Workers of All Countries, Unite!
__AUTHOR__
G.PLEKHANOV
(N.Beltov)
__TITLE__
the
DEVELOPMENT
of the
MONIST
VIEW
of
HISTORY
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2005-12-27T12:32:08-0800
__TRANSMARKUP__ "R. Cymbala"
__PUBL__
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
__PUBL_CITY__
MOSCOW
[1]
K Bonpocy o pasBHTHH MOHHCTHiecKoro B3rjinna Ha Hcropmo Ha aHrjiHficKGM n3UKe
First printing 1956 Second printing 1972 Third printing 1974 Fourth printing 1980
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
10104--597
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014 (01)-80 0101000000 [2]CONTENTS
P. B.
Page Publishers' Foreword................ 5 Preface to the Second and Third Editions........ 7 Chapter I. French Materialism of the Eighteenth Century ... 11 Chapter II. French Historians of the Restoration...... 22 Chapter III. The Utopian Socialists.......... 37 Chapter IV. Idealist German Philosophy......... 72 Chapter V. Modern Materialism............ 116 Conclusion.................... 230 Appendix I. Once Again Mr.~Mikhailovsky, Once More the 'Triad" 262 Appendix II. A Few Words to Our Opponents....... 270 Notes...................... 309 Name Index................... 318 Subject Index.................... 328 [3] ~ [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ PUBLISHERS' FOREWORDGeorgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856--1918) belonged to the first generation of Russian Marxists, to those people who laid the foundation for the dissemination of the revolutionary teaching of Karl Marx in Russia. Plekhanov's literary activity as a revolutionary Enlightener was extremely versatile. He wrote on the theory and history of Marxism, philosophy, sociology and political economy, the history of Russian and world social ideas, literary criticism, aesthetics, and so on. The significance of his revolutionary work extended beyond the bounds of the Russian social movement. In the 1880s and 1890s Plekhanov gained fame and authority among the socialists in Western Europe and America as an eminent theorist of Marxism and the working-class movement.
In 1883 Plekhanov, together with other emigrants from Russia, formed in Geneva the first Russian Marxist group— the Emancipation of Labour Group—which successfully undertook the mission of refuting the fallacious ideological views predominant at that time among the Russian intellectuals who took part in or were influenced by Narodism.
In the period of the struggle against Narodism (18831903) Plekhanov produced his best philosophical and sociological works in which he brilliantly expounded the principles of Marxism. He criticised not only the philosophical and sociological concepts of the Russian Narodniks. His writings also played a great role in the struggle against anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism in Western Europe. In the late 1890s Plekhanov was the first to attack the revision of Marxism started by Eduard Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt, their attempts to substitute reformism for the revolutionary theory of Marx and Engels.
After 1903 Plekhanov went over to Menshevism—the opportunist trend in Russian Social-Democracy—and made a considerable number of mistakes in appraising contemporary developments, for which was sharply criticised by 5 Lenin. However, concerning Plekhanov's philosophical writings Lenin wrote in 1921: "...I think it proper to observe for the benefit of young members of the Party that you cannot hope to become a real, intelligent Communist without making a study—and I mean study—of all of Plekhanov's philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world."
The Development of the Monist View of History was first published in St. Petersburg, in 1895, legally, under the pseudonym of N. Beltov. He was prompted to write the book by articles in Russkoye Bogatstvo attacking the Russian Marxists. They were written by one of the magazine's editors, N. Mikhailovsky, a theorist of Liberal Narodism. Because of the censorship, Plekhanov gave the book, as he put it, an "intentionally clumsy" title. The word ``monist'' was used as if to counterbalance the ``dualist'' view of history, and did not directly suggest the materialist approach to philosophical problems—propaganda of materialist philosophy was prohibited in tsarist Russia.
The Development of the Monist View of History is one of Plekhanov's best works—it is polemical and written in a lively, readable form. Although a small book, it gives a sufficiently full account of the main features of Marxist philosophy.
[6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONSI have here corrected only slips and misprints which had crept into the first edition. I did not consider it right to make any changes in my arguments, since this is a polemi~ cal work. Making alterations in the substance of a polemical work is like appearing before your adversary with a new weapon, while compelling him to fight with his old weapon. This is impermissible in general, and still less permissible in the present case because my chief adversary, N. K. Mikhailovsky, is no longer = alive.%%1%%
The critics of our views asserted that these views are, first, wrong in themselves; secondly, that they are particularly wrong when applied to Russia, which is destined to follow its own original path in the economic field; thirdly, that they are bad, because they dispose their supporters to impassivity, to ``quietism''. This last stricture is not likely to be reiterated by anyone nowadays. The second has also been refuted by the whole development of Russian economic life in the past decade. As to the first stricture, it is enough to acquaint oneself with recent ethnological literature, if with nothing else, to be convinced of the correctness of our explanation of history. Every serious work on "primitive civilisation" is obliged to resort to it whenever' the question under discussion is the causal connection between manifestations of the social and spiritual life of ``savage'' peoples. Witness, for example, the classical work of K. Steinen, Unter der Naturvolkern Zentral-Brasiliens. But I cannot, of course, dilate on this subject here.
I reply to some of my critics in an article appended to this edition, "A Few Words to Our Opponents'', which I published under a pseudonym, and therefore refer in it to my book as if it were the work of another person whose views are also my own. But this article says nothing in opposition to Mr.~Kudrin, who came out against me in Russkoye Bogatstvo%%2%% after it had appeared. In reference to Mr. Kudrin, I shall say a couple of words here.
7It might seem that the most serious of his arguments against historical materialism is the fact he notes that one and the same religion, Buddhism for instance, is sometimes professed by peoples at very different levels of economic development. But this argument may appear sound only at first glance. Observation has revealed that "one and the same" religion substantially differs in content depending on the level of economic development of the peoples professing it.
I should also like to reply to Mr.~Kudrin on another point. He found in my book an error in the translation of a Greek text from Plutarch (see footnote, p. 142), and is very scathing about it. Actually, I am "not guilty''. Being on a journey at the time the book was published, I sent the manuscript to St. Petersburg without giving the quotation from Plutarch, but only indicating the paragraphs which should be quoted. One of the persons connected with the publication of the book—who, if I am not mistaken, graduated from the same classical gymnasium as Mr.~Kudrin—translated the paragraphs I had indicated and ... made the mistake Mr. Kudrin points out. That, of course, is a pity. But it should also be said that this mistake was the only blunder our opponents could convict us of. They too had to have some moral satisfaction. So that, "humanly speaking'', I am even glad of the error.
N. Beltov
[8]H.
Bonpocy
0 PA3BHTIH
Audiatur tt altera pars
C.-nETEPEYPrB.
Tnnorpa<t>ifl H. H. CKOPOXOROBA (HaAeHCjumcicafl, 43) 1895.
__CAPTION__ Title page of the first Russian edition [9] ~ [10] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER I __ALPHA_LVL1__ FRENCH MATERIALISM OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY"If you nowadays,'' says Mr. = Mikhailovsky,%%3%% "meet a young man ,. .. who, even with some unnecessary haste, informs you that he is a 'materialist', this does not mean that he is a materialist in the general philosophical sense, in which in olden days we had admirers of Biichner and Moleschott. Very often the person with whom you are talking is not in the least interested either in the metaphysical or in the scientific side of materialism, and even has a very vague idea of them. What he wants to say is that he is a follower of the theory of economic materialism, and that in a particular and conditional = sense."^^*^^
We do not know what kind of young men Mr.~Mikhailovsky has been meeting. But his words may give rise to the impression that the teaching of the representatives of "economic materialism" has no connection with materialism "in the general philosophical sense''. Is that true? Is "economic materialism" really so narrow and poor in content as it seems to Mr.~Mikhailovsky?
A brief sketch of the history of that doctrine will serve as a reply.
What is "materialism in the general philosophical sense"?
Materialism is the direct opposite of idealism. Idealism strives to explain all the phenomena of Nature, all the qualities of matter, by these or those qualities of the spirit. Materialism acts in the exactly opposite way. It tries to explain psychic phenomena by these or those qualities of matter, by this or that organisation of the human or, in more general terms, of the animal body. All those philosophers in the eyes of whom the prime factor is matter belong to the camp of the materialists; and all those who consider such a factor to be the spirit are idealists.
That is all that can be said about materialism in general, about "materialism in the general philosophical sense'', as _-_-_
~^^*^^ Russkoye Bogatstvo, January 1894, Section II, p.~98.
11 time built up on its fundamental principle the most varied superstructures, which gave the materialism of one epoch quite a different aspect from the materialism of another.Materialism and idealism exhaust the most important tendencies of philosophical thought. True, by their side there have almost always existed dualist systems of one kind or another, which recognise spirit and matter as separate and independent substances. Dualism was never able to reply satisfactorily to the inevitable question: how could these two separate substances, which have nothing in common between them, influence each other? Therefore the most consistent and most profound thinkers were always inclined to monism, i.e., to explaining phenomena with the help of some one main principle (monos in Greek means ``one''). Every consistent idealist is a monist to the same extent as every consistent materialist. In this respect there is no difference, for example, between Berkeley and Hoibach. One was a consistent idealist, the other a no less consistent materialist, but both were equally monistic; both one and the other equally well understood the worthlessness of the dualist outlook on the world, which up to this day is still, perhaps, the most widespread.
In the first half of our century philosophy was dominated by idealistic monism. In its second half there triumphed in science—with which meanwhile philosophy had been completely fused—materialistic monism, although far from always consistent and frank monism.
We do not require to set forth here all the history of materialism. For our purpose it will be sufficient to consider its development beginning with the second half of last century. And even here it will be important for us to have in view mainly one of its trends—true, the most important— namely, the materialism of Holbarh, Heivetius and their supporters.
The materialists of this trend waged a hot polemic against the official thinkers of that time who, appealing to the authority of Descartes (whom they can hardly have well understood), asserted that man has certain innate ideas, i.e., such as appear independently of his experience. Contesting this view, the French materialists in fact were only setting forth the teaching of Locke, who at the end of the seventeenth century was already proving that there are "no 12 innate principles''. But setting forth his teaching, the French materialists gave it a more consistent form, dotting such "i's" as Locke did not wish to touch upon, being a well-bred English liberal. The French materialists were fearless sensationalists, consistent throughout, i.e., they considered all the psychic functions of man to be transformed sensations. It would be valueless to examine here to what extent, in this or that particular case, their arguments are satisfactory from the point of view of present-day science. It is selfevident that the French materialists did not know a great deal of what is now known to every schoolboy: it is sufficient to recall the views of Holbach on chemistry and physics, even though he was well acquainted with the natural science of his age. But the French materialists' incontestable and indispensable service lies in that they thought consistently from the standpoint of the science of their age—and that is all that one can and must demand of thinkers. It is not surprising that the science of our age has advanced beyond the French materialists of last century: what is important is that the adversaries of those philosophers were backward people even in relation to science of that day. True, the historians of philosophy usually oppose to the views of the French materialists the view of Kant, whom, of course, it would be strange to reproach with lack of knowledge. But this contraposition is quite unjustified, and it would not be difficult to show that both Kant and the French materialists took, essentially, the same = view,^^*^^ but made use of it differently and therefore arrived at different conclusions, in keeping with the different characteristics of the social relations under the influence of which they lived and thought. We know that this opinion will be found paradoxical by people who are accustomed to believe every word of the historians of philosophy. There is no opportunity to prove it here by circumstantial argument, but we do not refuse to do so, if our opponents should require it.
Be that as it may, everyone knows that the French materialists regarded all the psychic activity of man as _-_-_
~^^*^^ Plekhanov's statement about "both Kant and the French materialists taking, essentially, the same view" is erroneous. In contradistinction to Kant's agnosticism and subjective idealism, the French materialists of the eighteenth century believed in cognisability of the external world.— Ed.
13 transformed sensations (sensations transformees). To consider psychic activity from this point of view means to consider all notions, all conceptions and feelings of man to be the result of the influence of his environment upon him. The French materialists did adopt this very view. They declared constantly, very ardently and quite categorically that man, with his views and feelings, is what his environment, i.e., in the first place Nature, and secondly society, make of him. "L'homme est tout education" (man depends entirely on education), affirms Helvetius, meaning by the word education the sum-total of social influence. This view of man as the fruit of his environment was the principal theoretical basis for the progressive demands of the French materialists. For indeed, if man depends on his environment, if he owes it all the qualities of his character, then he owes it also his defects; and consequently if you wish to combat his defects, you must in suitable fashion change his environment, and moreover his social environment in particular, because Nature makes man neither bad nor good. Put people in reasonable social relations, i.e., in conditions where the instinct of self-preservation of each of them ceases to impel him to struggle against the remainder: co-ordinate the interests of the individual man with the interests of society as a whole—and virtue will appear of her own accord, just as a stone falls to the earth of its own accord when it loses any support. Virtue requires, not to be preached, but to be prepared by the reasonable arrangement of social relations. By the light-hearted verdict of the conservatives and reactionaries of last century, the morality of the French materialists is up to the present day considered to be an egotistical morality. They themselves gave a much truer definition: in their view it passed entirely into politics.The doctrine that the spiritual world of man represents the fruit of his environment not infrequently led the French materialists to conclusions which they did not expect themselves. Thus, for example, they sometimes said that the views of man have absolutely no influence on his conduct, and that therefore the spreading of one idea or another in society cannot by a hairbreadth change its subsequent fate. Later on we shall show wherein such an opinion was mistaken, but at this stage let us turn our attention to another side of the views of the French materialists.
14If the ideas of any particular man are determined by his environment, then the ideas of humanity, in their historical development, are determined by the development of the social environment, by the history of social relationships. Consequently, if we were to think of painting a picture of the "progress of human reason'', and if we were not to limit ourselves in doing so to the question of "how?" (in what particular way did the historical advance of reason take place?}, and put to ourselves the quite natural question of "why?" (why did that advance take place just in this fashion, and not otherwise?), we should have to begin with the history of the environment, the history of the development of social relations. The centre of gravity of our research would thus be shifted, at all events in the first stages, in the direction of studying the laws of social development. The French materialists came right up against this problem, but proved unable not only to solve it but even correctly to state it.
Whenever they began speaking of the historical development of mankind, they forgot their sensationalist view of ``man'' in general and, like all the philosophers of "enlightenment" of that age, affirmed that the world (i.e., the social relations of mankind) is governed by opinions (c'est I'opinion qui gouverne le = monde).^^*^^ In this lies the radical contradiction from which the materialism of the eighteenth century suffered, and which, in the reasoning of its supporters, was divided into an entire series of secondary and derivative contradictions, just as a banknote is exchanged for small cash.
Thesis. Man, with all his opinions, is the product of his environment, and mainly of his social environment. This was the inevitable conclusion from the fundamental proposition of Locke: there are no innate principles.
Antithesis. Environment, with all its qualities, is the product of opinions. This is the inevitable conclusion from the fundamental proposition of the historical philosophy of the French materialists: c'est I'opinion qui gouverne le monde.
_-_-_~^^*^^ "I mean by opinion the result of the mass of truths and errors diffused in a nation: a result which determines its judgments, its respect or contempt, its love or hate, which forms its inclinations and customs, its vices and virtues—in a word, its manners. This is the opinion of which it must be said that it governs the world.'' Suard, Melanges de Litterature, Paris, An XII, tome III, p.~400.
15From this radical contradiction there followed, for example, the following derivative contradictions:
Thesis. Man considers good those social relations which are useful to him. He considers bad those relations which are harmful to him. The opinions of people are determined by their interests. "L'opinion chez un peuple est toujours d6terminee par un interet dominant,'' says = Suard.^^*^^ What we have here is not even a conclusion from the teachings of Locke, it is simply the repetition of his words: "No innate practical principles-----Virtue generally approved; not because innate, but because profitable---- Good and Evil... are nothing but Pleasure or Pain, or that which occasions or procures Pleasure or Pain, to = us."^^**^^
Antithesis. The existing relations seem useful or harmful to people, according to the general system of opinions of the. people concerned. In the words of the same Suard, every people "ne veut, n'aime, n'approuve que ce qu'il croit £tre utile" (every people desires, loves and approves only what it considers useful). Consequently in the last resort everything again is reduced to the opinions which govern the world.
Thesis. Those are very much mistaken who think that religious morality—for example, the commandment to love one's neighbour—even partially promoted the moral improvement of mankind. Such commandments, as ideas generally, are quite devoid of power over men. Everything depends on social environment and on social = relations.^^***^^
Antithesis. Historical experience shows us "que les _-_-_
~^^*^^ Suard, tome III, p. 401.
^^**^^ Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Ch. 3; Book II, Ch. 20, 21, 28.
^^***^^ This principle is more than once repeated in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature. It is also expressed by Helvetius when he says: "Let us suppose that I have spread the most stupid opinion, from which follow the most revolting consequences; if I have changed nothing in the laws, I will change nothing in manners either" (De FHomme, Section VII, Ch. 4). The same opinion is frequently expressed in his Correspondance Litteraire by Grimm, who lived for long among the French materialists and by Voltaire, who fought the materialists. In his Philosophe Ignorant, as in many other works, the "Patriarch of Ferney" endeavoured to demonstrate that not a single philosopher had ever yet influenced the conduct of his neighbours, since they were guided in their acts by customs, not metaphysics.
16 opinions sacr6es furent la source veritable des maux du genre humain"—and this is quite understandable, because if opinions generally govern the world, then mistaken opinions govern it like blood-thirsty tyrants.It would be easy to lengthen the list of similar contradictions of the French materialists, inherited from them by many "materialists in the general philosophical sense" of our own age. But this would be unnecessary. Let us rather look more closely at the general character of these contradictions.
There are contradictions and contradictions. When Mr. V.V. contradicts himself at every step in his Destinies of Capitalism or in the first volume of his Conclusions from an Economic Investigation of Russia, his sins against logic can be of importance only as a "human document": the future historian of Russian literature, after pointing out these contradictions, will have to busy himself with the extremely interesting question, in the sense of social psychology, of why, with all their indubitable and obvious character, they remained unnoticed for many and many a reader of Mr. V.V. In the direct sense, the contradictions of the writer mentioned are as barren as the well-known fig-tree. There are contradictions of another character. Just as indubitable as the contradictions of Mr. V.V., they are distinguished from the latter by the fact that they do not send human thought to sleep, they do not retard its development, but push it on further, and sometimes push it so strongly that, in their consequences, they prove more fruitful than the most harmonious theories. Of such contradictions one may say in the words of Hegel: Der Widerspruch ist das Fortleitende (contradiction leads the way forward). It is just among these that the contradictions of French materialism in the eighteenth century must be rightfully placed.
Let us examine their main contradiction: the opinions of men are determined by their environment; the environment is determined by opinions. Of this one has to say what Kant said of his ``antinomies''—the thesis is just as correct as the antithesis. For there can be no doubt that the opinions of men are determined by the social environment surrounding them. It is just as much beyond doubt that not a single people will put up with a social order which contradicts all 17 its views: it will revolt against such an order, and reconstruct it according to its own ideals. Consequently it is also true that opinions govern the world. But then in what way can two propositions, true in themselves, contradict each other? The explanation is very simple. They contradict each other only because we are looking at them from an incorrect point of view. From that point of view it seems— and inevitably must seem—that if the thesis is right, then the antithesis is mistaken, and vice versa. But once you discover a correct point of view, the contradiction will disappear, and each of the propositions which confuse you will assume a new aspect. It will turn out to be supplementing or, more exactly, conditioning the other proposition, not excluding it at all; and if this proposition were untrue, then equally untrue would be the other proposition, which previously seemed to you to be its antagonist. But how is such a correct point of view to be discovered?
