PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
 
Translated from the Russian  Designed by V . Y E R Y O M IN
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
T his five- volume edition includes the most impor tant and v aluable of   Plekhanov’s works on philosophy.
The first three volumes contain works written in the defence and substan tiatio n of Marx ism in the course of the strugg le ag ainst Narodism, rev isionism  and Machism. In the fourth are Plekhanov's best works on Russian philo sophy and social and political thought, and the fifth consists of works on  literature and art.
The texts of these works have again been checked with the extant manu scripts in Russian or other languages kept in Plekhanov House, the Saltykov-   Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad, and with publications which  appeared during the author’s lifetime.
Each v olume is provided w ith an introductor y ar ticle, notes of a fac tual character and name and subject indices.
The publication has been prepared by the Institute of Philosophy of the   A cade my of Sciences of the US S R w ith the colla bo ratio n of Ple khanov   House and under the editorship of M. T. Iovchuk, A. N. Maslin, P. N. Fedo-   seyev, V. A. Fomina and B. A. Chagin.
T he texts were prepared and the notes composed by Y . S. K ots , I. S . Be lenky, S. M. Firsova and B. L. Yakobson.
The translation of The Development of the Monist View of History   is by    A ndrew Rot hs tein and was or ig in ally publis hed in L ondon, 19 47, by Law rence &. W is har t. T he tra nsla tions of Pl ek hanov ’s preface to the second  and third editions of the book and of his ar ticle “A Few Words to Our Oppo nents” were made by the late A. Finebcrg.
The remainder of the works were translated by R. Dixon.
© T ranslation into Eng lish. Progress Publishers 1974
First printing 1960  Second revised edition 1974
„ 10104-405 „ „ 
014(01)-74
 
C O N T E N T S
 V. Fomina,  P L E K H A N O V ’ S H O L E I N T H E D E F E N C E A N D S U B S T A N T IA T IO N OF M A R X IS T P H IL O S OP H Y (Introductory 
Essay)  .................................................................................................... 7
S E L E C T E D P H I L O S O P H I C A L W O R K S    V o l u m e I
S OCIA L IS M A ND T H E P O L IT IC A L S T R U G G L E ............................   49 P r e f a c e .................................................................................................... 49
OU R D IF F E R E N C E S ................................................................................ 107 L etter to P. L . L av rov (In L ieu of P r e f a c e )................................... 107 In t r o d uc t io n ............................................................................................ 124
1. What We Are Reproached With ................................• 124 2. Pos ing of the Q u e s t i o n ............................................................ 127 3. A . I. Herzen ............................................................................ 129 4. N. G. Cherny shevsk y ............................................................ 131 5. M. A . B ak unin ........................................................................ 148 6. P. N. T k a c h o v ............................................................................ 156 7. Results ....................................................................................... 161
Chapter I. A Few References to H i s t o r y ........................................ 166
1. Russ ian B l a n q u i s m .................................................................... 166 2. L . T ik homir ov ............................................................................ 169 3. T he Ema ncipatio n of L abour Gr oup .................................... 177 4. L. T ikhomirov in the Battle A gainst the Emancipation
of L abour G r o u p ........................................................................ 182 5. T he Historica l Role of C a p it a l is m ........................................ 186 6. The Development of Capitalismin the W’e s t .......................... 195
Chapter I I . Ca pita lis m in Russia .................................................... 208
1. T he Home Mar ket .................................................................... 208 2. Number of Workers ................................................................ 213 3. Handic rafts men ........................................................................ 221 4. Handicr af t T rade and A g riculture ........................................ 228 5. T he Handicraftsman and the F a c t o r y ....................................  231 6. Russian Capitalism’s Successes ............................................ 233 7. M a r k e t s ........................................................................................ 235
Chapter II I. Capitalism aDd Communal Land T e n u r e ................   238 1. Ca pitalis m in A g r i c u l t u r e ........................................................ 238 2. T he V illag e Commune ............................................................ 240 3. Dis integrat ion of Our V i llage C o m m u n e ................................  244 4. T he Nar odniks ’ Ideal V illag e Commune ............................   253 5. R e d e m p t io n ................................................................................ 263 6. S mall L anded Pr oper ty ........................................................ 272 7. Conclusion .................................................................................... 273
Chapter IV . Ca pita lis m and Our T asks ........................................ 275
1. Character of the Impending R e v o lu ti o n ............................   275 2. “Seizure of Power” .................................................................... 295 3. Pr obable Consequences of a “ Po pular” Re v olutio n . . . 303 4. L. T ikhomirov Wavers Between B lanquism and B ak uninism 318 5. Pr obable Consequences of the Seizure of Power by the
Socialists .................................................................................... 328
6 CONTENTS
Chapter V . T rue T asks of the S ocialists in Russ ia . ..................... 330
1. Social- Democrats and Man- Handling . . . . . . 330 2. Pr opag anda A mong the Workers ......................................... 339
Chapter V I. C o n c lu s io n ..................................................................... 350
P R O G R A M M E OF T H E S O CIA L - D EMO CR A T IC E M A N C IP A T IO N
O F L A B O U R G R O U P ..................................................................... 353
SECOND DRAF T PROGRA MME OF T HE RUSSIA N SOCIAL- DE MO CR A T S . ................................................................................. 358
 A NE W CHA MP IO N OF A UT OCRA CY , OR Mr. L . T IK H O M IR O V ’S  GRIEF (Reply to the Pamphlet:  Why I Ceased to Be aJ Revolu
tionary)  .................................................................................................... 363
From the A u t h o r .......................................................................... 363
S P E E CH AT T H E I N T E R N A T IO N A L W O R K E R S ' S OC IA L I S T CO NG RE S S IN P A RIS (J uly 14- 21, 1 8 8 9 ) ..................................... 398 (First V e r s io n ] ................................................................................ 398 [Second Version] . . ............................................................................ 399
F OR T H E S I X T IE T H A N N IV E R S A R Y OFH E G E L ’Sj DEA T H 401
[ F O R E W O R D T O T H E F IR S T E D I T IO N (F R OM T H E T R A N S
L A T O R) A N D P L E K H A N O V ’S N OT E S T O E N G E L S ’ B O O K   
L U D W I G F E U E R B A C H A N D T H E E ND O F C L A S S IC A L
G E R M A N P H I L O S O P H Y ]  ..................................................... 427
From the T ransla tor . .................................................... ...   427 [ Plek hanov’s Notes to E nge ls’ Book LudwigFeuerbach...)  . 429 [Notes to the First Edition in the Original Version] ..................... 472
B O U R G E O IS OF DA Y S G ON E B Y ........................................ 477
T H E D EV E L O P M E NT OF T H E MO NIS T V IE W OF H I S T O R Y 480
Preface to the Second and T hird E d i t i o n s ......................................... 480
Chapter I. French Mate ria lism of the Eig htee nth Century . . . 482
Chapter I I. French Histor ians of the R e s t o r a t io n ............................. 495
Chapter I I I . T he Uto pian S o c ia l is t s ............................................ 508
Chapter IV . Ideal ist German P h ilo s o p h y .....................................  537 Chapter V . Modern Mat erialis m ..................................................... 574 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 669
 A ppendix I .   ON CE A G A IN Mr . M I K H A IL O V S K Y , ONC E M O RE T H E “ T R IA D ” . ............................................................................ 698
 
PLEKHANOV’S ROLE IN THE DEFENCE  A ND SUBST A NT IAT ION OF MA RX IS T PHIL OSOPHY 
Georgi V ale ntinov ich Ple khanov , the f irst Russian Marx ist,  was one of the w or ld’s g reatest think er s and publicis ts . His activity in the Russian and the international arena in the eighties and nineties of the last century g ave the world outsta nding works on the theory and history of Marxism. In his works he defended, substantiated and popularised the teachings of Marx and Engels, developed and gave concrete expression to questions of Marxist philosophy, particular ly the theory of historical mate rial ism: the role of the popular masses and of the individual in history, the interaction of the basis and the superstructure, the role of ide ologies, etc. Plekhanov did much to substantiate and develop Marxist aesthetics.
His best works on the history of philosophical, aesthetic, social and political thought, especially on the history of mate rialism and of philosophy in Russia, are a valuable contribution to the development of scientific thought and progressive culture.
Lenin ranked Plekhanov among the socialists having the greatest knowledge of Marx ist philosophy. He described his philosophical works as the best in international Marxist litera ture.
* *
Plekhanov began his social, polit ical and l iterary work at the end of the seventies, when the revolutionary situation in Russia  was matur ing .
 
