu tations, h eld b a ck w h ile others co m m itted
them selves to u n tcn a b le positions a n d then struck,
an d struck h ard . H e w as a cu n n in g , v in d ictiv e and
ruthless a n ta g o n is t; a n d the in dign ities an d b ru ta lities w h ich he h ea p ed on his fallen adversarles
w h ile th ey h a d m a n y precedents in the R u ssia n
trad itio n , w ere sh ockin g to w estern m inds.
Y e t, i f S ta lin in tro d u ce d o r rein tro d u ced in to
R u ssian h istory a n a rro w an d system atica lly ruthless
in to leran ce w h ich the first enthusiasm o f th e re v o lu
tion seem ed to h a v e ex p elled or m itig a ted , this w as
in the ch a ra cte r o f th e tim e as m u ch as o f the m an .
T h e B olsh evik revolu tio n , lik e oth er revolutions,
b e g a n in an atm osp here o f id ealism w h ich b o rd ered
on U to p ia . B u t soon op p osition fro m w ith in a n d
from w ith o u t p ro vo k ed repression, a n d vio le n ce b red
vio len ce. T e r r o r w as soon b e in g a p p lie d n o t o n ly
a gain st survivors o f the anden rgime a n d o f th e
bourgeoisie b u t again st o th er re v o lu tio n a ry p arties
209
w h ich attem pted to m aintain an independent
existence. E ven L en in s prestige and his genius for
persuasin did not suffice in his later years to m ain
tain p arty unity w ithout threats o f expulsin and
lim itations on the freedom o f speech and opinin o f
its members. W h en Len in disappeared from the
scene, profound rifts quickly revealed themselves,
and the weapons o f repression hitherto used only
against dissentients outside the party were, logically
and almost inevitably, turned against dissentients
w ithin it.
T h e ju d gm en t o f history on Stalins role w ill
depend in part on the w ider ju d gm en t w hich it
passes on the Bolshevik revolution. T h e claim o f
that revolution to have inaugurated a new civilization has been asserted and contested. But, on
any view , it was one o f the great turning-points in
history, com parable w ith the French revolution and
perhaps surpassing it in significance. N o country in
the w orld has rem ained indifferent to it, no form o f
governm ent has been able to evade its challenge,
no political or econom ic theory has escaped its
searching criticism ; or, according to all signs and
portents, has its influence yet reached a peak. T h e
collected edition o f Stalins writings and speeches,
w hile it will probably add little that is specific to
existing knowledge o f the m an or his work, w ill help
to place it in perspective, and w ill constitute a
historical docum ent o f the first im portance.
210
14
S T A L I N : (2) T H E D I A L E C T I C S
O F S T A L IN IS M
v e r y biograph y o f Stalin is necessarily a

