May there be peace in the East

Georgi Plekhanov (1856-1918) is often called “the father of Russian Marxism”. He was a founding member of the first Russian Marxist group, known as Emancipation of Labor, and became the early movement's foremost theoretician. His two most well known works are “The Development of the Monist View of History” and “The Role of the Individual in History”. At least in my social circles! Plekhanov later supported the Menshevik faction of Russian Social Democracy, backed the Allies in World War I and opposed the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. After his death in 1918, the Bolsheviks turned Plekhanov into a harmless icon of sorts, apparently naming several Bolshevik academic institutions after him! Meanwhile, Plekhanov's remaining supporters were arrested or worse if found.

“The Bourgeois Revolution” is a short piece on the French Revolution, originally published in the German Social Democratic weekly Die Neue Zeit in 1890-91. Its real title is “How the Bourgeoisie Remembers Its Own Revolution”. This is the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) edition, first published in 1955, which also contains an excerpt from another Plekhanov text in which the father of Russian Marxism fulminates against Theosophists and Druids!

Yes, Druids.

I reviewed this pamphlet already two years ago on another product page, mostly on account of the Druids. This review will be somewhat longer!

Plekhanov's Marxist analysis of the French Revolution is interesting. On the one hand, he defends the Jacobins and the Terror, suggesting it was good, necessary and inevitable. On the other hand, however, he also believes that the actions of the Jacobins represent a lower stage of social evolution, and that the future socialist revolution will be very different. The workers will no longer need to resort to terror, while the bourgeoisie will try using it to stop the emancipation of labor.

During the French Revolution, Plekhanov argues, the workers were too weak and the economy too primitive for private property to be abolished and replaced by truly collective, socialized ditto. The best the Jacobins and the “mob” of Paris could accomplish was to make inroads on private property as it was through requisitioning or price controls, but without actually abolishing it overall. The Terror was a sign of weakness. Indeed, Plekhanov believes that ferocious repression is typical of regimes and classes which are weak. Plekhanov also suggests that both Jacobins and the even more radical Hebertists had ideas which, if they had been allowed to evolve further, would land them in the bourgeois or “petty bourgeois” camp, since none of them questioned private property as such. Apparently, only Babeuf called for complete socialization.

The evolution of society and the economy has finally, at the end of the 19th century, made it possible for the proletariat to take power in its own hands, wield it and establish socialism, which Plekhanov in true Marxist fashion believes is a historic necessity. Therefore, the new proletarian regime won't resort to terroristic methods, excepts in self-defense. It has history, sheer numbers and (presumably) morality on its side.

Thus, while giving his support to the radicals during the French Revolution, Plekhanov in some sense nevertheless believes that they were doomed to failure. It's easy to see how both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks could find talking points in “The Bourgeois Revolution”. The Bolsheviks could point to Plekhanov's defense of the Jacobins and the sans-culottes, his conviction that the Terror and the centralized war economy were necessary to save the revolution, and his criticism of the “petty bourgeois” and “bourgeois” tendencies in the thinking of even the revolutionary factions. Indeed, a large portion of Plekhanov's article attacks the moderate Girondins. But, ironically, the Mensheviks could also find useful material in the text. If terror is the weapon of weak regimes, if requisitioning and other crisis measures aren't true socialization, if certain economies are too backward for socialism, what does that tell us about Soviet Russia? Perhaps the October Revolution was a mistake, and perhaps the Bolshevik regime is doomed to be defeated, too, just as the Jacobins?

Of course, Lenin would have argued that since backward Russia is part of a global economy ripe for socialism, and can export the revolution to the West, it's backwardness isn't decisive in the final analysis. Marx would probably have said the same thing, judging by his famous correspondence with Vera Zasulich. It seems Plekhanov eventually came to the opposite conclusion!

As already mentioned, this edition of “The Bourgeois Revolution” was published by the Socialist Labor Party, a small Marxist group in the United States. In its present form, the SLP was established in 1890 and hence could comment on the Russian revolutions as they happened. The SLP's position on the October Revolution fell somewhere in between the Bolshevik and Menshevik ditto. On the one hand, the SLP regarded the Bolshevik revolution as fully justified, and protested U.S. military intervention in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, the SLP didn't believe that socialism was possible in such a backward nation. In the advanced United States, by contrast, socialism could be introduced by more or less peaceful means. What made the SLP's position peculiar, is that they supported both Lenin and Stalin, despite being convinced that the Soviet Union would never become truly socialist. It's almost as if the SLP regarded the “Stalinist” bureaucracy as somewhat justified, given the relatively primitive nature of Russia. It's interesting to note that some Mensheviks reached the same conclusion, arguing that Stalinism was an inevitable stage made necessary by Russian backwardness. (The SLP continued to admire Lenin even after repudiating Stalin circa 1940. In 1978, the small party finally changed its analysis, arguing in favor of the Workers' Opposition instead.)

But enough about the SLP. Georgi Plekhanov's “The Bourgeois Revolution” is interesting in its own right. As far as I can tell, this really is the original Marxist analysis of the French Revolution, so it can be taken as a short and clarifying introduction to that subject. Of course, Plekhanov inadvertently also clarifies the weaknesses of Marxism. As we know, there was no socialist revolution in the economically advanced nations. Conversely, socialist revolutions in backward nations *did* succeed in nationalizing the economy, but without workers' power. The ruling “Stalinist” bureaucracy sometimes proved more repressive than the Jacobins! Eventually, many workers started longing for…the Gironde. Perhaps the ghost of the later, Menshevik, Plekhanov has come back to haunt the revolutionary hollows?

Druids, anyone…?