8  V . F OMIN A 
T he Russ o- T urkish W ar of 1877- 78, w hich had just ended, in flicted many hardships on the Russian people. It brought to light the incurable ulcers of the autocratic and landlord system, tyranny, lawlessness and widespread corruption, bad supply of the army and other vices in the m ilitar y adminis tr ativ e machine.  A ll this addod to the indig na tio n of the po pular mas ses , w ho were cruelly oppressed by tsarism, the landlords and the capitalists.
By this time capitalism had already come to dominate in Russia’s economy. After Lhe 1801 Reform, feudal relations of production were g r adua lly replaced by bourgeois relations. Ca pi talism asserted itself in industry and penetrated increasingly into the countryside, where it led to stratification of the peasantry. The expropriation of the peasants from their lands formed an an ny of unemploy ed wage- workers for industr y and for landlord and capitalist agriculture. The survivals of feudal relations in agricultural production, which were fostered by the system of autocracy and landlordship, and the elements of natural economy  w hich s t il l ex is ted in s eparate ar eas of the countr y , he ld up the growth of the productive forces. Capitalism made its way slowly and with great diff iculty in agriculture and left the landlords in their do m inant position there for many decades. A fte r the Ref orm , s ma ll, low- productive, priv ate ly owned peasant econo mies predominated in the countryside, and Russia was still m a i n l y a g r a r i a n .
T he dev elopment of ca pitalism combined w ith the all- power fulness of the landlords exacerbated the growing antagonism between the working masses and the ruling classes.
The bulk of the peasantry was doubly oppressed—by feudalism and by capital; they suffered from land hunger, survivals of feudalism and capitalist exploitation; ruin and misery were their lot. As a result, the peasant movement against the landlords,  w hich had s ubs ided s omew hat in the late s ix tie s , s tarted to g row again in the middle of (he seventies.
The working class, too, was in a condition of great hardship. U nbr idled capita lis t e x ploitat ion, low wages, the absence of leg islation on labour protection, the ban on the ins titut ion of  w orkers' org anis atio ns, ar bitr ar y police r ule — a ll this le d to unrest and spontaneous outbreaks among the workers. The middle of the seventies saw the appearance of the first workers’ organisations— the S outh Russ ian W ork er s ’ U nion and the Northern Union of Russian Workers—which attempted to organise to some extent the s pontaneous w orking- class move ment.  A t that tim e the w or king - class mov ement in Rus s ia was de v elop
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   9
Uie sev enties, Nar odism was influenced by the re v olutionar y - democratic ideas of Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobro ly ubov. Despite the lim itat ions of their outlook, the re v olutionary Narodniks played a great part in the country’s emancipation movement. They fought selflessly   for the emancipation of (he peasants, for the abolition of the autocracy and the privileges of the no bil it y , a nd tried to rouse the peasa nts to r ev olt ag ainst the tsarist gov ernment. T he culm inat ing point in the re v olution ary N ar odnik s ’ strugg le against, ts arism and the landlor ds in the seventies and early eighties was the Narodnay a V oly a (People's  W ill) mo v ement . T he heroism of the rev olut io nar ie s in this movement and their unstinting devotion to the people received high praise fr om Marx and Eng els, who noted that a re v olution ary crisis was g row ing in Russ ia and that the centre of the revolutionary movement had begun to shift to Russia. In 1882, they stressed in the preface to the Russian edition of the Manifesto  of the Communist Party   (which Plekhanov translated): “Russia forms the vanguard of revolutionary action in Fairope.”*
In the period following the Reform, the Russian revolutiona ries ex tended their contacts w ith the Wes t European r ev olutio nary movement. In the half century, beginning about the middle of the nineteenth century, revolutionary Russia closely observed the dev elopment of progress ive theor etica l thoug ht in the W es t and learned from the experience of the West European working people’s struggle. Progressive Russians studied the works of Marx and Engels; the Manifesto of the Communist Parti)  was published in Rus s ian in 1869 and the first vo lume of Mar x ’s Capital  in 1872. Russian revolutionary Narodniks—P. Lavrov, II. L opatin, V . Za sulich and many others —kept up a liv ely correspondence w ith Marx and Eng els on ques tions of economic and political development in Russia, the Russian emancipation movement and the ideas of socialism.
In the first years of his public activity, G. V. Plekhanov took part in revolutionary Narodnik organisations.
Plekhanov was born on December 11, 1856, in the village of Gudalovka, Lipetsk Uyezd, Tambov Gubernia. His father,  V ale nt in Petr ov ic h P lek ha nov , belong ed to the g entry and ha d
a small estate; his mother, Maria Fyodorovna (a relative of Belin sky), hold progressive views and had a great influence on her son. On finishing the m ilita r y school in V oronezh in 1873, P lek hanov studied for a few months at the K on s ta ntin Cadets ' S chool in Petersburg and entered the Mining Institute in 1874.
In 1876, he joined the Narodnik circle “The Rebels”, which later merged w ith Zem ly a i V oly a. He was one of the org anisers of the
 
10  V . F OMIN A 
first politica l demonstr ation in Rus s ia, w hich took place in 1876 on the square in front of the Kazan Cathedral in Petersburg with Petersburg workers taking part for the first time. At this demon
stration Plekhanov made a fiery speech indicting the autocracy arid defending the ideas of Chernyshevsky, who was then in exile. Prom then on Plekhanov led an underground life. The Petersburg P ubl ic L ibrar y (now Saltykov- Shchedrin State P ublic L ibrary ) became his alma mater where he look refuge to study.
T he young Plek hanov was a passionate admire r of Chernyshevsky and Belinsky, whom he considered as his true masters and tutors, lie was amazed at the ideological wealth of Belinsky’s articles and was inspired to tight for the people by Chernyshevsky’s noble  wor ks and r e v olut io nar y herois m. It was not f or tuitous tha t
Plekhanov later devoted a number of his writings to the activity and works of those outstanding representatives of Russian revo lutionary democracy, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Herzen and Dobrolyubov.
In the early years of his activity Plekhanov was one of the theoreticians of Narodism. He twice “went among the people” as a Narodnik agitator to prepare a rising, for he believed in the possibility of transition to socialism through a peasant revolu tion. A t the same tim e , ho took a g rea t intere st, as he put it., in the “w orking- class cause”. He conducted study gr oups for w ork ing men, spoke at workers’ meetings and helped to carry out strikes, published articles and correspondence in the journal Zemlya I Volya,  wrote leaflets on the major outbreaks and strikes among the workers and called on the working people to fight. Plekhanov’s close association w ith the Russ ian w orkers proved ex tremely fr uitful, for it prepared him to under stand the histor ical role J of the working class in the revolutionary movement. The thorough s tudy he made of Marx ism and of the ex perience of the working- class movement in Western Europe enabled him in the early eighties to understand clearly this role of the working class and to go over to the standpoint of the revolutionary proletariat.
In the early eighties, fo llow ing the assass ination of A lex an der II by members of Narodnaya Volya led by Andrei Zhelyabov and S ophia Per ovs kay a, years of reaction set in w ith the reign of A lex ander II I . T he wave of re v olutionary Nar odnik terror was. crushed. In the nineties, Narodism degenerated to a liberal trend professing conc iliation w ith the tsar ist gov ernment and renun ciation of the revolutionary struggle.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   II
The first Russian Marxist organisation—the Emancipation of Labour group—was founded in Geneva in 1883 by Plekhanov, Zas ulich, Deutsch, A x elrod and Ignatov . Its aim was to spread scientific socialism by means of Russian translations of the works of Marx and Engels and criticism from the Marxist standpoint of the Narodnik teaching s pre v ail ing in Russia. T he E ma ncipation of Labour group laid the theoretical foundation of Russian Social- Democracy and g rea tly promoted the g row th of political consciousness among progressive workers in Russia.
L enin noted that the w ritings of the E ma ncipation of L abour group, “printed abroad and uncensored, were the first systemati cally to expound and draw all the practical conclusions from the ideas of Marxism’’.*
In A pr il 1895, L enin we nt abroad to es tablish contact w ith the Emancipation of Labour group in order to unite all the Russian Marx ists’ re v olutionary work. His ar riv al was of great impor tance for the Russ ian w orking- class mov eme nt. For the first time the Emancipation of Labour group established regular contact with Russia.  W hile in e mig r ation (in Franco, S w it ze r land and It a ly ) P le k ha
nov, w ho had made the diss em ination of Marx and Eng els ’ rev o lutionary ideas the work of his life, was extremely active as a publicist. He also delivered lectures and wrote papers on various subjects. A s early as 1882 ho tra nsla ted Mar x and E ng els ’ M a n i festo of the Communist. Party   into Russian; in 1892 he translated and published f or the first time in Rus s ian Eng els ’ pam phlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy    w ith his ow n comme nt arie s ; he also trans lated the section “C r it i cal Battle against French Materialism” from the sixth chapter of The Holy Family   by Marx and Engels.  A s early as the be g in ning of the e ig htie s P le k ha nov w rote his
outstanding works on the theory of re v olutionary Marx ism,  w hich pr ov ided s tudy and e duc ational ma te r ia l for Marx is ts
in Russia. M. I. K a lin in, a pupil and colleag ue of L e nin, recorded Ple k ha
nov’s role in that period in the following vivid words: "In the period of g loomy r eac tion, a t a time w hen the rank-
and- file work er w’as oblig ed to overcome gre at diff iculties and make tremendous efforts to obta in even primar y education, ille gal publications w ritten by Georgi V ale ntinov ich were already circulating among the workers.
“These works opened up a new world for the working class, they called on it to fight for a better future and taught the funda mentals of Marxism in plain, simple form accessible to all; by 
 