Let us take an example. It often used to be said, particularly in the eighteenth century, that the constitution of any given people was conditioned by the manners of that people; and this was quite justified. When the old republican manners of the Romans disappeared, their republic gave way to a monarchy. But on the other hand it used no less frequently to be asserted that the manners of a given people are conditioned by its constitution. This also cannot be doubted in the least. And indeed, how could republican manners appear in the Romans of the time, for example, of Heliogabalus? Is it not patently clear that the manners of the Romans during the Empire were bound to represent something quite opposite to the old republican manners? And if it is clear, then we come to the general conclusion that the constitution is conditioned by manners, and manners—by the constitution. But then this is a contradictory conclusion. Probably we arrived at it on account of the mistaken character of one or the other of our propositions. Which in particular? Rack your brains as you will, you will not discover anything wrong either in one or in the other; thev are both irreproachable, as in reality the manners of every given people do influence its constitution, and in this sense are its cause, while on the other hand they are conditioned by the constitution, and in this sense are its consequence. Where, then, is the way out? Usually, in 18 questions of this kind, people confine themselves to discovering interaction: manners influence the constitution and the constitution influences manners. Everything becomes as clear as daylight, and people who are not satisfied with clarity of this kind betray a tendency to one-sidedness worthy of every condemnation. That is how almost all our intellectuals argue at the present time. They look at social life from the point of view of interaction: each side of life influences all others and, in its turn, experiences the influence of all the others. Only such a view is worthy of a thinking "sociologist'', while those who, like the Marxists, keep on seeking for some more profound reasons or other for social development, simply don't see to what degree social life is complicated. The French writers of the Enlightenment were also inclined to this point of view, when they felt the necessity of bringing their views on social life into logical order and of solving the contradictions which were getting the upper hand of them. The most systematic minds among them (we do not refer here to Rousseau, who in general had little in common with the writers of the Enlightenment) did not go any further. Thus, for example, it is this viewpoint of interaction that is maintained by Montesquieu in his famous works: Grandeur et Decadence des Romains and De I'Esprit des = Lois^^*^^ And this, of course, is a justifiable point of view. Interaction undoubtedly exists between all sides of social life. But unfortunately this justifiable point of view explains very little, for the simple reason that it gives no indication as to the origin of the interacting forces. If the constitution itself presupposes the manners which it influences, then obviously it is not to the constitution that those manners owe their first appearance. The same must be said of the manners too: if they already presuppose the constitution which they influence, then it is _-_-_
~^^*^^ Holbach in his Politique nature lie takes the standpoint of interaction between manners and constitution. But as he has there to deal with practical questions, this point of view leads him into a vicious circle:- in order to improve manners one must perfect the constitution, and in order to improve it, one must improve manners. Holbach is rescued from this circle by an imaginary bon prince, who was desired by all the writers of the Enlightenment, and who, appearing like deus ex machina, solved the contradiction, improving both manners and constitution.
19 clear that it is not they which created it. In order to get rid of this muddle we must discover the historical factor which produced both the manners of the given people and its constitution, and thereby created the very possibility of their interaction. If we discover such a factor we shall reveal the correct point of view we are seeking, and then we shall solve without difficulty the contradiction which confuses us.As far as the fundamental contradiction of the French materialists is concerned, this means the following. The French materialists were very mistaken when, contradicting their customary view of history, they said that ideas mean nothing, since environment means everything. No less mistaken was that customary view of theirs on history (c'est 1'opinion qui gouverne le monde), which proclaimed opinions to be the main fundamental reason for the existence of any given social environment. There is undoubted interaction between opinions and environment. But scientific investigation cannot stop at recognising this interaction, since interaction is far from explaining social phenomena to us. In order to understand the history of mankind, i.e., in the present case the history of its opinions, on the one hand, and the history of those social relations through which it passed in its development, on the other—we must rise above the point of view of interaction, and discover, if possible, that factor which determines both the development of the social environment and the development of opinions. The problem of social science in the nineteenth century was precisely to discover that factor.
The world is governed by opinions. But then, opinions do not remain unchanged. What conditions their changes? "The spreading of enlightenment,'' replied, as early as the seventeenth century, La Mqthe le Vayer. This is the most abstract and most superficial expression of the idea that opinions dominate the world. The writers of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century held to it firmly, sometimes supplementing it with melancholy reflections that the fate of enlightenment, unfortunately, is in general very unreliable. But the realisation that such a view was inadequate could already be noticed among the most talented of them. Helvetius remarked that the development of knowledge is subordinated to certain laws, and that, consequently, there 20 are some hidden and unknown causes on which it depends. He made an attempt of the highest interest, still not assessed at its true value, to explain the social and intellectual development of man by his material needs. This attempt ended, and for many reasons could not but end, in failure. But it remained a testament, as it were, for those thinkers of the following century who might wish to continue the work of the French materialists.
[21] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER II __ALPHA_LVL1__ FRENCH HISTORIANS OF THE RESTORATION%%4%%"One of the most important conclusions which can be drawn from the study of history is that government is the most effective cause of the character of peoples; that the virtues or the vices of nations, their energy or their weakness, their talents, their enlightenment or their ignorance, are hardly ever the consequence of climate or of the qualities of the particular race, but are the work of the laws; that nature has given all to everyone, while government preserves or destroys, in the men subjected to it, those qualities which originally constituted the common heritage of the human race.'' In Italy there occurred no changes either in climate or in race (the influx of the barbarians was too insignificant to alter the latter's quality): "Nature was the same for Italians of all ages; only governments changed— and these changes always preceded or accompanied changes in the national character."
In this way Sismondi contested the doctrine which made the historical fate of peoples depend only on geographical environment.^^*^^ His objections are not unfounded. In fact, geography is far from explaining everything in history, just because the latter is history, i.e., because, in Sismondi's words, governments change in spite of the fact that geographical environment remains unchanged. But this in passing: we are interested here in quite a different question.
The reader has probably already noticed that, comparing the unchanging character of geographical environment with the changeability of the historical destinies of peoples, Sismondi links these destinies with one main factor—"gofernment'', i.e., with the political institutions of the given country. The character of a people is entirely determined by the character of the government. True, having stated this proposition categorically, Sismondi immediately and _-_-_
~^^*^^ Histoire des Republiques italiennes du may en age, Paris, t. I, Introduction, pp. v--vi.
22 very essentially modifies it: political changes, he says, preceded changes of the national character or accompanied them. Here the character of the government appears to be rather determined by the character of the people. But in this case the historical philosophy of Sismondi encounters the contradiction with which we are already familiar, and which confused the French writers of the Enlightenment: the manners of a given people depend on its constitution; the constitution depends on their manners. Sismondi was just as little able to solve this contradiction as the writers of the Enlightenment: he was forced to found his arguments now upon one, now upon the other branch of this antinomy. But be that as it may, having once decided on one of them —namely that which proclaims that the character of a people depends on its government—he attributed to the conception of government an exaggeratedly wide meaning: in his eyes it embraced absolutely all the qualities of the given social environment, all the peculiarities of the social relations concerned. It would be more exact to say that in his view absolutely all the qualities of the social environment concerned were the work of ``government'', the result of the constitution. This is the point of view of the eighteenth century. When the French materialists wanted briefly and strongly to express their conviction of the omnipotent influence of environment on man, they used to say: c'est la legislation qui fait tout (everything depends on legislation). But when they spoke of legislation, they had in mind almost exclusively political legislation, the system of government. Among the works of the famous G. B. Vico there is a little article entitled: "Essay of a System of Jurisprudence, in Which the Civil Law of the Romans Is Explained by Their Political = Revolutions."^^*^^ Although this ``Essay'' was written _-_-_~^^*^^ We translate the title of the article from the French, and hasten to remark in so doing that the article itself is known to tjs Only from certain French extracts. We were unable to discover the original Italian text, as it was printed, so far as we know, only in one edition of Vice's works (1818); it is already missing from the Milan edition in six volumes of 1835. However what is important in the present case is not how Vico performed the task he had set himself, but what task it was.
We shall incidentally anticipate here one reproach which shrewd critics will probably hasten to level at us: "You indiscriminately make use of the term 'writers of the Enlightenment' and 'materialists', yet __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 24. 23 at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, nevertheless the view it expresses on the relationship between civil law and the system of government prevailed up to the French Restoration. The writers of the Enlightenment reduced everything to ``politics''.
But the political activity of the ``legislator'' is in any event a conscious activity, although naturally not always expedient. The conscious activity of man depends on his ``opinions''. In this way the French writers of the Enlightenment without noticing it themselves returned to the idea of the omnipotence of opinions, even in those cases when they desired to emphasise the idea of the omnipotence of environment.
Sismondi was still adopting the view-point of the eighteenth = century.^^*^^ Younger French historians were already holding different views.
The course and outcome of the French Revolution, with its surprises that nonplussed the most ``enlightened'' thinkers, proved a refutation, graphic to the highest degree, of the idea that opinions were omnipotent. Then many became quite disillusioned in the power of ``reason'', while others who did not give way to disillusionment began all the more to incline to acceptance of the idea of the omnipotence of environment, and to studying the course of its development. But in the era of the Restoration environment too began to be examined from a new point of view. Great historic events had made such a mock, both of ``legislators'' and of political constitutions, that now it already seemed strange to make dependent on the latter, as a basic factor, all the qualities of a particular social environment. Now political constitutions began to be considered as something derivative, as a consequence and not as a cause.
"The majority of writers, scholars, historians or publicists,'' says Guizot in his Essais sur I'histoire de = France^^**^^ _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 23. far from all the 'Enlighteners' were materialists; many of them, for example Voltaire, vigorously combated the materialists.'' ,This is so; but on the other hand Hegel demonstrated long ago that the writers of the Enlightenment who rose up against materialism were themselves only inconsistent = materialists.%%5%%
~^^*^^ He began working at the history of the Italian Republics in 1796.
~^^**^^ Their first edition appeared in 1821.
24 "have attempted to explain the condition of society, the degree or the nature of its civilisation, by the study of its political institutions. It would be wiser to begin with the study of society itself, in order to learn and understand its political institutions. Before becoming a cause, institutions are a consequence; society creates them before it begins to change under their influence; and instead of judging the condition of a people from the system or the forms of its government, we must first of all investigate the condition of the people, in order to judge what should be and what could be its government.... Society, its composition^ the mode of life of individual persons in keeping with their social position, the relations of various classes of persons, in a word, the civil condition of men (1'etat des personnes) —such, without doubt, is the first question which attracts the attention of the historian who desires to know how peoples lived, and of the publicist who desires to know how they were = governed."^^*^^This view is directly opposed to the view of Vico. The latter explained the history of civil law by political revolutions. Guizot explains the political order by civil conditions, i.e., by civil law. But the French historian goes even further in his analysis of "social composition''. He states that, among all the peoples who appeared on the historical arena after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the "civil condition" of men was closely connected with agrarian relations (etat des terres), and therefore the study of their agrarian relations must precede the study of their civil condition. "In order to understand political institutions, we must study the various strata existing in society and their mutual relationships. In order to understand these various social strata, we must know the nature and the relations of landed = property."^^**^^ It ,is from this point of view that Guizot studies the history of France under the first two dynasties. He presents it as the history of the struggle of various social strata at the time. In his history of the English Revolution he makes a new step forward, representing this event as the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, and tacitly recognising in this way that to explain the political life of a particular _-_-_
~^^*^^ Essais (lOe edition), Paris, 1860, pp. 73--74.
~^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 75--76.
25 country it is necessary to study not only its agrarian relations, but also all its property relations in = general.^^*^^Such a view of the political history of Europe was far from being the exclusive property of Guizot at that time. It was shared by many other historians, among whom we shall refer to Augustin Thierry and Mignet.
In his Vues' des revolutions d'Angleterre Thierry represents the history of the English revolutions as the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy. "Everyone whose ancestors were numbered among the conquerors of England,'' he writes of the first Revolution, "left his castle and journeyed to the royal camp, where he took up a position appropriate to his rank. The inhabitants of the towns and ports flocked to the opposite camp. Then it might have been said that the armies were gathering, one in the name of idleness and authority, the other in the name of labour and liberty. All idlers, whatever their origin, all those who sought in life only enjoyment, secured without labour, rallied under the royal banner, defending interests similar to their own interests; and on the contrary, those of the descendants of the former conquerors who were then engaged in industry joined the Party of the = Commons."^^**^^
_-_-_~^^*^^ The struggle of religious and political parties in England in the seventeenth century "was a screen for the social question, the struggle of various classes for power and influence. True, in England these classes were not so sharply delimited and not so hostile to one another as in other countries. The people had not forgotten that powerful barons had fought not only for their own but for the people's liberty. The country gentlemen and the town bourgeois for three centuries sat together in parliament in the name of the English Commons. But during the last century great changes had taken place in the relative strength of the various classes of society, which had not been accompanied by corresponding changes in the political system.... The bourgeoisie, country gentry, farmers and small landowners, very numerous at that time, had not an influence on the course of public affairs proportionate to their importance in the country. They had grown, but not been elevated. Hence in this stratum, as in other strata lying below it, there appeared a proud and mighty spirit of ambition, ready to seize upon the first pretext it met to burst forth.'' Discours sur I'histoire de la revolution d'Angleterre, Berlin, 1850, pp. 9--10.
Compare the same author's entire six volumes relating to the history of the first English Revolution, and the sketches of the life of various public men of that time. Guizot there rarely abandons the view-point of the struggle of classes.
~^^**^^ Dix ans d'etudes hisioriques, the sixth volume of Thierry's Complete Works (10th ed.), p.~66.
26The religious movement of the time was, in Thierry's opinion, only the reflection of positive lay interests. "On both sides the war was waged for positive interests. Everything else was external or a pretext. The men who defended the cause of the subjects were for the most part Presbyterians, i.e., they desired no subjection even in religion. Those who adhered to the opposite party belonged to the Anglican or the Catholic faith; this was because, even in the religious sphere, they strove for authority and for the imposition of taxes on men.'' Thierry quotes in this connection the following words of Fox in his History of the Reign of James II: "The Whigs considered all religious opinions with a view to politics.... Even in their hatred to popery, (they) did not so much regard the superstition, or imputed idolatry of that unpopular sect, as its tendency to establish arbitrary power in the = state."^^*^^
In Mignet's opinion, "the movement of society is determined by the dominating interests. Amid various obstacles, this movement strives towards its end, halts once that end has been reached, and yields place to another movement which at first is imperceptible, and becomes apparent only when it becomes predominant. Such was the course of development of feudalism. Feudalism existed in the needs of man while it still did not exist in fact—the first epoch; in the second epoch it existed in fact, gradually ceasing to correspond to men's needs, wherefore there came to an end, ultimately, its existence in fact. Not a single revolution has yet taken place in any other = way."^^**^^
In his history of the French Revolution, Mignet regards events precisely from this point of view of the ``needs'' of various social = classes.%%6%% The struggle of these classes is, in his opinion, the mainspring of political events. Naturally, such a view could not be to the taste of eclectics, even in those good old times when their brains worked much more than they do nowadays. The eclectics reproached the partisans of the new historical theories with fatalism, with prejudice in favour of a system (esprit de systeme). As always happens in such cases, the eclectics did not notice at all the really weak sides of the new theories, but in return with _-_-_
~^^*^^ London, 1808, p. 275.—Ed.
~^^**^^ De la feodalite des institutions de St. Louis et de l'influence de la legislation de ce prince, Paris, 1822, pp. 76--77.
27 the greater energy attacked their unquestionably strong sides. However, this is as old as the world itself, and is therefore of little interest. Much more interesting is the circumstance that these new views were defended by the Saint-Simonist Bazard, one of the most brilliant representatives of the socialism of that day.Bazard did not consider Mignet's book on the French Revolution to be flawless. Its defect was, in his eyes, that among other things it represented the event it described as a separate fact, standing without any connection with "that long chain of efforts which, having overthrown the old social order, was to facilitate the establishment of the new regime''. But the book also has unquestionable merits. "The author has set himself the task of characterising those parties which, one after the other, direct the revolution, of revealing the connection of these parties with various social classes, of displaying what particular chain of events places them one after the other at the head of the movement, and how finally they disappear.'' That same "spirit of system and fatalism'', which the eclectics put forward as a reproach against the historians of the new tendency, advantageously distinguishes, in Bazard's opinion, the work of Guizot and Mignet from the works "of literary historians (i.e., historians concerned only for beauty of style) who, in spite of all their numbers, have not moved historical science forward one step since the eighteenth = century".^^*^^
If Augustin Thierry, Guizot or Mignet had been asked, do the manners of a people create its constitution, or, on the contrary, does its constitution create its manners, each of them would have replied that, however great and however unquestionable is the interaction of the manners of a people and its constitution, in the last analysis, both owe their existence to a third factor, lying deeper—"the civil condition of men, their property relations".
In this way the contradiction which confused the philosophers of the eighteenth century would have been solved, and every impartial person would recognise that Bazard was right in saying that science had made a step forward, in the person of the representatives of the new views on history.
_-_-_~^^*^^ "Considerations sur l'histoire" in = Le~Producteur,%%7%% Part IV.
28But we know already that the contradiction mentioned is only a particular case of the fundamental contradiction of the views on society held in the eighteenth century: = (1) man with all his thoughts and feelings is the product of environment; = (2) environment is the creation of man, the product of his ``opinions''. Can it be said that the new views on history had resolved this fundamental contradiction of French materialism? Let us examine how the French historians of the Restoration explained the origin of that civil condition, those property relations, the close study of which alone could, in their opinion, provide the key to the understanding of historical events.
The property relations of men belong to the sphere of their legal relations; property is first of all a legal institution. To say that the key to understanding historical phenomena must be sought in the property relations of men means saying that this key lies in institutions of law. But whence do these institutions come? Guizot says quite rightly that political constitutions were a consequence before they became a cause; that society first created them and then began to change under their influence. But cannot the same be said of property relations? Were not they in their turn a consequence before they became a cause? Did not society have first to create them before it could experience their decisive influence on itself?
To these quite reasonable questions Guizot gives highly unsatisfactory replies.
The civil condition of the peoples who appeared on the historical arena after the fall of the Western Roman Empire was in the closest causal connection with = landownership^^*^^: the relation of man to the land determined his social position. Throughout the epoch of feudalism, all institutions of society were determined in the last analysis by agrarian relations. As for those relations they, in the words of the same Guizot, "at first, during the first period after the _-_-_
~^^*^^ Consequently, of modern peoples alone? This restriction is all the more strange that already Greek and Roman writers had seen the close connection between the civil and political life of their countries, and agrarian relations. However, this strange limitation did not prevent Guizot making the fall of the Roman Empire depend upon its state economy. See his first ``Essay'': Du regime municipal dans I'empire romain au V-me siecle de I'ere chretienne.
29 invasion of the barbarians'', were determined by the social position of the landowner: "the land he occupied acquired this or that character, according to the degree of strength of the = landowner."^^*^^ But what then determined the social position of the landowner? What determined "at first, during the first period after the invasion of the barbarians" the greater or lesser degree of liberty, the greater or lesser degree of power of the landowner? Was it previous political relations among the barbarian conquerors? But Guizot has already told us that political relations are a consequence and not a cause. In order to understand the political life of the barbarians in the epoch preceding the fall of the Roman Empire we should have, according to the advice of our author, to study their civil condition, their social order, the relations of various classes in their midst, and so forth; and such a study would once again bring us to the question of what determines the property relations of men, what creates the forms of property existing in a given society. And it is obvious that we should gain nothing if, in order to explain the position of various classes in society, we began referring to the relative degrees of their freedom and power. This would be, not a reply, but a repetition of the question in a new form, with some details.The question of the origin of property relations is hardly likely even to have arisen in Guizot's mind in the shape of a scientific problem, strictly and accurately formulated. We have seen that it was quite impossible for him not to have taken account of the question, but the very confusion of the replies which he gave to it bears witness to the unclarity with which he conceived it. In the last analysis the development of forms of property was explained by Guizot by exceptionally vague reference to human nature. It is not surprising that this historian, whom the eclectics accused of excessively systematic views, himself turned out to be no mean eclectic, for example in his works on the history of civilisation.%%8%%
Augustin Thierry, who examined the struggle of religious sects and political parties from the view-point of the _-_-_
~^^*^^ That is, landownership bore this or that legal character, or in other words its possession involved a greater or lesser degree of dependence, according to the strength and liberty of the landowner (loc. cit., p.~75).
30 "positive interests" of various social classes and passionately sympathised with the struggle of the third estate against the aristocracy, explained the origin of these classes and ranks in conquest. "Tout cela date d'une conquete; il y a une conquete la'dessous" (all this dates from a conquest; there's a conquest at the bottom of it), he says of class and rank relations among the modern peoples, which are exclusively the subject of his writing. He incessantly developed this idea in various ways, both in his articles and in his later learned works. But apart from the fact that ``conquest'' —an international political act—returned Thierry to the point of view of the eighteenth century, which explained all social life by the activity of the legislator, i.e., of political authority, every fact of conquest inevitably arouses the question: why were its social consequences these, and not those? Before the invasion of the German barbarians Gaul had already lived through a Roman conquest. The social consequences of that conquest were very different from those which were produced by the German conquest. The social consequences of the conquest of China by the Mongols very little resembled those of the conquest of England by the Normans. Whence do such differences come? To say that they are determined by differences in the social structure of the various peoples which come into conflict at different times means to say nothing, because what determines that social structure remains unknown. To refer in this question to some previous conquests means moving in a vicious circle. However many the conquests you enumerate, you will nevertheless arrive in the long run at the inevitable conclusion that in the social life of peoples, there is some X, some unknown factor, which is not only not determined by conquests, but which on the contrary itself conditions the consequences of conquests and even frequently, perhaps always, the conquests themselves, and is the fundamental reason for international conflicts. Thierry in his History of the Conquest of England by the Normans himself points out, on the basis of old monuments, the motives which guided the Anglo-Saxons in their desperate struggle for their independence. "We must fight,'' said one of the earls, "whatever may be the danger to us; for what we have to consider is not whether we shall accept and receive a new lord.... The case is quite otherwise. The Duke 31 of Normandy has given our lands to his barons, to his knights and to all his men, the greater part of whom have already done homage to him for them: they will all look for their gift if their duke become our king; and he himself will be bound to deliver up to them our lands, our wives and our daughters: all this is promised to them beforehand. They come, not only to ruin us, but to ruin our descendants also, and to take from us the country of our ancestors,'' etc. On his part, William the Conqueror said to his companions: Fight well and put all to death; for if we conquer we shall all be rich. What I gain, you will gain; if I conquer, you will conquer; if I take this land, you shall have = it."^^*^^ Here it is abundantly clear that the conquest was not an end in itself, and that "beneath it" lay certain ``positive'', i.e., economic interests. The question is, what gave those interests the form which they then had? Why was it that both natives and conquerors were inclined precisely to the feudal system of landownership, and not to any other? ``Conquests'' explains nothing in this case.In Thierry's Histoire du tiers etat, and in all his sketches of the internal history of France and England, we have already a fairly full picture of the historical advance of the bourgeoisie. It is sufficient to study even this picture to see how unsatisfactory is the view which makes dependent on conquest the origin and development of a given social system: that development progressed quite at variance with the interests and wishes of the feudal aristocracy, i.e., the conquerors and their descendants.