political biography ; for Stalin is a politician
to his finger-tips, and there is no other cap acity in
w hich either contem poraries or posterity are likely
to interest themselves in him. W h at M r. Deutscher
means b y givin g his new biography o f Stalin * this
sub-title is, perhaps, not so m uch that he has wasted
less time than the hagiographers o f M oscow or than
hostile biographers like Souvarine and T rotsky on
more or less m ythical episodes, creditable or discreditable, o f Stalins youth and personal life, but
rather that he intends his book as an analysis o f his
heros political achievem ent. T his is, in fact, w hat it
i s ; and the intention has been brillian tly executed.
T h e usual difficulty o f political biography, the
difficulty o f separating the record o f the m an from
the history o f his time, scarcely arises in dealing with
Stalin. Since L en ins death Stalins career and the
history o f Soviet Russia have been inseparable.
N othing that belongs to the one can be regarded as
* I . D eutsclier, Stalin. A P olitical B iograp hy.
Press. L o n d o n ; C u m berlege. 255.
211
O xfo rd U n iversity
irrelevant to the other. A story so dram atic as
S talin s cannot be dull. M r. D eutscher has missed
none o f the points and has written a book which,
am ong its other merits, is absorbing to read. B ut
it is absorbing in part because, in all the cxcitem ent o f the externai detall, he has never lost sight
o f his central them e o f the nature o f Stalins
achievem ent and his place in the history o f the
revolution.
It need hard ly be said that this, like everything
else about Stalin, is highly controversia!. It raises
m an y questions which, like most o f the profound
questions o f history, cannot be readily answered
w ith a simple yes or no. Is Stalin the disciple o f
M a rx or an O rien tal despot? Has he fulfilled or
renounced the heritage o f L e n in ? Has he built
socialism in one country or blightcd the prospects
o f socialism throughout the world for a generation
to com e ? Has he a second Peter the G reat
Europeanized Russia, or^ a second Genghis K h a n
m ade Russia part o f a vast A siatic em pire ? Is
he a nationalist assiduously seeking to increase the
prestige and pow er o f Russia, or an internationalist
concerned to bring about the universal trium ph o f
a revolutionary creed ? These qiiestions are sus
ceptible o f m any different answers. M r. D eutschers
book w ill enable the reader, i f not to answer them,
at any rate to ask them w ith greater understanding.
H istory never stands still least o f all in the
m iddle o f a revolution. "What I.enin created and
w h at Stalin inherited from him was a constantly
changing entity, not a static system, but a process
212
Stalin:
{2 )
The Dialectics o f Stalinism
o f developm ent.
It was a process in which, to
borrow the H egelian idiom , thesis was continually
begetting antithesis, so that the question whether
Stalin continued or negated the work o f Lenin m ay
reflect a distinction o f language rather than o f
substance. Put less abstractly, the truth seems to
be that every revolution is succeeded by its own
reaction and that, when Lenin was w ithdraw n
from the scene, the Russian revolution had already
entered this secondary stage o f its course. T h e once
current slogan, Stalin is the Lenin o f to-day , did
not assert that Stalin was the Len in o f 1917, but
that he was perform ing the function w hich Lenin
him self would have had to perform if he had re
mained the leader o f the revolution ten years later.
Even so, it was not w holly true. But it contained
some elements o f the truth.
T h e early Bolsheviks were students o f history and
knew w hat happens to revolutions : they feared that
their revolution, too, would meet its Therm idor.
B ut the spell o f Bonapai te made them assume that
the source o f danger was a dictator in shining
arm our. It was this assumption w hich proved fatal
to T rotsky and smoothed Stalin's path to pow er. In
M r. D eutschers w o rd s:
It had always been admitted that history might repeat
itself, and that a directory or a single usurper might once
again climb to power on the back of the revolution. It
was taken for granted that the Russian usurper would,
like his French prototypc, have a personality possessed
of brilliancc and legendary fame won in battles. The
mask of Bonaparte seemed to fit Trotsky only too wcll.
213
Indeed, it might have fitted any personality with the
cxception of Stalin. In this lay part of his strength.
T hus it was that Stalin becam e, i f not the Lenin
o f to-day , the Bonaparte o f to-day, the heir o f
Len in as Bonaparte was the heir o f Robespierre, the
m an who chained and disciplined the revolution,
and Consolidated its achievements, and garbled its
doctrines, and w edded it to a great national power,
and spread its influence throughout the world.
Y e t this, too, was not the whole truth. For,
w hile history sometimes repeats itself in unexpected
disguises, every historical situation is nonc the less
unique. T h e odd thing is that Stalin, unpredictably
and seem ingly in spitc o f himself, becam e, unlike
Bonaparte, a revolutionary in his o^vn right. M ore
than ten years after L en in s revolution, Stalin made
a second revolution without w hich L en in s revolu
tion w'ould have run out into the sand. In this sense
Stalin continued and fulfillcd Leninism, thoxrgh the
slogan o f socialism in one country , under w hich
he m ade his revolution, was the rejection o f w hak
Lenin believed (the eforts o f Stalins theorists to
father it on Lenin were childishly disingenuous) and
L enin would have recoiled in horror from some o f
the methods b y w hich the second' revolution was
made.
Intcllectually, as M r. D cutscher is careful to
point out, socialism in one country m ade no
new and original contribution to doctrine. It was
not even very coherent, since Stalin himself, clinging
frm ly to the ill-fitting garments o f M arxist orthodoxy, adm itted that socialism could never be coin214
S ta lin : (2) T he D ialectics o f Stalinism