12  V . FOMIN A 
unshakable faith in the final victory of the ideals of the working class they bred the assurance that all obstacles and difficulties on the road to those ideals w ould bo eas ily sw ept aw ay by the organised proletariat.”*
Plekhanov occupied a prominent place and received internation al recognition among the West European and American socialists in the late eighties and early nineties of the nineteenth century as a great theoretician of Marxism and an authoritative figure in the inte rn ationa l working- class moveme nt. For a number of  y ear s he represented the R us s ia n S ocia l- De mocr atic L a bour P ar ty in the International Socialist Bureau of the Second International,  w hi ch he kept infor med of the s tate of affair s in Rus s ia. l ie also
took an active part in the work of the German, Swiss, French and Italian Socialist parties and in the work of the Congresses and the Secretariat of the Second International.
He wr ote numerous articles on Russ ian and inte rn ation al themes, cr itica l rev iews w hich in their agg reg ate embraced a broad range of subjects on politics, economics, philosophy, history, literature and art. These appeared mainly in il legal publications in Russia and in the socialist press in Germany, Bulgaria, France, Switzerland, Italy, Poland and other countries.
P lek hanov ’s cr iticism of anarchism and anarcho- sy ndicalism  was of g reat im po r tance in the ideolo g ic al s tr ug g le for the rev o lutiona ry principles of the inter national working- class move ment.  A t the be g inning of the eig htie s ,* (w hen B a k un in ’s anar chi s t
theories considerably influenced educated youth in Russia, Plekhanov came out against anarchism and its adventurist tactics. But in his criticism of anarchist views he failed to throw light on the question of the attitude of the proletarian revolution to the state or of the slate in general, for which ho was criticised by Lenin.
Not a single West European Marxist raised the banner of the fight against B er nsteinianism, but Plek hanov did. He also cr it i cised the opportunism of Millerand. Bissolati and other socialists. Ilis struggle in Russia against the opportunist Irend of Econo- mism and the bourgeois travesty of Marxism, “legal Marxism”, is w ell known. He did no litt le to unmask the socialist- rev olutio- naries, too, particularly their individual terrorist tactics.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   13
socialist systems of Ow eu, Saint- S imon, F ourier, and the petty- bourgeois socialism of Proudhon, the Narodniks, anarchists and othors. His  A ug us tin T hierry and the Mate r ia lis t Conception of   History, On Modern S ocialism, Scientific S ocialism and Re lig ion,  Foreign Review, Preface to Four Speeches by Workers, Home Review   and other writings, not to speak of his widely known works against Narodism, anarchism, Economism, B er nsteinianism and Struv- ism, show how thoro ughly he s tudied ques tions of s cientific socialism. I
In the works which he wrote against the bourgeois opponents of Marxism, Plekhanov analysed the social substance of the views held by the classics of bourgeois political economy—Adam S mith and Da v id K icar do— and defended Ma r x ’s oconomic teach ing, especially s ing ling out his re v olutionary teaching on sui'plus- v alue and c apit al.
Plekhanov played a great role in the life of the older generation of Marxists. His authority was enormous in revolutionary circles in Russia.
From the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism entered a new period in its develop ment—the period of imperialism, the period of revolutionary upheavals and battles—which called for a reconsideration of old methods of w ork, a ra dical change in the a ct iv ity of the Social- Democratic- parties , and an all- round croat iv e dev el opme nt of the Marx ist theory as applie d to the new histo r ical conditions.  A ltho ug h ho rema ined an activ e fig ure in the inte r na tiona l
 working - clas s mov eme nt and defende d and s ubs tantiate d Marx is m. Plekhanov did not clearly grasp the character of the new historical epoch; he was unable to disclose its laws and specific features, to generalise the new ex perience acquired by the working- class movement or to arm the working class with new theoretical conclusions and propositions. Lenin was the man who was des tined to fulf il this hist or ic tas k and to raise Ma rx ism to a new and higher stage.
 
14  V . F OMIN A 
ism on a number of ques tions were connected w ith his f a llin g off to Menshevism in politics.
But although Plekhanov held Menshevik views on basic ques tions of politics and the tactics of the working class, he never theless advocate d the maintenanc e of the P ar ty , and from 1909 to 1912 he opposed liquidationism and stood for the underground org anisation of the Pa rty , supporting L enin in his strugg le for the Party.
Plekhanov opposed the conference of liquidators in August 1912. Lenin stressed this and wrote that Plekhanov said outright that the conference was attended by “ non- Party   and anti- Party   ele ments”.*
From 1908 to 1912, when the Bolsheviks led by Lenin waged a resolute fight against Machism, Plekhanov was the only theo retician of the Second International to write against Bogdanov and Lunacharsky and expose Shulyatikov, the vulgariser of materialism, and others. It was at that time that he wrote his valuable work Fundamental Problems of Marxism.  Plekhanov severely criticised Croce, Mach, A ve narius, Pe tzoldt, W indel- band, Rickert, Bergson, Nietzsche and many other bourgeois philosophers and sociologists, and defended the philosophical foundations of Marxism. During this period he defended the materialistic and emancipatory traditions of progressive Russian philosophical thought against the  V ekhi  people and “re lig ious seekers”. B ut af ter 1912 he becamc a supporter of “unity ” w ith the liquidator s . L enin wrote: “ .. . it is a pity t hat he is now nullifying his great services in the struggle against the liquidators during the period of disorganisation, in the struggle against the Machists at the heig ht of Machism, by preaching w hat he himself cannot explain: Unity with  whom,  then? ... and on  what  terms?”**
During the First World War Plekhanov adopted a social- chauv inist s tandpoint. A fter the bourg eois- democratic rev olu tion in February 1917 he returned to Russia after 37 years in emigration and went to Petrograd.
Having been many years abroad, Plekhanov was out of touch  w ith the R us s ian r e v olut ionar y mov ement . On hi s retur n to
Russia he was a captiv e to the social- reformist and social- chau vinist theories of the Second International and was unable to understand the intricate concatenation and peculiarity of social development in Russia. We know how he attacked the course for a socialist revolution, steered by Lenin. In his appraisal of the future of the Russian revolution he proceeded from the Second
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y  
* * *
The spread of Marxism in the working class and among progres sive intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century was hin dered by the penetr ation of bourg eois, anti- Mar x ist theories in the  wor king - clas s and r e v olut ionar y mov ement. In the West the struggle against revolutionary Marxism was waged not only by bourg eois idea lis t and eclectic professors (e.g., B r ent ano, Som- bart, Schulze- Gav ernitz) but by the ir followers , the theore ticians of the Second International, Bernstein, Kautsky, Hochberg and others, too. In Russia, where the works of Marx and Engels were then litt le known in the original, attempts to “criticise” Marxism from the bourg eois s ta ndpo int, to debase and disc re dit it openly or covertly, came not only from the official ideologists of the landlord and monarchic state and liberal bourgeois professors, but also from the liberal Narodniks, and then from the legal “Marxists” and the Economists.
Great, in the circumstances, was the importance of Plekhanov’s Marxist writings of the eighties and nineties, which were pub lished in Russia as well as abroad and in which the ideas of Marx ism were defended and their lofty scientific and revolutionary content substantiated and brought to light.
In his boundless faith in the victory of Marxist ideas, Plekhanov courageously and fearlessly opposed all kinds of “critics” and distorters of Marxism. He was the first in Russia to give a Marxist analysis of the erroneous views of the Narodniks, to oppose the Marxist outlook to the utopias of Narodism and to show the historic role of the working class of Russia, thereby dealing a severe blow to Narodism.
 