It can be said without any exaggeration that in his historical researches Thierry himself did much to refute his own views on the historical role of = conquests.^^**^^
In Mignet we find the same confusion. He speaks of the influence of landownership on political forms. But what the _-_-_
~^^*^^ History of the Conquest of England by the Normant (Eng. ed.), London, 1841, pp. 67--68.—Ed.
~^^**^^ It is interesting that the Saint-Simonists already saw this weak side of the historical views of Thierry. Thus, Hazard, in the article quoted earlier, remarks that conquest in reality exercised much less influence on the development of European society than Thierry thought. "Everyone understanding the laws of development of humanity sees that the role of conquest is quite subordinate.'' But in this case Thierry is closer to the views of his former teacher Saint-Simon than is __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 33. 32 forms of landownership depend on, why they develop in this or that direction, this Mignet does not know. In the last analysis he, too, makes forms of landownership depend on = conquest.^^*^^
He senses that it is not abstract conceptions such as "conquerors" and ``conquered'', but people possessing living flesh, having definite rights and social relations that we are dealing with in the history of international conflicts; but here, too, his analysis does not go very far. "When two peoples living on the same soil mingle,'' he says, "they lose their weak sides a0d communicate their strong sides to each other."^^**^^
This is not profound, nor is it quite clear.
Faced with the question of the origin of property relations, each of the French historians of the time of the Restoration whom we have mentioned would probably have attempted, like Guizot, to escape from the difficulty with the help of more or less ingenious references to "human nature".
The view of "human nature" as the highest authority which decides all "knotty cases" in the sphere of law, morality, politics and economics, was inherited in its entirety by the writers of the nineteenth century from the writers of the Enlightenment of the previous century.
If man, when he appears in the world, does not bring with him a prepared store of innate "practical ideas''; if virtue is respected, not because it is innate in people, but because it is useful, as Locke asserted; if the principle of social utility is the highest law, as Helvetius said; if man is the measure of things wherever there is a question of mutual human relations—then it is quite natural to draw the conclusion that the nature of man is the view-point from which we should assess given relations as being useful or harmful, rational or irrational. It was from this standpoint that the writers of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century discussed both the social order then existing and _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 32. Bazard: Saint-Simon examines the history of Western Europe from the fifteenth century from the view-point of the development of economic relations, but explains the social order of the Middle Ages merely as the product of conquest.
~^^*^^ De la feodalite, p. 50. '
~^^**^^ Ibid., p. 212.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 2---570 33 the reforms which they thought desirable. Human nature was for them the most important argument in their discussions with their opponents. How great in their eyes was the importance of this argument is shown excellently, for example, by the following observation of Condorcet: "The ideas of justice and law take shape invariably in an identical form among all beings gifted with the capacity of sensation and of acquiring ideas. Therefore they will be identical.' True, it happens that people distort them (les alterent). "But every man who thinks correctly will just as inevitably arrive at certain ideas in morality as in mathematics. These ideas are the necessary outcome of the irrefutable truth that men are perceptive and rational = beings."%%9%% In reality the views on society of the French writers of the Enlightenment were not deduced, of course, from this more than meagre truth, but were suggested to them by their environment. The ``man'' whom they had in view was distinguished not only by his capacity to perceive and think: his ``nature'' demanded a definite bourgeois system of society (the works of Holbach included just those demands which later were put into effect by the Constituent Assembly). His ``nature'' prescribed free trade, non-interference of the state in the property relations of citizens (laissez faire, laissez = passer!),^^*^^ etc., etc. The writers of the Enlightenment looked on human nature through the prism of particular social needs and relations. But they did not suspect that history had put some prism before their eyes. They imagined that through their lips "human nature" itself was speaking, understood and assessed at its true value at last, by the enlightened representatives of humanity.Not all the writers of the eighteenth century had an identical conception of human nature. Sometimes they differed very strongly among themselves on this subject. But all of them were equally convinced that a correct view of _-_-_
~^^*^^ True, not always. Sometimes, in the name of the same nature, the philosophers advised the legislator "to smooth out the inequalities of property''. This was one of the numerous contradictions of the French writers of the Enlightenment. But we are not concerned with this here. What is important for us is the fact that the abstract "nature of man" was in every given case an argument in favour of the quite concrete aspirations of a definite stratum of society, and moreover, of bourgeois society.
34 that nature alone could provide the key to the explanation of social phenomena.We said earlier that many French writers of the Enlightenment had already noticed a certain conformity to law in the development of human reason. They were led to the idea of this conformity to law first and foremost by the history of literature: "what people,'' they ask, "was not first a poet and only then a = thinker?''^^*^^ But how is such succession to be explained? By the needs of society, which determine the development of language itself, replied the philosophers. "The art of speech, like all other arts, is the fruit of social needs and interests,'' asserted the Abbe Arnaud, in the address just mentioned in a = footnote.%%10%% Social needs change, and therefore there changes also the course of development of the ``arts''. But what determines social needs? Social needs, the needs of men who compose society, are determined by the nature of man. Consequently it is in that nature that we must seek the explanation of this, and not that, course of intellectual development.
In order to play the part of the highest criterion, human nature obviously had to be considered as fixed once for all, as invariable. The writers of the Enlightenment did in fact regard it as such, as the reader could see from the words of Condorcet quoted above. But if human nature is invariable, how then can it serve to explain the course of the intellectual or social development of mankind? What is the process of any development? A series of changes. Can those changes be explained with the help of something that is invariable, that is fixed once for all? Is this the reason why a variable magnitude changes, that a constant magnitude remains unchanged? The writers of the Enlightenment realised that this could not be so, and in order to get out of their difficulty they pointed out that the constant magnitude itself proves to be variable, within certain limits. Man goes through different ages: childhood, youth, maturity and so forth. At these various ages his needs are not identical: "In his childhood man has only his feelings, his _-_-_
~^^*^^ Grimm, Correspondance Litteraire for August, 1774. In putting this question, Grimm only repeats the idea of the Abbe Arnaud, which the latter developed in a discourse pronounced by him at the French Academy.
35 imagination and memory: he seeks only to be amused and requires only songs and stories. The age of passions succeeds: the soul requires to be moved and agitated. Then the intelligence extends and reason grows stronger: both these faculties in their turn require exercise, and their activity extends to everything that is capable of arousing curiosity."Thus develops the individual man: these changes are conditioned by his nature; and just because they are in his nature, they are to be noticed in the spiritual development of all mankind. It is by these changes that is to be explained the circumstance that peoples begin with epics and end with = philosophy.^^*^^
It is easy to see that ``explanations'' of this kind, which did not explain anything at all, only imbued the description of the course of intellectual development of man with a certain picturesqueness (simile always sets off more vividly the quality of the object being described). It is easy to see likewise that, in giving explanations of this kind, the thinkers of the eighteenth century were moving round the abovementioned vicious circle: environment creates man, man creates environment. For in effect, on the one hand it appeared that the intellectual development of mankind, i.e., in other words the development of human nature, was due to social needs, and on the other it turned out that the development of social needs is to be explained by the development of human nature.
Thus we see that the French historians of the Restoration also failed to eliminate this contradiction: it only took a new form with them.
_-_-_~^^*^^ Suard, loc. cit., p.~383.
[36] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER III __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE UTOPIAN SOCIALISTSIf human nature is invariable, and if, knowing its main qualities, we can deduce from them mathematically accurate principles in the sphere of morality and social science, it will not be difficult to invent a social order which would fully correspond to the requirements of human nature, and just for that very reason, would be an ideal social order. The materialists of the eighteenth century were already very willing to engage in research on the subject of a perfect system of laws (legislation parfaite}. These researches represent the Utopian element in the literature of the Enlightenment.^^*^^
The Utopian Socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century devoted themselves to such researches with all their heart.
The Utopian Socialists of this age fully shared the anthropological views of the French materialists. Just like the materialists, they considered man to be the product of the social environment around = him,^^**^^ and just like the materialists they fell into a vicious circle, explaining the variable qualities of the environment of man by the unchanging qualities of human nature.
_-_-_~^^*^^ Helvetius, in his book, De I'Homme, has a detailed scheme of such "perfect system of laws''. It would be in the highest degree interesting and instructive to compare this Utopia with the Utopias of the first half of the nineteenth century. But unfortunately both the historians of socialism and the historians of philosophy have not up to now had the slightest idea of any such comparison As for the historians of philosophy in particular, they, it must be said in passing, treat Helvetius in the most impermissible way. Even the calm and moderate Lange finds no other description for him than "the superficial Helvetius''. The absolute idealist Hegel was most just of all in his attitude to the absolute materialist Helvetius.
~^^**^^ "Yes, man is only what omnipotent society or omnipotent education make of him, taking this word in its widest sense, i.e., as meaning not only school training or book education, but the education given us by men and things, events and circumstances, the education which begins to influence us from the cradle and does not leave us again for a moment.'' Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, 1848 ed., p.~402.
37All the numerous Utopias of the first half of the present century represent nothing else than attempts to invent a perfect legislation, taking human nature as the supreme criterion. Thus, Fourier takes as his point of departure the analysis of human passions; thus, Robert Owen in his Outline of the Rational System of Society starts from the "first principles of human nature'', and asserts that "rational government" must first of all "ascertain what human nature is''; thus, the Saint-Simonists declare that their philosophy is founded on a new conception of human nature (sur une nouvelle conception de la nature = humaine)^^*^^; thus, the Fourierists say that the social organisation invented by their teacher represents a number of irrefutable deductions from the immutable laws of human = nature.^^**^^
Naturally, the view of human nature as the supreme criterion did not prevent the various socialist schools from differing very considerably in defining the qualities of that nature. Thus, in the opinion of the Saint-Simonists, "the plans of Owen contradict to such an extent the inclinations of human nature that the sort of popularity which they, apparently, enjoy at the present time" (this was written in 1825) "seems at first glance to be = inexplicable".^^***^^ In Fourier's polemical pamphlet, Pieges et charlatanisme des deux sectes Saint-Simon et Owen, qui promettent Vassociation et le progres, we can find a number of harsh statements that the Saint-Simonists' teaching also contradicts all the _-_-_
~^^*^^ See Le Producteur, Vol. I, Paris, 1825, Introduction.
~^^**^^ "Mon but est de donner une Exposition Elementaire, claire et facilement intelligible, de 1'organisation sociale, d£duite par Fourier des lois de la nature humaine.'' (V. Considdrant, Destinee Sociale, t. I, 3-me Edition, Declaration.) "II serait temps enfin de s'accorder sur ce point: est-il a propos, avant de faire des lois, de s'enqu£rir de la veritable nature de Thornine, afin d'harmoniser la loi, qui est par elle-me'me modifiable, avec la nature, qui est immuable et souveraine?" Notions elementaires de la science sociale de Fourier, par I'auteur de la Offense du FouriMsme (Henri Gorsse, Paris, 1844, p. 35). ``(My aim is to give an Elementary Exposition, clear and easy to understand, of the social organisation deduced by Fourier from the laws of human nature.'' (V. Consid6rant, Social Destiny, Vol. I, 3rd ed., Declaration.) "It is high time we reached agreement on the following point: would not it be better, before making laws, to inquire into the real nature of man in order to bring the law, which is in itself modifiable, into harmony with Nature, which is immutable and supreme?" ---Ed.)
~^^***^^ Le Producteur, Vol. I, p.~139.
38 inclinations of human nature. Now, as at the time of Condorcet, it appeared that to agree in the definition of human nature was much more difficult than to define a geometrical figure.To the extent that the Utopian Socialists of the nineteenth century adhered to the view-point of human nature, to that extent they only repeated the mistakes of the thinkers of the eighteenth century—an error which was common, however, to all social science contemporary with them.^^*^^ But we can see in them an energetic effort to break out of the narrow confines of an abstract conception, and to take their stand upon solid ground. Saint-Simon's works are especially distinguished for this.
While the writers of the French Enlightenment very frequently regarded the history of humanity as a series of more or less happy, but chance = occurrences,^^**^^ Saint-Simon seeks in history primarily conformity to law. The science of human society can and must become just as exact as _-_-_
~^^*^^ We have already demonstrated' this in relation to the historians of the Restoration. It would be very easy to demonstrate it also in relation to the economists. In defending the bourgeois social order against the reactionaries and the Socialists, the economists defended it precisely as the order most appropriate to human nature. The efforts to discover an abstract "law of population"—whether they came from the Socialists or the bourgeois camp—were closely bound up with the view of "human nature" as the basic conception of social science. In order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to compare the relevant teaching of Malthus, on the one hand, and the teaching of Godwin or of the author of the Comments on = Mill,%%11%% on the other. Both Malthus and his opponents equally seek a single, so to speak absolute, law of population. Our contemporary political economy sees it otherwise: it knows that each phase of social development has its own, particular, law of population. But of this later.
~^^**^^ In this respect the reproach addressed by Helvetius to Montesquieu is extremely characteristic: "In his book on the reasons for the grandeur and decadence of Rome, Montesquieu has given insufficient attention to the importance of happy accidents in the history of that state. He has fallen into the mistake too characteristic of thinkers who wish to explain everything, and into the mistake of secluded scholars who, forgetting the nature of men, attribute to the people's representatives invariable political views and uniform principles. Yet often one man directs at his discretion those important assemblies which are called senates.'' Pensees et Reflexions, CXL, in the third volume of his Complete Works, Paris, MDCCCXVIII. Does not this remind you, reader, of the theory of "heroes and = crowd"%%12%% now fashionable in Russia? Wait a bit: what is set forth further will show more than once how little there is of originality in Russian ``sociology''.
39 natural science. We must study the facts of the past life of mankind in order to discover in them the laws of its progress. Only he is capable of foreseeing the future who has understood the past. Expressing the task of social science in this way, Saint-Simon in particular turned to the study of the history of Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. The novelty and scope of his views can be seen from the fact that his pupil Thierry could practically effect a revolution in the study of French history. Saint-Simon was of the opinion that Guizot also borrowed his views from himself. Leaving this question of theoretical property undecided, we shall note that Saint-Simon was able to trace the mainsprings of the internal development of European societies further than his contemporary specialist historians. Thus, if both Thierry and Mignet, and likewise Guizot, pointed to property relations as the foundation of any social order, Saint-Simon, who most vividly and for the first time threw light on the history of these relations in modern Europe, went further and asked himself: why is it that precisely these, and no other relations, play such an important part? The answer is to be sought, in his opinion, in the requirements of industrial development. "Up to the fifteenth century lay authority was in the hands of the nobility, and this was useful because the nobles were then the most capable industrialists. They directed agricultural works, and agricultural works were then the only kind of important industrial = occupation.''^^*^^ To the question of why the needs of industry have such a decisive importance in the history of mankind, Saint-Simon replied that it was because the object of social organisation is production (le but de 1'organisation sociale c'est la production). He attributed great significance to production, identifying the useful with the productive (1'utile—c'est la production). He categorically declared that "la politique ... c'est la science de la production".It would seem that the logical development of these views should have brought Saint-Simon to the conclusion that the laws of production are those very laws by which in the last analysis social development is determined, and _-_-_
~^^*^^ Opinions litteraires, philosophiques et industrielles, Paris, 1825, pp. 144--45. Compare also Catechisme politique des industriels.
40 the study of which must be the task of the thinker striving to foresee the future. At times he, as it were, approaches this idea, but that only at times.For production the implements of labour are necessary. These implements are not provided by nature ready-made, they are invented by man. The invention or even the simple use of a particular implement presupposes in the producer a certain degree of intellectual development. The development of ``industry'' is, therefore, the unquestionable result of the intellectual development of mankind. It seems as though opinion, ``enlightenment'' (lumieres) here also reign unchallenged over the world. And the more apparent the important role of industry becomes, the more is confirmed, seemingly, this view of the philosophers of the eighteenth century. Saint-Simon holds it even more consistently than the French writers of the Enlightenment, as he considers the question of the origin of ideas in sensations to be settled, and has less grounds for .meditation on the influence of environment on man. The development of knowledge is for him the fundamental factor of historical = advance.^^*^^ He tries to discover the laws of that development; thus he establishes the law of three stages—theological, metaphysical and positive—which later on Auguste Comte very successfully gave out to be his own = ``discovery''.^^**^^ But these _-_-_
~^^*^^ Saint-Simon brings the idealistic view of history to its last and extreme conclusion. For him not only are ideas (``principles'') the ultimate foundation of social relations, but among them "scientific ideas" —the "scientific system of the world"—play the principal part: from these follow religious ideas which, in their turn, condition the moral conceptions of man. This is intellectualism, which prevailed at the same time also among the German philosophers, but with them took quite a different form.
~^^**^^ Littre strongly contested the statement of Hubbard when the latter pointed out this ... borrowing. He attributed to Saint-Simon only "the law of two stages": theological and scientific. Flint, in quoting this opinion of.Littrd, remarks: "He is correct when he says that the law of three stages is not enunciated in any of Saint-Simon's writings" (The Philosophy of History in Europe, Edinburgh and London, MDCCCLXXIV, p. 158). We shall contrast to this observation the following extract from Saint-Simon: "What astronomer, physicist, chemist and physiologist does not know that in every branch of knowledge the human reason, before proceeding from purely theological to positive ideas, for a long time has used metaphysics? Does there not arise in everyone who has studied the history of sciences the conviction that this intermediate stage has been useful, and even absolutely __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 42. 41 laws, too, Saint-Simon explains in the long run by the qualities of human nature. "Society consists of individuals" he says. "Therefore the development of social reason can be only the reproduction of the development of the individual reason on a larger scale.'' Starting from this fundamental principle, he considers his ``laws'' of social development finally ascertained and proved whenever he succeeds in discovering a successful analogy in the development of the individual confirming them. He holds, for example, that the role of authority in social life will in time be reduced to zero.^^*^^ The gradual but incessant diminution of this role is one of the laws of development of humanity. How then does he prove this law? The main argument in its favour is reference to the individual development of man. In the elementary school the child is obliged unconditionally to obey his elders; in the secondary and higher school, the element of obedience gradually falls into the background, in order finally to yield its place to independent action in maturity. No matter how anyone may regard the history of ``authority'', everyone will nowadays agree that here, as everywhere; comparison is not proof. The embryological development of any particular individual (ontogenesis] presents many analogies with the history of the species to which this individual belongs: ontogenesis supplies many important indications about phylogenesis. But what should we now say of a biologist who would attempt to assert that the ultimate explanation of phylogenesis must be sought in ontogenesis? Modern biology acts in the exactly opposite way: it explains the embryological history of the individual by the history of the species.
The appeal to human nature gave a very peculiar appearance to all the ``laws'' of social development _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 41. indispensable to carry out the transition?" (Du systeme industriel, Paris, MDCCCXXI, Preface, pp. vi-vii.) The law of three stages was of such importance in Saint-Simon's eyes that he was ready to explain by this means purely political events, such as the predominance of the "legists and metaphysicians" during the French Revolution. It would have been easy for Flint to ``discover'' this by carefully reading the works of Saint-Simon. But unfortunately it is much easier to write a learned history of human thought than to study the actual course of its development.
~^^*^^ This idea was later borrowed from him and distorted by Proudhon, who built on it his theory of anarchy.
42 formulated both by Saint-Simon himself and by his followers.It led them into the vicious circle. The history of mankind is explained by its nature. But what is the key to the understanding of the nature of man? History. Obviously, if we move in this circle, we cannot understand either the nature of man or his history. We can make only some individual, more or less profound, observations concerning this or that sphere of social phenomena. Saint-Simon made some very subtle observations, sometimes truly instinct with genius: but his main object—that of discovering a firm scientific foundation for ``politics''—remained unattained.
