Georgi V. Plekhanov
(Marxists Internet Archive)
1. OUR IMMEDIATE TASK
Today the Russian working-class movement is in transition. The splendid birth of Social-Democratic worker organizations in the Western Area (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and other cities) climaxed in the creation of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (on Old Style March 13-15, 1898, at Minsk).1
Russian Social-Democracy seems to have spent its strength in making this tremendous step forward and has reverted to its former state of detached cells. The Party has not ceased to exist but has only retreated to regain strength and to subsequently unite the Russian Social-Democrats on a sound footing. The immediate and most urgent task of Russian Social-Democrats is to unify suitably and to get rid of narrow local isolation completely.
We all agree that our task is to direct the proletarian class struggle. But what is class struggle? Does class struggle occur when the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry battle their employer(s)? No, this is just an embryo. The struggle of workers becomes a class struggle only when the foremost representatives of the entire working class are conscious of constituting a single working class and therefore battle not individual employers but the entire capitalist class and the government protecting it.
A worker's struggle becomes a class struggle only when he realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognizes the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is part of a broader struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government.
[...]
Our chief drawback is the narrow "amateurish" nature of local work. Many deeds of the working-class movement remain local events and do not entail a step forward in the class struggle. Consequently the workers are not conscious of their class interests and do not identify with the aims of Russian socialism and democracy.
Moreover the miscellaneous opinions of comrades on theoretical and practical issues are not discussed openly in a central newspaper and therefore their views do not contribute to work out a common programme or common tactics but stay marooned in local study circles.
Enough of our amateurishness! We are mature enough to undertake common action: the creation of a Party programme, tactics and organization.
[...]
2. HOW THE "SPARK" WAS NEARLY EXTINGUISHED.
On the question of our attitude toward the Jewish Union (the "Bund") Plekhanov displayed extreme intolerance and openly declared it to be not a Social-Democratic organization at all but an organization of exploiters who exploit Russians. He said that our aim should be to eject this Bund from the Party, that all Jews are chauvinists and nationalists, that a Russian party should be Russian and not render itself into "captivity" to the "brood of vipers," etc. None of our objections to these indecent speeches had any effect and Plekhanov stuck to his ideas completely, stating that we simply did not know the Jews well enough, that we had no real experience dealing with Jews.
[...]
We 1 had received the most bitter lesson of our lives, a painfully bitter, painfully brutal lesson. Young comrades "court" an elder comrade [Plekhanov] out of the great love they bear for him—and suddenly he injects into this love an atmosphere of intrigue, compelling them to feel not as younger brothers but as fools to be led by the nose, as pawns to be moved about at will and, still worse, as clumsy Streber (careerists) who must be thoroughly frightened and quashed! An enamoured youth receives a bitter lesson from the object of his love: to regard all persons coldly, to keep a stone in one's sling. Many more words of an equally bitter nature did we utter that night. The suddenness of the disaster naturally caused us to magnify it but, in the main, the bitter words we uttered were true.
3. THE URGENT TASKS OF OUR MOVEMENT.
Social-Democracy is the combination of a working-class movement and socialism. Its task is not to serve the working-class movement passively but to embody its interests fully, to point out its ultimate aim, its political tasks and to safeguard its political and ideological independence.
[...]
Without such an organization (the political party) the proletariat will never rise to a class-conscious struggle; without such an organization the working-class movement is doomed to impotence.1
With the aid of nothing but funds, study circles and mutual-benefit societies the working class will never be able to fulfil its great historical mission: to emancipate itself and the whole Russian people from political and economic slavery.
[...]
If we have a strongly organized party a single strike may turn into a political demonstration and a political victory over the government. If we have a strongly organized party a revolt in a single locality may burgeon into a victorious revolution.
We must bear in mind that confrontations with the government over partial demands, the gain of certain concessions, are merely light skirmishes with the enemy, encounters between outposts; the decisive battle is yet to come.
