Victor Artsimovich A CENTENARY OF TWO RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS AND THE MAIN ERROR OF MARXISM 1. PREFACE

Victor Artsimovich

A CENTENARY OF TWO RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS AND THE MAIN ERROR OF MARXISM

1.  PREFACE

Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth,

But women worst and best as Heaven and Hell.

(Alfred Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien)

This 2017 year marks a centenary of the developments that shook the whole world at that time. I mean the ruin of the Russian Empire and what is called the February and the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia.

Socialist ideas and people who followed them are known to have played a great role in those developments. Moreover, by no means only adherents of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (bolshevik) (RSDLP (b)), i.e. the bolsheviks followed them, but also the mensheviks did so. Also, there existed a Socialist Revolutionary Party. As one can see just from the name, it practised the socialist ideas too. It also played a great role in those developments. As a matter of fact, Alexander Kerensky, a minister at first, and the Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government afterwards, was its member. Anarchists were also rather influential. Although there was no word 'socialism' in the name of that ideological movement, it, nevertheless, also adhered to the socialist ideas. It was a well-known fact.¹ The anarchists and bolsheviks had a common ideal, viz., society without State. The difference was only in their method to achieve that ideal, the anarchists advocating its immediate implementation, whereas the bolsheviks believed it to be necessary to set up the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat at first and to implement the ideal only later when the State withers away by itself because of its uselessness. In the year of that revolutionary upheaval and later during the civil war an impact of the anarchists was very considerable.

In 1991, after 74 years of the attempts to implement the socialist ideas in Russia, they were rejected by the leadership of the New Russia.

But they are undoubtedly still alive and have not been overcome yet. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the successor of the RSDLP (b) and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), has a rather large electorate and is represented in the State Duma (Gosduma) of Russia. In the Russian media and especially in article comments, one often observes glorifications of the 'Great October Socialist Revolution'. Not seldom one hears slogans of studying writings of Marx, Engels,² and Lenin, those of resurrection of socialism in keeping to allegedly pure Marxist ideas, rather than their deviations in the Soviet Union. One L. Danilkin has published a big apologetic screed entitled Lenin: Pantocrator of Solar Dust Particles. Therein he has dared to level God with Lenin.³ Not seldom one hears statements that socialism was the most human social system, which eliminated exploitation of man by man, that socialism was a true freedom, etc.

'The Centenary of two revolutions and the civil war is an important occasion to ponder over the future',⁴ as the leader of the CPRF G. Zyuganov has told. And therein I agree with him in full. Well, so I have also made up my mind to ponder over it. But the future is based on the past. One should therefore gain insight into the past at first, i.e. into the socialist ideas.

Igor Shafarevich has pinpointed 4 main ideas not only of Marxism, but also of all socialist ideology, which has been existing for many millennia:

• Equality, elimination of hierarchy;
• Elimination of private property;
• Elimination of religion;
• Elimination of family.⁵

I have no doubt whatsoever that Shafarevich is absolutely right in having pinpointed the above 4 ideas. I have some material and considerations, which can help to confirm his rightness and to replenish him as well as to give an opportunity to a new sight of some aspects of the socialist ideology.

1Cf. Joseph Stalin Anarchism or Socialism, Writings of Stalin, Vol. 1 (in Russian).

2I should like to advise reading Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in original only. The official Russian translation of their writings is too freewheeling and inexact.

3 '… if God, there in the Heaven, takes a fancy for discussing politics and the latest news when playing chess, then with whom, except for Lenin, can he talk?' (my from Russian).

4G. Zyuganov Time Imperatively Requires a New Policy, Press Service of the Central Committee of the CPRF, 19/12/2016 19:35 (update: 28/01/2017 01:21).

5I. Shafarevich Socialism (Collection: From Under the Rubble) (in Russian).