pletely and securely realized in one country isolated
in a capitalist w orld.
B ut psychologically and
politically it was a brilliant d isco v ery; and it does
not seriously detract from Stalins political genius to
say that, like other great discoveries, its author
stumbled on it unawares. It happened in 1924, the
year in w hich Lenin died, at the height o f the controversy w ith T rotsky and between tw o cditions o f
Stalins Foundations o f Leninism. T h e first edition
contained a passage w hich read too m ueh like an
endorsement o f T rotskys perm anent revolution
In the second edition this gave place to a clear
and unequivocal statement that socialism could be
built in one country even in backw ard, peasant
Russia.
W hen L enin died, orthodox Bolshevism had run
into a blind alley. A ll agreed that the first task in
1917 had been to com plete the unfinished bourgeois
revolution in R u ssia; and this, it could fairly be
said, had been done. A ll Bolsheviks agreed (as
against the Mensheviks) that, in com pleting the
bourgeois revolution, they w ould pass over directly
into the stage o f the socialist re vo lu tio n ; this, too,
had happened. But at this point all Bolsheviks,
from Lenin downwards, had confidently assumed
that the torch kindled in Russia w ould ignite the
socialist revolution in western Europe, and that the
E uropean proletariat would take up the burden o f
com pleting the socialist revolution and building a
socialist society. T his task Lenin had said it
again and again was too heavy for backw ard
Russia to carry out alone.
215
U nfortunately this tim e-table had not been
realized.
R evolution in Europe, w hich seemed
certain in 1919 and im m inent in 1920 when the R ed
A rm y was outside W arsaw , still unaccoun tably
tarried. In the autum ii o f 1923, when the G erm n
proletariat for the third or fourth tim e since 1918
suffered a crushing defeat (recriminations about wlio
was to blam e did not help), it carne to be gradually
understood in M oscow that the E uropean revolution
was still a long w a y of. But what, on this new
hypothesis, was the role o f the Russian Bolsheviks ?
N obod y dcnied, it was truc, that one o f their tasks
was to procccd w ith the building o f socialism iu
R u s s ia : T rotsky was pressing the case for intensivo
planning and industrialization long before it had
been taken up b y Stalin. But, none the less, since
it seemed to follow from the orthodox doctrine that
it was not possible to gct very far in R ussia in the
absence o f revolution clsewhcrc, a sense o f unreality
and frustration could hard ly be avoidcd. T h e rank
and file, i f not the party intelligentsia, needed the
stirnulus and inspiration o f a finite goal set in a not
too remte future, and dependent for its realization,
not on incalculable events in far-aw ay E urope but
on their own cfforts.
'
T his need was brillian tly met b y socialism in
one country . M r. D eutschers im aginative reconstruction o f w hat the new slogan m eant to Stalins
followers cannot be bettered :
O f course we are looking forward to internatlonal
revolution. O f course we have been brought up in the
school o f M arxism ; and we know that contemporary
216
Stalin :
(2) T he D ialectics o f Stalinism
social and political struggles are, by their very nature,

