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This stimulates neither progress nor perfection, but leads only to the
utter degeneration of the class of workers, whose only future is an
unrivalled pauperization. 1~ Tkachev~ view, society as a whole
will have to strain working power to the point of extreme exhaustion
to satisfy its demands, and the result [of this excessive st j will be,
as we have shows, the degeneration of the working classes, which will
lead in the long run to the complete degradation of man, to the
weakening of his physical organisation, to the deadening of his
intellectual capacities, in short to his transformation into some sort of
animal sui generis, an animal that most recent naturalists probably
would find it difficult to identify as the same race as ~r~.~
To substantiate his inverted Spencerian anthropology, in which the
assessment of modernity is linked directly with an anti-capitalism where
all institutions of modern society are seen as derivatives of bourgeois
exploitation (including the democratized state and the public sphere),
Tkachev relies on Marxs Capital. This work is important to him more
for its wealth of empirical detail concerning the English working class,
than for its theory of historical materialism.3 Drawing from Capital
achev contrasts living labour to the historical weight of dead labour
which is &dquo;crystallised in money, credit papers in 21 word, in capital&dquo;.24
..,
force of all and not by means of struggle of each with the other.
With the observance of this law, neither the fall of the so~a! union
nor the degeneration of individuality nor the extinction of the race is
conceivable. On ~he contrary its inevitable consequences will be: the
progress of society, the progress of individuality, the progress of the
race.27
Tkachevs conflation of the action of individual with that of race is a
specific solution to the dilemma facing populist thinkers, that is, the
reconciliation of the value placed oil the archaic coll~tivis~ of the
peasant commune with the recognition of a &dquo;creeping&dquo; industrial-
ization. For Tkachev, the institutional framework of the ~a~ embodies
the Spencerian notion of integration; his ontology of society
strives ... to submit the individual to the social
The family and
...
personal interests
closely merged
are so and interlaced with the my,
[with] common interests, that in the majority of cases it is difficult
even to define where the one ends and the others begin. 28
circle is broken
But, for Tkachev, the question still remains: who breaks the
magic circle? is the historical agent a generic subject (class) or an
individual? How is institutional control over the revolutionary process
achieved? How is the programme of revolution i~plc~e~tcd.:~
The notion of historical leaps enables Tkachev to grasp the
~herng~~cvs~an concept of &dquo;mew people&dquo; with all their might and
vigour, and project them onto the evolutionary stage as the sole
historical actors who intercede to alter an historically contingent set of
conditions. Their only error is that they are
ahead of their times in their ideas and wanted to make their
neighbours happy some years or centuries earlier than the inert force
of circumstances would do it. Thus it is realised that these [are]
...
138
people of the future, not ~ild men but very serious and positive
movers among their dreaming ~nt~~~r~rri~ ~
These new people are the enactors then, not so much of reason, but
of +411 and desire. Moreover, it is only the barrenness of the
slavophile landscape that marks them out as unusual. For 7%achev, as
with Chernyshevsky,
the people of the future are not ascetics, not egoists, and not heroes
-
they are ordinary people, and only th~ ~ kiezs that they adopt
and that govern them set them in such keen contrast to everything
that surrounds them that the heroes of the bourgeoisie can actually
take them for ~xr~~asuai people.41
While in one sense it may be the case that these people are not
heroes ascetics - Tkachevs point is to situate therla problematically
or
within the &dquo;naturalness&dquo; of everyday life ® their absorption and
dedication to revolutionary work transfers a quasi-religious asceticism
into the world of concrete activity. In l~achev9s view,
all their action, even the whole form of their life, is determined by
one desire, by one passionate idea - to make the majority of the
people happy, to cali to the feast of life as many participants as
possible. The realisation of this idea becomes the sole task of their
activity because this idea is totally merged with their concept of their
