Vladimir Bazarov

On ‘proletarian culture’. Socialist culture as a precondition for a successful revolution.*

The skeptics who doubt the socialist character of the revolutions that are currently
sweeping across eastern Europe support their position by pointing out the extremely low level of
productive forces in the countries where the revolutionary flame burns most brightly. Further,
they turn the attention of faithful communists to the fact that the colossal destructive work of war
objectively moved the possibility of socialism father away even for the most advanced countries
of the capitalist world. Germany is currently on the verge of complete economic bankruptcy, on
the verge of hopeless starvation and disintegration of all industrial production. In such conditions
the extensive plans for socialist construction are practically unachievable, regardless of the
revolutionary spirit of the proletariat were it able to take control of the state power: beggars can’t
be choosers. And not only in the defeated Germany but also among the members of the
victorious coalition – Italy, France and even England – the war caused a huge decrease of the
level of productive forces. Even if we agree that these advanced capitalist countries were
economically prepared for socialism five years ago, even if we acknowledge that the world
catastrophe we are experiencing now is the collapse of capitalism that took the form of
imperialist war rather than the form of socialist revolution because in August of 1914
international proletariat could not muster enough solidarity and revolutionary decisiveness, –
even if all of this is indeed the case, then there is little else that can be done now, and the belated
revolutionary remorse of the proletariat, now attempting to plant the banner of its dictatorship on
the ruins of capitalist economy, cannot transform these ruins into a flowering garden of
socialism, but it can only decisively complete the process of degradation of industrial production.
Thus argue the skeptics. And they are, of course, factually correct. German followers of
Scheidemann are correct when they argue that introduction of “immediate socialism” will very
quickly lead to a state of affairs where “there will be nothing to socialize.” Even more correct in
their skepticism are Russian “socialist-conciliators.” Soviet Russia already achieved what for
Germany is still only a frightening prospect. We already have the enormously bloated socializing
apparatus, but we have almost nothing to socialize, at least within the reach of this apparatus.
The appearance of socialist construction is temporarily supported by the energetic paper-pushing
of the infinite number of bureaucratic institutions. But since the approaching shortage of paper is
likely to affect this sphere of activity of our communism, then we are going to witness in the
nearest future the following edifying spectacle: complete paralysis of communist institutions as a
result of complete political triumph of the communist party.
So, facts are indisputably on the side of the skeptics. But the theoretical explanation that
they give to these facts, as we just saw, is reduced to pointing out the decline of the level of
productive forces due to war. It is not entirely correct and in any case it is not sufficient and does
not fully address the issue at hand, and therefore it does not allow one to make all the necessary
conclusions from this correctly intuited position.

*
First published in Mysl’ [Thought] (1919), No. 4, pp. 99-103.

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 First and foremost there is the following question: is it permissible to take all the material
devastation caused by war and without any further analysis identify it with the destruction of the
productive forces of warring nations? Communists point out, not without foundation, that the
measure of the development of the forces of production is not the quantity of material goods
found in a society, but the condition of the methods of social labor with the help of which these
material goods adapt to the satisfaction of particular needs. The term “force of production” is a
sociological and not a technical or a scientific term; “forces of production” are not a thing or an
aggregate of things, but a social relation. To think otherwise is to fall into the trap of the same
“fetishism” that was exposed by Marx when he criticized the common view of commodity as
something that has value by nature.
Indeed, a factory that is equipped with the most advances technology is a valuable force
of production in a civilized society. But the very same factory does not at all constitute a force of
production in the hands of savages: it is only a pile of raw materials – stone, metal, belts – that
the savage can turn into a useful thing like a tool or a household utensil only as a result of a
tenacious effort.
Let us consider the opposite situation. Let us imagine that a society with an established
socialist order, firmly rooted in its socialist norms and customs, experiences a natural disaster
(earthquake, flood and so on) that destroy the material resources of its existence in a manner
similar to the recently concluded war did in modern capitalist Europe. It would be ridiculous to
assume that such a society would be forced to return to an economic order that includes private
property until the forces of production destroyed during the disaster are reconstructed and
restored to their former level. It is obvious that the opposite would take place and during this
period of reconstruction of the social economy, a period of intense struggle against the
consequences of common disaster, that it would be necessary to utilize all the advantages of
socialist methods of economic management, such as a higher level of productivity, a general plan
and organization of social labor, as opposed to a return to any form of economic order with
private property that would be more or less an anarchical system.
Therefore if European society was in fact already prepared for a socialist revolution†
before the war, then now, after the war, the socialization of Europe would not only be a possible,
but an urgently necessary measure. It would have been the best means to heal the terrible wounds
that war inflicted on the populations of the civilized world in the shortest possible amount of
time and with smallest amount of effort.
So what is the criterion that allows us to decide whether a given society is prepared or
unprepared, ripe or unripe, for socialist reorganization?
As we just observed, the quantity of material riches of a given society, either in the form
of things available for immediate consumption or in the form of means of production, cannot be
such a criterion. The precondition of the possibility of realizing socialism is not this or that

