p ...Interest, tlie well-being, the
happiness of every individual is
inseparably bound up with
that of his fellow-men  [202•* 

p As long as nihilism spreads its views only about modern bourgeois society, some fundamental aspects for understanding its essence remain obscured, although its actions against society as such in any form (sociophobia) and its negative attitude (that sometimes evolves into extreme hostility) to the genuinely revolutionary forces in that selfsame bourgeois society not only arouse suspicion but lift the curtain over much of the mystery. However, the mystery is laid bare when nihilism’s attitude to existing socialism is examined.

p Nihilistic criticism constantly refers to the results of the socialist revolution in the Soviet Union, the experience of building the new society and its functioning and the prospects for its further development, making a kind of “analysis” of existing socialism. But the purpose of these references is not to conduct an impartial study of the complex objective laws of historical development. This it is unable to do without ceasing to be itself, without modifying the entire range of its principles. It pursues a different purpose altogether, that of persuading its disciples, supporters and involuntary victims that neither existing socialism nor the communist perspectives are acceptable to them in any way.

p Of course, nihilistic criticism has to acknowledge that existing socialism is achieving impressive successes. It asserted itself under extremely difficult conditions, the most 203 convincing evidence of which is given by the whole of modern history from 1917, the year the socialist revolution was accomplished in Russia, to the failure of the cold war. The viability of the new system is no longer questioned even by its most rabid enemies.

p However, nihilism argues, worrying only about satiety (as it is inclined to call the well-being of the people) and endeavouring to achieve it, the socialist revolution is becoming deformed. The revolution, it contends, reaches its consummation with the betrayal of man, with the creation of yet another (and the worst) variant of industrialised, organised and stratified society. Alienation allegedly remains in it and, consequently, neither the sense of contentedness nor the sense of wretchedness disappears. The idea of communism, it concludes, has proved to be no more than a lost paradise, a grandiose utopia of our epoch, a mirage.

Criticism steeped in nihilistic ideas tries to prove that existing socialism brings no radical change whatever to human existence and does not solve a single key problem of mankind. We already know the content of these attacks: man’s alienation from labour, technology, science, rationality, power and culture.