"The supreme law of progress of human reason,'' says Saint-Simon, "subordinates all to itself, rules over everything: men for it are only tools. And although this force [i.e., this law] arises from ourselves (derive de nous), we can just as little set ourselves free from its influence or subordinate it to ourselves as we could at our whim change the working of the force which obliges the earth to revolve around the sun___All we can do is consciously to submit to this law (our true Providence) realising the direction which it prescribes for us, instead of obeying it blindly. Let us remark in passing that it is just in this that will consist the grand step forward which the philosophical intelligence of our age is destined to = accomplish.''^^*^^
And so humanity is absolutely subordinated to the law of its own intellectual development; it could not escape the influence of that law, should it even desire to do so. Let us examine this statement more closely, and take as an example the law of the three stages. Mankind moved from theological thought to metaphysical, from metaphysical to positive. This law acted with the force of the laws of mechanics.
This may very well be so, but the question arises, how are we to understand the idea that mankind could not alter the workings of this law should it even desire to do so? Does this mean that it could not have avoided metaphysics if it had even realised the advantages of positive thinking while still at the end of the theological period? Evidently no; and _-_-_
~^^*^^ L'Organisateur, p. 119 (Vol. IV of the Works of Saint-Simon, or Vol. XX of the Complete Works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin).
43 if the answer is no, then it is no less evident that there is some lack of clarity in Saint-Simon's view of the conformity of intellectual development to law. Wherein lies this unclarity and how does it come about?It lies in the very contrasting of the law with the desire to alter its action. Once such a desire has made its appearance among mankind, it becomes itself a fact in the history of mankind's intellectual development, and the law must embrace this fact, not come into conflict with it. So long as we admit the possibility of such a conflict, we have not yet made clear to ourselves the conception of law itself, and we shall inevitably fall into one of two extremes: either we shall abandon the standpoint of conformity to law and will be taking up the view-point of what is desirable, or we shall completely let the desirable—or more truly what was desired by the people of the given epoch—fall out of our field of vision, and thereby shall be attributing to law some mystical shade of significance, transforming it into a kind of Fate. ``Law'' in the writings of Saint-Simon and of the Utopians generally, to the extent that they speak of conformity to law, is just such a Fate. We may remark in passing that when the Russian "subjective sociologists" rise up in defence of ``personality'', ``ideals'' and other excellent things, they are warring precisely with the Utopian, unclear, incomplete and therefore worthless doctrine of the "natural course of things''. Our sociologists appear never even to have heard what constitutes the modern scientific conception of the laws underlying the historical development of society.
Whence arose the Utopian lack of clarity in the conception of conformity to law? It arose from the radical defect, which we have already pointed out, in the view of the development of humanity which the Utopians held—and, as we know already, not they alone. The history of humanity was explained by the nature of man. Once that nature was fixed, there were also fixed the laws of historical development, all history was given an sich, as Hegel would have said. Man can just as little interfere in the course of his development as he can cease being man. The law of development makes its appearance in the form of Providence.
This is historical fatalism resulting from a doctrine which considers the successes of knowledge—and consequently the 44 conscious activity of man—to be the mainspring of historical progress.
But let us go further.
If the key to the understanding of history is provided by the study of the nature of man, what is important to me is not so much the study of the facts of history as the correct understanding of human nature. Once I have acquired the right view of the latter, I Ibse almost all interest in social life as it is, and concentrate all my attention on social life as it ought to be in keeping with the nature of man. Fatalism in history does not in the least interfere with a Utopian attitude to reality in practice. On the contrary, it promotes such an attitude, by breaking off the thread of scientific investigation. Fatalism in general marches frequently hand in hand with the most extreme subjectivism. Fatalism very commonly proclaims its own state of mind to be an inevitable law of history. It is just of the fatalists that one can say, in the words of the poet:
Was sie den Geist der Geschichte nennen, Ist nur der Herren eigner Geist^^*^^
The Saint-Simonists asserted that the share of the social product which falls to the exploiters of another's labour, gradually diminishes. Such a diminution was in their eyes the most important law governing the economic development of humanity. As a proof they referred to the gradual decline in the level of interest and land rent, If in this case they had kept to the methods of strict scientific investigation, they would have discovered the -economic causes of the phenomenon to which they pointed, and for this they would have had attentively to study production, reproduction and distribution of products. Had they done this they would have seen, perhaps, that the decline in the level of interest or even of land rent, if it really takes place, does not by any means prove of itself that there is a decline in the share of the property owners. Then their economic ``law'' would, of course, have found quite a different formulation. But they were not interested in this. Confidence in the omnipotence of the mysterious laws arising out of the nature of man _-_-_
~^^*^^ "What they call the Spirit of History is only the spirit of these gentlemen themselves.'' Goethe, Faust, Part I.—Ed.
45 directed their intellectual activity into quite a different sphere. A tendency which has predominated in history up to now can only grow stronger in the future, said they: the constant diminution in the share of the exploiters will necessarily end in its complete disappearance, i.e., in the disappearance of the class of exploiters itself. Foreseeing this, we must already today invent new forms of social organisation in which there will no longer be any place for exploiters. It is evident from other qualities of human nature that these forms must be such and such.. .. The plan of social reorganisation was prepared very rapidly: the extremely important scientific conception of the conformity of social phenomena to law gave birth to a couple of utopian recipes. .. .Such recipes were considered by the Utopians of that day to be the most important problem with which a thinker was faced. This or that principle of political economy was not important in itself. It acquired importance in view of the practical conclusions which followed from it. J. B. Say argued with Ricardo about what determined the exchange value of commodities. Very possibly this is an important question from the point of view of specialists. But even more important is it to know what ought to determine value, and the specialists, unfortunately, do not attempt to think about this. Let us think for the specialists. Human nature very clearly tells us so and so. Once we begin to listen to its voice, we see with astonishment that the argument so important in the eyes of the specialists is, in reality, not very important. We can agree with Say, because from his theses there follow conclusions fully in harmony with the requirements of human nature. We can agree with Ricardo too, because his views likewise, being correctly interpreted and supplemented, can only reinforce those requirements. It was in this way that Utopian thought unceremoniously interfered in those scientific discussions the meaning of which remained obscure for it. It was in this way that cultivated men, richly gifted by nature, for example Enfantin, resolved the controversial questions of the political economy of their day.
Enfantin wrote a number of studies in political economy which cannot be considered a serious contribution to science, but which nevertheless cannot be ignored, as is done up to the present day by the historians of political economy and 46 socialism. The economic works of Enfantin have their significance as an interesting phase in the history of the development of socialist thought. But his attitude to the arguments of the economists may be well illustrated by the following example.
It is known that Malthus stubbornly and, by the way, very unsuccessfully contested Ricardo's theory of rent. Enfantin believed that truth was, in fact, on the side of the first, and not of the second. But he did not even contest Ricardo's theory: he did not consider this necessary. In his opinion all "discussions on the nature of rent and as to the actual relative rise or fall of the part taken by the propertyowners from the labourer ought to be reduced to one question: what is the nature of those relations which ought in the interests of society to exist between the producer who has withdrawn from affairs" (that was the name given by Enfantin to the landowners) "and the active producer" (i.e., the farmer)? "When these relations become known, it will be sufficient to ascertain the means which will lead to the establishment of such relations; in doing so it will be necessary to take into account also the present condition of society, but nevertheless any other question" (apart from that set forth above) "would be secondary, and would only impede those combinations which must promote the use of the above-mentioned = means.''^^*^^
The principal task of political economy, which Enfantin would prefer to call "the philosophical history of industry'', consists in pointing out both the mutual relations of various strata of producers and the relationships of the whole class of producers with the other classes of society. These indications must be founded on the study of the historical development of the industrial class, and such a study must be founded on "the new conception of the human race'', i.e., in other words, of human = nature.^^**^^
Malthus's challenge to Ricardo's theory of rent was closely bound up with his challenge to the very well-known— as people now say—labour theory of value. Paying little attention to the substance of the controversy, Enfantin _-_-_
~^^*^^ In his article, "Considerations sur la baisse progressive du loyer des objets mobiliers et immobiliers'', Le Producteur, Vol. I, p. 564.
~^^**^^ See in particular the article in Le Producteur, Vol. IV, "Considerations sur les progres de lYconomic politique".
47 hastened to resolve it by a Utopian addition (or, as people in Russia say nowadays, amendment) to Ricardo's theory of rent: "If we understand this theory aright,'' he says, "we ought, it seems to me, to add to it that ... the labourers pay (i.e., pay in the form of rent) some people for the leisure which those enjoy, and for the right to make use of the means of production."By labourers Enfantin meant here also, and even principally, the capitalist farmers. What he said of their relations with the landowners is quite true. But his ``amendment'' is nothing more than a sharper expression of a phenomenon with which Ricardo himself was well acquainted. Moreover, this sharp expression (Adam Smith sometimes speaks even more sharply) not only did not solve the question either of value or of rent, but completely removed it from Enfantin's field of view. But for him these questions did not in fact exist. He was interested solely in the future organisation of society. It was important for him to convince the reader that private property in the means of production ought not to exist. Enfantin says plainly that, but for practical questions of this kind, all the learned disputes concerning value would be simply disputes about words. This, so to speak, is the subjective method in political economy.
The Utopians never directly recommended this "method''. But that they were very partial to it is shown, among other ways, by the fact that Enfantin reproached Malthus (!) with excessive objectivity. Objectivity was, in his opin* ion, the principal fault of that writer. Whoever knows the works of Malthus is aware that it is precisely objectivity (so characteristic, for example, of Ricardo) that was always foreign to the author of the Essay on the Principle of Population. We do not know whether Enfantin read Malthus himself (everything obliges us to think that, for example, the views of Ricardo were known to him only from the extracts which the French economists made from his writings); but even if he did read them, he could hardly have assessed them at their true value, he would hardly have been able to show that real life was in contradiction to Malthus. Preoccupied with considerations about what ought to be, Enfantin had neither the time nor the desire attentively to study what really existed. "You are right,'' he was ready to say to the first sycophant he met. "In present-day social 48 life matters proceed just as you describe them, but you are excessively objective; glance at the question from the humane point of view, and you will see that our social life must be rebuilt on new foundations."
Utopian dilettantism was forced to make theoretical concessions to any more or less learned defender of the bourgeois order. In order to allay the consciousness rising within him of his own impotence, the Utopian consoled himself by reproaching his opponents with objectivity: let us admit you are more learned than I, but in return I am kinder. The Utopian did not refute the learned defenders of the bourgeoisie; he only made ``footnotes'' and ``corrections'' to their theories. A similar, quite Utopian attitude to social science meets the eye of the attentive reader on every page of the works of our ``subjective'' sociologists. We shall have occasion yet to speak a good deal of such an attitude. Let us meanwhile quote two vivid examples.
In 1871 there appeared the dissertation by the late N. Sieber: "Ricardo's Theory of Value and Capital, in the Light of Later Elucidations.'' In his foreword the author benevolently, but only in passing, referred to the article of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky: "The School of Adam Smith and Positivism in Economic Science" (this article appeared in the Sovremennik^^13^^ of 1864J. On the subject of this passing reference, Mr.~Mikhailovsky remarks: "It is pleasant for me to recall that in my article 'On the Literary Activity of Y. G. Zhukovsky' I paid a great and just tribute to the services rendered by our economist. I pointed out that Mr.~Zhukovsky had longxago expressed the thought that it was necessary to return to the sources of political economy, which provide all the data for a correct solution of the main problems of science, data which have been quite distorted by the modern text-book political economy. But I then indicated also that the honour of priority in this idea, which later on proved so fruitful in the powerful hands of Karl Marx, belonged in Russian literature not to Mr.~Zhukovsky, but to another writer, the author of the articles 'Economic Activity and Legislation' (Sovremennik, 1859), 'Capital and Labour' (1860), the Comments on Mill, etc. In addition to seniority in time, the difference between this = writer^^*^^ and Mr.~ _-_-_
~^^*^^ The reference is to Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky.—Ed.
49 Zhukovsky can be expressed most vividly in the following way. If, for example, Mr.~Zhukovsky circumstantially and in a strictly scientific fashion, even somewhat pedantically, proves that labour is the measure of value and that every value is produced by labour, the author of the above-mentioned articles, without losing sight of the theoretical aspect of the question, lays principal stress on the logical and practical conclusion from it: being produced and measured by labour, every value must belong to = labour.''^^*^^ One does not have to be greatly versed in political economy to know that the "author of the Comments on Mill" entirely failed to understand the theory of value which later received such brilliant development "in the powerful hands of Marx''. And every person who knows the history of socialism understands why that author, in spite of Mr.~Mikhailovsky's assurances, did in fact "lose sight of the theoretical aspect of the question" and wandered off into meditations about the basis on which products ought to be exchanged in a well-regulated society. The author of the Comments on Mill regarded economic questions from the standpoint of a Utopian. This was quite natural at the time. But it is very strange that Mr. Mikhailovsky was unable to divest himself of this point of view in the 70s (and did not do so even later, otherwise he would have corrected his mistake in the latest edition of his works) when it was easy to acquire a more correct view of things, even from popular works. Mr.~Mikhailovsky did not understand what "the author of the Comments on Mill" wrote about value. This took place because he, too, "lost sight of the theoretical aspect of the question" and wandered off into the "logical and practical conclusion from it'', i.e., the consideration that "every value ought to belong to labour''. We know already that their passion for practical conclusions always had a harmful effect on the theoretical reasoning of the Utopians. And how old is the ``conclusion'' which turned Mr.~Mikhailovsky from the true path is shown by the circumstance that it was being drawn from Ricardo's theory of value by the English Utopians even of the 1820s.^^14^^ But, as a Utopian, Mr.~Mikhailovsky is not interested even in the history of Utopias. _-_-_~^^*^^ N.~K. Mikhailovsky, Works, Vol. II, Second ed., St. Petersburg, 1888, pp. 239--40.
50Another example. Mr. V.~V., in 1882, explained in the following way the appearance of his book, The Destinies of Capitalism in Russia:
"The collection now offered to the reader consists of articles printed earlier in various journals. In publishing them as a separate book, we have brought them only into external unity, disposed the material in a somewhat different fashion and eliminated repetitions" (far from all: very many of them remained in Mr. V.V.'s book.—G.P.). "Their content has remained the same; few new facts and arguments have been adduced; and if nevertheless we venture for a second time to present our work to the attention of the reader, we do so with one sole aim—by attacking his world outlook with all the weapons at our command, to force the intelligentsia to turn its attention to the question raised" (an impressive picture: "Using all the weapons at his command'', Mr. V. V. attacks the world outlook of the reader, and the terrified intelligentsia capitulates, turns its attention, etc.—G.P.) "and to challenge our learned and professional publicists of capitalism and Narodism to study the law of the economic development of Russia—the foundation of all the other expressions of the life of the country. Without the knowledge of this law, systematic and successful social activity is impossible, while the conceptions of the immediate future of Russia which prevail amongst us can scarcely be called a law" (conceptions .. . can be called law?l—G.P.) "and are hardly capable of providing a firm foundation for a practical world outlook" (Preface, p.~1).
In 1893 the same Mr. V. V., who had by now had time to become a ``professional'', though, alas! still not a ``learned'' publicist of Narodism, turned out to be now very remote from the idea that the law of economic development constitutes "the foundation of all the other expressions of the life of the country''. Now "using all the weapons" he attacks the "world outlook" of people who hold such a ``view''; now he considers that in this "view, the historical process, instead of being the creation of man, is transformed into a creative force, and man into its obedient = tool''^^*^^; now he considers social relations to be "the creation of the spiritual _-_-_
~^^*^^ Our Trends, St.~Petersburg, 1893, p.~138.
51 world of = man'',^^*^^ and views with extreme suspicion the theory of the conformity to law of social phenomena, setting up against it "the scientific philosophy of history of Professor of History N. I. Kareyev" (hear, O tongues, and be stilled, since the Professor himself is with = us!).^^**^^What a change, with God's help! What brought it about? Why, this. In 1882, Mr. V. V. was looking for the "law of the economic development of Russia'', imagining that that law would be only the scientific expression of his own ``ideals''. He was even convinced that he had discovered such a ``law''—namely, the ``law'' that Russian capitalism was stillborn. But after this he did not live eleven whole years in vain. He was obliged to admit, even though not aloud, that stillborn capitalism was developing more and more. It turned out that the development of capitalism had become all but the most unquestionable "law of the economic development of Russia''. And lo, Mr. V. V. hastened to turn his "philosophy of history" inside out: he who had sought for a ``law'' began to say that such a search is quite an idle waste of time. The Russian Utopian is not averse to relying on a ``law''; but he immediately renounces it, as Peter did Jesus, if only the ``law'' is at variance with that ``ideal'' which he has to support, not only for fear, but for conscience's sake. However Mr. V. V. even now has not parted company with the ``law'' for ever. "The natural striving to systematise its views ought to bring the Russian intelligentsia to the elaboration of an independent scheme of evolution of economic relations, appropriate to the requirements and the conditions of development of this country; and this task will be undoubtedly performed in the very near future" (Our Trends, p. 114). In ``elaborating'' its "independent scheme'', the Russian intelligentsia will evidently devote itself to the same occupation as Mr. V. V. when, in his Destinies of Capitalism, he was looking for a ``law''. When the scheme is discovered—and Mr. V. V. takes his Bible oath that it will be discovered in the immediate future— our author will just as solemnly make his peace with the principle of conformity to law, as the father in the Testament made his peace with his prodigal son. Amusing _-_-_
~^^*^^ Op. cit., pp. 9, 13, 140, and many others.
~^^**^^ Ibid., p. 143, et seq.
52 people! It is obvious that, even at the time when Mr. V. V. was still looking for a ``law'', he did not clearly realise what meaning this word could have when applied to social phenomena. He regarded ``law'' as the Utopians of the 20s regarded it. Only this can explain the fact that he was hoping to discover the law of development of one country —Russia. But why does he attribute his modes of thought to the Russian Marxists? He is mistaken if he thinks that, in their understanding of the conformity of social phenomena to law, they have gone no further than the Utopians did. And that he does think this, is shown by all his arguments against it. And he is not alone in thinking this: the "Professor of History" Mr.~Kareyev himself thinks this; and so do all the opponents of ``Marxism''. First of all they attribute to Marxists a Utopian view of the conformity to law of social phenomena, and then strike down this view with more or less doubtful success. A real case of tilting at windmills!By the way, about the learned "Professor of History''. Here are the expressions in which he recommends the subjective view of the historical development of humanity: "If in the philosophy of history we are interested in the question of progress, this very fact dictates the selection of the essential content of knowledge, its facts and their groupings. But facts cannot be either invented or placed in invented relations" (consequently there must be nothing arbitrary either in the selection or in the grouping? Consequently the grouping must entirely correspond to objective reality? Yes! Just listen!—G. P.) "and the presentation of the course of history from a certain point of view will remain objective, in the sense of the truth of the presentation. Here subjectivism of another kind appears on the scene: creative synthesis may bring into existence an entire ideal world of norms, a world of what ought to be, a world of the true and just, with which actual history, i.e., the objective representation of its course, grouped in a certain way from the standpoint of essential changes in the life of humanity, will be compared. On the basis of this comparison there arises an assessment of the historical process which, however, must also not be arbitrary. It must be proved that the grouped facts, as we have them, really do have the significance which we attribute to them, having taken up a definite point of 53 view and adopted a definite criterion for their evaluation."
Shchedrin writes of a "venerable Moscow historian" who, boasting of his objectivity, used to say: "It's all the same to me whether Yaroslav beat Izyaslav or Izyaslav beat = Yaroslav."%%15%% Mr.~Kareyev, having created for himself an "entire ideal world of norms, a world of what ought to be, a world of the true and just'', has nothing to do with objectivity of that kind. He sympathises, shall we say, with Yaroslav, and although he will not allow himself to represent his defeat as though it were his victory ``(facts cannot be invented''), nevertheless he reserves the precious right of shedding a tear or two about the sad fate of Yaroslav, and cannot refrain from a curse addressed to his conqueror Izyaslav. It is difficult to raise any objection to that kind of "subjectivism''. But in vain does Mr.~Kareyev represent it in such a colourless and therefore harmless plight. To present it in this way means not to understand its true nature, and to drown it in a stream of sentimental phraseology. In reality, the distinguishing feature of ``subjective'' thinkers consists in the fact that for them the "world of what ought to be, the world of the true and just" stands outside any connection with the objective course of historical development: on one side is "what ought to be'', on the other side is ``reality'', and these two spheres are separated by an entire abyss—that abyss which among the dualists separates the material world from the spiritual = world.%%16%% The task of social science in the nineteenth century has been, among other things, to build a bridge across this evidently bottomless abyss. So long as we do not build this bridge, we shall of necessity close our eyes to reality and concentrate all our attention on "what ought to be" (as the Saint-Simonists did, for example): which naturally will only have the effect of delaying the translation into life of this "what ought to be'', since it renders more difficult the forming of an accurate opinion of it.
