Marxism in Russia

12 Key excerpts on "Marxism in Russia"

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  The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia

  • Robert V. Daniels(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Starting as an intellectual creation by individuals, Marxism became an official rationale of governmental policy and virtually a state religion. Thanks to the enforced manipulation of theory, the pronouncements of Soviet Marxism after Stalin achieved supremacy in  cannot be taken seriously as genuine philosophi-cal efforts. The core of Marx’s theory of history, a point of view to which he adhered with but slight shifts of emphasis from the mid- s to the end of his life, is the doctrine of “historical materialism.” Marx and Engels had clearly established this approach when they wrote in The German Ideology in  –  , “The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life process of defi-nite individuals, but of individuals not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imagination, but as they really are, i.e., as they are effective, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions, and conditions independent of their will.” Against the prevailing philosophical ide-alism of their epoch, Marx and Engels exclaimed, “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.” 3 Economic conditions and economically oriented actions, therefore, con-stituted the base of the social structure and as such profoundly influenced all other aspects of human existence and activity. Marx succinctly expressed this model of the social system in the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in  : “In the social production which men car-ry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent Marx and the Movement of History  of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production.

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  From Darkness To Light

  Class, Consciousness, & Salvation In Revolutionary

  • Igal Halfin(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • University of Pittsburgh Press

    (Publisher)

  If the West observed the Soviet Union with bewilderment, it was not because twentieth-century Russia was a unique region of the globe, marvelous in its monstrosity. Rather, it was because, for a long time, Russia alone was the locus for the realization of Marxism, ex-hibiting to the world the e ff ects of a uniquely radical ideology. Marxism was as messianic in the West as in the East. But whereas in the West Marxist messianism remained one among many intellectual currents, in postrevolu-tionary Russia it was endowed with state power and was thus able to realize itself. The Bolsheviks, in any case, never thought of themselves as bearers of a native ideology. “For Lenin,” Maxim Gorky observed in  , “Russia is only the object of an experiment designed, in the long run, to take on a uni-versal scope.” ⁹ Marxism was the vehicle that transformed the fundamental assumptions at the base of Russian political discourse. Marxism eroded the socially pas-sive, conservative political attitudes of the post-Petrine Orthodox church, which had deemphasized human agency by declaring that attempts to build heaven on earth were heretical. Turn-of-the-century Orthodoxy mourned the fact that “virtues typical of our people the Church taught for ages, such as patience, strength of spirit, reconciliation with fate, are now being substi-:     tuted with their antipodes.” ¹⁰ Thus, strikes, a new form of social protest in-troduced into Russia by the Social Democrats, violated “Christian ethics.” By breaking the commandment to love thy neighbor, the Orthodox press continued, “strikes generate egotism and self-interest.

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  Comprehensive Introduction to Socialism, A

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Library Press

    (Publisher)

  ___________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ___________________________ Chapter- 2 Marxism Marxism is an economic and socio-political worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th century by two German philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism encompasses Marxian economic theory, a sociological theory and a revolutionary view of social change that has influenced socialist political movements worldwide. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of material conditions, taking at its starting point the necessary economic activities required by human society to provide for its material needs. The form of economic organization, or mode of production, is understood to be the basis from which the majority of other social phenomena — including social relations, political and legal systems, morality and ideology — arise (or at the least by which they are greatly influenced). These social relations form the superstructure, of which the economic system forms the base. As the forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient and stifle further progress. These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production; the bourgeoisie, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services; the proletariat. Taking the idea that social change occurs because of the struggle between different classes within society who are under contradiction against each other, the Marxist analysis leads to the conclusion that capitalism oppresses the proletariat, the inevitable result being a proletarian revolution.

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  Lenin and Revolutionary Russia

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF Marxism in Russia TO 1905

  BACKGROUND

  Marxism made its appearance in Russia during the early 1880s, as an alternative revolutionary ideology to populism; unlike the latter, it was based mainly on the urban workers. In 1898 the various Marxist groups united to form the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSPLD), under the leadership of Lenin, Martov and an ex-populist, Plekhanov. The RSDLP was committed to ending the Tsarist regime and to the eventual establishment of a workers’ state. In Marxist terms this would involve the end of capitalism and of the bourgeoisie and the introduction of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ – which would lead eventually to the ‘classless society’. The Party developed a propaganda structure and the newspaper Iskra (The Spark ).