international. O f course we still believe the victory o f
the proletariat in the west to be n ea r; and we are bound
in honour to do what we can to speed it up. But
and this was a very big, a highly suggestive but
do not worry so much about all that international
revolution. Even if it were to be delayed indefinitely,
even if it were never to occur, we in this country are
capable o f developing into a fully fledged classless
society. Let us then concntrate on our great constructive task.
A n English empiricist m ight have said : L et the
theory takc care o f itself, and get on w ith the jo b
Stalin the M arxist had to w rap it up in a tiresome
paraphernalia o f doctrine. But it carne to m uch the
same thing.
O n the slogan o f socialism in one country
Stalin rod to pow er to becom e the prisoner o f
the spirits he had conjured up. F or there was, it
turned out, som ething to be said for the older, more
cautious, less em pirical M arxism o f an earlier
generation, how ever inconvenient its application
m ight be to the Russia o f the later nineteen-twenties.
T h e hard core o f reality behind the divisin o f
E urope into east and west was the frontier running
approxim ately from D an zig to Trieste, the frontier
between developed capitalist Europe, where the
proletariat was alread y a forc, and undeveloped
peasant Europe, w here the hold o f feudalism had
hard ly yet been broken. Perhaps, after all, Lenin
and T rotsky and Stalin him self dow n to the
autum n o f 1924 had been right when they argued
that the victory o f socialism could not be achieved
2 17
in backw ard Russia w ithout a socialist revolution in
the proletarian countries o f western Europe. Per
haps even though nobody ,dared to hint this in
R ussia the M ensheviks had not been altogether
w rong when they m aintained that it was not possible
to pass over direct from the bourgeois to the socialist
stage o f the revolution and that socialism could be
built only on an established foundation o f bourgeois
capitalism .
N atu rally the answer to these questions turned
p artly on w h at was m eant b y socialism. Stalin had
undertaken to produce socialism in one country .
W h atever he produced must clearly be called
socialism ; moreover, the F ive-year Plan and
the collectivization o f agriculturc were unim peachable tems in a revolutionary socialist program m e.
Nevertheless it w ould be a mistake to assume that
these measures were imposed on Stalin, or imposed
b y Stalin on Russia, on the strength o f any slogan
or program m e, w hether socialism in one country
or another. T h e y were imposed b y the objective
situation w hich Soviet Russia in the later nineteentwenties had to face.
T h e Leninist revolution had b y this tim e run its
course. T h e key industries had been nationalized
and, in a superficial and fragm entary w ay,
planned , but not fitted into an econom y designed as a single unit. T h e land had been given
to the peasants. E very device had been tried to
step up agricultural production the key to the
w hole structure. T h e kulak had been first terrorized
for the benefit o f the poor peasant, then encouraged
218
Stalin:
to fend for him self under N E P ; Bukharin had even

told him that he was fulfilling the highest purposes
o f socialism b y enriching himself. B ut none o f these
devices had more than a m om entary success. Since
an y substantial assistance from the capitalist countries
had to be ruled out, the econom y could not advance
on socialist lines, or on a n y other lines, w ithout an
increased yield from a g ricu ltu re ; and this was
conceivable only through the restoration o f largescale farm ing and the introduction o f m echanization.
Short o f a relapse into conditions m ore prim itive
than those destroyed b y the revolution, or o f an
unconditional surrender to foreign capitalism and
neither was a conceivable solution there was no
road open save the hard road w hich Russia was to
travel under Stalins leadership and the banner o f
socialism in one country .
T h e most baffling feature o f Stalins career is
that he carried out a revolution w hich was no less
far-reaching than the revolution o f 1917, and was
in m any senses its logical and necessary com pletion,
at a tim e when the popular tide o f revolutionary
enthusiasm had ebbed aw ay, and to the accom panim eiit o f m any T herm idorean symptoms o f
counter-revolution. I t was thus that T rotsky could
find ground for denouncing Stalin as a counterrevolutionary and as the destryer o f the revolution.
M r. D eutscher sums up the difference between the
Leninist and Stalinist revolutions b y calling the first
a revolution from below and the second a
revolution from above . T h e distinction must
not be pressed too far. L enin specifically rejected
219
the idea that revolutions are m ade b y the spontaneous enthusiasm o f the m asses; he believed in,
and imposed, strict revolutionary discipline. Stalin,
whose theory on this point did not difer from
L en in s, could not have executed his colossal task
unless he had been able to rely on a broad base o f
popular support. Y e t it is clear that Stalin had to
contend w ith far more apath y and disillusionment
in the masses, far more opposition and intrigue in
the p arty lite, than Len in had ever known, and was
driven to a p p ly correspondingly harsher and more
ruthless measures o f discipline. It is also significant
that most o f the appeals b y w hich Stalin justified
his revolution w ere to instincts norm ally the reverse
o f revolutionary to law and order, to the sanctity
o f the fam ily, to the defence o f the fatherland and
to the virtue o f cultivatin g ones own g a r d e n : it
was as a restless international adventurer, a m an
who cared nothing for his country, a Champion
o f perm anent revolution , that T rotsky was
pilloried.
Stalin thus presents tw o faces to the w orld a
revolutionary-M arxist face and a national-Russian
face two aspects w hich are partly conflicting and
partly com plem entary. A n d i f th gradation from
the Leninist to the Stalinist revolution is expressed
in these terms, it m ay perhaps be said that the one
was essentially designed as an international revolu
tion occurring in Russia and to that extent adapting
itself to Russian conditions, and the other as a
national revolution w hich no doubt carried w ith it
its international dem ands and its international
220
Stalin:
(2) The D ialectics o f Stalinism
im plications, bu t was prim arly concerned w ith