16  V . F OMIN A 
social theories, it gives a bril l iant characterisation of the scienti fic socialism of Marx and Engels, brings out the profound meaning of the well- known Marx ist propositioni “Eve ry class struggle is a political struggle”, and speaks of the necessity of combining the revolutionary struggle in Russia with correctly understood scienti fic socialism.
This pamphlet of Plekhanov’s was translated into Polish and Bulgarian in the nineties of the last century.
Besides Socialism and the Political Straggle,  his subsequent  w or ks, Our Differences  (1885) and The Development of the Monist   V iew of His tory   (1895), also cleared the way for the victory of Marxism in Russia and were the most important theoretical  wor ks of Rus s ia n Marx is ts in tha t period.
In these writings Plekhanov provided the first creative applica tion of Marxism to the analysis of economic conditions in Russia after the Reform and showed the immediate needs of the Russian revolutionary movement and the political tasks of the Russian  w or k ing class. He la id bar e the r e actio nar y essence of the so- called socialist views of the Nar odniks , w hich had nothing in common w ith scientific socialism.
In Our Differences  Ple khanov continued the cr iticis m of the theoretical doctrine of the Narodniks as a whole and particularly of their economic “theory” and their erroneous views on the peasant ques tion in Russ ia. L enin, in his  W ha t the ‘''’Frie nds of   the People”  A re and How They F ig ht the Social- Democrats,  called Plekhanov’s Our Differences  the “first Social- Democratic  w ork” of a Rus s ian Mar x is t. Eng els g av e a hig h appr ais al of it.
The Development of the Monist View of History   (1895), one of Plekhanov’s best Marxist works, was written in London, where ; he went after being deported from France in 1894. Lenin wrote f that it “had helped to educate a whole generation of Russian  j Marxists”. ]
There are other books by Plekhanov akin to The Development  of the Monist View of History   by their theme. They are: Essays on  the History of Materialism,  which was written in 1894 and pub lished in Stuttgart in 1896 in German and had enormous success abroad, and his work For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegel's   Death  (1891), also first published in G er man and described as excellent by Engels, and other philosophical works of later  years.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   17
od into a number of foreign languages and soon became widely known, Engels wrote on January 30, 1895: “George's book has been published a l a most oppor tune tim e .” On Fe bruary 8, 1895, he wrote to Plekhanov: “In any case, it is a great success that you  were able to get it publis he d inside the country.”
In this book Plekhanov dwelt mainly on questions of the mate rialist conception of history. In a polemic with the liberal Narod niks Mikhailovsky, Kareyev and others, he set himself the task of exposing the idealism of subjective sociology.
These works of Plekhanov and others of that period clearly reflect, his great Marxist erudition and his profound knowledge of the history of philosophic and social thought. They reveal the historic preparation of Marxism on the basis of past progressive social thought, its sources and component parts, and shed light on major problems of dialectical and historical materialism, political economy and scientific socialism. By his light against var ious forms of idealism, particularly positivism and K a ntia n ism. and also “economic” ma te ria lis m, Plek hanov contributed much that was new and original to the argumentation of Marxist ideas, and gave concrete expression and development to proposi tions of Marxism.
* * *
In fighting against idealism, metaphysics and the reactionary utopias of Narodnik “socialism”, Plekhanov defended materialism in philosophy and history and disclosed the objective nature of the laws governing social development and the dialectics of the historical process.
lie considered it. his main tas k first and fore most to e x plain the proposition that Marx ism was a pplicable to the historical conditions in Russia.
The main question in the Narodnik economic theory  was tha t of the no n- capitalis t de v elopment of Rus s ia , w hether Russia “must" or “must not" go through the “school” of capi talism.
The subjective Narodniks maintained that Russia was follow ing a road of her own and that as capitalis m was “ar tific ially transplanted” into Russia, it was accidental and a decline, a retrogression, for the “exceptional” Russian economic system. It was therefore necessary to “hold back”, to “stop” the develop-
2 - 0 1 3 2 9
 
18 V . F OMINA  
ment of capitalism, to “put an end to the breaking up” by capi talism of the traditional foundations of Russian l i fe. This Narod nik position was reactionary and aimed in essence at preserving survivals of feudal relations.  A dv ocating the impos s ibility of c a pita lis t de v e lopm e nt in
Russia, the Narodniks attempted to distort the ideas of Marx and his follow ers in that country. Mik hailov s k y , for ex ample, stated tha t Marx had a pplied his his tor ical scheme uncr itically to Russ ia and that the Russ ian Marx ists were just as uncr itically copy ing those “ready- made schemes" of Marx and ig nor ing f acts pointing to Russia’s “exceptional road”, distinct from capitalism. Mikhai lovsky, Vorontsov and others maintained that Marxism as a theory was applicable in a certain degree to the West European countries only, but completely inapplicable to Russia.
In opposition to the Nar odnik appraisal of Mar x ism, Plekha- nov conv incing ly proved tha t Marx ism was f ully applicable to the economic and political conditions in Russia.
In order to bring out all the fallacy of the Narodnik economic theory, Plekhanov compared the conditions of capitalism’s rise and its histor ic role in the Wes t w ith the co nditions of its deve l opment in Russia, ascertained the general preconditions for Ihe development of capitalism in various countries and hence drew the conclusion that it was a mistake to oppose Russia to the  W es t. He show ed the unte na bil ity of the N ar odnik s ’ m y th about the “special” character of Russian economic development. Plekha nov gave a profound Marxist analysis of Ihe economic relation ships in Russia since the Reform and of the capitalist road of development of town and country in his book Our Differences.  This work is full of historical facts and statistics describing the various fields in the economic life of Russia. It shows very well the penetration of foreign ca pital into Rus s ia, the ever - gr owirg dependence of small handicraft industry on commercial capital, the process of proletarianisation of the craftsmen and the trans formation of small handicraft production into a domestic system of large-scale production. “Capitalism is going its way,” Plekha nov w rote, “it is ous ting independent producers from the ir shaky positions and creating an army of workers in Russia by the same tested me thod as it has alr ea dy practise d ‘in the  W e s t’.” *
Plekhanov was just as convincing when he revealed the penetra tion of ca pitalis m in ag riculture too, the disinteg ra tion of the “foundations of the peasant m/r”—the village commune (ob-  shchina).
*  See this volume, p. 231.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   19
The Narodniks, who were fighting capitalism from the petty- bourgeois standpoint, saw the village commune as an indestruc tible stronghold, a universal remedy for all the evils of capitalism and the basis for the socialist tr ans for mation of Rus s ia, allo w ing capitalism to be by passed. Idea lis ing Ihe pre- capitalist forms of life, they were completely mistaken in their appraisal of the actual situation and they argued, Plekhanov said, like metaphy sicians, who do not understand the dialectic contradictions of life. They kept talking about a supposed “popular” production, free from inner contradictions, and regarded Ihe people as a kind of rigid mass. They considered historical phenomena metaphysi cally, apart from 1heir actual development and change.
The Narodniks refused to notice the weakening and disintegra tion of Ihe village communes. In Our Differences P lek hanov showed by facts that these communes display ed indubitable v ita lit y as long as they remained within the conditions of natural economy. They began to disintegrate, not under the influence of circum stances outside and independent of them , but by v ir tue of inner causes, of the fact that “the dev elopment of money economy and commodity production litlle by little undermines communal land tenure”.*
Plekhanov was profoundly convinced that Russia was develop ing along the road of capitalism not, as the subjectivists thought, because of the ex istence of a ny ex ter nal force or my ste rious law dr iv ing her on to that r oad, but because there was no ac tual internal force that could divert her from that road. “Capitalism  is favoured  by the whole dynamics of our social life,” he wrote.
T he princ ipal conclusion to be drawn f rom the analy sis of Russ ian re ality was tha t large- scale priva te ca pitalis t production in Russia was expanding and developing unceasingly while the Narodnik illusion of a supposed “popular production” and the other utopian outlooks were being shattered by life itself.
In his works Plekhanov proved that “by the inherent character of its organisalion the rural commune tends first and foremost to give place to bourgeois, not communist, forms of social life....” T he com mune’s “role w ill he not active, but passive; it is not in a position to advance  Russia on the road to communism...."**
Plekhanov’s greatest historic merit was that besides investi gating the paths of Russia’s economic development he provided a Marxist solution to the question of the class forces and the character of the class struggle in Russia. It was typical of the Narodniks to idealise the “people”; they considered the peasantry as the main revolutionary force and ignored the role of the prole
* Ibid.,  p. 241. * * Ibid.,  p. 330.
2*
20 V . FO MINA 
tariat. Plekhanov was the first in Russia lo oppose to their utopia the doctrine of the historic role of the Russian working class in the emancipation struggle.
The Narodniks’ position was based on the erroneous idea that industry was hardly developing in Russia and that consequently the inconsiderable worker stratum was not increasing.
Plekhanov showed by convincing arguments why the revolu tionaries should rely precisely on the proletariat, the growing force in society , connected w ith the most progr essive for m of pro duction, big factory production, and not on the peasantry, who, although they were more numerous, must inevitably divide, as com modity production dev eloped, “into two hostile camps— the exploit ing minority and the toi l ing majority”.*
Plekhanov was the first in Russia to prove that the working class was to play the chief role in the impending Russian revolu tion. “The initiative in the communist movement can be assumed on ly by the w or king class in our indus tr ial centres, the class  whose e mancipa tion can be achie v ed only by it s ow n conscious efforts.”**
This conviction that Plekhanov had of the historic future of the working class of Russia was clearly illustrated in his speech a t the 1889 Inte r nat ional W or k ing Me n’s S ocialist Congress 111  Paris. He then proclaimed: “The revolutionary movement in Russia can triumph only as the revolutionary movement of the  wor ker s. T her e is not and cannot be any other w ay out for us !” * * *
To the vulgar economists, who attached to the political organi sation of society an utterly negligible significance, he opposed the Marxist proposition that wherever society is split into classes the antagonism between the interests of those classes necessarily leads them to struggle for political domination. It is, therefore, a mistake to recommend that the workers should fight only in the economic field and to ignore the political tasks of the working class. T hat, P lek hanov a rg ued, is nothing but the line of re nounc ing revolutionary class struggle, revolution and socialism. The class, political struggle against tsarism and the bourgeoisie is the only way to fulfil the task of the historical emancipation of the working class. This struggle culminates in revolution, the most powerful manifestation of the class struggle and the means of achieving the social and economic transformation of society.
Plekhanov contested the Narodnik utopian conception that Russia was on the very eve of a socialist revolution. The Narod niks proceeded fr om the v iew tha t there was no bourg eoisie in
*  Ib id . ,  p. 273. * *  Ib id .,  p. 330.
* * *  Ibid .,  p. 399.
 