  Before long, however, the Russian Social Democrats began to follow the same course as their Marxist equivalent in Germany, the SPD. Differences emerged between Lenin and other leading Social Democrats, especially Martov, on questions of organisation and strategy.These surfaced at the second Congress of the RSDLP (1903), which started in Brussels and was then reconvened in London. From the bitter debates emerged two factions, soon to become par ties in their own right. The Bolsheviks supported Lenin’s strategy of a party organisation based on strict discipline, operated by professional revolutionaries and avoiding collaboration with other opponents of the Tsarist regime. The Mensheviks, by contrast, favoured the more democratic approach to membership advocated by Martov, along with a period of co-operation with liberals and other members of the bourgeoisie. The key question was which of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were to develop the more appropriate strategy. After all, Russia’s unique social and political conditions meant that Marx and Engels had never even considered it as a possibility for early revolution.

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  Society and History

  Essays in Honor of Karl August Wittfogel

  • G. L. Ulman(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  This specific description of the revolutionary transformation of the Russian state and society from feudalism through a brief bourgeois-capitalist interlude to Socialism parallels the general pattern of societal development posited by the Marxists as a uni-versal process, observable in Western Europe and applicable to all societies in the rest of the world. The general assertion has been advanced in the formulations of historical materialism since the 1930's that mankind as a whole has passed through four formations, primitive-communal, slaveholding, feudal, and capitalist and is, since 1917, in the process of transition to communism, the first phase of which is called socialism. These same formulations specifically describe the Russian revolutionary experience to be a part of that process. 312 However, both as a general theory of societal development and as a specific description of Russian social transformation since the nineteenth century, this scheme has been unambiguously propounded as a universal law only since the 1930's. Previously there had been considerable doubt among Marxists, includ-ing Marx himself, about the unilinear character of societal development, and there had been considerable certainty, among Marx and some of his Western disciples, but especially among the Russian Marxists, that Russian social conditions and revolutionary prospects did not parallel those of Western European societies. This has created the problem of reconciling the formal statements of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet thought regarding historical development and Russia's place in it with the much fuller statements of Marx and the early Russian Marxists on that question. Whether or not early or later Marxist and Soviet descriptions of the historical process reflect reality, we must know what these descriptions are or were.

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  Russia and the USSR, 1855–1991

  Autocracy and Dictatorship

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As both an ideology and an institution, autocracy died with the Revolution of March 1917. The Tsar was forced to abdicate and autocracy replaced by a brief experiment with liberal democracy and moderate socialism by the Provisional Government. These alternatives lasted only a few months until, in October 1917, they were replaced by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, or Communism.

  BASE, SUPERSTRUCTURE, THE DIALECTIC AND CLASS CONFLICT Figure 1.

  Soviet Communism

  Marxism entered Russia during the 1880s, promoted by revolutionaries seeking an alternative to the Russian-based Populist groups. It was officially represented by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) from 1898, although this divided into moderate and radical approaches – Menshevism and Bolshevism respectively. The latter, Marxism-Leninism or Communism, became the official ideology of Russia and the Soviet Union between 1918 and 1991. Communism has remained in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet state, but as one of a number of ideologies competing for power through a new multi-party process.

  Marxism in whatever form derives ultimately from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Despite the quantity and complexity of their writings, it is possible to identify three main constituents in their thought.

  The first was a determinist conception of society and of the relationship between economic circumstances and political power. They maintained that the foundation, or base, of society was always the state of economic development reached by the ruling class. The superstructure consisted of the political, juridical and religious institutions by which the ruling class maintained its grip. Any meaningful change to these institutions could be achieved only by removing the economic base from which they sprang. This immediately invalidated the sort of piecemeal reform to the superstructure that was often proposed by regimes attempting to maintain their base intact.

  The second component of Marxist theory was value and profit. The proletariat, Marx and Engels believed, were created and used by the bourgeoisie as wage labourers but were always paid far less than the real value of what they produced. The balance of the value therefore constituted profit, which was used as capital to exploit more wage labour. The proletariat, as a result, became ‘concentrated in greater masses’ and would seek to overcome their ‘misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation’.5