4. PREFACE TO THE PAMPHLET, "MAY DAYS IN KHARKOV."
What made the May Day celebrations in Kharkov an event of outstanding importance? The large-scale participation of workers, the huge mass meetings in the streets, the unfurling of red flags and the proclamation of revolutionary demands (an eight-hour workday and political liberty).1
January 21, 1898. El Lucense, diario católico de Lugo, pages 1-2
Czar Nicholas II starts this year off merry, noble and full of good intentions. He was born on May 18, 1868, and rose to the throne on November 1, 1894. The trip to France he made last year and his crowning ceremony made him well known in Europe. He is married since 1894 to Princess Alice of Hesse who altered her name to Alexandra Feodorovna upon becoming Empress. They make a very happy couple together. Nicholas II is doubtlessly up to the task he and his people must do in Europe.
August 2, 1898. La Correspondencia Gallega, diario de Pontevedra, page 2.
Czar Nicholas II has not yet left his capital for he is expecting the visit of several illustrious guests, among them the Prince and Princess of Naples. H.I.M. intends to sojourn at Livadia Palace and tour a portion of Crimea in the autumn. Alexander III the father of the current Czar spent his summers always in Denmark, settled happily with the family of his adored wife, accompanied by the Princess of Wales and the other children of the ageing King Christian who, every year, delighted to reunite his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at his castle of Fredensborg. Equally motivated by affection toward his wife, it seems that Nicholas II prefers the small Duchy of Hesse, cradle of the extremely beautiful Czarina. Alexander III usually stayed at Gatchina Palace whereas the current sovereign opts for Peterhof Palace and Tsarskoye Selo.
August 10, 1898. La Correspondencia Gallega, diario de Pontevedra, page 1.
Several foreign newspapers dilate on the news received by telegraph a few days ago concerning an attempt on the life of the Emperor of Russia. According to fresh details a wealthy retired businessman made a vow to erect a chapel and committed the sum of 200,000 rubles to its construction. The Czar laid the cornerstone and now that the chapel is nearing completion volunteered to attend the solemn consecration ceremony. Some embellishments were being set up to host the sovereign properly when the decorators spied a thick wire jutting out between stones. The discovery drew so much attention that a minutious search was made which revealed that the wire in question connected with a mine beneath the floor of the church, precisely under the spot where the Czar was supposed to station himself during the ceremony. Many people were arrested, among them the businessman whose money funded the church, all the carpenters involved in the project and the architect in charge. Apparently the businessman and the workers were released without charges, but the architect remains under very strong suspicion. When his mother heard the news she was overwhelmed with emotion and died of a sudden. News of the attempt on the life of the Emperor has made a profound impression in Russia where no reports of nihilist conspiracies had appeared for some time and where the Emperor is genuinely loved by 125 million of his subjects.
September 3, 1898. El Correo Gallego, diario monárquico de Ferrol, page 1.
Nicholas II the Czar of Russia has proposed a conference of the main powers to conclude a general disarmament agreement. It seems to us that, at least this time, the commendable goals of the young emperor will not be realized. Europe suffers the plague of militarism because it has trampled law, resisted not injustice and embraced institutions shaded by bayonets.
[...]
Russia with Poland as loot; Germany with its Kulturkampf; England oppressing Ireland; France musing how to recover the Alsace-Lorraine, those bits of her nation; Italy the publishing house of the Masonic lodges brushing aside the incontestable rights of the sovereign Pontiff...; a Europe thus constituted and a Europe that remains indifferent to the despoil of Spain—which represents the acme of civilization in the universal history—will not be able to live without an armed peace that buttresses the greatest breaches of law. When these vanish, then will the disarmament presently solicited by Nicholas II materialize, but while this does not happen, the idea, beautiful though it may be, will not transcend being only a beautiful idea. For a rainbow to glow the storm must precede it; the olive branch was discovered after the deluge and the rose bushes deck themselves with flowers after teeming with thorns.
January 21, 1899. El Correo Gallego, diario monárquico de Ferrol, page 1.
The Emperor of Russia discounts the guards and extraordinary surveillance his father surrounded himself with in his travels because he says that "Death's hour cannot be delayed." The imperial train is relatively modest and Nicholas II whiles away the time with the Empress and the Grand Duchess Olga or chatting with the generals in the military cabin. The Emperor exits the Empress' coach to have a smoke; she frowns upon tobacco smoke. On their excursions to Crimea the Emperors take the yacht Standard, lavishly furnished and with excellent sailing properties.
April 8, 1899. El Lucense, diario católico, page 2.
Letter from Berlin. "A new coup d'état has taken place in Russia. By the decree of February 15 the freedoms, exemptions and privileges accorded Finland were abolished. Finland lived under the empire of the Czars for a century enjoying her autonomy, satisfied with her rights and prosperity. Starting today Finland is just another province of the vast moscovite empire. Of no avail were the pleas of her Chambers or the massive pilgrimages of her peasants who went to St. Petersburg to exercise the right of representation before the Czar. No one was given the honour of having an audience with the Czar. And this in the days of the peace conference! And this even though Nicholas II pledged at his father's deathbed to respect the rights of Finland!"
August 4, 1899. La Idea Moderna, diario democrático de Lugo, pages 1-2.
A very interesting book about the life of the current czar Nicholas II has been published in Berlin.
[...]
Nicholas II said when he rose to the throne, "I wish to live and die for Russia; how I die is irrelevant"; and with these words he dislodged the unbreachable barrier that separated the throne from the people. While he was yet a prince heir to the throne he uttered the famous phrase that became popular in Russia afterward, "We have had a liberating czar; now a tutoring czar is needed." Now that he is Emperor hardly a day goes by without the Government Gazette announcing the opening of a new school, library or educational society... Czar Nicholas II is a good man, humane and liberal, but the czar does not rule, the clergy does. These are, in broad strokes, the matters the cited book confronts.
August 27, 1899. El Regional, diario de Lugo, page 1.
Grave rumours circulate about the health of Nicholas II. It seems that as a result of the sorrow he felt upon the death of the czarevitch 1 he is once more having the epileptic seizures of his youth and an amnesia that causes him to forget his own orders... Doctors recommend absolute rest in the palace of Seeheim near Darmstadt... Some doctors think the amnesia is not due to his epilepsy but is the consequence of a sword's blow to the head he received while in Japan in 1883.
September 13, 1899. El Lucense, diario católico de Lugo, page 2.
A Kharkovite newspaper informs that the rumour sweeping Russia about the approaching end of the world has bred real panic in Kharkov. The workers of the great industrial establishments in the city have left their jobs and board every means of transportation to go back home as soon as possible, disposed to die. The owners and directors of the factories and workshops have petitioned the authorities and the police to halt this singular emigration.
September 19, 1899. El Regional, diario de Lugo, page 2.
Upon watching the (Polish) peasants pass by on their way to the church wearing their Sunday best—which do not always shield them from the rigors of the climate, that harsh climate which they endure courageously along with the cruellest hardships because faith gives warmth to their bodies and hope to their souls—the image kept rising in my mind of those primitive Christians who, divested of every possession, persecuted and miserable, sought refuge in the temple to sing their hymns of praise to the Lord...
How odd is the fate of this people!
It is a century since the partition of Poland took place; and who does not remember that act of pillage unparalleled in human history? an act which attests, so long as Poland is not returned to Poland, that the world abides by the hellish laws of injustice and cruelty!
The prevailing regime of terror uses refinements of cruelty that horrify and hurt Catholics even in the sacred haven of church. After mass is said, the priest asks the Most High—in the Polish language and in a loud voice so not a phrase goes unheard—for the health and prosperity of the Czar, the Czarina, the Czarevitch and the entire imperial family. And when these mandatory phrases leave the priest's lips, "Grant, Lord, all your grace to noble and generous Nicholas II, our Lord and King, whom we humbly thank for his kindness demonstrated governing and protecting us," his voice quivers.
SOFÍA CASANOVA DE LUTOSLAWSKI 1
July 13, 1900. Gaceta de Galicia, diario de Santiago de Compostela, page 1.
The Russian Minister of Justice has redacted a draft bill abolishing the penalty of exile to Siberia. The Senate examined the bill and voiced its approval.
6. GEORGI V. PLEKHANOV
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856–1918) was a Marxist theoretician who started the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and one of the first to dub himself a "Marxist." Facing political persecution Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880. Although he supported the Bolsheviks at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (1903) he soon rejected the idea of democratic centralism and in 1905 became a chief antagonist of Lenin and Trotsky in the St. Petersburg Soviet. Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers during World War I, returned to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution, opposed the Bolsheviks and emigrated to Finland that same year. He died of tuberculosis in 1918. Full Wikipedia biography here.
The Emancipation of Labour group aims to spread socialist ideas in Russia and to assist in the creation of a Russian workers' socialist party.
The essence of its outlook is contained in the following few propositions:
I. The economic emancipation of the working class will be achieved only by the transfer of all the means and objects of production to the collective ownership of the working people and by the organization of all the functions of social and economic life in accordance with the requirements of society.
II. The modern development of technology in civilized societies not only provides the material possibility for such a transformation but makes it necessary and inevitable for solving the contradictions which hinder the peaceful and all-round development of those societies.
III. This radical economic revolution will entail most fundamental changes in the entire constitution of social and international relations.
Eliminating the class struggle by erasing the classes themselves; making the economic struggle of individuals impossible and unnecessary by abolishing commodity production and its attendant competition; briefly, the end of the struggle for existence between individuals, classes and entire societies renders unnecessary the weapons forged to wage it over the many previous centuries.
Without falling into utopian fantasies about a social and international structure of the future, we can nevertheless foretell the abolition of the most important organ of class struggle in society, namely, the state, opposed to society and safeguarding mainly the interests of its ruling class. In exactly the same way we can already discern the international character of the impending economic transformation because modern international trade and commerce compels all civilized societies to take part in it.
(G. V. Plekhanov, 1884. Program of the Social-Democratic Emancipation of Labour Group)
In our time science addresses itself to the workers and we have every right to look with enthusiasm upon the modern working class to whom the most profound thinkers address themselves and before whom the most talented orators appear. Finally, only in our time has a close and indissoluble alliance been concluded between science and the workers—an alliance which will usher in a great and fruitful epoch of world history.
(G. V. Plekhanov, 1891. The Meaning of Hegel)
Plutarch, when citing the inventions made by Archimedes during the Roman siege of Syracuse, finds it necessary to apologize for the inventor.1,2,3 It is of course indecent for a philosopher to occupy himself with such trifles, he reflects, but Archimedes was justified by the extremity which his country found itself in.
We ask, who would now think of seeking alibis to extenuate Edison's "guilt"? Nowadays we do not consider man's inventiveness shameful, quite the opposite, whereas the Greeks (or the Romans if you prefer) had quite a different opinion, as we have seen. Hence the evolution of technology and invention was bound to proceed incomparably more slowly among them than among us.
Here it might seem once more that opinions govern the world, but whence did the Greeks get such a strange "opinion"? Its origin cannot be explained by pointing to their human "intellect"; one must bring to mind their societal relationships.
The societies of Greece and Rome were, as we know, societies of slave-owners where all the toil, the work of production, fell upon the slaves. The free man was ashamed of performing such labour and so there naturally prevailed a contemptuous attitude even toward inventions that improved production—among them mechanical novelties. That is why Plutarch judged Archimedes very differently from how we judge an Edison today.
But why was slavery established in Greece in the first place? Was it not because the Greeks, on account of "intellectual" misjudgments, felt that the slave-owning order was the best? No, it was not because of that. There was a time when the Greeks too had no slavery and in that period they did not at all view the slave-owning social order to be natural or inevitable. However slavery crept in among them and gradually began to play a more and more important role in their lifestyle until eventually the thinking of the citizens of Greece changed: they began to defend slavery as quite a natural and unquestionably essential institution.
Why then did slavery flourish among the Greeks? Evidently for the same reason that it flourished among other countries as well. And this reason is well known: the stage of development of their productive forces. For, in fact, in order that it should be more profitable for me to make a defeated enemy my slave instead of roast meat it is requisite that his yoke should preserve his own existence and benefit mine at least partially. In other words, a certain sophistication of the productive forces at my disposal is essential. And it is precisely through this door that Slavery enters History.
Slave labour does not abet progress. Under slavery the productive forces develop extremely slowly although they do advance. Finally a juncture is reached where the exploitation of slave labour becomes less profitable than the exploitation of free labour. At this point slavery is abolished or gradually peters out—it is shown to the door by the evolution of the same productive forces that brought it into being.
Thus, hearking back to Plutarch, we see that his opinion of Archimedes's inventions was conditioned by the degree of development that the productive forces enjoyed in his day. And since such opinions undoubtedly bear on the future of discovery and invention vastly we can assert all the more forcefully that for every given people at every epoch of their history the evolution of the productive forces at their disposal is conditioned by the stage of development they are at.
(G. V. Plekhanov, 1895. The Development of the Monist View of History, chapter V)
While not a Marxist yourself you would like nothing better than to have us Marxists accept you as our comrade.1 You remind me of the mother in one of Gleb Uspensky's stories.2 She wrote to her son, saying that since he lived a long way off and was in no hurry to see her, she would complain to the police and demand that the authorities bring her son "under escort" so she could "embrace" him. Uspensky's philistine, to whom this maternal threat was addressed, burst into tears whenever he remembered it. We Russian Marxists will not weep for such reasons. But this will not stop us from telling you quite bluntly that we wish to take full advantage of our right to dissociate ourselves and that neither you nor anyone else (no matter who it may be) will succeed in "embracing" us "under escort."
[...]
Once, I don't remember which particular fasting date it was, the monk Gorenflot had a craving for chicken.3 But that would be a sin. What should he do to have his chicken yet avoid committing a sin? The monk Gorenflot found a simple way out. He caught the tempting chicken and christened it with the name "Carp" or some other species. Fish is known to be a Lenten dish, not forbidden on fast days. So our monk ate his chicken on the pretext that it had been christened a fish.
You, Mr. Bogdanov, acted in exactly the same way as this cunning monk. You feasted and continue to feast on the idealist philosophy of "empiriomonism." But my "tactics" made you feel that this was a theoretical sin in the eyes of orthodox Marxists. So, after thinking the matter over briefly, you performed the holy ritual of christening your "empiriomonism" the philosophical teaching of Marx and Engels. Well, no orthodox Marxists will ever forbid such spiritual nourishment. So you manage to have it both ways: you continue to enjoy "empiriomonism" while at the same time considering yourself a member of the Orthodox Marxist family. And not only do you consider yourself one of that family, but you are offended (or pretend to be) at those who do not wish to recognize you "as one of them." Just like the monk Gorenflot. The monk was crafty in small matters whereas you, Mr. Bogdanov, display craftiness in big ones. That's why I say you are much smarter than the famous monk ever was.
(G. V. Plekhanov, 1907. Materialismus Militans: Reply to Mr Bogdanov, First Letter)
There is every reason to believe that young blood with the constituents it drains from young tissues is capable of helping an aging organism overcome the problems it faces increasingly, i.e., overcome the body's natural “aging" process.On April 7, 1928, Bogdanov died of an experimental blood transfusion he performed on himself. Russian source: Wikipedia.
The Greek word "mythos" means a story. Man is startled by some phenomenon, real or imaginary. He tries to explain it and the myth is born.
An example: the ancient Greeks believed in the goddess Athena (Minerva). How was this goddess born? Zeus had a severe headache so he sought the help of a surgeon. The surgeon's role fell upon Hephaestus (Vulcan) who armed himself with a poleaxe and whacked the king of the gods on the head so vigorously that the monarch's head split in two and out sprang the goddess Athena.
Another example: a Jew of antiquity asked himself, "Where did the world come from?" In response he was told how the world was created in six days and how man was made from the dust of the earth.
A third example: a contemporary Australian of the Arunta tribe wants to know the origin of the moon. The following tale satisfies his curiosity: In the olden days when the sky had no moon a man by the name of Opossum died and was buried. Soon afterwards he rose from the dead in the form of a boy. Seeing this happen, his kinsmen took fright and started to run away, but he followed them shouting, "Don't be afraid, don't run or you'll die altogether! I shall die but I shall rise again in the sky!" So the boy lived to old age and died. Then he appeared again in the shape of the moon and ever since has been dying and rising periodically. The moon's origin and its phases were thus accounted for.
I am not sure if this explanation will satisfy any of our present-day "god-seekers"; probably not. But it satisfies the Australian native just as the Greeks were content with Athena emerging from Jupiter's head or the ancient Jew with the tale of the world's creation in six days.
The myth is a story which answers the questions: Why? How? The myth is the first expression of man's apprehension of a causal connection between phenomena.
[...]
The question of "Where did the world come from?" is answered by some Polynesians as follows: Once upon a time God was fishing on the seashore with a fishing rod and suddenly pulled out the world instead of a fish. Primitive fishermen imagined that God acted like them, austerely, the chores of a "savage" being restricted by a minimal technological sophistication.
The Bible says: "And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." And when Adam had sinned the Lord God said unto him, "For dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return." The belief that man was created by God from "dust" (or more exactly from "earth", or still more exactly, from "clay") is very widespread among the primitive peoples. But this implies a particular level of technology, namely, pottery. This knowledge was not acquired everywhere all at once, far from it! Even to this day the Veddas of Ceylon are unacquainted with the art of pottery. Therefore it would never occur to them to think of man as being created by God from "earth" in a way similar to how the potter fashions his objects from clay.
Generally speaking, a primitive appraisal of the world's origin is determined by its primitive grasp of technology.
However it must be remarked—and this is exceptionally important for elucidating the causal dependence of thinking upon being—that the creation of the world and of man is rarely mentioned in primitive mythology.
The savage "creates" comparatively little; his means of production are chiefly procuring and appropriating what nature provides, leaving aside other modest means of production, for while the man fishes and hunts, the woman gathers wild roots and tubers. The "savage" does not "create" animals; his sustenance depends on his knowledge of their habits, haunts, and so on. That is why the fundamental question his mythology answers is not who created man and the animals, but rather where did they come from. Once the primitive hunter has obtained a reply to this fundamental question, his curiosity is satisfied and before his curiosity can be rekindled he must be exposed to technological progress.
As an example here is a myth current among the Australian Dieri,
In the beginning the earth opened up in the middle of Lake Peregundi and out came one animal after another: Kaualka (the raven), Katatara (a species of parrot), Warukati-Emu (Australian ostrich), and so on. Being without limbs and sense organs they simply lay flat on the dunes about the lake. Under the sunshine their strength grew and at length stood up as Kana (that is, real people) and went away in all directions.
That is all. As you see, God does absolutely nothing; the earth opens up of its own accord and the creatures issue forth, not fully formed until they receive the beneficent influence of the sun. A modern Christian would contend that only an atheist could have created this theory and, indeed, it numbers among the theories which explain the evolution of living creatures without resorting to the "hypothesis of God."
[...]
Mr. Lunacharsky 1 is confident that "modern man" can enjoy religion without God, and "to demonstrate this contingency is to deal the final blow at God." Since our author is very anxious "to deal the final blow at God," he takes it upon himself to prove "that this is possible" by turning to Feuerbach.2
Mr. Lunacharsky thinks that "no materialist has ever dealt such a shattering blow to religion, positive religion or belief in God, the other world and the supernatural, as Ludwig Feuerbach did." "After Feuerbach, the religion of God was philosophically dead."