establishing itself. M r. D eutscher quotes somewhere
the retort o f Dostoevskys G rand Inquisitor to
C h ris t; W e have corrected T h y deed . O n e o f
the ways in w hich Stalin corrected L en in s deed was
to root it firm ly and tenaciously in the national soil.
This was, after all, the central tenet o f Stalins
philosophy. H e believed, w h at L en in doubted or
denied, that socialism could be b u ilt in an isolated
Russian State.
T h e m arriage o f the international ideis o f the
revolution to national sentirnent was bound to occur.
It had happened in the French revolution. It had
begun to happen in Soviet Russia long before Stalin
took charge o f her d estinies: the first occasion on
w hich patriotic and revolutionary feelings were
conspicuously blended and intertw ined was the w ar
against Poland in 1920. T h e long isolation o f Soviet
Russia, the persistent hostility o f the greater part o f the
capitalist world were bound to reinforce the trend.
W hen Stalin in 1924 proclaim ed the possibility o f
socialism in one country he was, w ithout knowing
it, appealing to the deep springs o f a national pride
w hich for ten years had been not only dead but
dam ned. H e told his followers that Russians could
do precisely what L enin and all other Bolsheviks
had hitherto believed them incapable o f doing.
Russia will do it for h e rse lf , he m ight have said,
parodying C avour.
T h e five-year plans were
launched under the slogans o f catching up and
overtaking the capitalist countries, o f beating
them at their own gam e.
221
I t was thus that Stalin becam e the reviver o f
Russian patriotism , the first leader explicitly to
reverse the International or anti-national attitude
w hich had dom inated the early stages o f the revolu
tion. T h e first Bolshevik historiaos had depicted
previous Russian history in the m ain as a long series
o f barbarities and scandals. Backw ard was the
standard epithet to attach to the nam e Russia .
Stalin changed all that. H e put out o f business
altogether the M arxist school o f historians headed
b y Pokrovsky (whom Len in had highly praised and
valued), and rehabilitated the Russian past. A new
drive was required in place o f the cooling revolu
tionary ardour in order to render tolerable the
hardships o f industrialization and to Steel resistance
to potential enemies. Stalin found it in nationalism.
N ew -found enthusiasms tend to exag g era tio n ; and
victory over H itler was an intoxicating achievem ent.
Soviet nationalism since the w a r has taken some
forms w hich western observers have thought sinister
and others w hich they have thought absurd. But
it has, perhaps, not differed as m uch as is sometimes
supposed from that o f other great Powers at the
m om ent o f their ascent to greatness.
O th er aspects o f Stalins retufn to a national
tradition m ay w eigh more heavily against him in the
scales o f history. T h e real charge against Stalinism
is that it abandoned those fruitful elements o f the
western tradition w hich were em bodied in the
original M arxism , and substituted for them retro
grade and oppressive elements draw n from the
Russian tradition. M arxism stood on the shoulders
222
Stalin:
o f western bourgeois liberal dem ocracy, and, while