personal happiness. To this idea everything is subordinated,
everything is called to sacrifice.42
This transformation of what Weber termed in the context of West
European protestantism, an &dquo;inner worldly asceticism&dquo; into an &dquo;outer
worldly asceticism&dquo; directed towards political change, stems from the
self-understanding of the intelligentsia. This self-understanding
manifests itself in two ways; on the one hand (as we have just
suggested), as an action and worldly centred ascetic, and on the other,
in a profoundly ambivalent attitude towards modernity and towards
the appropriation of its western philosophical heritage. Waiicki, to
take the latter point first, has indicated that the populist consciousness
had to
reconcile the welfare of the people which demanded a stop to the
process of westernisation, with the welfare of the intelligentsia, which
was a product of westernisation, and vitaity interested in its future
progrcss.~3
139
weight of this worldview two perspectives join hands: not only does
the revolutionary elite have a civilizing mission which brings the
revolution to fruition and in~pefls action by those for whom it was
intended, but it also illuminates the elite9s uniqueness as a product of
its own cultural heritage, as raznochintsy. In other words, it is from
the raznochinnaia intelligentsia that the revolutionary minority is
drawn.49 There is no way to rescue the r, the peasantry and the
working class from their plight, no way to ~~lig~t~~ them, no way to
transform them into r~fin~ and moral beings motivated by an ethical
consciousness, except by a radical social upheaval. This is achieved by
their self-imputed agents, the revolutionaries. The addressees, then,
become the real dispossessed: dispossessed of a material existence and
of a political consciousness.
two phases; the first is when the State is utilized as a coercive power
in which its essence is struggle and force, and where it combines
centralization, strict discipline, s, decisiveness and unity in
action.so 53
The ~e~l work of the revolution takes place afterwards in what
its is constituted through the revolutionary elite or party itself
esseJi1œ
identifying and definhlg ~~~~ interests and ideals of the ywOple,54 It can
then impose these conscious aspirations and interesls on the
unconscious majority. Giving a direct and unequivocal answer to the
question which is raised at the o~d of the 1860s (and which links this
type of populism to the Jacobin consciousness of the French
revolutionary tradition) - the question concerning the possibility that
after a successful change of state power the people might still be
incapable of recognizing their true interests Tkachev declares that,
-
But the revolutionary minority must be able also to continue its work
of revolutionary destruction in those spheres where it can hardly
reckon on the genuine support and assistance of the popular majority.
That is why it must possess might, power and authority. And the
143
greater this might, the firmerand more energetic this power, the
fnller and more comprebensive the implementation of the ideas of
the revolution, the easier it will ~ to id a conflicts with the
conservative elements of the le.
In short, the relationship of the revolutionary ority to the people,
and the part played by the latter in the revolution, can be defined as
follows. the revolutionary minority, having liberated the people from
the grip of fear and terror of the authorities, provide them with the
opportunity for demonstrating their destructive revolutionary force.
Basing itself upon this force, skilfully guiding it towards the
destruction of the immediate enemies of the revolution, the minority
thereby demolishes the enemys entrenched strongholds and deprives
it of the means of resistance and counteraction. Then, utilizing its
power and its authority, the minority introduces new, progressive-
communistic elements into the peoples life; it will shift the peoples
life off its age-old foundations, and rejuvenate its osified and
shrivelled forms ...
The people can never save thent1selves. Neither in the present nor
in the future could the people, left to themselves; carry out the social
revolution. Only we, the revolutionary movement, can do this - and
we must do it as soon as possible. 56
Thus, the acquisition of statue power does not constitute the social
revolution itself, merely its begiaaisg. It is an action which makes
possible the injection of new, supposdly rational principles into a
developmental logic of society, a logic cohering around the state form.