IN T R O DU C T O R Y E S S A Y 21
Russia and that, therefore, the bourgeois revolution would pass her by, but that the Russian peasantry showed a propensity lo communism and that, therefore, conditions were favourable for a popular socialist revolution. In Plekhanov’s opinion, socialism  was imposs ible w it hout the economic pr econdit ions . T he impe nd ing re v olution in Rus s ia could only be a bourg eois one. In his early works Plekhanov gave serious attention to the peasant question and thought it indispensable for the workers, who were eventually to win political freedom, to carry on revolutionary  work and spread the ide as of scie ntif ic s ocia lis m amo ng the peas antry.
But as he maintained that the peasantry as a class was break ing up, Ple k hanov fa iled to take into account the fact that one of the prima ry tasks of the bourg eois- democratic re v olution in Russia was to fight for the abolition of landed proprietorship and that the peasantry was destined to play an enormous progressive role in that fight.
In his very first works Plekhanov speaks a number of times of the passivity, the political apathy and conservatism of the peasantry. This error showed that he underestimated the revolu tionary potential of the peasantry and as a result he subsequently fell into the erroneous Menshevik interpretation of the peasant ques tion and of the Soc ial- Democr ats ’ a tt itude to the peasa nts.  A t the be g in nin g of the eig htie s , w hen the r e v olut io nar y pro
letarian movement in Russia was still in its embryonic stage, Plekhanov was a bri l l iant champion of Marxism. For its t ime the programme of revolutionary activity which he set forth in Our Differences  was a considerable step forward in the fight for the s preading of Mar x ism in Russ ia. T he members of Bla g oy ev ’s T ochissk y ’s and B r usne v ’s Social- Democra tic circles w ho were then doing pra ctical work in Russ ia and mainta ined contact w ith the Emancipation of Labour group highly appraised Plekhanov’s,  works and drew atte ntio n to the ir s ig nif icance in s pr eading revo lutionary theory during the period of disorder and vacillation. They requested that the pamphlets { Our Differences  and Socialism  and the Political Struggle)  be sent in “as large quantities and as soon as possible”.
 
22  V . F OMIN A 
means and objects of production to social ownership, which would be possible only as a result of a communist revolution. In his article “A Draft Programme of Our Parly”, Lenin expressed the opinion that there were elements in Plekhanov’s draft which  were abs olute ly indis pe ns able for the prog ramme of a Social-
Democratic labour party.* Plekhanov’s Socialism and the Political Struggle  and Our  
Differences   fulfilled a great historic task. It was under their in fluence that the first Russian Marxists turned their eyes and their hopes towards the working class, tried to develop its class self- consciousness, to create its rev olutionar y or g anis atio n—the party—and aimed their work at helping the working class to rise to the fight against the bourgeois and landlord regime. Plekhanov pointed out “ the task of the Rus s ian r ev olutionar ies — the foundation of a re v olutionary working- class party ”.* * Rut not until the middle of the nineties did the formation of a revo lutiona r y Marx ist party become possible.
* * *
T he significance of jPle k lianov ’s ac tiv ity as an outst anding Ma rx ist philosopher in the field of theory is not lim ite d to his masterly application of a number of basic propositions of Marxist theory to the his tor ica l condit ions of Rus s ia or to his defence and .substantiation of Marxism in the fight against its enemies.
In his philosophical works Plekhanov endeavoured to defend, substantiate and popularise all Marx and Engels’ new contribu tions to philosophy. The greatness of dialectical and historical materialism, Plekhanov stressed, consists in its having overcome the l imitations of metaphysical material ism and idealism and explained all aspects of human life.
Plekhanov proclaimed that “the appearance of Marx’s material ist philosophy was a g enuine re v olution, the greatest re v olution known in the history of human thought”.*** He considered Marx’s
* Seo V. I. Lenin, Collected Works,  V ol. 4, p. 232. * * Ibid.,  p. 264.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   23
materialist philosophy as the inevitable anti natural result of the development of the whole history of social thought, as a higher stage in the dev elopment of philos ophy ; he saw Ma rx ’s rev olu tionary outlook as the reflection of the class interests of the proletariat.
Plekhanov mainly directed his attention to the propaganda of historical materialism and disclosed its real content; this was a vital necessity of the time, for the bourgeois opponents of Marx ism both in the West and in Russia tried to debase historical materialism to the level of vulgar “economic” materialism and replace it by a ll sorts of non- sciontiiic theories —rac ism, M a lth u s ianism, the theory of “factors” , the g eog raphical theory and others, or else they passed over in complete silence the materi alist conception of history formulated by Marx.
In his Development of the Monist View of History , Plekhanov poleinised against Mikhailovsky, “who had not noticed” Marx's historical theory and, moreover, tr ied to hush up Mar x ’s mas ter ly ideas for the benefit of subjectivism. Plekhanov showed that many experts 011  history, economics, the history of political relations and the history of culture knew nothing of Ma rx ’s his tor ical materialism and yet the results that they had achieved obviously testified in fav our of Ma rx ’s theory . Ple k hanov was convinced that there would be many discoveries confirming that theory. “As to Mr. Mikhai lovsky, 011  the other hand, we are convinced of the contrary : not a single discover y w ill jus tify the ‘s ubjectiv e’ point of view, either in five years or in five thousand.”*
Plekhanov repeatedly wrote that the materialist conception of history for mulated by Marx was one of the gre atest achieve ments of theore tical thoug ht in the ninet ee nth century and an epoch- making service rendered by Marx. Nobody before Marx had been able to give a correct, strictly scientific explanation of the history <if social life. Marx was the first to extend materialism to the development of society and he created the science of society.  A t the same tim e P le k ha nov stres sed tha t the mate r ia lis t
conception of history, while being one of the paramount achieve ments of Ma rx ism , is only a part of the mater ialist outlook of Marx and Engels. It is a mistake to see the “most important element of Marxism” in historical materialism alone. The materialist expla nation of history presupposes the materialist conception of nature.
Plekhanov clearly and convincingly demonstrated the organic unity of Marx's philosophical, sociological and economic theories, the close interc onnection of the basic propos itions of Mar x ism , and described Marxism as the integral, coherent revolutionary  w orld out look of the pr ole tar iat.
* See thi s v olume, p. 655.
 