†
[Trans.] Bazarov uses the word “perevorot” which means “overthrow” or “coup” but in the context of this essay it
is best rendered as “revolution” due to negative connotations of English “overthrow/coup” as illegitimate change of
power.

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combination of things, but the presence of a certain social-psychological way of life, a certain
system of social inclinations, habits and skills. In order for socialism to become possible, during
the period of its struggle against capitalism the proletariat must already have developed the
necessary qualities that would allow it to be the builder of future society.
What are these qualities? Many think that the success of the socialist revolution will be
guaranteed if the leading elements of the proletariat are able to absorb the technical data
necessary in order to oversee the work of professional intelligentsia that under socialism will be
in charge of organizing production in the same way as it did under capitalism. This is a serious
misunderstanding. Engineers and technicians, even if they have the best possible intentions, are
only able to turn private capitalist enterprises into official state enterprises but not at all into
socialist enterprises. For some sectors of production such a change may turn out to be necessary,
but in general it cannot but lead to overall decline of industry.
We have a very widespread prejudice that the conversion of capitalist private property
into state property in and of itself would pour great and rich blessings on the proletariat and the
poorest peasantry. Those who hold on to such hopes forget that only a comparatively small
portion of the surplus value that otherwise goes into the capitalist’s personal consumption fund
could be used to raise the standard of living for the working masses, the rest of the surplus that
the capitalist invests in amortization, expansion, business improvement and other production
needs will need to be spent in a similar manner by the state power that now owns the enterprise.
But even the capitalist’s personal consumption fund will not end up in the hands of the workers
because it will be just enough to pay salaries of all the additional state agents of supervision,
control and management, tasks that would otherwise be performed by the vigilant “owner’s eye”
of the private capitalist. Consequently, nationalization does not bring any special advantage even
when it is not accompanied by a decrease of productivity. But such a decrease is in the majority
of cases inevitable: when the main driving motivation for productive activity is the pursuit of
personal profit, a private capitalist, all other things being equal, will inevitably turn out to be a
better organizer than the state, will be better at using the psychology of his workers and
employees in his own interests. Thus, since the psychology of workers and employees as agents
of production preserves its bourgeois-individualist character, then the “socialization” or
“nationalization” of enterprises remains a deeply reactionary measure that decreases the
productivity of social labor. In order to handle the financial consequences of this decrease, the
“socialist” state would have to either lower the salary significantly below its level under
capitalism, which does not at all harmonize with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or
greatly increase the price of commodities of nationalized industry, which would set all the non-
proletarian population against the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It is permissible to talk about the “bourgeois-individualist” psychology of the proletariat
during the epoch of such a powerful proletarian revolution? This is the epoch during which the
working class demonstrated so much unconquerable energy, patience and solidarity in its
struggle against the bourgeois world, the epoch when almost all organizational functions both in
the economy and state government are executed by the proletarian “collective.”