Moreover this social revolution not onl~p ultimately transforms all
existing social relations, but also changes &dquo;the very nature of man. ,57
The egalitarian project, the elimination of poverty, the raising of moral
ideals and education become effective when the ultilna ratio of the
party lies in the authority and power of the state. For Tkachev, then,
the problem of socialist transition (and in the Russian context, whether
the capitalist stage could be missed) resides in the potential of the
state to change hands, so to ~~~1~~ The problematic of practical
politics, of practical reason, then, is reduced to one of both strategic
and instrumental control over the state. Reforms can take place under
the auspices and juridical power of the state apparatuses, but only
when the party itself, on behalf of the people, becomes the state. The
asœticized revolutionaries, in their conflation of the multi-
dimensionality of politics to etatism, and as self-proclaimed
representatives of the oppressed classes (especially after the failure of
144
the &dquo;go to the people campaign&dquo;), can now claim the ri to political
control and legitimate domination (in the ~e~ri~~ s~ ~9 the social
warrant, and (fello+4ng Baoouf) judicial ~D.CHOJloS8 The large mass of
the people, oœ R1eedOO~ are now excl4~de-d from the r:evolution&ry
process which is denied to them9 as a fadical pedagogy embodying their
own self-management of the multiplicity of societal pr The .
NOTES
1. See C. Taylor, Hegel (London, Cambridge University Press, 1975), esp. pp.
3-11; also J. Rundell, Origins of Modernity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987),
pp. 1-13.
2. K. Marx, "Private Property and Communism", Early Writings (London,
Penguin, 1981), esp. pp. 345-348. The value-idea of freedom which is
located in these works also provides the orientation for his later analyses
of the Crimean War and the Russian State. See The Eastern Question: A
Reprint of Letters Written 1853-1856 Dealing with Events of the Crimean
War, ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling (London, Frank Cass
& Co. Ltd, 1969), esp. pp. 29, 78, 80-81, 356, 452, 482-491, 525; "Secret
Diplomatic History of the Century", The Unknown Marx, ed. Robert Payne
(New York, New York University Press, 1972).
3. See, Franco Venturi, The Roots of Revolution, ch. 18, pp. 469-506; Tbor
Szamuely, The Russian Tradition, ch. 15, pp. 272-282; Andrej Walicki, The
Controversy Over Capitalism, pp. 88-107 and A History of Russian Thought,
ch. 12, pp. 223-267; D. Hardy, "Consciousness and Spontaneity, 1875: The
Peasant Revolution as seen by Tkachev, Lacrov, and Bakunin", Canadian
Slavic Studies IV (1970), pp. 699-720; A Besançon, The Intellectual Origins
of Leninism, chs 8-9, pp. 127-169.
4. Venturi, p. 503.
5. This also refers to the Aristotelian undercurrent in Marx, see C.
Castoriadis, "Value, Equality, Justice, Politics: From Marx to Aristotle and
Aristotle to Ourselves", Crossroads in the Labyrinth, trans. Kate Soper and
Martin H. Ryle (Sussex, The Harvester Press, 1984), pp. 260-339.
6. Venturi, p. 391.
7. Szamuely, p. 287.
8. The hatred of western democratic forms and conflation to an epi-
phenomenon of their bourgeois capitalistic life is not unknown in the
Russian revolutionary tradition. This tendency, in fact is cemented in the
146
small in amount, are of the kind required; and the ratio which these
facts bear to the generalisation based on them, seems as great as is the
ratio between facts and generalisation, which in another case, produces
conviction. (Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, Vol. 1, p. 437)
Tkachev himself adds to this
that the laws of reproduction to which all living organisms have been
subject, beginning from the first vesicle to the multicelled tree, from the
rhizopod to the highest species of mammal, must also be the laws of
human reproduction - this the most desperate and even the most
ignorant spiritualist could hardly doubt. (Tkachev in Hardy, Critic, p.
171)
Importantly, though, Tkachevs attachment to Spencer remains positivistic
in a methodological sense only. Earlier, during his association with
Cause
(1967) Tkachev had attacked Comtean positivism, particularly as a social
theory.
14. Spencer, Principles, Vol. I, pp. 77-80.
15. Herbert Spencer, "Progress: Its Law and Course" in Herbert Spencer on
Social Evolution, ed. J.D.Y. Peel (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1972), pp. 45-46; ibid., chs 15 and 16, pp. 142-166; and Herbert Spencer
:
Structure, Function and Evolution, ed. Andreski, part 3 (esp. pp. 142-147)
(London, Michael Joseph, 1971).
