The Vicissitudes of Soviet Marxism: 1950-1994
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TITLE: THE VICISSITUDES OF SOVIET MARXISM: 1950-1994 AUTHOR: MIKHAIL EPSTEIN, Emory University THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARCH TITLE VIII PROGRAM 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 PROJECT INFORMATION:* CONTRACTOR: Emory University PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Mikhail Epstein COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER: 807-21 DATE: August 16, 1994 COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Individual researchers retain the copyright on work products derived from research funded by Council Contract. The Council and the U.S. Government have the right to duplicate written reports and other materials submitted under Council Contract and to distribute such copies within the Council and U.S. Government for their own use, and to draw upon such reports and materials for their own studies; but the Council and U.S. Government do not have the right to distribute, or make such reports and materials available, outside the Council or U.S. Government without the written consent of the authors, except as may be required under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 5 U.S.C. 552, or other applicable law. The work leading to this report was supported in part by contract funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, made available by the U. S. Department of State under Title V11I (the Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act of 1983). The analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those of the author. NCSEER NOTE This paper is one in a series by the author on the "Philosophical and Humanistic Thought of Russia since 1950". Earlier papers distributed by the Council in the series were, New Sects: The Varieties of Religious-Philosophical Consciousness in Russia. 1970s - 1980s (April 5,1993); The Significance of Russian Philosophy (July 14, 1993); The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism (July 16, 1993); The Russian Philosophy of National Spirit: Conservatism and Traditionalism (July 11, 1994); and From Anti-Socialism to Anti-semitism: Igor Shafarevich (August 9, 1994); Mikhail Epstein An Abstract of the Chapter, "Vicissitudes of Soviet Marxism" The five sections of this chapter, presented below, describe the initial and final stages in the post-WWII evolution of Soviet Marxism. One principal vector of change was the infusion of nationalism into Marxism, undertaken first by Stalin in his work on linguistics, where the class categories of traditional Marxism were abolished in favor of a notion of national unity, as exemplified in the integrity of national language. This tendency resurfaced in the 1980's, with the increasing rapprochement of official Marxism and grass-roots, nativist ideology, which later grew into a political alliance of communists and neo-fascists. Another revisionist tendency, toward the humanization of Marxism, emerged in the mid-1950's with the publication of Marx's earlier Philosophical-Economical Manuscripts, and found expression in the writings of Evald Ilyenkov, Genrikh Batishchev, and Iakov Mil'ner-Irinin. This tendency suffered a severe political blow with the 1968 failure of the Czechoslovakian attempt to build a "socialism with a human face," which revealed the incompatibility of humanism and Marxism. Three new approaches to Marxism emerge in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The first is an attempt to revitalize and modify Marxism in the wake of the failure of the Soviet communist project. This version of post-communist Marxism, exemplified in the work of Sergei Platonov, proposes the purification of Marxism from its Leninist and especially Stalinist modifications and the incorporation of new realities, such as the persistent success of capitalist economics. The second approach identifies Leninism and Stalinism as valid interpretations of a Marxism that must therefore be held responsible for all of communism's crimes against humanity. This version, developed in the writings of Alexander Iakovlev, the Secretary of Ideology in Gorbachev's Politbureau, involves the radical criticism of Marxism as a non-scientific and anti-humanist theory which, with its all-inclusive determinism, underestimates the sovereignty of consciousness, reducing personality to a function of social circumstances. The third approach, which can be called post-Marxist communism (as distinct from the post-communist Marxism of the first approach), glorifies the religious aspects of communism, which were abandoned by classical Marxism in favor of a quasi-scientific materialism. This position, articulated in the works of Sergei Kurginian, promotes a renewal of communism as a religious doctrine encompassing the deepest insights of many Eastern and Western faiths and opposing itself to the soulless hedonism and consumerism of capitalist civilization. Whether it is abandoned or revitalized, Marxism is no longer active in post- Soviet Russia as a materialist interpretation of history or a doctrine of class struggle. On the contemporary scene, what is sometimes identified as Marxism or communism is, in fact, an eclectic mixture of metaphysical and nationalist views extolling the mystic values of collectivism and opposing an immoral Western individualism. Mikhail Epstein Chapter One. VICISSITUDES OF MARXISM. *1. Late Joseph Stalin: from "Class" to "Nationality." *2.The Renaissance of Early Marx. The Philosophy of Communism. From "Class" to "Humankind." 