We already krow that the historians of the Restoration, in contradistinction to the writers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, regarded the political institutions of any country as the result of its civil conditions. This new view became so widespread and developed that in its application to practical questions it reached strange extremes which to us nowadays are almost incomprehensible. Thus, 54 J.~B. Say asserted that political questions should not interest an economist, because the national economy can develop equally well even under diametrically opposite political systems. Saint-Simon notes and applauds this idea of Say's, although in fact he does give it a somewhat more profound content. With very few exceptions, all the Utopians of the nineteenth century share this view of ``politics''.
Theoretically the view is mistaken in two respects. In the first place, the people who held it forgot that in the life of society, as everywhere where it is a case of a process and not of some isolated phenomenon, a consequence becomes, in its turn, a cause, and a cause proves to be a consequence. In short, they abandoned here, at quite the wrong moment, that very point of view of interaction to which in other cases, also at very much the wrong moment, they limited their analysis. Secondly, if political relations are the consequence of social relations, it is incomprehensible how consequences which differ to the extreme (political institutions of a diametrically opposite character) can be brought about by one and the same cause—the same state of ``wealth''. Evidently the very conception of the causal relationship between the political institutions of a country and its economic condition was still extremely vague; and in fact it would not be difficult to show how vague it was with all the Utopians.
In practice this vagueness brought about a double consequence. On the one hand the Utopians, who spoke so much about the organisation of labour, were ready occasionally to repeat the old watchword of the eighteenth century "laissez faire, laissez passer''. Thus, Saint-Simon, who saw in the organisation of industry the greatest task of the nineteenth century, wrote: "I'industrie a besoin d'etre gouvernee le moms possible.'' ``(Industry has need of being governed as little as = possible.'')^^*^^ On the other hand the Utopians— _-_-_
~^^*^^ The writers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century contradicted themselves in just the same way, although their contradiction displayed itself otherwise. They stood for non-interference by the state, and yet at times required the most petty regulation by the legislator. The connection of ``politics'' (which they considered a cause) with economy (which they considered a consequence) was also unclear to them.
55 again with some exceptions falling in the later period—were quite indifferent to current politics, to the political questions of the day.The political system is a consequence, not a cause. A consequence always remains a consequence, never becoming in its turn a cause. Hence followed the almost direct conclusion that ``politics'' cannot serve as a means of realising social and economic ``ideals''. We can therefore understand the psychology of the Utopian who turned away from politics. But what did they think would help them realise their plans of social transformation? What was it they pinned their practical hopes on? Everything and nothing. Everything—in the sense that they awaited help indifferently from the most opposed quarters. Nothing—in the sense that all their hopes were quite unfounded.
The Utopians imagined that they were extremely practical people. They hated = ``doctrinaires'',%%17%% and unhesitatingly sacrificed their most high-sounding principles to their own idees fixes. They were neither Liberals, nor Conservatives, nor Monarchists, nor Republicans. They were quite ready to march indifferently with the Liberals and with the.Conservatives, with the Monarchists and with the Republicans, if only they could carry out their ``practical''—in their view, extremely practical—plans. Of the old Utopians Fourier was particularly noteworthy in this respect. Like Gogol's = Kostanjoglo,%%18%% he tried to use every piece of rubbish for the good cause. Now he allured money-lenders with the prospect of the vast interest which their capital would bring them in the future society; now he appealed to the lovers of melons and artichokes, drawing for them a seductive picture of the excellent melons and artichokes of the future; now he assured Louis Philippe that the princesses of the House of Orleans, at whom at the time other princes of the blood were turning up their noses, would have no peace from suitors under the new social order. He snatched at every straw. But, alas! neither the money-lenders, nor the lovers of melons and artichokes, nor the "Citizen King'', as they say, pricked up an ear: they did not pay the slightest attention to what, it might have seemed, were the most convincing arguments of Fourier. His practicality turned out to be doomed beforehand to failure, and to be a joyless chase of some happy accident.
56The chase of the happy accident was the constant occupation of the writers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century as well. It was just in hope of such an accident that they sought by every means, fair and foul, to enter into friendly relations with more or less enlightened "legislators" and aristocrats of their age. Usually it is thought that once a man has said to himself that opinion governs the world, he no longer has any reason to despair of the future: la raison finira par avoir raison. But this is not so. When and in what way will reason triumph? The writers of the Enlightenment held that in the life of society everything depends, in the long run, on the ``legislator''. Therefore they went on their search for legislators. But the same writers knew very well that the character and views of man depend on his upbringing, and that generally speaking their upbringing did not predispose the ``legislators'' to the absorption of enlightened doctrines. Therefore they could not but realise that there was little hope of the legislators. There remained only to put trust into some happy accident. Imagine that you have an enormous box in which there are very many black balls and two or three white ones. You take out ball after ball. In each individual case you have incomparably fewer chances of taking out a white ball than a black. But, if you repeat the operation a sufficient number of times, you will finally take out a white ball. The same applies to the ``legislators''. In each individual case it is incomparably more probable that the legislator will be against the ``philosophers'': but in the end there must appear, after all, a legislator who would be in agreement with the philosophers. This one will do everything that reason dictates. Thus, literally thus, did Helvetius = argue.^^*^^ The subjective idealist view of history ``(opinions govern the world''), which seems fo provide such a wide field for man's freedom of action, in reality represents him as the plaything of accident. That is why this view in its essence is very joyless.
Thus, for example, we know nothing more joyless than the views of the Utopians of the end of the nineteenth _-_-_
~^^*^^ "Dans un temps plus on moins long il faut, disent les sages, que toutes les possibilites se realisent: pourquoi desesperer du bonheur futur de 1'humanite?"
57 century, i.e., the Russian Narodniks and subjective sociologists. Each of them has his ready-made plan for saving the Russian village community, and with it the peasantry generally: each of them has his "formula of progress''. But, alas, life moves on, without paying attention to their formulae, which have nothing left but to find their own path, also independently of real life, into the sphere of abstractions, fantasies and logical mischances. Let us, for example, listen to the Achilles of the subjective school, Mr.~Mikhailovsky."The labour question in Europe is a revolutionary question since it requires the transfer of the conditions" (?) "of labour into the hands of the labourer, the expropriation of the present owners. .The labour question in Russia is a conservative question, since here all that is needed is preserving the conditions of labour in the hands of the labourer, guaranteeing to the present owners the property they possess. Quite close to St. Petersburg itself ... in a district dotted with factories, works, parks, country cottages, there are villages the inhabitants of which live on their own land, burn their own timber, eat their own bread, wear coats and sheepskins made by their own labour out of the wool of their own sheep. Give them a firm guarantee that this property of theirs will remain their own, and the Russian labour question is solved. And for the sake of such a purpose everything else can be given up, if we properly understand the significance of a stable guarantee. It will be said: but we cannot for ever remain with wooden ploughs and threefield economy, with antediluvian methods of making coats and sheepskins. We cannot. There are two ways out of this difficulty. One, approved by the practical point of view, is very simple and convenient: raise the tariffs, dissolve the village community, and that probably will be enough—industry like that of Great Britain will grow up like a mushroom. But it will devour the labourer and expropriate him. There is another way, of course much more difficult: but the simple solution of a question is not necessarily the correct solution. The other way consists in developing those relations between labour and property which already exist, although in an extremely rude and primitive form. Obviously this end cannot be achieved without broad intervention by the state, the first act of which 58 should be the legislative consolidation of the village community.''^^*^^
Through the wide world For the free heart 'There are two paths still. Weigh your proud strength, Bend your firm mind, Choose which you = will!^^**^^
We suspect that all the arguments of our author have a strong aroma of melons and artichokes; and our sense of smell hardly deceives us. What was Fourier's mistake in his dealings with melons and artichokes? It was that he fell into "subjective sociology''. The objective sociologist would ask himself: is there any probability that the lovers of melons and artichokes will be attracted by the picture I have drawn? He would then ask himself: are the lovers of melons and artichokes in a position to alter existing social relations and the present course of their development? It is most probable that he would have given himself a negative reply to each of these questions, and therefore would not have wasted his time on conversation with the "melon and artichoke lovers''. But that is how an objective sociologist would have acted, i.e., a man who founded all his calculations upon the given course of social development in conformity to law. The subjective sociologist, on the other hand, discards conformity to law in the name of the ``desirable'', and therefore there remains no other way out for him but to trust in chance. As the old Russian saying has it, in a tight corner you can shoot with a stick too: that is the only consoling reflection upon which a good subjective sociologist can rely.
In a tight corner you can shoot with a stick too. But a stick has two ends, and we do not know which end it shoots from. Our Narodniks and, if 1 may use the expression, subjectivists have already tried a vast number of sticks (even the argument as to the convenience of collecting arrears of taxes in the village-community system of landholding has sometimes appeared in the role of a magic stick). In the vast majority of cases the sticks proved quite incapable of _-_-_
~^^*^^ N.~K. Mikhailovsky, Works, Vol. II (Second eel.), pp. 105--03.
~^^**^^ N.~Nekrasov's Who Lives Well in Russia.—Ed.
59 playing the part of guns, and when by chance they did fire, the bullets hit the Narodniks and subjectivists themselves. Let us recall the Peasant = Bank.%%19%% What hopes were placed upon it, in the sense of reinforcing our social ``foundations''! How the Narodniks rejoiced when it was opened! And what happened? The stick fired precisely at those who were rejoicing. Now they themselves admit that the Peasant Bank—a very valuable institution in any case—only undermines the ``foundations''; and this admission is equivalent to a confession that those who rejoiced were—at least for some time—also engaged in idle = chatter.%%20%%"But then the Bank undermines the foundations only because its statutes and its practice do not completely correspond to our idea. If our idea had been completely applied, the results would have been quite different----"
"In the first place, they would not have been quite different at all: the Bank in any case would have facilitated the development of money economy, and money economy would inexorably have undermined the 'foundations'. And secondly, when we hear these endless 'ifs', it seems all the time to us, for some reason, that there is a man with a barrow shouting under our windows: 'Here are melons, melons, and good artichokes!'"
It was already in the 20s of the present century that the French Utopians were incessantly pointing out the "conservative" character of the reforms they had invented. Saint-Simon openly tried to frighten both the government and what we nowadays call society with a popular insurrection, which was meant to present itself to the imaginations of the ``conservatives'' in the shape of the terrible movement of the sansculottes, still vividly remembered by all. But of course nothing came of this frightening, and if history really provides us with any lessons, one of the most instructive is that which attests the complete unpracticality of all the plans of all the would-be practical Utopians.
When the Utopians, pointing to the conservative character of their plans, tried to incline the government to put them into effect, they usually, to confirm their idea, presented a survey of the historical development of their country over a more or less prolonged epoch—a survey from which it followed that on these or those particular occasions ``mistakes'' were made, which had given a quite new and 60 extremely undesirable aspect to all social relations. The government had only to realise and correct these "mistakes" immediately to establish on earth something almost resembling paradise.
Thus, Saint-Simon assured the Bourbons that before the revolution the main distinguishing feature of the internal development of France was an alliance between the monarchy and the industrialists. This alliance was equally advantageous for both sides. During the revolution the government, through a misunderstanding, came out against the legitimate demands of the industrialists, and the industrialists, through just as sad a misunderstanding, revolted against the monarchy. Hence all the evils of the age that followed. But now that the root of the evil had been laid bare things could be put straight very easily, as the industrialists had only to make their peace on certain conditions with the government. It is this that would be the most reasonable, conservative way out of the numerous difficulties of both sides. It is unnecessary to add now that neither the Bourbons nor the industrialists followed the sage advice of Saint-Simon.
"Instead of firmly keeping to our age-old traditions; instead of developing the principle of the intimate connection between the means of production and the direct producer, which we inherited; instead of taking advantage of the acquisitions of West European science and applying them for the development of forms of industry, founded on the possession by the peasantry of the implements of production; instead of increasing the productivity of its labour by concentrating the means of production in its hands; instead of taking advantage, not of the form of production, but of its very organisation as it appears in Western Europe . .. instead of all this, we have taken a quite opposite path. We not only have not prevented the development of the capitalist forms of production, in spite of the fact that they are founded on the expropriation of the peasantry, but on the contrary have tried with all our strength to promote the complete break-up of all our economic life, a break-up which led to the famine of = 1891.''^^*^^ Thus laments Mr. _-_-_
^^*^^ Nikolai —on [N. Danielson], Outlines of Our Social Economy Since the Reform, St. Petersburg, 1893, pp.~322--23.
61 N. —on, recommending ``society'' to correct this mistake, by solving an "extremely difficult" but not ``impossible'' problem: "to develop the productive forces of the population in such a form that not an insignificant minority, but the entire people could take advantage of = them.''^^*^^ Everything depends upon correcting the ``mistake''.It is interesting that Mr. N. —on imagines himself to be ever so foreign to any Utopias. Every minute he makes references to people to whom we owe the scientific criticism of Utopian = socialism.%%21%% Everything depends on the country's economy, he repeats in season and out of season, echoing these people, and all the evil springs from this: "Therefore the means to eliminate the evil, once it has been discovered, must consist likewise in altering the very conditions of production.'' To explain this he once again quotes one of the critics of Utopian socialism: "These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of = production.''^^**^^
But in what, then, consist those "stubborn facts of the existing system of production" which will move society to solve, or at least to understand, the problem presented to it by Mr. N.—on? This remains a mystery not only to the reader but, of course, to the author himself as well. By his "problem" he has very convincingly demonstrated that in his historical views he remains a full-blooded Utopian, in spite of his quotations from the works of quite non-utopian writers.^^***^^
_-_-_~^^*^^ Ibid., p. 343.
~^^**^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. Ill, Moscow, 1970, p. 134.
~^^***^^ Correspondingly, Mr. N. —on's practical plans also represent an almost literal repetition of those ``demands'' which long ago and, of course, quite fruitlessly were presented by our Utopian Narodniks, like, for example, Mr.~Prugavin. "The ultimate ends and tasks of social and state activity" (you see, neither society nor the state is forgotten) "in the sphere of factory economy must be: on the one hand, the purchase for the state of all implements of labour and the granting of the latter to the people for temporary use, for hire; on the other, the establishment of an organisation of the conditions of production" (Mr.~Prugavin wants to say simply ``production'', but as is the custom of all Russian writers, headed by Mr.~Mikhailovsky, he uses the expression "conditions of production'', without understanding what it means) "which would be founded upon the requirements of the people __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 63. 62
Can it be said that the plans of Fourier contradicted the "stubborn facts" of production in his times? No, not only did they not contradict them, but they were entirely founded upon those facts, even in their defects. But this did not prevent Fourier from being a Utopian, because, once having founded his plan "by deduction" on the material conditions of the production of his age, he failed to adapt its realisation to those same conditions, and therefore with complete futility pestered with his "great task" those social strata and classes which, in virtue of those same material conditions, could not have either the inclination to set about its solution or the possibility of solving it. Mr. N. —on sins in this way just as much as Fourier or the Rodbertus whom he loves so little: most of all he reminds one precisely of Rodbertus, because Mr. N. —on's reference to ageold traditions is just in the spirit of that conservative writer.
For the better instruction of ``society'', Mr. N. —on points to the terrifying example of Western Europe. By such observations our Utopians have long attempted to give themselves the aspect of positive people, who don't get carried away by fantasies but know how to take 'advantage of the "lessons of history''. However this method, too, is not at all new. The French Utopians were already attempting to terrify their contemporaries and make them listen to reason by the example of England, where "a vast distance separates the employer from the workman" and where there hangs over the latter the yoke of a special kind of despotism. "Other countries which follow England along the path of industrial development,'' said the Producleur, "must understand that they ought to search for the means to prevent such a system arising on their own = soil."^^*^^ The only real obstacle to the appearance of English methods in other countries could be the SaintSimonists' "organisation of labour and = labourers".^^**^^ With the development of the labour movement in France it was _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 62. and the state, and not on the interests of the market, of disposal and of competition, which is the ease in the commodity-capitalist organisation of the economic forces of the country" (V. S. Prugavin, The Handicraftsman at the Exhibition, Moscow, 1882, p. 15). Let the reader compare this passage with the above quotation from the book of Mr. N. —on.
~^^*^^ Le Producteur, Vol. I, p. 140.
~^^**^^ On this organisation, see the = Globe%%22%% for 1831--32, where it is set foith in detail, with even the preparatory transitional reforms.
63 Germany that became the principal theatre of day-dreams about avoiding capitalism. Germany, in the person of her Utopians, long and stubbornly set herself up against "Western Europe" (den westlichen Landern). In the Western countries, said the German Utopians, the bearer of the idea of a new organisation of society is the working class, with us it is the educated classes (what is called in Russia the intelligentsia). It was precisely the German ``intelligentsia'' which was thought to be called upon to avert from Germany the cup of = capitalism.^^*^^ Capitalism was so terrifying _-_-_~^^*^^ "Unsere Nationalokonomen streben mit alien Kraften, Deutschland auf die Stufe der Industrie zu heben, von welcher herab England jetzt die andern Lander noch beherrscht. England ist ihr Ideal. Gewiss: England sieht sich gern schon an; England hat seine Besitzungen in alien Weltteilen, es weiss seinen Einfluss aller Orten geltend zu machen, es hat die reichste Handels- und Kriegsflotte, es weiss bei alien Handelstraktaten die Gegenkontrahenten immer hinters Licht zu fiihren, es hat die spekulativsten Kaufleute, die bedeutendsten Kapitalisten, die erfindungsreichsten Kopfe, die prachtigsten Eisenbahnen, die grossartigsten Maschinenanlagen; gewiss, England ist, von dieser Seite betrachtet, ein glikkliches- Land, aber—es lasst sich auch ein anderer Gesichtspunkt bei der Schatzung Englands gewinnen und unter diesem mochte doch wohl das Gliick desselben von seinem Ungluck bedeutend iiberwogen werden. England ist auch das Land, in welchem das Elend auf die hochste spitze getrieben ist, in welchem jahrlich Hunderte notorisch Hungers sterben, in welchem die Arbeiter zu Fiinfzigtausenden zu arbeiten verweigern, da sie trotz all ihrer Miihe und Leiden nicht so viel verdienen, dass sie notdurftig leben konnen. England ist das Land, in welchem die Wohltatigkeit durch die Armensteuer zum ausserlichen Gesetz gemacht werden musste. Seht doch ihr, Nationalokonomen, in den Fabriken die wankenden, gebuckten und verwachsenen Gestalten, seht die bleichen, abgeharmten, schwindsiichtigen Gesichter, seht all das geistige und das leibliche Elend, und ihr wollt Deutschland noch zu einem zweiten England machen? England konnte nur durch Ungluck und Jammer zu dem H6hepunkt der Industrie gelangen, auf dem es jetzt steht, und Deutschland konnte nur durch dieselben Opfer ahnliche Resultate erreichen, d.h. erreichen, dass die Reichen noch reicher und die Armen noch armer werden.'' ``(Our national economists strive with all their might to lift Germany on to that stage of industry from which England now still dominates other countries. England is their ideal. Of course, England likes to admire herself: she has her possessions in all parts of the world, she knows how to make her influence count everywhere, she has the richest mercantile marine and navy and knows in all trade agreements how to humbug her partner, she has the most speculative merchants, the most important capitalists, the most inventive heads, the most excellent railways, the most magnificent machine equipment. Of course, England when viewed from this aspect is a happy country, but— another point of view might gain the upper hand in assessing England, __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 65. 64 to the German Utopians that, for the sake of avoiding it, they were ready in the last resort to put up with complete stagnation. The triumph of a constitutional system, they argued, would lead to the supremacy of the money aristocracy. Therefore let there rather be no constitutional system.^^*^^ Germany did not avoid capitalism. Now it is the Russian Utopians who talk about avoiding it. Thus do Utopian ideas journey from west to east, everywhere appearing as the heralds of the victory of that same capitalism against which they are revolting and struggling. But the further they penetrate into the east the more their historical significance changes. The French Utopians were in their day bold innovators of genius; the Germans proved much lower than they; and the Russians are now capable only of frightening Western people by their antediluvian appearance.
