The Philosophy of Bolshevism Moscow Dialogues., By Julies . F. Hecker. -
(Chapman and Hall.
128. 6d.) - - •
THERE are .still many people who refuse to believe that there is such a thing as:n philosophy of Bolshevism. The very col- location of the words strikes them as a paradox ; and they see, in the successive pronouncements of the Soviet pontiffs, nothing but an opportunist interpretation of Soviet interests. The illusion is a dangerous one. It is dangerous in opponents of Bolshevism, fin' it leaves ,them in ignorance of the funda- mental nature of the forces arrayed against them. It is, perhaps, even more dangerous in sympathizers with Bol-, shevisin ; for it encourages them to nurse-the idea (particularly prevalent among Fabians. and other " 'advanced " people in' this country) that the Bolsheviks will one day introduce a system, say, of religious. toleration or of the impartial 'ad- ministration of justice—things which, if the matter is rightly understood, arc totally incompatible withsliolshevik ideology.
The philosophy of Bolshevism is in easel-ice the philosophy of Karl Marx. Marx believed, with Hegel, that the historical process, which is the essence of Reality, is a constant conflict between opposing forces, between thesis and antithesis. He further believed, unlike Hegel, that Reality was material, and that-the confl!et through which it expressed itself was a conflict between classes for the possession of the means of economic production. Class-warfare is not therefore, as is sometimes supposed, an incidental and perhaps regrettable adjunct of the Soviet regime. It is, in Bolshevik eyes, the one essential element of human activity. When the exploiting classes are at length annihilated and a class-less society (which is the Marxist's Utopia) established, then' religion—the instrument of the exploiting classes—will disappear, and the State itself with all its organs will " wither away." But until this still remote consummation is achieved, class-justice and the war on religion are essential and indispensable weapons of class-warfare. You cannot abandon them without aban- doning Marxism.
The various revolutionary philosophies which were tried out in nineteenth-century Russia, and which were finally swallowed up by Bolshevism, have been brilliantly analysed in a book published just before the War and translated into English in 1918 under the title The Spirit of Russia, by Presi- dent Masaryk of Czechoslovakia. But this analysis stopped short at the point where the Russian revolution, so long pre- pared by theorists and agitators, at last began ; and there was no more recent book in English to deal in a comprehensive and up-to-date way with the Bolshevik philosophy. Moscow Dialogues, by Dr. Julius Hecker, a Russian by birth, once an American citizen and now a lecturer in Moscow, is a note- worthy attempt to fill this gap ; and it has been followed at a short interval by the second and concluding volume of the English translation of Stalin's Leninism, which is not a systematic treatise, but a series of official pronouncements on current Soviet orthodoxy. In Moscow Dialogues, one Soeratov expounds the philosophy of Bolshevism, and is cross-examined and sometimes mildly refuted by a party of American visitors. " The Banker " and The Senator " ask questions which seem at times unduly naive even -for members of these honourable professions, and "The Rotarian" (surely a libel on the society) provides pseudo-comic relief by his infantile misunderstandings.. Whether you like your philosophy. in dialogue form is a' matter of taste and of the literary skill of the writer. Dr. Hecker writes clearly and straightforwardly ; but there is a good deal of slovenliness in matters of scholarship. Marx's famous remark that in Darwin's Origin of Species " the animal. kingdom masquerades as bourgeois society " is mis- translated on page 98 in such a way as to spoil the point. It is unnecessary, in such a book, to mention the parentage of Herzen, the first Russian revolutionary writer. But if it is to be mentioned, it should not be stated that his mother was a Baltic German or that he was the " unwanted child " of a " morganatic marriage " (whatever that may mean) ; for both statements are untrue. It is permissible not to know the Christian name of Diderot; but if it is given it should be given correctly, and the title of his most famous book should not be flagrantly mis-spelt. But despite. these and other flaws, the reader will find in Moscow Dialogues not only a thorough exposition of the principles of contemporary Marxism, but many sidelights on minor phases of Soviet theory. He will find, for instance, the answer (too long to be quoted here) to a question which has puzzled many people—i.e., why the Bolsheviks, are as uncom- promising as the Catholic Church in their hostility to the psycho-analytical theories of Freud. On the other hand, " Socratov " is clearly embarrassed in his reply to the ques- tions of his audience about the Marxist doctrine of " increasing misery "—i.e., the doctrine that the increasing prosperity of capitalism implies the increasing poverty of the worker. A reply suggesting that the converse has been true only in the exceptional case of America will carry little conviction to non- American readers.
There may be observed, both in Moscow Dialogues and in Stalin's address to an American Labour Delegation in Moscow which figures in the second volume of Leninism, an interesting tendency to put water into the pure wine of Soviet doctrine for American consumption. Thus Stalin told his American friends that " formally speaking " there was no rule requiring a member of the Communist Party to be an atheist ; and " Socratov," speaking of world revolution, admits that " iii different situations, the procedure applied by the Communists in Russia may not be imitated." The latter seems to be the one important respect in which Leninism, as now officially recognized, differs from primitive Marxism. The doctrine of " socialism in a single country "—and that in a country which is still, economically speaking, the most backward of the great States—was certainly not dreamt of in the philosophy
Previous page
