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Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente #31
Historical Materialism
This classic volume contains Nikolai Bukharin's 1928 treatise, "Historical Materialism". Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888-1938) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and author. Bukharin was an important Bolshevik revolutionary, and spent six years with Lenin and Trotsky in exile. He wrote prolifically on the subject of revolutionary theory. This book will appeal to those with an interest in the Russian Revolution, and would make for a fantastic addition to collections of related literature. Contents include: "The Practical Importance of the Social Sciences", "Cause and Purpose in the Social Sciences (Causation and Teleology", "Determinism and Indeterminism (Necessity and Free Will)", "Dialectic Materialism", "Society", "The Equilibrium Between Society and Nature", "The Equilibrium Between the Elements of Society", etc. Many classic books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
404 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1921
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About the author
Nikolai Bukharin
195 books66 followersNikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician, advocated gradual agricultural collectivization; after the last "show trial" of Moscow of the 1930s for treason, people executed him.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, a Russian prolific author, wrote on theory.
As a young man, he spent six years in exile, worked closely with Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After February 1917, he returned, his credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October, he served as editor of Pravda, the newspaper.
Within the bitterly divide, his move to the right as a defender of the new economy, positioned him favorably as chief ally of Joseph Stalin, and from the party leadership, they together ousted Trotsky, Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev, and Lev Borisovich Kamenev. From 1926, Bukharin enjoyed great power as general secretary of committee of Comintern to 1929. Nevertheless, decision of Stalin to proceed drove the two men apart, and the Politburo expelled Bukharin.
When the purges began in 1936, Joseph Stalin for pretext liquidated his former allies and rivals for power, and some letters, conversations, and tapped phone calls of Bukharin indicated disloyalty. People arrested him in February 1937, and charged conspiracy to overthrow the state. Proceedings alienated many western Communist sympathizers.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, a Russian prolific author, wrote on theory.
As a young man, he spent six years in exile, worked closely with Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After February 1917, he returned, his credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October, he served as editor of Pravda, the newspaper.
Within the bitterly divide, his move to the right as a defender of the new economy, positioned him favorably as chief ally of Joseph Stalin, and from the party leadership, they together ousted Trotsky, Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev, and Lev Borisovich Kamenev. From 1926, Bukharin enjoyed great power as general secretary of committee of Comintern to 1929. Nevertheless, decision of Stalin to proceed drove the two men apart, and the Politburo expelled Bukharin.
When the purges began in 1936, Joseph Stalin for pretext liquidated his former allies and rivals for power, and some letters, conversations, and tapped phone calls of Bukharin indicated disloyalty. People arrested him in February 1937, and charged conspiracy to overthrow the state. Proceedings alienated many western Communist sympathizers.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 9, 2021
Marx wrote somewhere that at the end or beginning of an epoch there is a summary, a systematization of the previous thinking. The achievements of antiquity were systematized by Aristotle. The modern breakthrough of Hegel. The thinking that comes afterwards is a critique of these masters, but what Marx forgot to write is that these summaries, which in their accumulation of knowledge also need to be translated. For every critique of Hegel, Aristotle, and Aquinas, there have been commentators and translators who try to translate these qualitative leaps in knowledge into something that is both useful and understandable.
Nikolai Bukharin's book clearly places itself in this second category. This Russian revolutionary was described by Lenin as the party's "golden boy" and as one of the party's ”most brilliant theorists”. Like so many other bright stars of the Russian Revolution, the self-sacrificial spasms of the Russian Communist Party in the 1930 marked him for execution.
This book was intended as a textbook in the method of scientific Marxism for party members. According to the author, the basis for this method was precisely historical materialism. Basically, Bukharin tries to explain Marxism as a social science, a tool for the party and its members in a way that becomes reasonably accessible. In this, of course, simplifications and interpretations take place, from Marx's descriptions of specific phenomena a system is created, which is almost all-encompassing. With that project, he succeeds, and even manages to present it in an educational way. The fact that a book that describes the philosophical conditions of the social sciences in such a detailed but also clear way, and then was used as a textbook for illiterates in Russia says as much about the pedagogical ability of the Russian Communist Party as Bukharin's own.