It is interesting that even the writers of the French Enlightenment had the idea of avoiding capitalism. Thus, Hoibach was very upset by the fact, that the triumph of the _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 64. and from this point of view her happiness might nevertheless be considerably outweighed by her unhappiness. England is also the country in which misery has been brought to its highest point, in which it is notorious that hundreds die of hunger every year, in which the workmen by the fifty thousand refuse to work because, in spite of all their toil and suffering, they do not earn enough to provide themselves with a bare livelihood. England is the country in which philanthropy through the poor rate had to be enacted by an extreme measure. Look then, national economists, at the swaying, bowed and deformed figures in the factories, look at the pale, languid, tubercular faces, look at all the spiritual and bodily misery—and you still wish to make Germany into a second England? England was only able through misfortune and misery to reach the high point of industry at which she now stands, and only through the same sacrifices could Germany achieve similar results, i.e., that the rich should become still richer and the poor still poorer."—Ed.) Trierscher Zeitung, May 4, 1846, reprinted in Vol. I of the review edited by M. Hess, under the title of Der Gesellschajtsspiegel. Die Gesellschaftlichen Zustande der zivilisierten Welt (The Social Mirror, Social Conditions of the Civilised World), Iserlohn and Elberfeld, 1846.
~^^*^^ "Sollte es den Constitutionellen gelingen,'' said Buchner, "die deutschen Regierungen zu stiirzen und eine allgemeine Monarchic oder Republik einzufuhren, so bekommen wir hier einen Geldaristokratismus, wie in Frankreich, und lieber soil es bleiben, wie es jetzt ist.'' ``(Should the Constitutionalists succeed,'' said Buchner, "in overthrowing the German governments and introducing a universal monarchy or republic, we should get here an aristocracy of money as in France; and better it should remain as it now is."—Ed. (Georg Buchner, Collected Works, ed. Franzos, p.~122.)
__PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 3---570 65 constitutional order in England led to the complete supremacy of I'interet sordide des marchands. He was very saddened by the circumstance that the English were tirelessly looking for new markets—this chase of markets distracted them from philosophy. Holbach also condemned the inequality of property existing in England. Like Helvetius, he would have liked to prepare the way for the triumph of reason and equality, and not of mercantile interests.But neither Holbach nor Helvetius, nor any other of the writers of the Enlightenment could put forward anything against the then course of events except panegyrics of reason and moral instructions addressed to the "people of Albion''. In this respect they were just as impotent as our own present-day Russian Utopians.
One more remark, and we shall have finished with the Utopians. The point of view of "human nature" brought forth in the first half of the nineteenth century that abuse of biological analogies which, even up to the present day, makes itself very strongly felt in Western sociological—and particularly in Russian quasi-sociological—literature.
If the cause of all historical social progress is to be sought in the nature of man, and if, as Saint-Simon himself justly remarks, society consists of individuals, then the nature of the individual has to provide the key to the explanation of history. The nature of the individual is the subject of physiology in the broad sense of the word, i.e., of a science which also covers psychological phenomena. That is why physiology, in the eyes of Saint-Simon and his followers, was the basis of sociology, which they called social physics. In the Opinions philosophiques, litteraires et industrielles published during Saint-Simon's lifetime and with his active participation, there was printed an extremely interesting but unfortunately unfinished article of an anonymous doctor of medicine, entitled: "De la physiologic appliquee a 1'amelioration des institutions sociales."
The author considered the science of society to be a component part of "general physiology" which, enriched by the observations and experiments of "special physiology" of the individual, "devotes itself to considerations of a higher order''. Individuals are for it "only organs of the social body'', the functions of which it studies "just as special physiology studies the functions of individuals''. General 66 physiology studies (the author writes: ``expresses'') the laws of social existence, with which the written laws should be accordingly co-ordinated. Later on the bourgeois sociologists, as for example Spencer, made use of the doctrine of the social organism to draw the most conservative conclusions. But the doctor of medicine whom we quote was first of all a reformer. He studied "the social body" with the object of social reconstruction, since only "social physiology" and the ``hygiene'' closely bound up with it provided "the positive foundations on which it is possible to build the system of social organisation required by the present state of the civilised world''. But evidently social physiology and hygiene did not provide much food for the reforming fantasy of the author, because in the end he found himself obliged to turn to the doctors, i.e., to persons dealing with individual organisms, asking them to give to society, "in the form of a hygienic prescription ', a "system of social organisation".
This view of "social physics" was later on chewed over— or, if you prefer, developed—by Auguste Comte in his various works. Here is what he said about social science still in his youth, when he was writing in the Saint-Simonist Producteur: "Social phenomena, being human phenomena, should without doubt be classed among physiological phenomena. But although social physics must find its point of departure in, and be in constant connection with, individual physiology, it nevertheless should be examined and developed as quite a separate science: for various generations of men progressively influence one another. If we maintain the purely physiological point of view, we cannot properly study that influence: yet its evaluation should occupy the principal place in social = physics."^^*^^
Now you can see what hopeless contradictions confront those who regard society from this point of view.
In the first place, since "social physics" has individual physiology as its "point of departure'', it is built on a purely materialist foundation: in physiology there is no place for an idealist view of an object. But the same social physics was principally to concern itself with evaluating the _-_-_
~^^*^^ "Considerations sur les sciences et les savants" in Le Produclcvr, Vol. I, pp. 355--56.
67 progressive influence of one generation on another. One generation influences the next, passing on to it both the knowledge which it inherited from previous generations, and the knowledge which it acquired itself. "Social physics" therefore examines the development of the human species from the point of-view of the development of knowledge and of ``enlightenment'' (lumieres). This is already the purely idealist point of view of the eighteenth century: opinions govern the 'world. Having "closely connected'', on Comte's advice, this idealistic point of view with the purely materialist point of view of individual physiology, we turn out to be dualists of the purest water, and nothing is easier than to trace the harmful influence of this dualism on the sociological views even of the same Comte. But this is not all. The thinkers of the eighteenth century noticed that in the development of knowledge there is a certain conformity to law. Comte firmly maintained such a conformity, putting into the foreground the notorious law of three stages: theological, metaphysical and positive.But why does the development of knowledge pass precisely through these stages? Such is the nature of the human mind, replies Comte: "By its nature (par sa nature), the human mind passes wherever it acts through three different theoretical = conditions."^^*^^ Excellent; but to study that "nature" we shall have to turn to individual physiology, and individual physiology does not give us an adequate explanation; and we have again to refer to previous ``generations'' —and the ``generations'' again send us back.to ``nature''. This is called a science, but there is no trace of science in it: there is only an endless movement round a vicious circle.
Our own allegedly original, ``subjective'' sociologists fully share the view-point of the French Utopian of the 20s.
"While I was still under the influence of Nozhin,'' Mr. Mikhailovsky tells us about himself, "and partly under his guidance, I interested myself in the question of the boundaries between biology and sociology, and the possibility of bringing them together----I cannot sufficiently highly assess the advantage I gained from communion with the ideas of Nozhin: but nevertheless there was much in them that was accidental, partly because they were still only _-_-_
~^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. I, p.~304.
68 developing in Nozhin himself, partly because of his limited knowledge in the sphere of the natural sciences. I received from Nozhin really only an impulse in a certain direction, but it was a strong, decisive and beneficent impulse. Without thinking of any special study of biology, I nevertheless read a great deal on Nozhin's suggestion and, as it were, by his testament. This new trend in my reading threw an original and most absorbing light on that considerable—though disorderly, and to some extent simply useless—material, both of facts and ideas, which I had stored up = previously."^^*^^Nozhin has been described by Mr.~Mikhailovsky in his sketches In the Intervals, under the name of Bukhartsev. Bukhartsev "dreamed of reforming the social sciences with the help of natural science, and had already worked out an extensive plan for that purpose''. The methods of this reforming activity can be seen from the following. Bukhartsev undertakes to translate into Russian from the Latin an extensive treatise on zoology, and accompanies the translation with his own footnotes, in which he proposes "to include the results of all his independent work'', while to these footnotes he adds new footnotes of a ``sociological'' character. Mr.~Mikhailovsky obligingly acquaints the reader with one such second-storey footnote: "Generally speaking, I cannot in my supplements to Van-der-Hoeven proceed too far in theoretical discussions and conclusions regarding the application of all these purely anatomical questions in solving social and economic questions. Therefore I again only draw the attention of the reader to the fact that my whole anatomical and embryological theory has as its main object the discovery of the laws of the physiology of society, and therefore all my later works will, of course, be founded on the scientific data set forth by ine in this = book."^^**^^
Anatomical and embryological theory "has as its main object the discovery of the laws of the physiology of society"! This is very awkwardly put, but nevertheless is very characteristic of the Utopian sociologists. He constructs an anatomical theory, with the help of which he intends to write out a number of "hygienic prescriptions" for the society surrounding him. It is to these prescriptions that his _-_-_
~^^*^^ "Literature and Life" in Russkaya = Mysl%%23%% 1891, Vol. IV, p. 195.
~^^**^^ N.~K. Mikhailovsky, Works, Vol. IV (Second ed.), pp. 265--66.
69 social ``physiology'' is reduced. The social ``physiology'' of Bukhartsev is, strictly speaking, not ``physiology'' but the ``hygiene'' with which we are already acquainted: not a science of what is, but a science of what ought to be, on the basis ... of the "anatomical and embryological theory" of that same Bukhartsev.Although Bukhartsev has been copied from Nozhin, he, nevertheless, represents to a certain extent the product of the artistic and creative work of Mr.~Mikhailovsky (that is, if we can speak of artistic work in relation to the sketches quoted). Consequently even his awkward footnote, perhaps, never existed in reality. In that event it is all the more characteristic of Mr.~Mikhailovsky, who speaks of it with great respect.
"I chanced nevertheless to come across the direct reflection in literature of the ideas of my unforgettable friend and teacher,'' says Tyomkin, in whose name the story is told. Mr.~Mikhailovsky reflected, and still reflects, the ideas of Bukhartsev-Nozhin.
Mr.~Mikhailovsky has his own "formula of progress''. This formula declares: "Progress is the gradual approach to the integrity of the individual, to the fullest possible and most manifold division of labour between the organs and the least possible division of labour between people. Anything retarding this movement is immoral, unjust, harmful and unreasonable. Only that is moral, just, reasonable and useful which diminishes the heterogeneity of society, thereby increasing the heterogeneity of its individual = = members.''^^*^^
What can be the scientific significance of this formula? Does it explain the historical progress of society? Does it tell how that progress took place, and why it took place in one particular way and not in another? Not in the least: and its "main aim" is not that at all. It does not speak of how history advanced, but of how it ought to have advanced to earn the approval of Mr.~Mikhailovsky. This is a "hygienic prescription" invented by a Utopian on the basis of "exact investigations of the laws of organic development''. It is just what the Saint-Simonist doctor was looking for.
... "We have said that the exclusive use in sociology of the objective method would be equivalent, if it were _-_-_
~^^*^^ Ibid., pp. 186--87.
70 possible, to adding up arshins and = poods^^*^^: whence, by the way, it follows, not that the objective method must be completely eliminated from this sphere of research, but that the supreme control must be exercised by the subjective method."^^**^^"This sphere of research" is precisely the ``physiology'' of the desired society, the sphere of Utopia. Naturally the use of the "subjective method" in it very much facilitates the work of the ``investigator''. But this use is based not at all on any ``laws'', but on the "enchantment of charming fantasy''; whoever once has given way to it, will never revolt even against the use in one and the same ``sphere''— true, with different rights—of both methods, subjective and objective, even though such a confusion of methods really does mean "adding up arshins and = poods''.^^***^^
_-_-_~^^*^^ The first is a measure of length, the second of weight: thus it is like saying that yards should be added to hundredweights.—Ed.
~^^**^^ N. K. Mikhailovsky, Works, Vol. IV (Second ed.), p. 185.
~^^***^^ Incidentally, these very expressions—"objective method'', "subjective method"—represent a vast confusion, at the very least in terminology.
[71] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER IV __ALPHA_LVL1__ IDEALIST GERMAN PHILOSOPHYThe materialists of the eighteenth century were firmly convinced that they had succeeded in dealing the deathblow to idealism. They regarded it as an obsolete and completely forsaken theory. But a reaction against materialism began already at the end of that century, and in the first half of the nineteenth century materialism itself fell into the position of a system which all considered obsolete and buried, once for all. Idealism not only came to life again, but underwent an unprecedented and truly brilliant development. There were, of course, appropriate social reasons for this: but we will not touch on them here, and will only consider whether the idealism of the nineteenth century had any advantages over the materialism of the previous epoch and, if it had, in what these advantages consisted.
French materialism displayed an astonishing and today scarcely credible feebleness every time it came upon questions of evolution in nature or in history. Let us take, for example, the origin of man. Although the idea of the gradual evolution of this species did not seem ``contradictory'' to the materialists, nevertheless they thought such a ``guess'' to be most improbable. The authors of the Systeme de la Nature (see Part I, ch. 6) say that if anyone were to revolt against such a piece of conjecture, if anyone were to object "that Nature acts with the help of a certain sum of general and invariable laws'', and added in doing So that "man, the quadruped, the fish, the insect, the plant, etc., exist from the beginning of time and remain eternally unaltered" they "would not object to this''. They would only remark that such a view also does not contradict the truths they set forth. "Man cannot possibly know everything: he cannot know his origin"—that is all that in the end the authors of the Systeme de la Nature say about this important question.
Helvetius seems to be more inclined to the idea of the gradual evolution of man, "Matter is eternal, but its forms are variable,'' he remarks, recalling that even now human 72 natures change under the influence of = climate.^^*^^ He even considered that generally speaking all animal species were variable. But this sound idea was formulated by him very strangely. It followed, in his view, that the causes of "dissimilarity" between the different species of animals and vegetables lie either in the qualities of their very ``embryos'', or in the differences of their environment, the differences of their = ``upbringing''.^^**^^
Thus heredity excludes mutability, and vice versa. If we adopt the theory of mutability, we must as a consequence presuppose that from any given ``embryo'' there can arise, in appropriate circumstances, any animal or vegetable: from the embryo of an oak, for example, a bull or a giraffe. Naturally such a ``conjecture'' could not throw any light on the question of the origin of species, and Helvetius himself, having once made it in passing, never returned to it again.
Just as badly were the French materialists able to explain phenomena of social evolution. The various systems of ``legislation'' were represented by them solely as the product of the conscious creative activity of ``legislators''; the various religious systems as the product of the cunning of priests, etc.
This impotence of French materialism in face of questions of evolution in nature and in history made its philosophical content very poor. In its view of nature, that content was reduced to combating the one-sided conception of matter held by the dualists. In its view of man it was confined to an endless repetition of, and some variations upon, Locke's principle that there are no innate ideas. However valuable such repetition was in combating out-of-date moral and political theories, it could not have serious scientific value unless the materialists had succeeded in applying their conception to the explanation of the spiritual evolution of mankind. We have already said earlier that some very remarkable attempts were made in this direction by the French materialists (i.e., to be precise, by Helvetius), but that they ended in failure (and if they had succeeded, French materialism would have proved very strong in questions of _-_-_
~^^*^^ Le vrai sens du systeme de la nature, London, 1774, p. 15.
~^^**^^ "De l'homme'', (Eumes completes de Helvetius, Paris, 1818, Vol. II, p. 120.
73 evolution). The materialists, in their view of history, took up a purely idealistic standpoint—that opinions govern the world. Orly at times, only very rarely, did materialism break into their historical reflections, in the shape of remarks that some stray atom, finding its way into the head of the ``legislator'' and causing in it a disturbance of the functions of the brain, might alter the course of history for entire ages. Such materialism was essentially fatalism, and left no room for the foreseeing of events, i.e., for the conscious historical activity of thinking individuals.It is not surprising, therefore, that to capable and talented people who had not been drawn into the struggle of social forces in which materialism had been a terrible theoretical weapon of the extreme Left party this doctrine seemed dry, gloomy, melancholy. That was, for example, how Goethe spoke of = it.%%24%% In order that this reproach should cease to be deserved, materialism had to leave its dry and abstract mode of thought, and attempt to understand and explain "real life"—the complex and variegated chain of concrete phenomena—from its own point of view. But in its then form it was incapable of solving that great problem, and the latter was taken possession of by idealist philosophy.
The main and final link in the development of that philosophy was the system of Hegel: therefore we shall refer principally to that system in our exposition.
Hegel called metaphysical the point of view of those thinkers—irrespective of whether they were idealists or materialists—who, failing to understand the process of development of phenomena, willy-nilly represent them to themselves and others as petrified, disconnected, incapable of passing one into another. To this point of view he opposed dialectics, which studies phenomena precisely in their development and, consequently, in their interconnection.
According to Hegel, dialectics is the principle of all life. Frequently one meets people who, having expressed some abstract proposition, willingly recognise that perhaps they are mistaken, and that perhaps the exactly opposite point of view is correct. These are well-bred people, saturated to their finger tips with ``tolerance'': live and let live, they say to their intellect. Dialectics has nothing in common with the sceptical tolerance of men of the world, but it, too, knows how to reconcile directly opposite abstract propositions. 74 Man is mortal, we say, regarding death as something rooted in external circumstances and quite alien to the nature of living man. It follows that a man has two qualities: first of being alive, and secondly of also being mortal. But upon closer investigation it turns out that life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence and will transform it into its own opposite. Everything flows, everything changes; and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting this eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of phenomena. Goethe personifies dialectics in the shape of a spirit:
In Lebensfluthen, im Thatensturm, Wall'ich, auf und ab, Webe hin und her! Geburt und Grab, Ein ewiges Meer, Bin wechselnd Weben, Ein gliihend Leben, So schaff'ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit, Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges = Kleid^^*^^
At a particular moment a moving body is at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become motionless. Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with _-_-_
~^^*^^ In the tides of Life, in Actions storm, A fluctuant wave, A shuttle free, Birth and the Grave, An eternal sea, A weaving, flowing, Life, all-glowing, Thus at Time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares The garment of Life which the Deity wears!
(Faust, Part~I, Scene~I [Bayard Taylor's translation].)
75 Hegel, who said that dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not only to cognition of nature. What for example is the meaning of the old saw: summum jus, summa injuria? Does it mean that we act most justly when, having paid our tribute to law, we at the same time give its due to lawlessness? No, that is the interpretation only of "surface thinking, the mind of fools''. The aphorism means that every abstract justice, carried to its logical conclusion, is transformed into injustice, i.e., into its own opposite. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice serves as a brilliant illustration of this. Take a look at economic phenomena. What is the logical conclusion of "free competition"? Every capitalist strives to beat his competitors and to remain sole master of the market. And, of course, cases are frequent when some Rothschild or Vanderbilt succeeds in happily fulfilling this ambition. But this shows that free competition leads to monopoly, that is to the negation of competition, i.e., to its own opposite. Or look at the conclusion to which the so-called labour principle of property, extolled by our Narodnik literature, leads. Only that belongs to me which has been created by my labour. Nothing can be more just than that. And it is no less just that I use the thing I have created at my own free discretion: I use it myself or I exchange it for something else, which for some reason I need more. It is equally just, then, that I make use of the thing I have secured by exchange—again at my free discretion—as I find pleasant, best and advantageous. Let us now suppose that I have sold the product of my own labour for money, and have used the money to hire a labourer, i.e., I have bought somebody else's labour-power. Having taken advantage of this labour-power of another, I turn out to be the owner of value which is considerably higher than the value I spent on its purchase. This, on the one hand, is very just, because it has already been recognised, after all, that I can use what I have secured by exchange as is best and most advantageous for myself: and, on the other hand, it is very unjust, because I am exploiting the labour of another and thereby negating the principle which lay at the foundation of my conception of justice. The property acquired by my personal labour bears me the property created by the labour of another. Summum jus, summa injuria. And such injuria springs up by the very 76 nature of things in the economy of almost any well-to-do handicraftsman, almost every prosperous = peasant.^^*^^And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite.
We have said that the idealist German philosophy regarded all phenomena from the point of view of their evolution, and that this is what is meant by regarding them dialectically. It must be remarked that the metaphysicians know how to distort the very doctrine of evolution itself. They affirm that neither in nature nor in history are there any leaps. When they speak of the origin of some phenomenon or social institution, they represent matters as though this phenomenon or institution was once upon a time very tiny, quite unnoticeable, and then gradually grew up. When it is a question of destroying this or that phenomenon and institution, they presuppose, on the contrary, its gradual diminution, continuing up to the point when the phenomenon becomes quite unnoticeable on account of its microscopic dimensions. Evolution conceived of in this way explains absolutely nothing; it presupposes the existence of the phenomena which it has to explain, and reckons only with the quantitative changes which take place in them. The supremacy of metaphysical thought was once so powerful in natural science that many naturalists could not imagine evolution otherwise than just in the form of such a gradual increase or diminution of the magnitude of the phenomenon being investigated. Although from the time of Harvey it was already recognised that "everything living develops out of the egg'', no exact conception was linked, evidently, _-_-_
~^^*^^ Mr.~Mikhailovsky thinks this eternal and ubiquitous supremacy of dialectics incomprehensible: everything changes except the laws of dialectical motion, he says with sarcastic scepticism. Yes, that's just it, we reply: and if it surprises you, if you wish to contest this view, remember that you will have to contest the fundamental standpoint of modern science. In order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient for you to recall those words of Playfair which Lyell took as an epigraph to his famous work Principles of Geology: "Amid the revolutions of the globe, the economy of Nature has been uniform, and her laws are the only things that have resisted the general movement. The rivers and the rocks, the seas and the continents have been changed in all their parts; but the laws which direct these changes, and the rules to which they are subject, have remained invariably the same."