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 No one doubts the militant courage of the proletariat, but it does not at all indicate that
the proletariat overcame individualism in the sphere of positive, creative work. We can see
examples of great bravery and strong spirit of militant comradeship even among the White Guard
troops. Are we able to suggest that the White Guard soldiers lose elements of bourgeois-
individualist psychology as a result of the Civil War testing their endurance, and that therefore
they acquire socialist psychology? Of course a certain military communism created by the
situation of military life and strengthened by military discipline is available to different social
classes, groups and estates, but the distance between this communism and creative socialist
consciousness is as great as the distance from earth to the nearest star. And when it comes to the
“collectives” that are in charge of our economic development and state management, these –
alas! – are more like awkward and incapable “collegia” [ministries] of Peter the Great that laid
the foundation for our current bureaucracy, and less like the free, ordered and flexible
organizations that during socialism must replace the obsolete rule of functionaries.
Socialism is a social construction that combines the maximum level of organization with
the maximum level of freedom. Socialism will win and build on its victory only if it completely
overcomes the anarchy of capitalist production: not only within the borders of a particular state
where this anarchy is expressed in the form of free competition between businessmen, but also in
the international realm where this capitalist anarchy takes on a form of annihilating militarism. It
follows then that socialism must systematically organize economic life of the cultural world into
a unified and strictly planned whole. But such organization cannot be built on the foundation of
external state coercion, and cannot be managed by the centralized bureaucratic mechanism. This
is the case because the bureaucracy of the entire universe would have a gigantic insurmountable
inertia, it would cause all social relations to stagnate, and it would make any energetic
development of the forces of production absolutely impossible.
Thus, socialism realized in such a state-bureaucratic form would begin to decay and
decompose the day after its victory.
Indeed, it is possible to “overcome” capitalism, i.e. to overcome all limitations put up by
capitalism in the process of the development of the forces of production, only under the
condition that the greatest plan of social organization of the economy is carried out not by
bureaucratic power, but by a free comradely union of all producers.
It is obvious that this type of organization radically contradicts the social-psychological
situation of bourgeois society: it requires a colossal shift, an elaboration of a new psychology, a
new worldview, new forms of everyday life, - in other words, a new social culture that is as
different from the current culture as the current culture is different from the culture of the Middle
Ages. And even in order to create those forms of transitional common living that could help raise
the masses in the spirit of socialist culture, the proletariat, at the very least, in the person of its
progressive elements must already now, under the rule of capitalism, become a bearer of a new
culture, otherwise it cannot even properly begin this reorganization of society.
The bourgeois order in Europe finally established itself only in the nineteenth century.
But already during the Middle Ages the commercial urban republics became the nurseries for

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bourgeois daily life, the bourgeois world view and bourgeois culture. Three hundred years before
its material triumph over the Middle Ages the bourgeoisie already achieved several spectacular
spiritual victories. During the time of Renaissance we see the emergence of the bourgeois culture
that is hostile to the medieval tradition and that is permeated with the spirit of free inquiry and
articulate individualism: we see the emergence of the new science, new art, new philosophy, new
religion.
Can socialism that now lays a claim to world domination give us anything that is even
remotely like that opulent blossoming of the creative forces of social consciousness that
awakened to the new culture? Is there any outline of the new style of being and thinking that
must constitute the foundation of socialist culture? What principally new input did socialism
make to moral consciousness, to music, to poetry, to painting, to philosophy and religion?
Many years ago Lenin with great satisfaction wrote that ‘Marxism contains not a grain of
ethics’; he could have added with even more satisfaction that ‘Marxism contains not a grain of
aesthetics’, and, of course, ‘not a grain of religion’ – in general, it contains nothing but the
methodology of cognition in the realm of social sciences.‡ It is true that this methodology was
brilliantly conceived by Marx and skillfully applied in practice by his talented disciples.
Marxism is a respected scientific school, but not at all a “worldview,” and it is even less an
embryo of the new social culture. But it is precisely from the Marxist point of view that such a
clear and complete lack of higher expressions of socialist culture would have been completely
inexplicable, if this socialist psychology already existed in reality.
The carriers of such a new, such a distinct from the bourgeois psychology could not, of
course, be satisfied with the “ideological superstructures” created by the bourgeoisie; but, at the
same time, they would not be satisfied with a simple negation of bourgeois values (not a grain of
ethics!), since it would signify an extreme scarcity, a great spiritual poverty of socialist culture
while its very social function requires that socialism bring about extreme wealth and
concentration of spiritual life.
We have no other choice but to accept that the absence of higher forms of socialist
“ideology” signifies the absence of any more or less developed socialist psychology. And we
must come to the conclusion that contemporary Europe is less ripe for socialism than Europe of
the fifteenth century was ripe for bourgeois revolution.
Whether this is the case or not, it is clear in any case that the problem of “proletarian
culture” represents today the deepest vital interest not only for the so-called cultural workers but
decidedly for any specialist.

‡
This is a reference to the following statement by Lenin in The Economic Content of Narodism
and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve’s Book: “One therefore cannot deny the justice of Sombart’s
remark that ‘in Marxism itself there is not a grain of ethics from beginning to end’; theoretically,
it subordinates the “ethical standpoint” to the “principle of causality”; in practice it reduces it to
the class struggle.”
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 In the next article we will consider how this problem is understood by those organizations
and particular actors who are in charge of the development of proletarian culture.
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov
(Metropolitan State University of Denver)