The book begins with a critique of philosophical idealism and the ”bourgeois misconceptions” of science. Here, the book is at its weakest, partly the debates are out of date almost a hundred years later, and partly and partly the straw man Bukharin attacks seems to be disingenuously stupid. But in a book that aims to deal with almost everything, this problems becomes inevitable.
He then goes on to define historical materialism: all social and human phenomena must be seen as part of a process, as a being in constant creation, shaped by its history. The driving factor in this development is the economy. Everything has a cause, everything has an effect. And here the author's is the weakest in comparison with Marx, where Marx saw exuberantly complex systems with multiple causes, Bukharin paints a somewhat simplistic materialism with a specific caus, the economic one. Soviet Marxism has not yet solidified into the vulgar materialism of the Stalinist era, but here it can be glimpsed.
The book's significance for the Marxist tradition is difficult to overestimate, it became canon for the first and second generation Russian revolutionaries but also became a starting point against which later Marxists could nuance the picture. Lukacs in his critique of Bukharin materialsim, Gramsci in the critique of the mechanical materialism's treatment of the base-superstructure problem.
Despite these problems, the book is more nuanced than many might people think, and an indispensable treasure for anyone who wants to understand the development of Marxism, in its pedagogical systematics, it is also a good book to start from the classic issues and debates that have since been this traditions signum. A starting point for understanding, but not a book that can be read without the criticism it later received from its own ranks.
Nikolai Bukharin's book clearly places itself in this second category. This Russian revolutionary was described by Lenin as the party's "golden boy" and as one of the party's ”most brilliant theorists”. Like so many other bright stars of the Russian Revolution, the self-sacrificial spasms of the Russian Communist Party in the 1930 marked him for execution.
This book was intended as a textbook in the method of scientific Marxism for party members. According to the author, the basis for this method was precisely historical materialism. Basically, Bukharin tries to explain Marxism as a social science, a tool for the party and its members in a way that becomes reasonably accessible. In this, of course, simplifications and interpretations take place, from Marx's descriptions of specific phenomena a system is created, which is almost all-encompassing. With that project, he succeeds, and even manages to present it in an educational way. The fact that a book that describes the philosophical conditions of the social sciences in such a detailed but also clear way, and then was used as a textbook for illiterates in Russia says as much about the pedagogical ability of the Russian Communist Party as Bukharin's own.
The book begins with a critique of philosophical idealism and the ”bourgeois misconceptions” of science. Here, the book is at its weakest, partly the debates are out of date almost a hundred years later, and partly and partly the straw man Bukharin attacks seems to be disingenuously stupid. But in a book that aims to deal with almost everything, this problems becomes inevitable.
He then goes on to define historical materialism: all social and human phenomena must be seen as part of a process, as a being in constant creation, shaped by its history. The driving factor in this development is the economy. Everything has a cause, everything has an effect. And here the author's is the weakest in comparison with Marx, where Marx saw exuberantly complex systems with multiple causes, Bukharin paints a somewhat simplistic materialism with a specific caus, the economic one. Soviet Marxism has not yet solidified into the vulgar materialism of the Stalinist era, but here it can be glimpsed.
The book's significance for the Marxist tradition is difficult to overestimate, it became canon for the first and second generation Russian revolutionaries but also became a starting point against which later Marxists could nuance the picture. Lukacs in his critique of Bukharin materialsim, Gramsci in the critique of the mechanical materialism's treatment of the base-superstructure problem.
Despite these problems, the book is more nuanced than many might people think, and an indispensable treasure for anyone who wants to understand the development of Marxism, in its pedagogical systematics, it is also a good book to start from the classic issues and debates that have since been this traditions signum. A starting point for understanding, but not a book that can be read without the criticism it later received from its own ranks.