ultim ately rejecting it, assumed and adopted m any
o f its achievem ents. T h is is the m eaning o f the
insistence in the Communist Manifesto that bourgeois
dem ocracy had been in its d ay a progressive liberating forc and that the proletarian revolution could
come only as a second step after the consum m ation
o f the bourgeois revolution ; and m any o f the first
legislative acts and declarations o f the Soviet regim e
in Russia were inspired as m uch b y the ideis o f
bourgeois dem ocracy as by those o f socialism. W hen
the m oment carne to pass on to the realization o f
socialism, this meant, not that dem ocratic ideis
would be abandoned, but that they w ould be fulfilled,
as the degenerate bourgeois dem ocracies o f the west
w ere no longer capable o f fulfilling them.
Such was L en in s dream in 1917. B ut it was
from the M arxist standpoint an anom aly, and from
the standpoint o f socialism a tragedy, that the first
victorious sociahst revolution should have occurred
in w hat was econom ically, socially and politically
the most backw ard o f the great countries o f Europe.
T h e workers w ho were called on to build the first
socialist order had been for generations the victim s
o f econom ic poverty, social inequality and political
repression m ore extrem e than those prevailing in
an y other great country. T h e socialist order in
Russia could draw neither on the w ealth created b y
past capitalist enterprise or on the political experi
ence fostered b y bourgeois dem ocracy. A t the very
end o f his life L enin began to realize to the full
the handicaps imposed b y these shortcomings. A
223
passage quoted b y M r. D eutscher from his speech
at the last p arty congress he attended penetrates to
the taproots o f Stalinism :
I f the conquering nation is more cultured than the
vanquished nation, the former imposes its culture on the
latter; but if the opposite is the case, the vanquished
nation imposes its culture on the conqueror.
Som ething o f the same sort, Lenin continued, could
happen between classes. In the R S F S R the culture
o f the vanquished classes, miserable and low as
it is, is higher than that o f our responsible Gom
munist administrators ; the old Russian bureaucracy, in virtue o f this relatively higher level o f
culture, was vanquishing the victorious, but ignorant
and inexperienced, Gommunists.
This was the danger w hich Lenin, w ith the clearsightedness o f genius, diagnosed in w h at he saw
around him in the fifth year o f the revolution. It
was im plicit in the continued isolation o f socialist
Russia from the rest o f the w orld and in the
necessity o f building socialism in one country .
International M arxism and international socialism,
planted in Russian soil and left to themselves, found
their international character exposed to the constant
sapping and m ining o f the Russian 'national tradition
w hich they had supposedly vanquished in 1917.
T e n years later, w hen Len in was dead, the leaders
w ho had most conspicuously represented the
international and western elements in Bolshevism,
Trotsky, Zin oviev and K am enev, not to mention
m inor figures like R ad ek, K rasin and R akovsky
had all disappeared ; the m ild and pliable Bukharin
224
S ta lin :
was soon to follow.