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  Theorising Welfare

  Enlightenment and Modern Society

  • Sue Penna, Martin O′Brien(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  In outlining this historic schema, Marx and Engels were thoroughly entrenched in the major philosophical paradigms of mid-nineteenth century Europe. The theme of evolution -as we noted in Chapter 1 -dominated many of the debates about society, politics and economics. Historical Marxism is a version of this evolutionary paradigm in social theory and philosophy. At Marx's graveside, Engels eulogised Marx in precisely these terms: 'Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history' (cited in Foster, 1968: 27). Marx and Engels' historical theories of social change provide the framework in which their economic and political analyses of capitalism are situated. Economic Marxism Fol lowing the failure of the European revolutionary uprisings in 1848, Marx turned his attention to the mammoth task of explaining the 'laws of motion' of capitalist development. As we have noted, for Marx and Engels the self-destruction of capitalism is inevitable: it is built into capitalism. This auto-destruction is embedded in the economic, as much as the politi-cal and historic laws of capitalism. In trying to account for the revol-utionary failures and describe the conditions necessary for success, Marx and Engels' prolific works examined the different conditions obtaining in different countries, the different stages of capitalist development, of bour-geois political structures and of trade union organisation. Marx and Engels considered that the homogeneous conditions caused by capitalist wage-relations would be more important than the existence of national identi-ties, so that an international revolutionary workers' movement would eventually liberate all of humanity. In the meantime, Marx produced Marxism 53 perhaps the most powerful critical account of the operations of capitalist economies ever written.

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  Marx: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself

  • Gill Hands(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Teach Yourself

    (Publisher)

  8 Marxism after Marx – ideas that changed the world

  In this chapter you will learn:

  •   about the spread of Marxist thought

  •   how socialism developed away from communism

  •   what led to revolution in Russia and China

  •   about the Cold War

  •   about the decline of communism

  Marxism is a term that can be used in a number of different ways. It is used to describe political systems where the ideas of Marx are allegedly put into practice. It is also used to describe social, philosophical and political theories based on the ideas of Marx. Marx died over a century ago and his ideas have been discussed and have evolved in many different forms since then. Many branches of Marxist thought have developed throughout the world and schools of Marxism have flourished in academic circles. In this chapter, I will be looking at the way that Marx’s ideas spread around the world and influenced political systems. The development of communism as a political system, beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1918, led to Marx’s ideas becoming a major driving force in the history of the twentieth century. They were also a major part of the early socialist movement, which developed out of the labour movement.

  In addition to his few books, Marx wrote numerous articles, pamphlets and speeches, many of which were not published until after his death. Because of the vast body of his work and its complexity, it is easy for people to interpret his ideas in their own way and claim that their interpretation is the ‘true’ meaning of Marxism. In some ways it is similar to interpretation of the Bible; there are many kinds of churches that call themselves Christian but they all have their own ways of worshipping God and many believe that their way is the ‘right’ way. Many different regimes call themselves Marxist or communist, but they do not necessarily have similar ideologies or political systems. In fact, they may well have very little in common with the original ideas of Marx, except for the use of his name. In a letter to Eduard Bernstein in 1882 Engels claimed that Marx was puzzled by the misinterpretations of ideas, and had once said, ‘If anything is certain I am not a Marxist.’

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  Sociology and Development

  • Emanuel de Kadt, Gavin Williams(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  PART ONE Marxism and Development DAVID LANE Leninism as an Ideology of Soviet Development Most analysis of Soviet society concentrates on its peculiar political features, either its totalitarian or its socialist character, and surprisingly few writers have tried to interpret the USSR as a developing society. 1 One exception is Marcuse’s classic study Soviet Marxism which in many places recognizes that the Soviet regime ensures ‘total mobilization of the individuals for the requirements of competitive total industrialization’ (1958: 259). This relative lack of emphasis in the west in considering the Soviet Union as a model of development stems from two sources. First there is the west European Marxist tradition of regarding ‘socialism’ as a qualitatively superior social and moral system to capitalism, and this is also the primary concern of Marcuse. But Marxism as interpreted by Lenin, and particularly by his followers in the USSR who have articulated the ideology of Leninism, is very much concerned with the role of development in societies that are economically at the pre-capitalist stage. Second, and perhaps more important, is the view that Russia in 1917 was far ahead of societies that are now regarded as underdeveloped or undeveloped. As Rostow (1960: 95) has put it, ‘the Russian take-off was under way by the 1890s. . .’. Also, Russia has a long and deep European tradition, which distinguishes it from many other countries of the Third World. While these objections must be given a prominent place when evaluating Soviet experience they do not detract from the fact that Russia in 1917 was one of the most backward countries in Europe, having a predominantly rural, agricultural, and illiterate peasant population

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  The Development Trajectory of Eastern Societies and the Theories and Practices of Socialism