16. Spencer, in Andreski, pp. 138-140.
, Vol. II, esp. part VI, chs 9-13.
17. See Spencer, Principles
18. ibid., p. 531.
19. Spencer, in Peel (ed.), p. 37.
20. Tkachev, in Hardy, Critic, p. 174.
21. Tkachev, ibid., pp. 172-173.
22. Tkachev, ibid., pp. 174.
23. According to Hardy and Besançon, Tkachev was probably the first Russian
to mention Marx (in 1865), and even paraphrased the base-superstructure
147
48. Venturi, p. 405. Tkachev states that "taken as whole the masses do not
and cannot believe in their own strength, They will never on their own
initiative begin to fight against the misery that surrounds them".
49. Tkachev, in Hardy, p. 122.
50. Now that the vocational revolutionaries have been freed from the crisis
problematic of the addressee, they can concentrate on their task of social
transformation - the political revolution. In this respect, the notion of the
party as a central problematic is wrenched the dream-work of
Nechaev into Tkachevs own reality (see Nechaevs Revolutionary Catechism,
discussed in Venturi, pp. 418-419).
For Tkachev, the party organization is important because it unifies all
diverse endeavours into a common disciplined and orderly whole which has
control over political knowledge, discourse and practice by conducting three
types of activity - organization, propaganda and agitation. Writing in The
Tocsin in 1878 he states that its pragmatic strength lies in centralizing all
the revolutionary struggles in such a way as to maintain, sanction and
enhance the vocational asceticism of its members, as well as protecting
them from the police measures of the State (see Tkachev, in Venturi, p.
428; Hardy, Critic, p. 266).
Politics now resides under the control of a common leadership which
is based on the centralization of power and functions including the
discursive. In this way Tkachev argues explicitly against both the Lavrovian
and Bakuninist strains of the revolutionary movement. Any plan to create
a movement based on a federation of independent groups could never
constitute an effective weapon as they would be incapable of speedy and
decisive action. Moreover, this organizational form opens the way for
internal dissension through mutual discussion (which would have to at least
nominally concede the structural and notional existence of a public sphere),
to doubts and compromise.
Tkachevs view of the partys organizational structure and raison détre
links directly with his negative reading of Spencer and his assessment of the
idiosyncratic Russian situation in which the idealized
obschina is under
threat and central as the post-revolutionary social institution. The time,
according to Tkachev, is fast approaching when the opportunity for an
"historical leap" will be missed. While the infrastructure of the obschina
remains there is still a chance for socialist transition, but capitalism is
already destroying this unique communalism. As the economy grows
stronger, transforming agrarian social relations into capitalistic ones, these
relations will become entrenched and impossible to shift. Only a centralized
disciplined party peopled by the "new ascetics" can fully comprehend the
situation, grasp the mettle and "leap" (see Tkachev, in Venturi, p. 412; in
Hardy, Critic, p. 252; and Szamuely, p. 301).
51. ibid., p. 255. Tkachevs introduction to Bechers The Worker Question in
the Contemporary Significance and the Methods for Solving It (1869) can be
150
also become differentiated and integrated into two [or] three separate
directions [and that] each direction [of social thought] is always based
strictly on that economic factor, the interests of which it embodies"
(Tkachev, in Hardy, p. 244). Tkachev, in his usage of Spencer and Marx
sets the scene (so to speak) for a transition to the Engelsian version of
historical materialism, which is "russified" in Plekhanov and "politicized"
in Lenin (see also footnote 34).
52. Tkachev, in Hardy, Critic, p. 255.
53. See Hardy, ibid. and Venturi, p. 419. Venturis translation more clearly
brings forward the moral maxim for action which is based in an imputed
universalism.
The programmatic principles are:
1. The gradual transformation of the existing peasant obschina -
founded on the basis of private property limited in time - into a
151