T h e hidden forces o f the
Russian past autocracy, bureaucracy, political
and cultural conform ity took their revenge, not by
destroying the revolution but b y harnessing it to
themselves in order to fulfil it in a narrow national
fram ework. These forces carried Stalin to pow er
and m ade him w hat he remains to-day, the enigm atic protagonist both o f international revolution
and o f national tradition.
T h e reader o f Stalins biography, holding this
thread in his hand, w ill be able to pick his w ay
through a m aze whose intricacies appear at first
sight infinite, but whose general pattern gradually
reveis itself. It is not perhaps an issue w hich lends
itself profitably to discussion in terms o f praise and
blam e. T h e isolation o f the Russian revolution
com pelled it to rely on its own resources ; in turning
its back on the outside w orld it increased its own
isolation. E ach step drove Russia farther back into
her past. W h en Stalin determ ined to drive the
revolution to its logical conclusin at all costs
through industrialization and collectivization, the
least fanciful observers were rem inded o f Peter the
G reat. W hen he resolved to protect him self against
the potential dangers o f treachery in the event o f
foreign attack b y elim inating every possible rival, men
thought o f Ivan the T errible. Party orthodoxy carne
to p lay the same constricting role as ecclesiastical
orthodoxy had played in m edieval Russia, w ith its
claim to a m onopoly over all philosophy and literature
and art. Y e t it w ould be unfair to suppose that Stalin
deliberately and consciously sought isolation. A gain
225
and again gestures o f approach were m ade to the
western w orld. B ut only under the stress o f w ar
could the barriers be overeme. O nce it was over,
the iron curtain again descended. T h e rift between
the Russian revolution and the west was too wide
to be bridged.
A t the end o f 1949 Stalin celebrated his
seventieth birthday. H e has led his country victoriously through its greatest w ar and surm ounted
the im m ediate difficulties o f dem obilization and
reconstruction as sm oothly as any o f the belligerents.
T o all outw ard seeming he stands at the pinnacle o f
his own and his nations power. In spite o f the
fam iliar injunction to cali no m an happ y till he is
dead, the tem ptation is strong to assume that the
shape o f Stalins career is fixed and w ill not be
substantially modified b y anything yet to come.
Even, however, i f this assumption is correct, it does
not m ean that Stalins place in history is already
fixed or w ill be for a generation to come. W e
can still only begin to see, through a glass, darkly ,
w hat has been happening in the last thirty years.
W e dim ly perceive that the revolution o f 1917, itself
the product o f the upheaval o f 1914, was a turningpoint in world history certainlj^ com parable in
m agnitude w ith the French revolution a century and
a quarter earlier, and perhaps surpassing it. T h e
significance o f L en in s w ork is ju st com ing into focus.
B ut o f Stalin it is still too early to sp e a k ; Stalins
w ork is still too plain ly subject to the distorting lens
o f excessive propinquity. H ow far has he generalized
the experience o f the revolution o f 1917 and h o w
226
Stalin:
(2)
The Dialectics o f Stalinism
far particularized it ? Has he carried it forw ard to

its trium phant conclusin, or destroyed it altogether,
or twisted it out o f shape ? T h e answer and one
w hich to some extent begs the question can for the
present be given only in terms o f the concluding
sentences o f M r. D eutschers b io g ra p h y :
The better part o f Stalins work is as certain to outlast
Stalin himself as the better parts of the works of Cromwell and Napolen have outlasted them. But in order
to save it for the future and to give it its full valu,
history may yet have to cleanse and reshape Stalins
work as sternly as it once cleansed and reshaped the
work o f the English revolution after Cromwell and of
the French after Napolen.
T H E END

E H Carr Studies in Revolution

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The Universal Lbrary

logians and the natural order o f A d am Sm ith

The maintenance o f liberty was bound to be an

the moral foundation for the labour theory o f value

will be entrusted to a specific social institution. A

O n the other hand, Saint-Sim on was constantly

the idea o f G od cannot be em ployed in the physical

1 H E winter o f 1847-48 (it is difficult to f i x a more

precise date for the celebration o f the centenary)

prescription for the action required o f revolution

T h e first revolutionary struggle was thus o v e r : the

Indeed, the bourgeoisie, far from bidding for pow er

a national basis, But the advance o f capitalism was

H enee the first step was for the proletariat o f every

swept into the agrarian revolution , In the same

foretaste o f subsequent controversy both the M en

there was no peasantry and no agrarian question,

composed the Manifesto. B ut how far were these

all the impurities w hich always disfigure practice as

A M A N o f paradoxes Proudhon called him self

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

But M a rx was, after all, right in describing

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

Between these dates Proudhons pages pullulate w ith

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

05-vi'tme*r,w ti? C t n ca * f ocni

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

Y e t the charge o f French egoism w hich

Proudhon: Robinson Crusoe o f Socialism

A L E X A N D E R H E R Z E N claim s attcntion in m any

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen: A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen: A n Intellectual Revolutionary

H erzen : A n Intellectual Revolutionary

b r a n d e s opens his essay on Lassalle,

originally published in the 1 8 7 0 S , w ith some

Lassalle meets Bism arck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

A n d a little later he was inform ing an audience o f

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Lassalle meets Bismarck

Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

Soine Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

T h e men o f the forties all assumed w ithout

Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

H ere already are the solid foundations o f class

Some JVineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

M ESTfAi;0 Z E vX ',. : AoiA

Some Nineteenth-Century Russian Thinkers

05-vi'tmer,w ti? C t n ca f ocni