77 with such development from the egg, and the discovery of spermatozoa immediately served as the occasion for the appearance of a theory according to which in the seminal cell there already existed a ready-made, completely developed but microscopical little animal, so that all its ``development'' amounted to growth. Some wise sages, including many famous European evolutionary sociologists, still regard the ``evolution'', say, of political institutions, precisely in this way: history makes no leaps: va piano (go softly)....German idealist philosophy decisively revolted against such a misshapen conception of evolution. Hegel bitingly ridiculed it, and demonstrated irrefutably that both in nature and in human society leaps constituted just as essential a stage of evolution as gradual quantitative changes. "Changes in being,'' he says, "consist not only in the fact that one quantity passes into another quantity, but also that quality passes into quantity, and vice versa. Each transition of the latter kind represents an interruption in gradualness (ein Abbrechen des Allmahlichen), and gives the phenomenon a new aspect, qualitatively distinct from the previous one. Thus, water when it is cooled grows hard, not gradually... but all at once; having already been cooled to freezingpoint, it can still remain a liquid only if it preserves a tranquil condition, and then the slightest shock is sufficient for it suddenly to become hard.... In the world of moral phenomena ... there take place the same changes of quantitative into qualitative, and differences in qualities there also are founded upon quantitative differences. Thus, a little less, a little more constitutes that limit beyond which frivolity ceases and there appears something quite different, crime... . Thus also, states—other conditions being equal— acquire a different qualitative character merely in consequence of differences in their size. Particular laws and a particular constitution acquire quite a different significance with the extension of the territory of a state and of the numbers of its = citizens."^^*^^
Modern naturalists know very well how frequently changes of quantity lead to changes of quality. Why does one part of the solar spectrum produce in us the sensation of a _-_-_
~^^*^^ Wissenschaft der Logik (Second ed.F Leipzig, 1932), Part I, Book I, pp. 383--84.—Ed.
78 red colour, another, of green, etc.? Physics replies that everything is due here to the number of oscillations of the particles of the ether. It is known that this number changes for every colour of the spectrum, rising from red to violet. Nor is this all. The intensity of heat in the spectrum increases in proportion to the approach to the external border of the red band, and reaches its highest point a little distance from it, on leaving the spectrum. It follows that in the spectrum there are rays of a special kind which do not give light but only heat. Physics says, here too, that the qualities of the rays change in consequence of changes in the number of oscillations of the particles of the ether.But even this is not all. The. sun's rays have a certain chemical effect, as is shown for example by the fading of material in the sun. What distinguishes the violet and the so-called ultra-violet rays, which arouse in us no sensation of light, is their greatest chemical strength. The difference in the chemical action of the various rays is explained once again only by quantitative differences in the oscillations of the particles of the ether: quantity passes into quality.
Chemistry confirms the same thing. Ozone has different qualities from ordinary oxygen. Whence comes this dif' ference? In the molecule of ozone there is a different number of atoms from that contained in the molecule of ordinary oxygen. Let us take three hydrocarbon compounds: CH4 (marsh gas), C2H6 (dimethyl) and C3H8 (methyl-ethyl). All of these are composed according to the formula: n atoms of carbon and 2n -f- 2 atoms of hydrogen. If n is equal to 1, you get marsh gas; if n is equal to 2, you get dimethyl; if n is equal to 3, methyl-ethyl appears. In this way entire series are formed, the importance of which any chemist will tell you; and all these series unanimously confirm the principle of the old dialectical idealists that quantity passes into quality.
Now we have learned the principal distinguishing features of dialectical thought, but the reader feels himself unsatisfied. But where is the famous triad, he asks, the triad which is, as is well known, the whole essence of Hegelian dialectics? Your pardon, reader, we do not mention the triad for the simple reason that it does not at all play in Hegel's work the part which is attributed to it by people who have not the least idea of the philosophy of that thinker, 79 and who have studied it, for example, from the "textbook of criminal law" of = Mr.~Spasovich.^^*^^ Filled with sacred simplicity, these light-hearted people are convinced that the whole argumentation of the German idealist was reduced to references to the triad; that whatever theoretical difficulties the old man came up against, he left others to rack their poor ``unenlightened'' brains over them while he, with a tranquil smile, immediately built up a syllogism: all phenomena occur according to a triad, I am faced with a phenomenon, consequently I shall turn to the = triad.^^**^^ This is simply lunatic nonsense, as one of the characters of Karonin puts it, or unnaturally idle talk, if you prefer the expression of Shchedrin. Not once in the eighteen volumes of Hegel's works does the ``triad'' play the part of an argument, and anyone in the least familiar with his philosophical doctrine understands that it could not play such a part. With Hegel the triad has the same significance as it had previously with Fichte, whose philosophy is essentially different from the Hegelian. Obviously only gross _-_-_
~^^*^^ "Aspiring to a barrister's career,'' Mr.~Mikhailovsky tells us,'' "I passionately, though unsystematically, read various legal works. Among them was the text-book of criminal law by Mr.~Spasovich. This work contains a brief survey of various philosophical systems in their relation to criminology. I was particularly struck by the famous triad of Hegel, in virtue of which punishment so gracefully becomes the reconciliation of the contradiction between law and crime. The seductive character of the tripartite formula of Hegel in its most varied applications is well known.... And it is not surprising that I was fascinated by it in the text-book of Mr.~Spasovich. Nor is it surprising that thereupon it drew me to Hegel and to much else...'' (Russkaya Mysl, 1891, Vol. Ill, Part II, p. 188). A pity, a very great pity, that Mr.~Mikhailovsky does not tell us how far he satisfied his yearning "for Hegel''. To all appearances, he did not go very far in this direction.
~^^**^^ Mr.~Mikhailovsky assures us that the late N. Sieber, when arguing with him about the inevitability of capitalism in Russia, "used all possible arguments, but at the least danger hid behind the authority of the immutable and unquestionable tripartite dialectical development" (Russkaya Mysl, 1892, Vol. VI, Part II, p. 196). He assures us also that all of what he calls Marx's prophecies about the outcome of capitalist development repose only on the ``triad''. We shall discuss Marx later, but of N. Sieber we may remark that we had more than once to converse with the deceased, and not once did we hear from him references to "dialectical development''. He himself said mflre than once that he was quite ignorant of the significance of Hegel in the development of modern economics. Of course, everything can be blamed on the dead, and therefore Mr.~Mikhailovsky's evidence is irrefutable.
80 ignoranee can consider the principal distinguishing feature of one philosophical system to be that which applies to at. least two quite different systems.We are sorry that the ``triad'' has diverted us from our exposition: but, having mentioned it, we should reach a conclusion. So let us examine what kind of a bird it is.
Every phenomenon, developing to its conclusion, becomes transformed into its opposite; but as the new phenomenon, being opposite to the first, also is transformed in its turn into its own opposite, the third phase of development bears a formal resemblance to the first. For the time being, let us leave aside the question of the extent to which such a course of development corresponds to reality: let us admit for the sake of argument that those were wrong who thought that it does so correspond completely. But in any case it is clear that the ``triad'' only follows from one of Hegel's principles, it does not in the least serve him as a main principle itself. This is a very essential difference, because if the triad had figured as a main principle, the people who attribute such an important part to it could really seek protection under its ``authority'', but as it plays no such part, the only people who can hide behind it are maybe those who, as the saying has it, have heard a bell, but where they cannot tell.
Naturally the situation would not change one iota if, without hiding behind the ``triad'', dialecticians "at the least danger" sought protection "behind the authority" of the principle that every phenomenon is transformed into its own opposite. But they never behaved in that way either, and they did not do so because the principle mentioned does not at all exhaust their views on the evolution of phenomena. They say in addition, for example, that in the process of evolution quantity passes into quality, and quality into quantity. Consequently they have to reckon both with the qualitative and the quantitative sides of the process; and this presupposes an attentive attitude to its real course in actual fact; and this means in its turn that they do not content themselves with abstract conclusions from abstract principles—or, at any rate, must not be satisfied with such conclusions, if they wish to remain true to their outlook upon the world.
"On every page of his works Hegel constantly and 81 tirelessly pointed out that philosophy is identical with the totality of empirics, that philosophy requires nothing so insistently as going deeply into the empirical sciences. ... Material facts without thought have only a relative importance, thought without material facts is a mere chimera... . Philosophy is that consciousness at which the empirical sciences arrive relative to themselves. It cannot be anything else."
That is the view of the task of the thinking investigator which Lassalle drew from the doctrine of Hegelian philos= ophy^^*^^: philosophers must be specialists in those sciences which they wish to help to reach ``self-consciousness''. It seems a very far cry from the special study of a subject to thoughtless chatter in honour of the ``triad''. And let them not tell us that Lassalle was not a ``real'' Hegelian, that he belonged to the ``Left'' and sharply reproached the ``Right'' with merely engaging in abstract constructions of thought. The man tells you plainly that he borrowed his view directly from Hegel.
But perhaps you will want to rule out the evidence of the author of the System of Acquired Rights, just as in court the evidence of relatives is ruled out. We shall not argue and contradict; we shall call as a witness a quite extraneous person, the author of the Sketches of the Gogol Period. We ask for attention: the witness will speak long and, as usual, wisely.
"We follow Hegel as little as we follow Descartes or Aristotle. Hegel now belongs to past history; the present has its own philosophy and clearly sees the flaws in the Hegelian system. It must be admitted, however, that the principles advanced by Hegel were indeed very near to the truth, and this thinker brought out some aspects of the truth with truly astonishing power. Of these truths, the discovery of some stands to Hegel's personal credit; others do not belong exclusively to his system, they belong to German philosophy as a whole from the time of Kant and Fichte; but nobody before Hegel had formulated them so clearly and had expressed them with such power as they were in his system.
_-_-_~^^*^^ See his System der erworbenen Rechte (Second ed.), Leipzig, 1880, Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
82"First of all we shall point to the most fruitful principle underlying all progress which so sharply and brilliantly distinguishes German philosophy in general, and the Hegelian system in particular, from the hypocritical and craven views that predominated at that time (the beginning of the nineteenth century) among the French and the English: 'Truth is the supreme goal of thought; seek truth, for in truth lies good; whatever truth may be, it is better than falsehood; the first duty of the thinker is not to retreat from any results; he must be prepared to sacrifice his most cherished opinions to truth. Error is the source of all ruin; truth is the supreme good and the source of all other good.' To be able to appraise the extreme importance of this demand, common to German philosophy as a whole since the time of Kant, but expressed with exceptional vigour by Hegel, one must remember what strange and narrow restrictions the thinkers of the other schools of that period imposed upon truth. They began to philosophise, only in order to 'justify their cherished convictions', i.e., they sought not truth, but support for their prejudices. Each took from truth only what pleased him and rejected every truth that was unpleasant to him, bluntly admitting that a pleasing error suited him much better than impartial truth. The German philosophers (especially Hegel) called this practice of seeking not truth but confirmation of pleasing prejudices 'subjective thinking' (Saints above! Is this, perhaps, why our subjective thinkers called Hegel a scholastic?— Author), philosophising for personal pleasure, and not for the vital need of truth. Hegel fiercely denounced the idle and pernicious pastime.'' (Listen well!) "As a necessary precaution against inclinations to digress from truth in order to pander to personal desires and prejudices, Hegel advanced his celebrated 'dialectical method of thinking'. The essence of this method lies in that the thinker must not rest content with any positive deduction, but must find out whether the object he is thinking about contains qualities and forces the opposite of those which the object had presented to him at first sight. Thus, the thinker was obliged to examine the object from all sides, and truth appeared to him only as a consequence of a conflict between all possible opposite opinions. Gradually, as a result of this method, the former one-sided conceptions of an object were 83 supplanted by a full and all-sided investigation, and a living conception was obtained of all the real qualities of an object. To explain reality became the paramount duty of philosophical thought. As a result, extraordinary attention was paid to reality, which had been formerly ignored and unceremoniously distorted in order to pander to personal, one-sided prejudices.'' (De te fabula narratur!) "Thus, conscientious, tireless search for truth took the place of the former arbitrary interpret'ations. In reality, however, everything depends upon circumstances, upon the conditions of place and time, and therefore, Hegel found that the former general phrases by which good and evil were judged without an examination of the circumstances and causes that give rise to a given phenomenon, that these general, abstract aphorisms were unsatisfactory. Every object, every phenomenon has its own significance, and it must be judged according to the circumstances, the environment, in which it exists. This rule was expressed by the formula: 'There is no abstract truth; truth is concrete,' i.e., a definite judgement can be pronounced only about a definite fact, after examining all the circumstances on which it = depends."^^*^^
_-_-_~^^*^^ Ghernyshevsky, Sketches of the Gogol Period in Russian Literature, St. Petersburg, 1892, pp. 258--59. In a special footnote the author of the Sketches magnificently demonstrates what is the precise meaning of this examination -of all the circumstances on which the particular phenomenon depends. We shall quote this footnote too. "For example: 'Is rain good or bad?' This is an abstract question; a definite answer cannot be given to it. Sometimes rain is beneficial, sometimes, although more rarely, it is harmful. One must inquire specifically: 'After the grain was sown it rained heavily for five hours—was the rain useful for the crop?'—only here is the answer: 'that rain was very useful' clear and sensible. 'But in that very same summer, just when harvest time arrived, it rained in torrents for a whole week—was that good for the crop?' The answer: 'No. That rain was harmful,' is equally clear and correct. That is how all questions are decided by Hegelian philosophy. 'Is war disastrous or beneficial?' This cannot be answered definitely in general; one must know what kind of war is meant, everything depends upon circumstances, time and place. For savage peoples, the harmfulness of war is less palpable, the benefits of it are more tangible. For civilised peoples, war usually does more harm than good. But the war of 1812, for example, was a war of salvation for the Russian people. The Battle of = Marathon%%25%% was a most beneficial event in the history of mankind. Such is the meaning of the axiom: 'There is no abstract truth; truth is concrete'—a conception of an object is concrete when it presents itself with all the qualities and specific features and in the circumstances, environment, in which the object __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 85. 84
And so, on the one hand, we are told that the distinguishing feature of Hegel's philosophy was its most careful investigation of reality, the most conscientious attitude to any particular subject, the study of the latter in its living environment, with all those circumstances of time and place which condition or accompany its existence. The evidence of N. G. Chernyshevsky is identical in this case with the evidence of F. Lassalle. And on the other hand we are assured that this philosophy was empty scholasticism, the whole secret of which consisted in the sophistical use of the ``triad''. In this case the evidence of Mr.~Mikhailovsky is in complete agreement with the evidence of Mr. V. V., and of a whole legion of other modern Russian writers. How is this divergence of witnesses to be explained? Explain it any way you please: but remember that Lassalle and the author of the Sketches of the Gogol Period did know the philosophy they were talking about, while Messrs. Mikhailovsky, V. V., and their brethren have quite certainly not given themselves the trouble of studying even a single work of Hegel.
And notice that in characterising dialectical thought the author of the Sketches did not say one word about the triad. How is it that he did not notice that same elephant, which Mr.~Mikhailovsky and company so stubbornly and so ceremoniously bring out on view to every loafer? Once again please remember that the author of the Sketches of the Gogol Period knew the philosophy of Hegel, while Mr.~Mikhailovsky and Co. have not the least conception of it.
Perhaps the reader may be pleased to recall certain other judgements on Hegel passed by the author of the Sketches of the Gogol Period. Perhaps he will point out to us the famous article: "Criticism of Philosophical Prejudices Against Communal Ownership of Land"? This article does speak about the triad and, to all appearances, the latter is put forward as the main hobby-horse of the German idealist. But it is only in appearance. Discussing the history of property, the writer asserts that in the third and highest phase of its development it will return to its point of _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 84. exists, and not abstracted from these circumstances and its living specific features (as it is presented by abstract thinking, the judgement of which has, therefore, no meaning for real life)."
85 departure, i.e., that private property in the land and the means of production will yield place to social property. Such a return, he says, is a general law which manifests itself in every process of development. The author's argument is in this case, in fact, nothing else than a reference to the triad. And in this lies its essential defect. It is abstract: the development of property is examined without relating it to concrete historical conditions—and therefore the author's arguments are ingenious, brilliant, but not convincing. They only astound, surprise, but do not convince. But is Hegel responsible for this defect in the argument of the author of the "Criticism of Philosophical Prejudices"? Do you really think his argument would have been abstract had he considered the subject just in the way in which, according to his own words, Hegel advised all subjects to be considered, i.e., keeping to the ground of reality, weighing all concrete conditions, all circumstances of time and place? It would seem that that would not be the case; it would seem that then there would not have been just that defect we have mentioned in the article. But what, in that event, gave rise to the defect? The fact that the author of the article "Criticism of Philosophical Prejudices Against Communal Ownership of Land'', in controverting the abstract arguments of his opponents, forgot the good advice of Hegel, and proved unfaithful to the method of that very thinker to whom he referred. We are sorry that in his polemical excitement he made such a mistake. But, once again, is Hegel to blame because in this particular case the author of "Criticism of Philosophical Prejudices" proved unable to make use of his method? Since when is it that philosophical systems are judged, not by their internal content, but by the mistakes which people referring to them may happen to make?And once again, however insistently the author of the article I have mentioned refers to the triad, even there he does not put it forward as the main hobby-horse of the dialectical method. Even there he makes it, not the foundation but, at most, an unquestionable consequence. The foundation and the main distinguishing feature of dialectics is brought out by him in the following words: "Eternal change of forms, eternal rejection of a form brought into being by a particular content or striving, in consequence of an in- 86 tensification of that striving, the higher development of that same content...—whoever has understood this great, eternal, ubiquitous law, whoever has learnt how to apply it to every phenomenon—ah, how calmly he calls into play the chance which affrights others,'' etc.
"Eternal change of forms, eternal rejection of a form brought into being by a particular content" .. . dialectical thinkers really do look on such a change, such a "rejection of forms" as a great, eternal, ubiquitous law. At the present time this conviction is not shared only by the representatives of some branches of social science who have not the courage to look truth straight in the eyes, and attempt to defend, albeit with the help of error, the prejudices they hold dear. All the more highly must we value the services of the great German idealists who, from the very beginning of the present century, constantly spoke of the eternal change of forms, of their eternal rejection in consequence of the intensification of the content which brought those forms into being.
Earlier we left unexamined "for the time being" the question of whether it is a fact that every phenomenon is transformed, as the German dialectical idealists thought, into its own opposite. Now, we hope, the reader will agree with us that, strictly speaking, this question need not be examined at all. When you apply the dialectical method to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change eternally in consequence of the "higher development of their content''. You will have to trace this process of rejection of forms in all its fullness, if you wish to exhaust the subject. But whether the new form is the opposite of the old you will find from experience, and it is not at all important to know this beforehand. True, it is just on the basis of the historical experience of mankind that every lawyer knowing his business will tell you that every legal institution sooner or later is transformed into its own opposite. Today it promotes the satisfaction of certain social needs; today it is valuable and necessary precisely in view of these needs. Then it begins to satisfy those needs worse and worse. Finally it is transformed into an obstacle to their satisfaction. From something necessary it becomes something harmful—and then it is destroyed. Take whatever you like—the history of literature or the history of 87 species—wherever there is development, you will see similar dialectics. But nevertheless, if someone wanted to penetrate the essence of the dialectical process and were to begin, of all things, with testing the idea of the oppositeness of the phenomena which constitute a series in each particular process of development, he would be approaching the problem from the wrong end.
In selecting the view-point for such a test, there would always turn out to be very much that was arbitrary. The question must be regarded from its objective side, or in other words one must make clear to oneself what is the inevitable change of forms involved in the development of the particular content? This is the same idea, only expressed in other words. But in testing it in practice there is no place for arbitrary choice, because the point of view of the investigator is determined by the very character of the forms and content themselves.
In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin and destruction. "Whether he was the first to do it is debatable,'' says Mr.~Mikhailovsky, "but at all events he was not the last, and the present-day theories of development—the evolutionism of Spencer, Darwinism, the ideas of development in psychology, physics, geology, etc. —have nothing in common with = Hegelianism."^^*^^
If modern natural science confirms at every step the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into quality, can we say that it had nothing in common with Hegelianism? True, Hegel was not the ``last'' of those who spoke of such a transition, but this was just for the very same reason that Darwin was not the ``last'' of those who spoke of the variability of species and Newton was not the ``last'' of the Newtonists. What would you have? Such is the course of development of the human intellect! Express a correct idea, and you will certainly not be the ``last'' of those who defend it; talk some nonsense, and although people have a great failing for it, you still risk finding yourself to be its ``last'' defender and champion. Thus, in our modest opinion, Mr.~Mikhailovsky runs a considerable _-_-_
~^^*^^ Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1894, Vol. II, Part II, p. 150.