March 30, 2015
All in all I felt this was a good read. Bukharin's initial thesis on dialectics was a little weak, relying on appeal to common sense over strong argument. There is a middle section where he goes into everything from Babylonian mythology to steel working to demonstrate materialist change in societies but it comes off more like Bukharin flaunting knowledge. When he expands on Marx, however, he's a lot more clear and argumentative.
February 28, 2024
Though I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, I think he does a very good job of presenting his subject matter in a systematic and understandable way, and contributes a good deal to the discussion of what a Marxist sociology should look like.
November 10, 2021
An excellent work by Bukharin attempting to expound the various principles of historical materialism, far superior to that of Kautsky and the theorists of the Second International, as well as the entire career of Trotsky.
The drawback of this work is precisely those noted by Lenin and Stalin: Bukharin does not fully understand dialectics, and his work is (although superior to the 2nd Int.) mechanical. Instead of freedom and necessity, Bukharin presents "determinism and indeterminism," dialectical materialism is not treated in its entirety, Bukharin speaks often of "equilibriums" (although acknowledges they are never truly equilibriums), etc.
However, there are some true gems in this work. Unlike most Marxists, Bukharin admits the existence of and actively deals with the possibility of "decay," or a reversion to a previous mode of production. This is all the more important considering the fall of socialism across the world. Additionally, Bukharin has excellent anti-humanist points in the five chapter that handily rebut the more revisionist notions of ideologies such as Juche (As Bukharin points out, humanity is not the "master" of nature, humanity is beholden to nature and can only "master" it as far as humanity complies with its laws).
Perhaps most interestingly, Bukharin deals extensively with art and the various properties he believes it has. I would like to reread and go over that section, as although it is admittedly a very rigid and mechanical analysis, I find it fascinating.
Bukharin also presents revolution as going through four stages. First, the ideological, preparing the proletariat with Marxist ideology; then the violent political revolution; then the restructuring of economic relations; and finally the "technical" revolution brought on by the liberation of the productive forces. The only thing left out here is the cultural revolution.
I would recommend this work heartily, and would like to reread it sometime in the future simply to digest his work even more.
The drawback of this work is precisely those noted by Lenin and Stalin: Bukharin does not fully understand dialectics, and his work is (although superior to the 2nd Int.) mechanical. Instead of freedom and necessity, Bukharin presents "determinism and indeterminism," dialectical materialism is not treated in its entirety, Bukharin speaks often of "equilibriums" (although acknowledges they are never truly equilibriums), etc.
However, there are some true gems in this work. Unlike most Marxists, Bukharin admits the existence of and actively deals with the possibility of "decay," or a reversion to a previous mode of production. This is all the more important considering the fall of socialism across the world. Additionally, Bukharin has excellent anti-humanist points in the five chapter that handily rebut the more revisionist notions of ideologies such as Juche (As Bukharin points out, humanity is not the "master" of nature, humanity is beholden to nature and can only "master" it as far as humanity complies with its laws).
Perhaps most interestingly, Bukharin deals extensively with art and the various properties he believes it has. I would like to reread and go over that section, as although it is admittedly a very rigid and mechanical analysis, I find it fascinating.
Bukharin also presents revolution as going through four stages. First, the ideological, preparing the proletariat with Marxist ideology; then the violent political revolution; then the restructuring of economic relations; and finally the "technical" revolution brought on by the liberation of the productive forces. The only thing left out here is the cultural revolution.
I would recommend this work heartily, and would like to reread it sometime in the future simply to digest his work even more.
December 5, 2025
As a piece of literature, it has some thought provoking insights about class, society, economy, and group dynamics; but is highly repetitive and can be a slog to read. As a piece of historical context, it’s fascinating. What Bukharin preaches can be seen manifest in the operations of the USSR, even after his death.
December 9, 2022
One of the most clear and engaging explanations and explorations of the heuristic of historical materialism.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews