V. I.

Lenin

Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism [1]

Our doctrine—said Engels, referring to himself and his famous friend—is not a dogma, but a guide to action. This classical
statement stresses with remarkable force and expressiveness that aspect of
Marxism which is very often lost sight of. And by losing sight of it, we
turn Marxism into something one-sided, distorted and lifeless; we deprive
it of its life blood; we undermine its basic theoretical
foundations—dialectics, the doctrine of historical development,
all-embracing and full of contradictions; we undermine its connection with
the definite practical tasks of the epoch, which may change with every new
turn of history.

Indeed, in our time, among those interested in the fate of Marxism in
Russia, we very frequently meet with people who lose sight of just this
aspect of Marxism. Yet, it must be clear to everybody that in recent years
Russia has under gone changes so abrupt as to alter the situation with
unusual rapidity and unusual force—the social and political situation,
which in a most direct and immediate manner determines the conditions for
action, and, hence, its aims. I am not referring, of course, to general and
fundamental aims, which do not change with turns of history if the
fundamental relation between classes remains unchanged. It is perfectly
obvious that this general trend of economic (and not only economic)
evolution in Russia, like the fundamental relation between the various
classes of Russian society, has not changed during, say, the last six
years.

But the aims of immediate and direct action changed very sharply during
this period, just as the actual social and political situation changed, and consequently , since Marxism
is a living doctrine, various aspects of it were bound to
become prominent.

In order to make this idea clear, let us cast a glance at the change in
the actual social and political situation over the past six years. We
immediately differentiate two three year periods: one ending roughly with
the summer of 1907, and the other with the summer of 1910. The first
three-year period, regarded from the purely theoretical standpoint, is
distinguished by rapid changes in the fundamental features of the state
system in Russia; the course of these changes, moreover, was very uneven
and the oscillations in both directions were of considerable amplitude. The
social and economic basis of these changes in the “superstructure” was
the action of all classes of Russian society in the most diverse fields (activity inside and outside the Duma, the press,
unions, meetings, and so forth), action so open and impressive and on a
mass scale such as is rarely to be observed in history.

The second three-year period, on the contrary, is distinguished—we
repeat that we confine ourselves to the purely theoretical “sociological”
standpoint—by an evolution so slow that it almost amounted to
stagnation. There were no changes of any importance to be observed in the
state system. There were hardly any open and diversified actions by the
classes in the majority of the “arenas” in which these actions
had developed in the preceding period.

The similarity between the two periods is that Russia underwent
capitalist evolution in both of them. The contradiction between this
economic evolution and the existence of a number of feudal and medieval
institutions still remained and was not stifled, but rather aggravated, by
the fact that certain institutions assumed a partially bourgeois character.

The difference between the two periods is that in the first the
question of exactly what form the above-mentioned rapid and uneven changes
would take was the dominant, his tory-making issue. The content of these
changes was bound to be bourgeois owing to the capitalist character of
Russia’s evolution; but there are different kinds of bourgeoisie. The
middle and big bourgeoisie, which professes a more or less moderate liberalism, was, owing to its very class position, afraid of
abrupt changes and strove for the retention of large remnants of the old
institutions both in the agrarian system and in the political
“superstructure”. The rural petty bourgeoisie, interwoven as it is with
the peasants who live “solely by the labour of their hands”, was bound to
strive for bourgeois reforms of a different kind, reforms that
would leave far less room for medieval survivals. The wage-workers,
inasmuch as they consciously realised what was going on around them, were
bound to work out for them selves a definite attitude towards this clash of
two distinct tendencies. Both tendencies remained within the frame work of
the bourgeois system, determining entirely different forms of that system,
entirely different rates of its development, different degrees of its
progressive influence.

Thus, the first period necessarily brought to the fore—and not by
chance—those problems of Marxism that are usually referred to as problems
of tactics. Nothing is more erroneous than the opinion that the disputes
and differences over these questions were disputes among “intellectuals”,
“a struggle for influence over the immature proletariat”, an expression
of the “adaptation of the intelligentsia to the proletariat”, as
Vekhi followers of various hues think. On the contrary, it was
precisely because this class had reached maturity that it could not remain
indifferent to the clash of the two different tendencies in Russia’s
bourgeois development, and the ideologists of this class could not avoid
providing theoretical formulations corresponding (directly or indirectly,
in direct or reverse reflection) to these different tendencies.

In the second period the clash between the different tendencies of
bourgeois development in Russia was not on the order of the day,
because both these tendencies had been crushed by the “diehards”, forced back, driven inwards and, for the time being,
stifled. The medieval diehards [2] not only occupied the foreground but also inspired the
broadest sections of bourgeois society with the sentiments propagated by
Vekhi , with a spirit of dejection and recantation. It was not the
collision between two methods of re forming the old order that appeared on
the surface, but a loss of faith in reforms of any kind, a spirit of
“meekness” and “repentance”, an enthusiasm for anti-social doctrines, a vogue of
mysticism, and so on.

This astonishingly abrupt change was neither accidental nor the result
of “external” pressure alone. The preceding period had so profoundly
stirred up sections of the population who for generations and centuries had
stood aloof from, and had been strangers to, political issues that it was
natural and inevitable that there should emerge “a revaluation of all
values”, a new study of fundamental problems, a new interest in theory, in
elementals, in the ABC of politics. The millions who were suddenly awakened
from their long sleep and confronted with extremely important problems
could not long remain on this level. They could not continue without a
respite, without a return to elementary questions, without a new training
which would help them “digest” lessons of unparalleled richness and make
it possible for incomparably wider masses again to march forward, but now
far more firmly, more consciously, more confidently and more steadfastly.

The dialectics of historical development was such that in the first
period, it was the attainment of immediate reforms in every sphere of the
country’s life that was on the order of the day. In the second period it
was the critical study of experience, its assimilation by wider sections,
its penetration, so to speak, into the subsoil, into the back ward ranks of
the various classes.

It is precisely because Marxism is not a lifeless dogma, not a
completed, ready-made, immutable doctrine, but a living guide to action,
that it was bound to reflect the astonishingly abrupt change in the
conditions of social life. That change was reflected in profound
disintegration and disunity, in every manner of vacillation, in short, in a
very serious internal crisis of Marxism. Resolute resistance to
this disintegration, a resolute and persistent struggle to up hold the
fundamentals of Marxism, was again placed on the order of the
day. In the preceding period, extremely wide sections of the classes that
cannot avoid Marxism in formulating their aims had assimilated that
doctrine in an extremely one-sided and mutilated fashion. They had learnt
by rote certain “slogans”, certain answers to tactical questions,
without having understood the Marxist criteria for these answers. The “revaluation of all values” in the various spheres of social
life led to a “revision” of the most abstract and general philosophical
fundamentals of Marxism. The influence of bourgeois philosophy in its
diverse idealist shades found expression in the Machist epidemic that broke
out among the Marxists. The repetition of “slogans” learnt by rote but
not understood and not thought out led to the widespread prevalence of
empty phrase-mongering. The practical expression of this were such
absolutely un-Marxist, petty-bourgeois trends as frank or shamefaced
“otzovism”, or the recognition of otzovism as a “legal shade” of
Marxism.

On the other hand, the spirit of the magazine Vekhi , the
spirit of renunciation which had taken possession of very wide sections of
the bourgeoisie, also permeated the trend wishing to confine Marxist theory
and practice to “moderate and careful” channels. All that remained of
Marxism here was the phraseology used to clothe arguments about
“hierarchy”, “hegemony” and so forth, that were thoroughly permeated
with the spirit of liberalism.

The purpose of this article is not to examine these arguments. A mere
reference to them is sufficient to illustrate what has been said above
regarding the depth of the crisis through which Marxism is passing and its
connection with the whole social and economic situation in the present
period. The questions raised by this crisis cannot be brushed
aside. Nothing can be more pernicious or unprincipled than attempts to
dismiss them by phrase-mongering. Nothing is more important than to rally
all Marxists who have realised the profundity of the crisis and
the necessity of combating it, for defence of the theoretical basis of
Marxism and its fundamental propositions, that are being distorted from
diametrically opposite sides by the spread of bourgeois influence to the
various “fellow-travellers” of Marxism.

The first three years awakened wide sections to a conscious
participation in social life, sections that in many cases are now for the
first time beginning to acquaint themselves with Marxism in real earnest,
The bourgeois press is creating far more fallacious ideas on this score
than ever before, and is spreading them more widely. Under these
circumstances disintegration in the Marxist ranks is particularly dangerous. Therefore, to understand the reasons for the inevitability of
this disintegration at the present time and to close their ranks for
consistent struggle against this disintegration is, in the most direct and
precise meaning of the term, the task of the day for Marxists.

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Notes:
[1]
Zvezda ( The Star ), in which this article appeared, was a Bolshevik legal newspaper, the forerunner of Pravda ,
published in St. Petersburg from December 16 (29), 1910 to April 22
(May 5), 1912 (at first weekly, then from January 1912 twice and from
March, three times a week). On February 26 (March 10), 1912, No. 1 of
Nevskaya Zvezda ( Neva Star ) was published at the same
time as Zvezda , and, after the latter was closed down, continued
its work. The last, the 27th issue of Nevskaya Zvezda was
published on October 5(18), 1912.

Contributers to Zvezda were N. N. Baturin, K. S. Yeremeyev,
N. G. Poletayev, M. S. Olminsky, and others, including Maxim Gorky, whom
Lenin enlisted as a contributor. The pro-Party Mensheviks (Plekhanov’s
group) contributed to Zvezda until the autumn of 1911. Lenin gave
the paper ideological leadership from abroad, and together Zvezda
and Nevskaya Zvezda published nearly fifty of his articles.

Under Lenin’s guidance the legal newspaper Zvezda became the
militant paper of the Bolsheviks which defended the programme of the
illegal Party Zvezda established workers’ correspondence on a
broad scale, maintaining strong and regular contact with the workers. Some
of its issues achieved a circulation of 50,000–60,000 copies.

The newspaper was the constant target of government repression; out of
96 issues of Zvezda and Nevskaya Zvezda , 39 were confiscated and 10 were subject to fines. Zvezda paved the way for
the publication of the daily Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and on the
very day it was closed down by the government the first issue of
Pravda appeared.

[2]
The “diehards” was the name given by Russian political literature to
the extreme Right-wing representatives of the reactionary landlord class.