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p In dealing with the content of the traditional ideals used as “outlets” from pessimism, we have been underscoring the distinctive features of each of them. Let us now consider what they have in common.

p The element uniting them lies in nihilistic postulates and inescapably affects their end conclusions. In compressed form the latter may be described as orientation of hope, guidelines and behaviour on self-change, on the remoulding of the consciousness, of ways of perceiving the world. These ideals leave this world to the mercies of fate: allegedly impenetrable to any practical efforts, the world has been and remains a realm of absurdities, irrationality and tragedy.

p According to the logic of these ideals, let “scorned” practice move in any direction it likes, but the individual must engage in what lies within his power—the healing of his own tormenting discontent, inventing ideals to cure it and from time to time cursing alienating reality; or the individual has to accept the sceptical principle that all ideals requiring a reality that can be more easily understood and is more pliant to change are objectively unattainable.

p Never before has the gulf between nihilism’s ideals and reality been so wide, and never before have despair and inaction been so dangerous. This gulf has opened in an epoch when capitalist reality, no longer reasonable, has obviously become an anachronism covering its shoddiness and hypocrisy with sophisms and making believe that it has faith in itself, demanding the same from others. In other 183 words, the material conditions have ’matured for negating capitalist reality. Moreover, development has reached a point where the assertion of socialism has become a vital act of mankind’s self-preservation. The realisation of the communist ideal, which stems from an analysis of all the contradictions and prospects of this reality, has become the central requirement of the epoch. But the process of removing the old form from social relations cannot be entrusted to supermen, who, whatever their merits, cannot attain the ideal on their own. Lenin wrote that “unless the masses are politically conscious, wide-awake and full of determination, no changes for the better can be brought about”.  [183•* 

p The world revolutionary process that is changing reality in accordance with the communist ideal is proceeding apace. The struggle is waged by the most advanced class of the age—the working class, around which are uniting other classes, strata and groups, in one way or another inclined towards such unity by their own interests.

p It is therefore quite inadequate merely to note the gulf between nihilism’s ideals and reality, because never before have the possibilities for closing it been so tangible as today. These possibilities are opened by the subjective factor, by the organisation, activity and consciousness level of the masses, by their political experience, social and psychological independence and stability, and by the wisdom of their leaders. The social activity of the anti-imperialist forces determines the rate and solidity of progress. The revolutionary consciousness taking shape today is well ahead of objective reality, in other words, it is being guided by the ideal that is yet to be translated into reality. A new orientation towards self-change in the course of revolutionary practice is being acquired.

p The bourgeoisie opposes this consciousness not only with the philistine-minded mass, the sense of contentedness and its mythology. It also makes use of the sense of wretchedness and its ideals of inaction, of disunited individuals orientated on self-change outside revolutionary practice. This orientation cannot be examined in isolation from its historical context.

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p The sense of wretchedness does not usually deny the social inutility of its ideals, but to justify them it asserts that they are moral, humane and devoid of self-interest. However, in our epoch can there be morality and humanism that spring up exclusively on the basis of self-change, and are they really so purged of self-interest as they are made out to be?

p We have already seen under what pressure the sense of wretchedness notes the incompatibility of its ideals with hedonistic-consumer aims. Whereas contentedness encloses conscience in the cellar of its consciousness and makes short shrift of it, the sense of wretchedness gives it prominence, holding that man should be guided not by the duty to abide by the moral principles and norms forced upon him by society, that he should not calculate before acting, but should act without calculation. Never mind if this action appears to be rationally unjustified, even absurd, or if it seems to be inspired by duty for the sake of duty; the main thing is that the subject of action should be aware of its living conformity to the will of conscience, to the ethics of the heart. Actions dictated extraneously, by institutionally approved aims and means, are worthless, the sense of wretchedness says; the merit of an action is allegedly determined entirely by the motives and not by official approval or by how far the end result conforms to its social utility.

p How appropriate is this contrast? Formally it is not devoid of meaning. Opposition to the moral dogmatism, bombastic rhetoric and “sacrosanct” principles of the bourgeois sense of contentedness requires a critical attitude to “ours is not to question why”; it requires attention to the contradictions of duties, norms and happiness. Nihilism’s ideals are not devoid of at least some anxiety, resistance to the yoke of moral alienation and the attractive striving to oppose the wave of immorality, assert personal staunchness and responsibility and jettison the prejudices of formal morality.