3. The Renewal of Dialectics. Evald Ilyenkov. *4. The Philosophy of Human Activity. The Renewal of Ethics. Genrikh Batishchev. 5. Discussion on Esthetics (Late 50's - Early 60's). "Prirodniki "and "Obshchestvenniki." Mikhail Lifshits. Aleksandr Burov. 6. Philosophy of Science. Technology and Nature. 7. Marxist History of Philosophy. The Critique of Western and Bourgeois Philosophy. 8. Rapprochement of Marxism and Grass-Roots Ideology (pochvennichestvo). Iurii Davydov. Arsenii Gulyga. *9. Revisions of Orthodox Marxism in Glasnost Era. Sergei Platonov. *10.The Self-Destruction of Soviet Marxism. Aleksandr Iakovlev. *11. Back from Science to Utopia. Mystical Neo-Communism. Sergei Kurginian. Marxism was firmly established as the official Soviet ideology in 1922, with the exile of the most outstanding non-Marxist thinkers, like Berdiaev, Struve, Lossky, and the suppression of all non-Marxist philosophical associations and periodicals. The program for the integration of Marxist philosophy with State politics was outlined in Lenin's article, "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (March, 1922) published in one of the first issues of the journal, Under the Banner of Marxism. Lenin's program called for the alliance of Marxist philosophy with the natural sciences and insisted on the collaborative criticism of bourgeois idealism and religion. Lenin's death in 1924 prompted a reassessment of Marxism on the basis of Lenin's philosophical supplements, whereby "Leninism" came to be understood as the next and highest stage of Marxism, as the "Marxism of the epoch of the proletarian revolution and the construction of communism." Lenin's main contribution to philosophy consisted of two works: the book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908), and the so-called Philosophical Notebooks, a collection of marginalia (written between 1914-1915 and published posthumously in 1929-1930) to Hegel's treatises, The Science of Logic and The History of Philosophy, including a short draft entitled, "Towards the Question of Dialectics." Since the philosophy of Marxism is dialectical materialism, Lenin was concerned *Included in this paper. with elaborating the two parts of this conception: in the book, Lenin defends materialism against "physical idealism" and neo-Kantian revisions of the Marxist doctrine popular among Bolsheviks at the turn of the century; in his marginalia, he pays tribute to dialectics as the component of Marxism adopted from Hegel. The relationship between the two constituents of dialectical materialism became the most dramatic theoretical topic of the 20's, when free discussion of philosophical issues was still permitted. Soviet Marxists divided themselves into two camps: "mechanists," headed by Bukharin, prioritized the materialistic component of Marxism, while "dialecticians," headed by Deborin, emphasized Marx's Hegelian legacy. By the end of the decade, "dialecticians" seemed to have gained the upper hand, especially after the publication of Engels' unfinished treatise, The Dialectics of Nature (1925), and Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, which gave authoritative arguments for the criticism of mechanist materialism. However, in 1930/31, the ideological organs of the Communist Party, under the leadership of Stalin, interfered in the debate and condemned the "dialecticians" as "Menshevist idealists."1 This strategy was characteristic for Stalin (1879-1953): he would take a stand between two opposing camps and denounce both of them for perverting authentic Marxism. In politics, Stalin fostered the establishment of a central dogma ("the general party line") by this method of "divide and conquer," which allowed him to amputate left and right extremities, which he deemed "Trotskist and Bukharinist counter-revolutionary deviations." This strategy of totalitarian synthesis was also used in philosophy, where extremes of "bourgeois mechanistism" and "Menshevist idealism" were rejected for the sake of a unified doctrine that excluded any further debate. The most authoritative product of this synthesis was contributed anonymously by Stalin as a chapter, "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," included in A Short Course in the History