88 risk of proving to be the ``last'' supporter of the "subjective method in sociology''. Speaking frankly, we see no reason to regret such a course of development of the intellect.We suggest that Mr.~Mikhailovsky—who finds "debatable" everything in the world, and much else—should refute our following proposition: that wherever the idea of evolution appears "in psychology, physics, geology, etc.'' it always has very much "in common with Hegelianism'', i.e., in every up-to-date study of evolution there are invariably repeated some of the general propositions of Hegel. We say some, and not all, because many modern evolutionists, lacking the adequate philosophical education, understand ``evolution'' abstractly and one-sidedly. An example are the gentry, already mentioned earlier, who assure us that neither nature nor history makes any leaps. Such people would gain a very great deal from acquaintance with Hegel's logic. Let Mr.~Mikhailovsky refute us: but only let him not forget that we cannot be refuted by knowing Hegel only from the "text-book of criminal law" by Mr.~Spasovich and from Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy. He must take the trouble to study Hegel himself.
In saying that the present-day teachings of the evolutionists always have very much "in common with Hegelianism'', we are not asserting that the present evolutionists have borrowed their views from Hegel. Quite the reverse. Very often they have just as mistaken a view of him as Mr.~Mikhailovsky has. And if nevertheless their theories, even partially and just at those points where they turn out to be correct, become a new illustration of ``Hegelianism'', this circumstance only brings out in higher relief the astonishing power of thought of the German idealist: people who never read him, by the sheer force of facts and the evident sense of ``reality'', are obliged to speak as he spoke. One could not think of a greater triumph for a philosopher: readers ignore him, but life confirms his views.
Up to this day it is still difficult to say to what extent the views of the German idealists directly influenced German natural science in the direction mentioned, although it is unquestionable that in the first half of the present century even the naturalists in Germany studied philosophy during their university course, and although such men learned in the biological sciences as Haeckel speak with respect 89 nowadays of the evolutionary theories of some nature-philosophers. But the philosophy of nature was the weak point of German idealism. Its strength lay in its theories dealing with the various sides of historical development. As for those theories, let Mr.~Mikhailovsky remember—if he ever knew—that it was just from the school of Hegel that there emerged all that brilliant constellation of thinkers and investigators who gave quite a new aspect to the study of religion, aesthetics, law, political economy, history, philosophy and so forth. In all these ``disciplines'', during a certain most fruitful period, there was not a single outstanding worker who was not indebted to Hegel for his development and for his fresh views on his own branch of knowledge. Does Mr.~Mikhailovsky think that this, too, is "debatable"? If he does, let him just try.
Speaking of Hegel, Mr.~Mikhailovsky tries "to do it in such a way as to be understood by people uninitiated in the mysteries of the 'philosophical nightcap of Yegor Fyodorovich' as Belinsky disrespectfully put it when he raised the banner of revolt against = Hegel".%%26%% He takes "for this purpose" two examples from Engels's book Anti-Diihrihg (but why not from Hegel himself? That would be much more becoming to a writer "initiated into the mysteries'', etc.).
"A grain of oats falls in favourable conditions: it strikes root and thereby, as such, as a grain, is negated. In its place there arises a stalk, which is the negation of the grain; the plant develops and bears fruit, i.e., new grains of oats, and when these grains ripen, the stalk perishes: it was the negation of the grain, and now it is negated itself. And thereafter the same process of 'negation' and 'negation of negation' is repeated an endless number" (sic!) "of times. At the basis of this process lies contradiction: the grain of oats is a grain and at the same time not a grain, as it is always in a state of actual or potential development.'' Mr.~Mikhailovsky naturally finds this ``debatable''. And this is how this attractive possibility passes with him into reality.
"The first stage, the stage of the grain, is the thesis, or proposition; the second, up to the formation of new grains, is the antithesis, or contradiction; the third is the synthesis or reconciliation" (Mr.~Mikhailovsky has decided to write in a popular style, and therefore leaves no Greek words without explanation or translation) "and all together they 90 constitute a triad or trichotomy. And such is the fate of all that is alive: it arises, it develops and provides the origin of its repetition, after which it dies. A vast number of individual expressions of this process immediately rise up in the memory of the reader, of course, and Hegel's law proves justified in the whole organic world (for the present we go no further). If however we regard our example a little more closely, we shall see the extreme superficiality and arbitrariness of our generalisation. We took a grain, a stalk and once more a grain or, more exactly, a group of grains. But before bearing fruit, a plant flowers. When we speak of oats or some other grain of economic importance, we can have in view a grain that has been sown, the straw and a grain that has been harvested: but to consider that the life of the plant has been exhausted by these three stages is quite unfounded. In the life of a plant the point of flowering is accompanied by an extreme and peculiar straining of forces, and as the flower does not arise direct from the grain, we arrive, even keeping to Hegel's terminology, not at a trichotomy but at least at a tetrachotomy, a division into four: the stalk negates the grain, the flower negates the stalk, the fruit negates the flower. The omission of the moment of flowering is of considerable importance also in the following respect. In the days of Hegel, perhaps, it was permissible to take the grain for the point of departure in the life of the plant, and from the business point of view it may be permissible to do so even today: the business year does begin with the sowing of the grain. But the life of the plant does not begin with the grain. We now know very well that the grain is something very complex in its structure, and itself represents the product of development of the cell, and that the cells requisite for reproduction are formed precisely at the moment of flowering. Thus in the example taken from vegetable life not only has the point of departure been taken arbitrarily and incorrectly, but the whole process has been artificially and once again arbitrarily squeezed into the framework of a = trichotomy."^^*^^ And the conclusion is: "It is about time we ceased to believe that oats grow according to = Hegel."%%27%%
Everything flows, everything changes! In our day, i.e., _-_-_
~^^*^^ Russkoye Bogatstvo. 1894, Vol. II, Part II, pp. 154--57.
91 when the writer of these lines, as a student, studied the natural sciences, oats grew "according to Hegel'', while now "we know very well" that all that is nonsense: now "nous avons chang£ tout cela''. But really, do we quite ``know'' what ``we'' are talking about?Mr.~Mikhailovsky sets forth the example of a grain of oats, which he has borrowed from Engels, quite otherwise than as it is set forth by Engels himself. Engels says: "The grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and finally once more produces grains of = oats,^^*^^ and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten-, twenty-, or = thirty-fold."^^**^^ For Engels the negation of the grain was the entire plant, in the cycle of life of which are included, incidentally, both flowering and fertilisation. Mr.~Mikhailovsky ``negates'' the word plant by putting in its place the word stalk. The stalk, as is known, constitutes only part of a plant, and naturally is negated by its other parts: omnis determinatio est negatio. But that is the very reason why Mr.~Mikhailovsky ``negates'' the expression used by Engels, replacing it by his own: the stalk negates the grain, he shouts, the flower negates the stalk, the fruit negates the flower: there's a tetrachotomy at least! Quite so, Mr.~Mikhailovsky: but all that only goes to prove that in your argument with Engels you do not stop even at ... how shall I put it more mildly ... at the ``moment'' ... of altering the words of your opponent. This method is somewhat ... "subjective".
Once the ``moment'' of substitution has done its work, the hateful triad falls apart like a house of cards. You have left out the moment of flowering—the Russian ``sociologist'' reproaches the German Socialist—and "the omission of the moment of flowering is of considerable importance''. The reader has seen that the "moment of flowering" has been _-_-_
~^^*^^ Engels writes, strictly speaking, of barley, not oats: but this is immaterial, of course.
~^^**^^ F.~Engels, Anti-Duhring, 'Moscow, 1969, pp. 162--63.—Ed.
92 omitted not by Engels, but by Mr.~Mikhailovsky in setting forth the views of Engels; he knows also that ``omissions'' of that kind in literature are given considerable, though quite negative, importance. Mr.~Mikhailovsky here, too, had recourse to a somewhat unattractive ``moment''. But what could he do? The ``triad'' is so hateful, victory is so pleasant, and "people quite uninitiated in the mysteries" of a certain ``nightcap'' are so gullible!We all are innocent from birth, To virtue a great price we pin: But meet such people on this earth That truly, we can't help but = sin...^^*^^
The flower is an organ of the plant and, as such, as little negates the plant as the head of Mr.~Mikhailovsky negates Mr.~Mikhailovsky. But the ``fruit'' or, to be more exact, the fertilised ovum, is really the negation of the given organism being the point of departure of the development of a new life. Engels accordingly considers the cycle of life of a plant from the beginning of its development out of the fertilised ovum to its reproduction of a fertilised ovum. Mr.~Mikhailovsky with the learned air of a connoisseur remarks: "The life of a plant does not begin with the grain. We now know very well, etc.": briefly, we now know that the seed is fertilised during the flowering. Engels, of course, knows this just as well as Mr.~Mikhailovsky. But what does this prove? If Mr.~Mikhailovsky prefers, we shall replace the grain by the fertilised seed, but it will not alter the sense of the life-cycle of the plant, and will not refute the ``triad''. The oats will still be growing "according to Hegel".
By the way, supposing we admit for a moment that the "moment of flowering" overthrows all the arguments of the Hegelians. How will Mr.~Mikhailovsky have us deal with non-flowering plants? Is he really going to leave them in the grip of the triad? That would be wrong, because the triad would in that event have a vast number of subjects.
But we put this question really only in order to make clearer Mr.~Mikhailovsky's idea. We ourselves still remain convinced that you can't save yourself from the triad even with "the flower''. And are we alone in thinking so? Here _-_-_
~^^*^^ From Offenbach's La Belle Helene.—Ed.
93 is what, for example, the botanical specialist Ph. Van Tieghem says: "Whatever be the form of the plant, and to whatever group it may belong thanks to that form, its body always originates in another body which existed before it and from which it separated. In its turn, at a given moment, it separates from its mass particular parts, which become the point of departure, the germs, of as many new bodies, and so forth. In a word it reproduces itself in the same way as it is born: by = dissociation."^^*^^ Just look at that! A scholar of repute, a member of the Institute, a professor at the Museum of Natural History, and talks like a veritable Hegelian: it begins, he says, with dissociation and finishes up with it again. And not a word about the "moment of flowering"! We ourselves understand how very vexing this must be for Mr.~Mikhailovsky; but there's nothing to be done—truth, as we know, is dearer than Plato.Let us once again suppose that "the moment of flowering" overthrows the triad. In that case, "keeping to Hegel's terminology, we arrive not at a trichotomy but at least at a tetrachotomy, a division into four''. "Hegel's terminology" reminds us of his Encyclopaedia. We open its first part, and learn from it that there are many cases when trichotomy passes into tetrachotomy, and that generally speaking trichotomy, as a matter of fact, is supreme only in the sphere of the = spirit.^^**^^ So it turns out that oats grow "according to Hegel'', as Van Tieghem assures us, and Hegel thinks about oats according to Mr.~Mikhailovsky, as is evidenced by the Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Marvel upon marvel! "She to him, and he to me, and I to the barman Peter....''%%28%%
Another example borrowed by Mr.~Mikhailovsky from Engels, to enlighten the ``uninitiated'', deals with the teachings of = Rousseau.%%29%%
"According to Rousseau, people in their natural state and savagery were equal with the equality of animals. But man is distinguished by his perfectibility, and this process of perfection began with the appearance of inequality: thereafter every further step of civilisation was contradictory: they were 'steps seemingly towards the perfection of the _-_-_
~^^*^^ Traite de Botanique (2nd ed.), Paris, 1891, Part I, p. 24.
~^^**^^ Enzyklopadie, Erstcr Teil, § 230, Zusatz.
94 individual man, but in reality towards the decay of the race.... Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts the discovery of which produced this great revolution. For the poet it is gold and silver, but for the philosopher iron and corn, which have civilised men and ruined the human race.' Inequality continues to develop and, reaching its apogee, turns, in the eastern, despotisms, once again into the universal equality of universal insignificance, i.e., returns to its point of departure: and thereafter the further process in the same way brings one to the equality of the social contract."That is how Mr.~Mikhailovsky sets out the example given by Engels. As is quite obvious, he finds this, too, "debatable".
"One could make some remark about Engels's exposition; but it is important for us only to know what precisely Engels values in Rousseau's work (Discours sur lorigine et les fondements de I'inegalite parmi les hommes}. He does not touch upon the question of whether Rousseau rightly or wrongly understands the course of history, he is interested only in the fact that Rousseau 'thinks dialectically': he sees contradiction in the very content of progress, and disposes his exposition in such a way as to make it adaptable to the Hegelian formula of negation and negation of the negation. And in reality this can be done, even though Rousseau did not know the Hegelian dialectical formula."
This is only the first outpost attack on ``Hegelianism'' in the person of Engels. Then follows the attack sur toute la ligne.
"Rousseau, without knowing Hegel, thought dialectically according to Hegel. Why Rousseau and not Voltaire, or not the first man in the street? Because all people, by their very nature, think dialectically. Yet it is precisely Rousseau who is selected, a man who stands out -among his contemporaries not only by his gifts—in this respect many were not inferior to him—but in his very mental make-up and in the character of his outlook on the world. Such an exceptional phenomenon, you might think, ought not to be taken as a test for a general rule. But we pick as we choose. Rousseau is interesting and important, first of all, because he was the first to demonstrate sufficiently sharply the contradictory character of civilisation, and contradiction is the essential condition of the dialectical process. We must however 95 remark that the contradiction discerned by Rousseau has nothing in common with contradiction in the Hegelian sense of the word. The contradiction of Hegel lies in the fact that everything, being in a constant process of motion and change (and precisely by the consistent triple path), is at every given unit of time 'it' and at the same time 'not-it'. If we leave on one side the obligatory three stages of development, contradiction is here simply, as it were, the lining of changes, motion, development. Rousseau also speaks of the process of change. But it is by no means in the very fact of change that he sees contradiction. A considerable part of his argument, both in the Discours and in his other works, can be summarised in the following way: intellectual progress has been accompanied by moral retrogression. Evidently dialectical thinking has absolutely nothing to do with it: there is no 'negation of the negation' here, but only an indication of the simultaneous existence of good and evil in the particular group of phenomena. All the resemblance to the dialectical process is reduced to the single word 'contradiction'. This, however, is only one side of the case. In addition, Engels sees an obvious trichotomy in Rousseau's argument: after primitive equality follows its negation— inequality, then follows the negation of the negation—the equality of all in the eastern despotisms, in face of the power of the khan, sultan, shah. 'Here we have the extreme measure of inequality, the final point which completes the circle and meets the point from which we set out.' But history does not stop at this, it develops new inequalities, and so forth. The words we have quoted are the actual words of Rousseau, and it is they which are particularly dear to Engels, as obvious evidence that Rousseau thinks according to = Hegel."^^*^^
Rousseau "stood out among his contemporaries''. That is true. What made him stand out? The fact that he thought dialectically, whereas his contemporaries were almost without exception metaphysicians. His view of the origin of inequality is precisely a dialectical view, although Mr.~Mikhailovsky denies it.
In the words of Mr.~Mikhailo'vsky, Rousseau only pointed _-_-_
~^^*^^ All these extracts have been taken from the volume of Kusskoye Bogatstvo already quoted.
96 out that intellectual progress was accompanied in the history of civilisation by moral retrogression. No, Rousseau did not only point this out. According to him, intellectual progress was the cause of moral retrogression. It would be possible to realise this even without reading the works of Rousseau: it would be sufficient to recall, on the basis of the previous extract, what part was played in his work by the working of metals and agriculture, which produced the great revolution that destroyed primitive equality. But whoever has read Rousseau himself has not, of course, forgotten the following passage in his Discours sur I'origine de rinegalite: "II me reste a considerer et a rapprocher les differents hasards qui ont pu perfectionner la raison humaine en deteriorant 1'espece, rendre un etre mediant en le rendant sociable___" ``(It remains for me to consider and to bring together the different hazards which have been able to perfect human reason by worsening the human species, making this animal wicked by making him sociable... .'' -Ed.)This passage is particularly remarkable because it illustrates very well Rousseau's view on the capacity of the human race for progress. This peculiarity was spoken of a great deal by his ``contemporaries'' as well. But with them it was a mysterious force which, out of its own inner essence, brought about the successes of reason. According to Rousseau, this capacity "never could develop of its own accord". For its development it required constant impulses from outside. This is one of the most important specific features of the dialectical view of intellectual progress, compared with the metaphysical view. We shall have to refer to it again later. At present what is important is that the passage just quoted expresses with utmost clarity the opinion of Rousseau as to the causal connection between moral retrogression and intellectual = progress.^^*^^ And this is very important for ascertaining the view of this writer on the course of _-_-_
~^^*^^ For doubters there is another extract: "J'ai assigne ce premier degre de la decadence des moeurs- au premier moment de la culture des lettres dans tous les pays du monde.'' Lettre a M. l'abb£ Raynal, (Euvres de Rousseau, Paris, 1820, Vol. IV, p. 43. ``(I have assigned this first degree of the decadence of morals to the first moment of the art of letters in all countries of the world.'' Letter to the Abb6 Raynal, in Rousseau's Works, Paris, 1820, Vol. IV, p. 43.—Ed.)
97 civilisation. Mr.~Mikhailovsky makes it appear that Rousseau simply pointed out a ``contradiction'', and maybe shed some generous tears about it. In reality Rousseau considered this contradiction to be the mainspring of the historical development of civilisation. The founder of civil society, and consequently the grave-digger of primitive equality, was the man who first fenced off a piece of land and said: "It belongs to me.'' In other words, the foundation of civil society is property, which arouses so many disputes among men, evokes in them so much greed, so spoils their morality. But the origin of property presupposed a certain development of "technique and knowledge" (de 1'industrie et des lumieres). Thus primitive relations perished precisely thanks to this development; but at the time when this development led to the triumph of private property, primitive relations between men, on their part, were already in such a state that their further existence had become = impossible.^^*^^ If we judge of Rousseau by the way in which Mr.~Mikhailovsky depicts the ``contradiction'' he pointed out, we might think that the famous Genevese was nothing more than a lachrymose "subjective sociologist'', who at best was capable of inventing a highly moral "formula of progress" for the curing of human ills. In reality Rousseau most of all hated just that kind of ``formula'', and stamped it underfoot whenever he had the opportunity.Civil society arose on the ruins of primitive relations, which had proved incapable of further existence. These relations contained within themselves the embryo of their own negation. In demonstrating this proposition, Rousseau as it were was illustrating in anticipation the thought of Hegel, that every phenomenon destroys itself, becomes transformed into its own opposite. Rousseau's reflection on despotism may be considered a further illustration of this idea.
Now judge for yourself how much understanding of Hegel and Rousseau Mr.~Mikhailovsky displays when he says: "Evidently dialectical thinking has absolutely nothing to do with it"—and when he naively imagines that Engels arbitrarily registered Rousseau in the dialectical department only on the grounds that Rousseau used the expressions _-_-_
~^^*^^ See the beginning of Part~II of Discours sur I'inegalite.
98 ``contradiction'', ``cycle'', "return to the point from which we set out'', etc.But why did Engels quote Rousseau, and not anyone else? "Why Rousseau and not Voltaire, or not the first man in the street? Because all people, by their very nature, think dialectically----"
You're mistaken, Mr.~Mikhailovsky: far from all. You for one would never be taken by Engels for a dialectician. It would be sufficient for him to read your article: "Karl Marx Before the Judgement of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky'', for him to put you down without hesitation among the incorrigible metaphysicians.
On dialectical thinking Engels says: "Men thought dialectically long before they knew what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed. The law of negation of the negation, which is unconsciously operative in nature and history, and, until it has been recognised, also in our heads, was only first clearly formulated by = Hegel."^^*^^ As the reader sees, this refers to unconscious dialectical thinking, from which it is still a very long way to its conscious form. When we say that "extremes meet'', we without noticing it express a dialectical view of things; when we move we, again without suspecting it, are engaged in applied dialectics (we already said earlier that motion is the application of contradiction). But neither motion nor dialectical aphorisms are sufficient to save us from metaphysics in the sphere of systematical thought. On the contrary. The history of thought shows that for a long time metaphysics grew more and more, strong—and necessarily had to grow strong—at the expense of primitive and naive dialectics: "The analysis of nature into its individual parts, the grouping of different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms—these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of nature that have been made during the last four hundred years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as _-_-_
~^^*^^ F.~Engels, Anti-Diihring, Moscow, 1969, p. 170.—Ed.
99 __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] ~ [100]