Socialism and the Political Struggle

by Georgi Plekhanov

Georgi V. Plekhanov 29 November 1856 – 30 May 1918) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia.
Here we present his first work, written in 1883. In it, he touches on Anarchism, Bakunin, Marx, Revolution and more. Published as an e-book for the first time.
Quotes from the
Let us help the people in its anti-state struggle. Let us unite its dispersed efforts in one revolutionary stream – and then the awkward edifice of the state will crash, opening by its fall a new era of social freedom and economic equality! These few words expressed the whole programme of our “rebels”.
In this sketchy review of the programmes of the different groups of Russian revolutionaries we must not forget that the views according to which “all constitutions” were only more or less unprofitable contracts with the devil, as old F. H. Jacobi put it – such views, we say, were typical not only of the Narodniks and anarchists. If the reader knows about Frederick Engels’ polemic with p.Titachov, he will probably remember that the editor of Nabat, a who disagreed with the Bakuninists on the question of practical struggle, was in perfect agreement with them on their basic views about the social and political condition of our country. He looked at it through the same prism of Russian exceptionalism and the “inborn communist tendencies of the Russian people”. (To be persuaded of this one needs but to compare the “Letter to Frederick Engels” just referred to with Bakunin’s pamphlet quoted above.)
We Russians could add that exactly the same mish-mash reigned in the first half of the seventies in the minds of our socialists and represented the general background against which two extreme trends stood the so-called Vperyod group and the Bakuninists. The former showed a tendency towards German Social-Democracy, the latter were a Russian version of the anarchist faction of the International. Differing very greatly from each other in almost all respects, the two trends were at one – strange as that is – in their negative attitude to “politics”. And it must be confessed that the anarchists were more consistent in this respect than the Russian Social-Democrats of the time.
From the anarchist point of view the political question is the touchstone of any working-class programme. The anarchists not only deny any deal with the modern state, they go so far as to exclude from their notions of “future society” anything that recalls the idea of state in one way or another. “Autonomy of the individual in an autonomous community” – such has been the motto of all consistent supporters of this trend. We know that its founder – Proudhon – in his publication La Voix du peuple set himself the not quite modest task “to do as regards the government” (which he confused with the state) “what Kant did as regards religion” and carried his anti-state zeal so far as to declare that Aristotle himself was “a sceptic in matters of state”.
We cannot enter here into a detailed analysis of anarchism in general or of Bakuninism in particular. (Let us simply remind our reader of the objection made to Proudhon by Rittinghausen. “Power, government and all its forms,” said the tireless propagandist of the theory of direct popular legislation, “are only varieties of the species that is interference by society in people’s relations with things and, consequently, with one another ... I call on M. Proudhon to throw into my face, as the result of his intellectual labour, the following ’No, there must be no such interference by society in people’s relations with things and, consequently, with one another!
Proletariat, syndicalism, anarchist-communist, collectivist,

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1883

About the author

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (Russian: Георгий Валентинович Плеханов) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia. During World War I Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany and he returned home to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution. Plekhanov was hostile to the Bolshevik party headed by Vladimir Lenin, however, and was an opponent of the Soviet regime which came to power in the autumn of 1917. He died the following year. Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Russian Communist Party following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting defense of Marxist political methods in the context of the Narodnik/Legal Marxist debates of the late 1800s revolutionary movements, similar to the earliest works of Lenin dealing with P. B. Struve and co. A basic, well-phrased defense of Marxist political method and materialist analysis, as well as allowing (albeit restricted) for the progressive role of the peasantry. Very useful as a work defending the use of state power by revolutionaries and the proletariat against reactionaries.

Also a useful quote on the role of the Communist Party, "[Marxists] try to organize the workers into a separate party in order to segregate the exploited from the exploiters and give political expression to the economic antagonism [in society]." Particularly useful in dealing with the various revisionist trends in modern Communist parties who claim to represent "all people" in society, i.e. the "Three Represents," etc.

Unfortunately not nearly enough on Marxist philosophy, dialectics or materialism.