24 V . F OMINA  
The striving to single out the most important in the phenomena of social life, their material basis, is in striking evidence all through Plekhanov’s exposition of Marx's materialist views of huma n society and its histo ry . It is fr om I his sta ndpoint that he analyses the philosophical views of materialists before Marx, the utopian s ocialists , the ninetee nth- century French sociologists and historians, the views of Comte, Spencer, Hegel, the Bauer brothers, Fichte, Weisongriin and others, and underlines that Mar x ’s masterly discover y — the mater ialist conception of histor y — corrects the radical error of the philosophers and sociologists before him, who proceeded from idealist premises in their analysis of society.
Plekhanov shows that Marx’s materialist scientific explanation of the social- his torical process deriv es f rom one sing le premise: the objective basis of social life, the economic structure of society.
Plekhanov thoroughly substantiates the Marxist conception of Ihe laws governing society. lie is inlorestod in the way the question of the laws of social development is posed in the teachings of Mar x ’s hist or ica l predecessors, the eig hteenth- century French mater ialists and the nineteenth- century utopian socialists. l ie stresses that, despite certain isolated materialist guesses, they remained idealists in their conception of history and were unable to grasp social development’s objective necessity and conformity to law and hence to roveal the roots of the ideas mo tiv at ing human activity. Plekhanov showed that it was Marxism that, first made a scientific inv es tig ation of the histor ical process. Marxism revealed the objective nature of the laws of history,  w hich w or k w ith the force of natur a l law s and w ith unr e le nting necess ity; he showed tha t changes in s ocial r ela tions , often unforeseen by man but necessarily resulting from his activity, tak e place in accordance w ith definite laws of social life.
People’s activity, their ideas and views do not depend on chance; they are subordinate to the laws of historical development, and in order to discover those laws, Plekhanov wrote, the facts of hum a ni ty ’s past life must bo studied w ith the help of Marx 's dialectical and materialist method. Only he who understands the pasl, who sees the succession and connection between histor ical ev ents, their co ndit iona lity and not a chaos of for tuities , can foresee the future.
Plekhanov assessed very highly the role of dialectics in Ihe life of society. The dialectical method, applied to social pheno mena. ho pointed out, has worked a complete revolution. “We can say without exaggeration that we are indebted to it for Ihe understanding of human history as a law- governed process.” *
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   25
This moans that the qualities of the social environment depend  jus t as l i t t le ori the w ill and consciousness of man as thos e of the geographical environment, Plekhanov said. He emphasised Marx’s thought that it is incorrect to look for the laws of society in nature.
Plekhanov, it should be noted, did not leave uncriticised (he even now w idespread pseudo- scientific bourg eois “ theories ” w hich apply biological laws to society and thereby reduce social progress lo biolog ical e v olution. He derided the positivis ts, the social- Darwinists, all those who dreamed of reforming social science by means of natural science, by the study of physiological laws. He called (hem U t o p i a n s . People who consider society from this standpoint, he wrote, find themselves in a blind alley, for physiol ogy. biolog y , me dicine a nd zoology are unable to ex plain the- specific sphere of social development.
Plekhanov showed and emphasised the distinction between Marxism and Darwinism. Darwin succeeded in solving the question of the origin of vegetable and animal species, whereas Marx solved the question of how the various forms of social organisation arise. If Darwin was inclined to apply his biological theory to the explanation of social phenomena, Plekhanov wrote, that was a mistake. Therefore, when Plekhanov himself wrote in his Development of the Monist View of History   that Marxism is Dar  w inis m applied to soc ia l sciences, he was obv ious ly us ing an unfortunate expression which by no means reflected his actual opinion of the relation between Marxism and Darwinism.
The objective laws of material production, the laws of the class strugg le —these are the key to the under s tanding of the inner logic of the social process, and of the whole wealth and variety of social re lat ions . It is here I ha I the causes of social phenomena must bes ought. Plek hanov e x plains that o ther phenomena of social life—ideology, for instance—are also governed by their specific laws. For the materialist, the history of human thought is a law- governed and necessary process. The train of human thought is also subject to its own par ticular laws. Nobody w ill identif y , say, the laws of logic and those of commodity circulation. I?ut Marxists do not consider, as the idealists did, that we can seek the ultimate cause, the basic motive force behind the intellectual development of mankind, in the laws of thought. The laws of thought cannot answer the question: what determines the afflux and character of new impressions? These questions can be elucidated only by anal  ysing soc ia l li fe and its reflect ion in man's consciousnes s.
 
26  V . F OMIN A 
sides of social lift* are interdependent. Historical necessity does not preclude freedom of action in man. In studying the objective conditions of the material existence of mankind, Marxists thereby study the relations between people, and also their thoughts, ideals and strivings. The subjective voluntarists' assertion thal man's w ill and a ct iv ity are entire ly free and independent of social conditions is untenable. In practice the w ill is only “a pparently ” free; the idea of complete freedom of w ill is an illus ion . Freedom of w ill does not ex ist of its elf — it is a result of ihe knowledge of historical necessity, knowledge of Ihe laws of progress. The free dom of the individual, Plekhanov holds, consists not only in knowing the laws of nature and history and being able to submit to Ihose laws, but also in being ablo to combine them in the most advantageous manner.
11 is just as erroneous, Ple k hanov s aid, to seek the motiv e force of historical development outside the practical activity of human beings. Bourgeois historians and sociologists attempted to ascribe to Marxism an absolute metaphysical determinism, maintaining that, according to Marx, historical necessity works of itself, without any human participation, for inasmuch as the  w or k ing of objectiv e necessity is recog nis ed, no room is lef t, they say, for free human activity.
Plekhanov completely exposed that falsification of Marxist views and refuted the standpoint according to which historical necessity works auto ma tica lly ; he proved that it is human ac tiv ity which makes history.
lie s k ilf ully refuted the assertions that people are subject In an iron law of necessity, that a ll their actions are predeter mined, and so on. “No, ... once we have discovered  that iron law, it depends on us to overthrow its yoke, it depends on us to make necessity   Ihe obedient slave of reason,"*  Plekhanov writes, quoting Marx.
Not only does dialectical materialism leach llial it is absurd to revolt against economic necessity, it shows how that necessity must be made use of practically. It thus rejects the fatalist point of view and proclaims the great and insuperable force of human activity, of human reason, which, once it has come  to know the inner laws of necessity, strives to transform reality and make it more rational. “People made and had to make their history unconsciously   as long as the motive forces of historical develop ment worked behind their backs, independently of their con sciousness. Once thoso forces have been discovered, once Ihe laws by w hich they w ork hav e been s tudied, people w ill be able to tak e them in their own hands and s ubm il the m to Iheir own rea-
* See this v olume , p. 660.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y K S S A Y   27
son. The service rendered by Marx consists in having discovered those forces and made a rigorous scientific study of their work ing.”*
Plekhanov made it clear that historical materialism's task consists in ex plaining the sum- total of social life. However , in order to explain lhe whole historical process consistently, one must remain true to the Marxist principle of first finding out the very foundation of social life. According to lhe theory of Marx and Engels, that basis is lhe development of the productivo forces, the production of mat e ria l w ealth. B ut in order to produce, people must establish between themselves certain mutual rela tions which Marx called rela tions of production. T he Sum- total of these relations constitutes the economic structure of society, out of which all other social relations between people develop. From the standpoint of Marxism, the historical progress is deter mined, in the final analy sis , nol by m an ’s w ill, but by the dev el opment of the material productive forces. Their development leads to changes in the economic re lations. T hat is w hy the st udy of history must begin with the study of the slate of the productive forces in the country concerned, its economy, out of which social psychology and the various ideologies develop.
In the light against idealism Plekhanov refuted the assertions made by Mikhailovsky and Kareyev that “the efforts of reason” play the decisive role in the development of the productive forces, the means of production, in the process of creating and applying the instruments of labour. lie showed that the very a bil it y to produce tools is deve loped in the process of act ion on nature, in the process of w inning the means of subsist ence. B y acting on nature, man changes his own nature. “He develops all his capacities , a mong them also the ca pacity of ‘too l- mak ing’. But at any given time the measure of that capacity is determined  by the measure of the development of productive forces already   achieved."**
T he indis s olubility , the unity of the inter re lations between the productive forces and the relations of production which Marx established, is called by Plekhanov the basic cause of social progress. He cloar ly sees the dialec tics of their dev elop ment in the fact that relations of production are the consequence, and the productive forces the cause. But the consequence in turn becomes a cause, the relations of production become a new source, a form of development of the productive forces.
Plekhanov also elucidates, although he not infrequently over estimates, the influence of nature—a natural, and, as he puts it, most impo r tan t pre condition of human his tor y —on the
* Ibid.,  p. 422. ** Ibid.,  p. 587,
 