  • Zhao Jiaxiang(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Under this condition, no “power in the world will be able to restore the Russian commune once its breakdown has reached a certain point.” 18 Second, when Marx was alive, the revolution in Russia was gathering momen- tum, through which the possibility of the outbreak of a proletarian revolution in Western Europe was huge. Therefore, he emphasized the need to save the Russian commune from all the extreme disasters brought about by the capitalist regime. After the death of Marx, the struggle of the Narodniks and the Narodnaya Volya to overthrow the tsarist government failed. Following this, Russia quickly embarked on capitalist development. Therefore, Engels emphasized the historical inevitabil- ity of Russia’s embarking on capitalism. He said in the afterword of “On Social Relations in Russia”: “When the old tsarist despotism continued unchanged after the defeats of the Crimean War and the suicide of Tsar Nicholas, only one road was open: the swiftest transition possible to capitalist industry.” Engels’ and Marx’s thoughts 39 The railways and factories were accompanied by the expansion of existing banks and the establishment of new ones; the emancipation of the peasants from serfdom instituted freedom of movement, in anticipation of the ensuing automatic emancipation of a large proportion of these peasants from land- ownership too. Thus in a short while all the foundations of the capitalist mode of production were laid in Russia. But the axe had also been taken to the root of the Russian peasant commune. “And so the transformation of the country into a capitalist industrial nation, the proletarianisation of a large proportion of the peasantry and the decay of the old communistic commune proceeds at an ever quickening pace.” Based on its eco- nomic prosperity, capitalism also matured politically. “In these circumstances the fledgling Russian bourgeoisie has the state completely in its power.

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  Marx, Justice and History

  A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader

  • Marshall Cohen(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  In The German Ideology, Marx stresses the contrast between de- scribing and prescribing. In the section of the first chapter entitled "History," he writes: Communism is not for us a state of affairs which ought to be estab- lished, an ideal in accordance with which reality should be trans- formed. For us communism is the real movement abolishing the present state of affairs, a movement whose necessary conditions exist as part of that same state of affairs. How justified are Marx's claims that he has developed a socialist the- ory which is empirical and descriptive, by contrast with the specula- tive and prescriptive theories developed by his predecessors and his contemporaries? I propose to test these claims by examining critically his two most celebrated expositions of historical materialism: the one presented in The Communist Manifesto and the one presented in the Preface to The Critique of Political Economy. I shall consider first a set of problems centering upon the role of class conflict in history, then a set of problems centering upon the relation of political to eco- Marx and Lenin as Historical Materialists nomic transformation. I shall argue that Marx's version of historical materialism is an unstable combination of two conflicting approaches to history—a dialectic of liberation and a sociology of change. I shall conclude that the conflict between Utopian and scientific—defined as Marx himself defines it—is an internal conflict of Marxian socialism. Concurrently indicating the position of Lenin on these issues, I shall attempt to relate internal conflicts of Marx's historical materialism to the split between communists and socialists after the Russian Revolu- tion. The distinctive doctrines of Leninism, I shall argue, derive from Marx's dialectic of liberation rather than his sociology of change.

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  Stalin

  A New History

  • Sarah Davies, James Harris(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  9 Stalin as Marxist: the Western roots of Stalin’s russification of Marxism Erik van Ree Introduction There exists an extensive scholarly literature highlighting the impact of Russia’s national traditions on the Stalinist state and society. The present article focuses on ideology, understood as a body of interconnected ideas providing a comprehensive view of the actual and desirable state of society. 1 As a rule, scholarly literature is more interested in the Stalinist transformations of the real world than in the dictator’s dogmatic pro- nouncements. Nevertheless, there exists a rough consensus that Stalin substantially russified Marxist ideology. Assuming that the Russian tradi- tion powerfully influenced Stalinist realities, this is what we would expect. It goes against common sense for state ideology to have remained unaf- fected when state policies and everyday social realities have not. Not only in his day-to-day practice of power, but in his ideology, too, Stalin adapted himself to the authoritarianism, bureaucratic etatism, and patri- otism that were important elements in the Russian political tradition. However, on a closer look the consensus on Stalin’s russification of Marxism is rather shallow. Some authors hold that the dictator did indeed impose a drastic shake-up of Marxist ideology. But others dis- agree, arguing that he did not change all that much in the existing ideology itself, and that to look in that direction would be to miss the point. The real change lay in his style of presentation and in the ideology’s new function of legitimising his dictatorship. On a close examination of official dogma and formulas, one finds Stalin basically repeating I want to thank Mark Tauger for suggesting the title of this paper, and David Brandenberger for making me think again about the problem of causality.

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