p But as Thoreau noted, minor circumstances are sometimes as eloquent as a fly in a glass of milk. The question, as we later find, is not exhausted by a statement of formal contrasts. It would be nai’ve to deny the role of inner motivation and the purity of intentions, to ignore them when we determine the merits of an action. There are no morals 185 without conscience. But the complex problems of a correct social orientation of activity cannot be resolved solely by the mysticism of moral feelings. Similarly, without norms there are no morals. The voice of conscience is not a cry out of nothing. Its social nature is unquestionable. The task is to find the unity between moral feeling and reason and not to set them off against each other. Consequently, the question is formulated differently from how it is posed by the sense of wretchedness: subjective certainty in the righteousness of one’s action (or inaction) is not enough to regard it as moral! The morality of an action, especially of the entire behaviour pattern, is ultimately determined by social usefulness—demolition of outworn forms of relations between people and the building up of new, loftier relations that open up the road to man’s further intellectual and moral development. It is a fact that the “laurels of mere willing are dry leaves that never were green”.  [185•* 

p However, the basic tenet underlying the moral guidelines of nihilism’s ideals is that there can be no balance between the effects of an action and historical necessity, and its social usefulness. Nihilistic postulates compel the sense of wretchedness to reckon solely with negative social reality. For that reason it regards the demand for reliance on historical necessity dictated by this reality as a highly suspicious guideline for understanding moral questions, asking if it does not contain a compromise with bourgeois reality.

p In individual cases morality possibly contains something elusive that defies clear determination and social qualification. But morals that in principle scorn to ascertain their relation with life are highly dangerous, not, needless to say, because feeling and intuition as such merit disdain but only by virtue of the fact that by themselves they do not give the correct orientation to moral consciousness. “It is not enough for the doctor,” Georgi Plekhanov wrote, “to sympathise with the condition of his patient: he has to reckon with the physical reality of the organism, to start from it in fighting it. If the doctor were to think of confining himself 186 to moral indignation against the disease, he would deserve the most malicious ridicule.”  [186•* 

p That is exactly what takes place. Nihilistic morals are finding they are helpless against consumer-conformist morals, which defend themselves with the same weapons they are attacked. Indeed, if in morality faithfulness to convictions is the main thing, while all kinds of convictions are equal and man allegedly does not bear responsibility for them, the morals of consumption and accommodation prove to be invulnerable. Can this morality be destroyed by halfhearted exhortations, examples and even irony without taking part in transforming the reality that does not cease generating it serially and on a mass scale? And is not this inability to quash contentedness a cause of despair?

p The morality of nihilism, if all the sediments are removed and things are called by their names, asserts individualism as the sole mode of existence, and in this sense differs from consumer morality only by its mode of expression and means. Of course, the orientation on self-improvement, zealously preached by it, is a vital component of the struggle against moral impoverishment. But when it is directed at suppressing the swarm of desires it quite imperceptibly loses sight of the aims of struggle. In what does struggle for the sake of struggle differ from consumption for the sake of consumption? This guideline likens its proponent to a person who prepares himself for action but does not act, who musters his forces but hesitates not only to crush the enemy but even give the signal for the attack. Virtues become a sedulously guarded but unwanted treasure, and the struggle for them is no longer in need of optimism, proceeding most effectively behind closed blinds, in the darkness of the pessimistic view of the world. Far from breaking open the locks of loneliness, these virtues only strengthen them.

p The guideline towards self-improvement logically leads to the idea of non-resistance to evil, for instead of orientating people on involvement in social conflicts it calls upon them to keep aloof from these conflicts. However, the wealth of moral experience has proved in practice that non-resistance to evil 187 is tantamount to indirect participation in it. There is only one way to do good (including self-improvement) and it is to fight evil. This requires that the individual solve intricate moral problems not taken from a textbook with casuistic examples but posed by life, by the course and logic of struggle. This requires combining expediency with humanity and harmonising ideals with the means of attaining them. Since there are very few stereotypes in this struggle, it requires moral creativity and sometimes temporary reliance on intuition, and risk without the backing of a clear-cut norm. But this is not legalised blindness and not fidelity to formal duty, because the proper road to good, the means of establishing unity between understanding and deed, can only be found in practice. A social determination of morality does not in any way eradicate the importance of conscience, freedom of choice and responsibility. It does not deprive virtue of the right to be an end in itself for the individual and does not make the striving for happiness the sole inducement to humanity. In addition to setting the boundaries of activity (which dissatisfies only the individualist, whom it prevents from attaining immoral aims), morality indicates the objectives of this activity: it both compels and induces. Morality is not so much a restricting as a stimulating factor. There is no morality outside independent creativity, and only comprehension of the social significance of morality allows assessing this individual creativity correctly.

p The orientation on self-improvement with freedom in a vacuum as its aim places a taboo on conscious action aimed at remaking society. This orientation suggests that working people should learn to endure burdens of life staunchly. For the exploiting classes this orientation has a different ring, calling upon them to display presence of mind and courage in the face of doom and loss of perspective. Moreover, it suggests that individuals learn to rely solely on themselves, that they develop qualities vitally needed for participation in the competitive struggle and highly esteemed in the market of success. In serving individualistic aims, self-discipline becomes immoral, while self-compulsion becomes brutal and merciless not only to oneself but to others.

p The orientation on self-improvement allows for the strategy of little good, precisely the strategy that nihilistic 188 morality angrily condemns in consumer morals. To say nothing of the fact that it signifies negativism relative to actions satisfying the main needs of social development, it is used (outside narrow personal relations) to smooth over the rough edges of individualism clearly sticking out of the ideals of non-action, giving them the hallmark of moderation and seeming harmony with humanism.