Later we shall verify with Mr. A. Lunacharsky's own example whether the "religion of God" is really dead. In the meantime let us see what Mr. A. Lunacharsky likes about Feuerbach, apart from the "killing of God,"
Feuerbach's definition of religion is nowhere formulated quite satisfactorily [he says] but the reader will immediately grasp the vast difference that exists between Feuerbach and Social-Democratic rationalists or enlighteners when he reads the lines, "Religion is the solemn revelation of the treasures hidden in man, the acknowledgment of his inner thoughts, the open confession of the secret of his love." Here Feuerbach has clutched religion by the heart—not by the clothes, as comrade Plekhanov does.
[...]
Marx's attitude toward religion was completely contrary, as anyone who takes the trouble to read his well-known article, Zur Kritik der Hegel'schen Rechtsphilosophie ("On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right") will readily realize. When he wrote the article he still agreed with Feuerbach's views on religion and accepted its essentials fully. But Marx drew some "irreligious" conclusions. He said,
The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man creates religion, religion does not create man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of the man who has not found himself yet or has lost himself again. Religion is merely an illusory sun that revolves around man for as long as he does not revolve around himself. But man is no abstract being camped outside the world. Man dwells inside the world of man, the state, the society. The state and the society create the religion, an inverted-world consciousness because the state and the society are an inverted world [where a few rule over the majority]. Religion is the broad exposé of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its popular logic, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemnity, its universal fount of consolation and justification. It is a fanciful representation of the "human essence" [spirit] because there is no such thing as a "human essence"; therefore the struggle against religion is an oblique struggle against the world of religion.
[...]
It is quite true that Nietzsche 3 drew from "positivism" a conclusion tantamount to a denial of all current morality ["the re-evaluation of all values"]. But the blame for this should not be placed on "positivism" or materialism but only on Nietzsche himself. It is not thinking that determines being but being that determines thinking. Nietzsche's amoralism expressed a mood peculiar to bourgeois society in a period of decline.
This mood did not surface only in the works of the German Nietzsche. Take the works of the Frenchman Maurice Barrès.4 Here is how he sums up one of them,
There is only one thing we know and really exists among all the false religions on offer. This sole tangible reality is my ego (c'est le moi) and the universe is just a more-or-less beautiful fresco painted by it. Let us attach ourselves to our "ego" and protect it from strangers, from the barbarians.
That is sufficiently expressive.
When people are in such a mood, when the "sole tangible reality" is their precious "ego," they have become true amoralists. Should these sentiments not always press them to draw immoral theoretical conclusions is solely because immoral practice hardly needs immoral theory. On the contrary, immoral theory can frequently hamper immoral practice; that is why immoral people often have a weakness for moral theory.
[...]
Nietzsche gave voice to what goes on in bourgeois society out of sight. Therefore contemporary society cannot accord him more than half-recognition.
Be that as it may, Nietzsche is a product of certain social conditions and to ascribe his amoralism to positivism or to a mechanical purview is to miss the reciprocal connection of phenomena.
The French materialists of the eighteenth century were also adherents of a mechanical purview, if memory serves me right, and yet none preached amoralism. On the contrary, they spoke so often and so warmly about morality that Grimm in one of his letters jokingly referred to them as the Capuchins of Virtue.5
Why did their mechanical outlook not induce them to amoralism? Solely because, in the prevailing social conditions, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie, among whom the materialists of the day were their "extreme left-wing," employed the defence of morality in general and of civic virtue in particular as a political tactic. The bourgeois were then in the ascendant, they were the advanced social class, they contended with an immoral aristocracy and thereby used "morality" as a slogan to entice a discontented populace with.
But now the bourgeoisie themselves have become the ruling class, now this class is moving in the descendant, now its own ranks are permeated more and more with corruption, now total war is increasingly the conditio sine qua non of its survival. Consequently it is not surprising if bourgeois ideologists discover amoralism, those who are frank, not given to the hypocrisy so common in their camp nowadays.
This is all perfectly understandable. But it can never be understood by someone who holds the extremely childish view that the moods and actions of men are determined by whether they believe or do not believe in the existence of supernatural beings.
(G. V. Plekhanov, 1909. On the So-Called Religious Seekings in Russia)
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