28  V . F OMIN A 
deve lopment of society. T hus, in his early w orks, par ticular ly in The Development of the Monist View of History,  he noted that so cia l re lations hav e an infinite ly g reater influence on the process of history than natural conditions. In Essays on the History of Mate rial ism— another of his earlier w ork s—he wrote that the m utua l influence of the productive forces and the relations of production is the cause of social development, which has its own logic and its own laws, independent of the natural environment, and that this inner log ic “may even enter into contradiction w ith the demands of the environment”. He speaks in the same spirit of the indirect influence of climate, of the fact that the historical destiny of peoples does not depend exclusively on the geographical envi ronment, for “geog raphy is far from e x plaining ev er y thing in ; history”. The relative stability of the geographical environment compared w ith the v ar iab ility of the histo rical destinies of peoples, Plekhanov writes, confirms this conclusion. This means, he goes^ on, tha t m a n’s dependence on his ge og raphical e nv ir onm ent is 1' a variable magnitude which changes with every new step in I histo r ical deve lopment. He was also correct in ass erting that the ' geographical environment promotes or hinders the development of the productiv e forces. A nd yet even in these early works Plekha- J nov slips into formulations which show that he exaggerates the i role of the natural, geographical environment—he explains the co ndition of the productiv e forces by the features of the geographi- i  cal env ir onme nt. T his was a concession to the so- called geog raphi- I cal trend in sociology . J
In his Development of the Monist View of History , he treats popu- " lat ion as an integ ra l element in social progress, whose g row th, howev er, is not the basic cause of tha t progress. He quotes M a r x ’s proposition that abstract laws of reproduction exist only for animals and plants, whereas the increase (or decrease) of population in human society is determined by its economic structure.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   29
of conscious and org anise d a c tiv ity : I hoy can only s ubordina te themselves to and Mindly follow the “heroes”.
The Narodnik ideologists held that historical progress is accom plished exclusively by critically thinking individuals, as a par ticular and higher variety of the human race. The critically thinking individual was a “hero", the one who carries along the “crow d”, as contras ted to the “hero” . The crow d, as the Nar odnik s see it, is “a mass alien to every creative element, something in the nature of a vas t q ua ntit y of ciphers, w hich acquire some positive significance only in the event of a k ind, ‘cr itica lly thi nk ing ’ entity condescendingly taking its place at their head”.* Elsewhere, IMekhanov noted that the Nar odnik s g iv e the name .crowd to millions of producers out of whom “ the hero w ill mould w hatever he considers necessary”.** This was the extremely harmful cult of the individual, of the “hero", who stands above the masses.
In one of the variants of Essays on the History of Materialism,  Plekhanov gave a remarkable explanation of the harm done by the cull of historical personalities. The actions of these people are not infrequently considered as the cause of great historical move ments. “ It is in this w ay that the roles of ‘Moses’, A br aha m', ‘Lycnrgus’ and others assume the incredible proportions which amaze us in the philosophy of history of Holbach and all the last century ‘enlighteners'. The history' of the peoples is turned into a series of ‘Lives of Illustrious Men’.” That is why “religion, morals, customs, and the entire character of tho people are repre sented as having been formed by one man acting according to a pre- considered plan. T hus there rema ins no trace ,” P lek hanov says, “of any idea of social science, of the laws on which man depends in histor ical dev elopment” . T his point of v iew , he noted, has nothing in common w ith science.
Since the Nar odnik ideologis ts as a r ule did not trust the masses and recognised only the “single combat” of isolated indiv idua ls  w ith the autocracy , the y w ent ov er, as P le k ha no v pointed out ,
to lhe pernicious tactics of individual terror, which retarded the development of tho revolutionary initiative and activity of the  w orking class and the peasantry . T he unsuccessful a ttempt s to  wage the strug g le ag ainst ts ar is m by the ef forts of indiv idua l heroes alone, divorcement from the popular masses, led the Narodniks to still more serious errors and made them evolve towards liberalism. Clearly realising the harmfnlness of the cult of the individual, of “heroes”, for the development of a mass revo lutionary movement. Plekhanov was not content with criticising the political and theoretical bankruptcy of the Narodnik ideolo
* See this volume, p. 577. * • Ibid.,  p. 733.
 
30  V . F OMIN A 
g ists ’ view s on this ques tion and der iding the ir immense conceit; he at the same time set examples of profound understanding of the Marxist teaching on the laws of social development and the role of the masses and of individuals in history.
Mikhailovsky, the “Achilles of the subjective school”, Plekhanov  w rote , im ag ines t ha t Marx is ts “m us t only ta lk abo ut ‘the self deve lopment of the forms of production and ex chang e’ “If y ou imagine,” Plekhanov said to the Narodniks, “that, in the opinion of Marx, the forms of production can develop ‘of themselves’,  y ou are cr ue lly mis tak e n. W ha t are the social relations of produc tion? They are relations between men. How can they develop, then, without men?”* It is the working masses, Plekhanov main tains, who advance the development of production.  W hile , in the v ie w of the s ubjectiv is ts , P le k ha nov w rote , the
hero operates and the producer co- operates, the Ma rx ist v iew is tha t the producers do not co- operate, but operate. T he de v elop ment of society is achieved only by the operations of the produc ers themselves.
He proved by examples from social life that history is made by the masses, the millions of producers, not by “heroes” according to their caprice or fantasy. “It is not the utopian plans of various reformers, but the laws of production and exchange, which deter mine the now cont inually g row ing working- class moveme nt.”* *
The subjectivists attribute to outstanding individuals deeds  w hich only the masses can accomplis h; no t indiv idua ls , but the
popular masses, the classes, play the decisive role in historical development, in Russia’s social reorganisation. The subjectivists and the voluntarists, Plekhanov wrote, cannot rise from the acts of individuals to the acts of the masses, to the acts of whole social classes. The Narodniks, like the bourgeois sociologists, are inclined to see in the political activity of great people the chief and almost only mainspring of historical development. They give too much attention to the genealogy of kings and leave no room for the independent activity of the popular masses.
The attention of historians, Plekhanov wrote, must be centred on the lif e of t he popula r masses. T he people mus t be the hero of history, he emphasised. The real history of a country is the history of the people, the history of the citizens. “...No great step can be made in the his tor ical progress of m an k ind, not only w ithout the par ticipa tion of people, but even w itho ut the pa rt icipat ion of the great majority of the people, i.e., of the masses."***
P lek hanov noted that : “So long as there ex ist ‘heroes’ who imagine that it is sufficient for them to enlighten their own heads
*  Ib id . ,  p. 652. * *  Ib id . ,  p. 424.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   31
to bo able to lead the crowd wherever they please, and to mould it, like clay, into anything that comes into Iheir heads, the king dom of reason remains a pretty phrase or a noble dream. It begins to approa ch us w ith sev en- league strides only w hen the ‘crow d' itself becomes the hero of historical action, and when in it, in that colourles s ‘crow d’, there deve lops the appro pria te conscious ness of self.”*
The greatness of Marx’s philosophy, Plekhanov wrote, consists in that, unlike many other philosophical trends, which have doomed man to inactivity and passive acceptance of reality, it appeals to his power of creation. Marx called to activity the proletariat, the class which has a great historical role to play in modern society. It is to it, the proletariat, the revolutionary class in the full sense of the w’ord, that the Marxists appeal. The prole tariat. uses Ma r x ’s philos ophica l theory as a re liable g uide in its struggle fo r e ma ncipat ion. T his theory infuses into the proletar iat an energy hither to unequalle d. T he w'hole practical philo sophy of Marxism amounls to action. Plekhanov called dialectical materialism the philosophy of action.
Hut in attributing decisive significance in historical development to the action of the masses, Marxism is nevertheless far from denying the role of the individual in history, from reducing it to nil.  A n out s tanding in div idua l, iri indis s oluble contact w ith the
masses and expressing their interests and aspirations, may in definite historical circumstances play a great role in society by arousing heroic self- consciousness in the masses; by his progres sive activity ho accelerates the advance of society. Hence “...the development of knowledge, the development of human conscious ness, is the greatest and most noble task of the thinking personal ity. L icht, mohr L ic ht ! ’—thal is w hat is most of all needed.... One should not leave the torch in the narrow study of the ‘intel lectual’. ... Develop human consciousness.... Develop the self- consciousness of the producers ” .* *
The significance of an outstanding individual’s social activity, Plekhanov stressed, depends on how correctly that individual understands the conditions of development of society, and is determined by his nearness to the people, to tho progressive class. Hut nn great man can impose on society relations which no longer conform to the condition of the productive forces.
T hus Plek hanov b r illia nt ly criticised the idealist cult of the individual in the middle of the nineties and explained the Marxist teaching on the role of the people and of the individual in history.
* See this v olume, pp. 661-62. ** fbld.
 
32  V . F OMIN A 
Plekhanov's Marxist works still help in tilt* fight to eliminate the remaining survivals of the cull of the individual.
Substantiating the paramount role of Ihi* people in history, Plekhanov sought to prove tlial only the revolutionary movement of the people, of the working class, could overthrow a political monster such as Russian autocracy and lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the triumph of socialism. This was of great importance to the Russian emancipation movement, in which Blanquist and anarchist ideas were being spread in Ihe eighties. Plekhanov defended the idea of the dictatorship of the proletar iat. in Socialism and the Political Struggle , Our Differences  and other works. He pointed out that the dictatorship of the prole tariat is ihe first act, the sign of the social revolution. The task of Ihe dictatorship of Ihe proletariat is not only to destroy the political domination of the bourgeoisie, it is also lo organise social and political life. “Always and everywhere,” he noted, “political power has been the lev er by w hich a class, hav ing achieved do m ina tio n, has carr ied out the social uphea v al necessary for its welfare.. . .”*  W he n he la ter ado pted Me ns he v ik v iew s, P le k ha nov , w hile
not openly renouncing the Marxist principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, let himself be influenced by reformist constitu tional illusions and evaded Ihe answer to concrete practical ques tions in the struggle for the dicta tor s hip of the prole tariat.  A mong the hig hly impor ta nt ques tions of his tor ical mate r ia l
ism w hich Plek hanov worked out, a prominent place is given lo the question of the rise and development of ideology, the origin of forms of social consciousness and their interaction, the question of the re lation between the polit ica l anti ideolog ical supers truc tures and the economic basis, and so on.
Just as there is nothing rigid, eternal and invariable in nature, so, in the history of social life, changes in the mode of production are accompanied by changes in ideas, theories, political institu tions and the lik e — i.e., in the entire superstructure. A ll this is the historical product of the practical activity of people.
In his works Plekhanov devoted his main attention to defining how the development of the forms of social consciousness depends on material production. He criticised in great detail the idealist theor y of “s elf- deve lopment” of ideologies , and the notion that, the general condition of intellects and morals creates not only the various forms of art, literature and philosophy but also the industry of a given period, the social environment. Plekhanov convincingly explains that only the materialist conception of 
* See this v olume , p. 73.
 