p Today, as in the past, these ideals are not a life-giving spirit of epoch-making processes, but only a “hot-water bottle for individual minds”.  [188•*  It is said that indignation, is the muse of decent people. But evil cannot be defeated solely by incantations. The morality of nihilism orientates people on finding a quiet cloister, on withdrawing into themselves. It justifies social fatigue and decorous surrender in face of evil. The excited but inactive conscience goes no farther than abstract compassion.

p But is this humanism? In our day perhaps only the drone does not vow fidelity to humanism. Whereas at one time in the ideals of nihilism there were some elements of humanism, today they have disappeared without leaving a trace. Pain for mankind’s suffering has given place to the absolutisation of suffering, infinite exaggeration of its “ educational" role and indifference to the actual suffering of actual people. Instead of fighting immorality they render concealed, subtle support to individualism, moral adventurism and the profanation of humanism. Instead of mobilising forces against the evils menacing mankind, they make an inventory of suffering, register it goad the forces of evil, urge non-resistance to it and shamelessly exploit the sense of danger; but such exploitation disarms, and is therefore just as dangerous. In criticising the idealisation of Lev Tolstoy’s preaching of religious morality, Lenin wrote that the most direct and profound danger comes from approval or mitigation of “his ‘non-resistance’, his appeals to the ‘Spirit’, his exhortations for ‘moral self-perfection’, his doctrine of ’ conscience’ and universal ’love’, his preaching of asceticism and quietism, and so forth”.  [188•** 

p Although the ideals of nihilism give the impression of bitterly attacking the capitalist present, they only personify the 189 past. In the modern sense of wretchedness the tendency towards replacing the ideals of the future with the idealised past has increased sharply. The source of this operation consists of quite real circumstances and the inducements stemming from them. The engagement in the reality of bureaucratically organised capitalism is accompanied by unremitting fits of acute nostalgia for the past, of elegiac longing for sentimentally embellished relations. Everything not subjected to the pressure of technologically developed systems, amassment, the corrupting influence of consumption, the oppression of the urbanist way of life, and spiritual and administrative manipulation is surrounded with the attractive halo of being strictly in good order.

p Selections from the past for the creation of an image may range from pastoral arcadias, various models of antiquity or hierarchically organised feudalism to the romantically perceived time of free enterprise. But in practice the orgies of nostalgia end only with the injection of elements of non-conformism into behaviour with the purpose of giving a sensation of some real action against the brutal and utilitarian society.

p Utopian sighs remain a romantic dream. One may speak endlessly of the need for “new ethics" based on the conclusions of anthropology and abstract reason, on the principles of non-violence and universal love. One may appeal endlessly for the development of intelligible and pedantic specialisation of humanitarian knowledge, and regard it as a counterbalance to the predominance of technology and the exact sciences. One may appeal for new cults of worship, for a humanistic reorganisation of mass consumption, for the recognition of the priority of “non-material elements”,  [189•*  and even for a natural economy equipped with modern machinery. One may endlessly suggest, as a criterion of planning, “optimal human development and not maximal production”.  [189•**  These appeals and suggestions have been and remain unrealisable wishes with fading innocence.

p While formerly it seemed that with the toppling of an ideal into the past there was some hope of actually returning 190 to history’s initial point devised by nature herself, to surmount the “fall from paradise" (anti-historical optimism of early bourgeois ideology most eloquently depicted in Voltaire’s L’ingenu and Diderot’s Promenade de sceplique], in our day the sad sense of wretchedness realises that paradise cannot be achieved. To say nothing of the fact that this consciousness that hopes cannot come true aggravates despair and contributes to the self-reproduction of nihilism, it is used for individualistic purposes as well. The speed with which the fragile Utopias crumble leaves not even a remote, hope that they can somehow influence people’s minds and thereby give reality at least a weak impulse towards the desired changes. It is not possible to end reality’s inability to transform under the impact of Utopias. For that reason in our day the production and consumption of Utopian images acquire a new mission and new motivations. This occupation is itself designed to bring satisfaction, the level of which rises with the fall of the theoretical and practical value of expended labour. The given work must somehow compensate for actual helplessness, for the inadequate satisfaction derived from the application of one’s effort to matters of social importance, and mainly from the fact that the individual is excluded from revolutionary criticism.

p The heightened interest in self-perfection, which itself expresses the objectively enhanced role played in our epoch by morals and moral means of regulating behaviour, is presented in a false light in nihilistic ideals. These ideals prove to be unable to show the class nature of morals. They do not embody the moral indignation that is part of the overall motivation for society’s reorganisation by revolution. On the moral level, nihilism is driven by fear, not by moral protest.

Being nothing more than camouflaged individualism, these ideals regard as their principal enemy not the individualism of consumer morals but the moral of collectivism. That explains why the morality of nihilism is worried most of all by the fact that the working people are joining the actual struggle for freedom, in the course of which they evolve their own morals, their understanding of duty and responsibility. What it fears most is the spread of not hedonistic but communist ideals, which require unity between moralf 191 and the social significance of behaviour, giving effect to this requirement in Marxism, in which are combined science, a moral code, a compelling logic of social development and genuine humanism.