INT K ODU C T O ItY ES S A Y 33
history ran lind the real cause of a given condition of both intel lects and morals in the production of material values.
In the interaction of society and nature people produce mate rial values and create the economic basis on which arise the politi cal system, psychology and ideology. The very direction of intel lectual work in society is determined in the final analysis by people’s relations in production. This materialist thesis does not reject cases of other countries’ ideological and political influence on the policy and ideology of the country in question. Plekhanov supplements the study of the interrelations between economy and ideology w ith in a country , the e lucida tio n of the dependence of political and ideological development on the economic structure of society, w ith the s tudy of foreign influences on the cultura l development of one people or another. “The French philosophers  were f ille d w ith a dm ir ation for the philos ophy of L ocke; but the y  went muc h fur the r tha n the ir teacher. T his was because the class  w hich they represented ha d gone in France, f ig ht ing ag ainst lhe
old regime, much further than the class of English society whose aspirations were expressed in the philosophical works of Locke.”* T his means that foreign influences cannot do aw ay w ith the main thing, the fact that the features and peculiarities of the social ideas in a giv en country are ex plained in the final analy s is by the f undam e nta l inner cause of its dev elopment —the degree of development of its own economic relations.
No less convincing is Plekhanov’s argument in favour of the .Marxist proposition on the reverse influence of the forms of super structure on the economy. The dependence of politics 011  econom ics does not preclude their inte r ac tion, the influence of pol itic al institutions on economic life. The political system either promotes the development of the productive forces or hinders it. The reason  w hy a g iv en polit ica l system is cr eated is to promote the fur the r development of the productive forces. If the political system becomes an obstacle to their development it must be abolished.
In societies based on e x plo ita tio n, the r ulin g and the suhject classes are opposed to one another in the production process. T he re lations between classes, Ple k hanov e x plains , are first and foremost relations into which people enter in lhe social process of production. The relations between the classes are reflected in the political organisation of society and tho political struggle. This struggle is the source from which the various political theories and the ideological superstructure arise and develop. Only by taking into account and studying the struggle between the classes can one come to understand the spiritual history of society, and draw a correct conclusion that in societies divided
* Ibid.,  p. 628.
 
34  V . F OM IN A 
into classes there is always a dominant ideology, which is the ideology of the dominant class.
Plekhanov’s indisputable services include his bril l iant refuta tion of the untenable idea, nevertheless obstinately ascribed to Marxism, that economic conditions determine spiritual l ife  w ho lly and e nt ir e ly (and not merely in the f in al resor t), and tha t any theory can be deduced directly from a given economic condi tion. This vulgar fiction which describes Marx’s historical mate rialism as “economic materialism” was spread at the end of the nineteenth century by Mikhailovsky and other subjective Narod niks and bourgeois sociologists in the West.
Mikhailovsky is wrong, Plekhanov wrote, to think that Marx ism knows only what belongs to economics, that it “breathes  only with the string ”. Marx never considered the economic development of a given country separate from the social forces  w hich, ar is ing from it , thems elv es influence it s fur the r directio n.  A s regards the de v elopment of ideolo g ie s, the best ex perts on eco nomic dev elopment w ill at times find themselves helpless if they have not a certa in artis tic sense w hich enables them to under sta nd, for example, the complicated process of the development of social psy chology and its significance in the life of society , its ada ptat ion to economics, its connections w ith ideology . T he great writers Balzac and Ibsen, Plekhanov noted, did much to ex plain the psy chology of the v arious classes in modern society. “L e t’s hope that in time there w ill appear many s uch artists,  w ho w il l unde r s tand on the one ha nd the ‘ir on law s ’ of mo v e ment of the ‘s tr ing ’, and on the other w ill be able to unders tand and to show how, on the ‘string’ and precisely thanks to its movement, there grows up the ‘garment of Life' of ideology."*
Marx, Plekhanov argued, never denied the very great impor tance of politics and ideology (moral, philosophical, religious and aesthetic concepts) in people’s life. But he first of all deter mined their genesis, and found it in the economic relations of society. Then he investigated how the economic skeleton is covered w ith the liv ing flesh of social and pol itic al forms and finally—and this is the most interesting, the most fascinating aspect—how human ideas, feelings, aspirations and ideals arise and develop.
Plekhanov showed the relative independence of ideological development, thus refuting the illusion of the absolute indepen dence of ideology, an illusion so characteristic of bourgeois ide ologists and re v isionists. T he process by w hich the ideolog ical superstructure arises out of the economic basis goes on unnoticed by man. T hat is w hy the l ink between ideological and economic
* See this volume, p. 653. •<I ..V.
 
I N T R O D U C T O R Y E S S A Y   35
relations, the dependence of lhe former upon the latter, is not seldom lost s ig ht of, the for mer are considere d “self- sufficient” nnd ideology is erroneously regarded as something which is independent by its very essence. The relative independence of ideological development is explained, Plekhanov emphasises, first of all by continuity in the development of each ideological form. This relative independence is shown by the fact that the ideologists of any class adopt an active attitude to the legacy of ideas from the preceding age and use the achievements of pre vious generations. “The ideologies of evory particular age are always most, closely connected— w hether pos itiv el y or nega tiv ely —w ith the ideologies of the preceding age.” * T he moment material and spiritual labour part, and opposition arises between them, special branches of the division of labour in spiritual production appear. The ideologies become, as it were, segregated in re lativ ely independent fields w ith the inner tendencies peculiar to their own development. The existence of these phenomena proves that the relative independence of ideologies is a reality, a historical fact.
It is an error, Plekhanov writes, to attribute to Marxism the thought that the content of all of a given society's ideas can be explained directly by its economic condition. Ideas which arise in one and the same society often play completely different roles.
Plekhanov’s profound thoughts on the role and significance of ideas in the development of society are of enormous interest to this day. In the eighties and nineties of the last century the Narodniks, whose utopian ideals were completely out of touch  w ith real life , g r e atly harmed the r e v olut ionar y s trug g le of the masses by asserting that ideas and theories are independent of economic, social l i fe. Exposing the subjectivism of Mikhailovsky and others, Plekhanov gave an independent and original develop ment of the Mar x ist te ac hing on the role of ideas and theories .
Ideals may be lofty or base, correct or erroneous. From Marx's point of view, Plekhanov noted, ideas, ideals are always the reflection of the material conditions of people's existence. The only correct ideal is that which corresponds to the aspect of economic reality which lends towards progress. The metaphysi cian thinks that if a public personality must base himself upon re ality it means that he should reconcile himse lf w ith it. B ut the mate r ialis t and diale ctic ian points out that life in a class society is antagonistic. The reactionaries base themselves on a reality which is already obsolete, and yet in it is being born a new life, the future reality, to serve which means to contribute to the victory of the new.
•Ibid.,  p. 636.
36  V . F OMIN A 
Marxists attribute great importance to ideas, ideals, although this is challenged by the Narodnik sociologists. Ideas become a great power, but 011  the indispensable condition that they are able to embrace and reflect reality, the course of history, the re lations between the classes. O nly in that case are they inv in cible and do they promote progress. In the opposite case they act as brakes to social development. A class and its political party may be called revolutionary only if they express the most pro gress ive tr ends of society , are ve hicles of the most advanced ideas of their lim e , if they deter mine the task s of tho social struggle.
Plekhanov called revolutionary ideas “dynamite” which “no other explosive in the world can replace”.*
Plekhanov, being a Marxist, never tired of calling for the ful filment of the great ideals of scientific socialism. lie stressed the exceptional role of revolutionary theory in the proletariat’s class strugg le. “For w ithout re v olutionar y theory ,” he w rote, “there is no revolutionary movement in the true sense of the word.”** He called for the dissemination among the masses of the progres sive ideas advanced by the most progressive social forces, and this he saw as a very great factor of progress.
* * *
 A t the end of the nineteenth centur y and later , w hen the bour geoisie were conducting a campaig