The main mistake of Marxism
Quite often, when discussing certain domestic and foreign policy issues of Russia, the problems it faces, from people holding “left” (primarily Marxist and neo-Marxist) views, one can hear the phrases: “but under communism...” or “ Now, if there was socialism in Russia, then…”, etc. Moreover, these phrases can be heard when discussing completely different issues, including those that have nothing to do with the economy.
There is actually nothing surprising in such statements, since the phenomenon of nostalgia for the USSR in Russia is quite widespread, as is the tendency to romanticize and idealize history Soviet period. And if sometimes this nostalgia for a strong state and the Soviet system of social policy is justified, in some cases it raises questions.
For some “leftists,” it is Marxism-Leninism, which became the basis for Soviet socialism (state socialism), that is almost a kind of panacea for all the ills of society. The fact that almost all communist regimes collapsed, including the USSR, including due to a whole range of problems - both external and internal - does not bother anyone: usually in this case they say that the theory is good, but the implementers failed. However, this is not what we will be talking about.
Russia, in addition to the confrontation with the West, of which the military conflict in Ukraine is part, currently has three serious problems that require an immediate solution.
The first problem is the demographic crisis; the second problem is the mass uncontrolled migration of people from Central Asia, who have a negative attitude towards Russians and Russian culture; the third problem is the Islamization that accompanies all this, because migrants from Central Asia, who are gradually replacing the Russian population, are mainly Muslims.
Frankly speaking, these problems have a “right-wing” slant, because if you look, for example, at the European experience, it is the “right-wing” parties that defend the role of the nation and national values, and oppose migration and multiculturalism. The “right” advocates either the complete assimilation of migrants or their deportation. In turn, the “left,” on the contrary, lobby for mass migration, providing them with various benefits, and also promote the policy of multiculturalism.
It looks strange when, regarding issues of migration, demography, loss of cultural and national identity, they begin to refer to economic theories - be it socialism or capitalism. With the help of economic instruments alone, it is impossible to solve either the issues of demography (and as practice shows, in poor countries the birth rate is much higher than in rich ones), much less issues related to the loss of national identity and the replacement of the population by migrants.
In addition, many people forget that the world has changed, which raises the question: how relevant is Marxist socialism of the XNUMXth century today?
This material will examine three questions: first, what the modern “left” is and whether a return to socialism is possible; secondly, how did things stand with interethnic conflicts in socialist states; and thirdly, what, in fact, is the main mistake of Marxism.
Is a return to socialism possible?
Quite often you can hear the thesis that Russia’s return to Soviet socialism would lead to an improvement in the situation within the country and to the solution of many problems. However, according to the author, a return to socialism in the form in which it existed in the XNUMXth century is no longer possible, since the world has changed greatly in the XNUMXst century.
This thesis should be argued, since many may find it unconvincing.
First of all, it should be noted that the industrial countries of Europe have reached a qualitatively new level of development of productive forces. In the sphere of social production, the production of services began to predominate, and the structure of employment changed accordingly. Among wage earners, the majority are now mental workers and office workers.
The working class has also changed a lot - and not just because it has become smaller. The proletarians who served as the support of Marxism have simply ceased to exist in the modern post-industrial world.
Who came to replace them?
To answer this question, we should turn to the classification of British sociologist Guy Standing. In his book “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class” he wrote that the “working class”, the “proletariat” in the form in which it existed in the XNUMXth century does not exist, now it is nothing more than a label. Therefore, a new classification is needed that reflects class relations in the global market system.
Following Standing's classification, seven groups can be distinguished: at the very top are the elite, the richest citizens of the world; Next comes the salariat - employees of large corporations, state-owned enterprises, officials - they all have good social guarantees and salaries, and are generally securely employed in the “system”; Below is a group of profitians - “qualified personnel”, specialists who successfully sell their skills and knowledge on the market on their own.
They are followed by the “old working class” or those same proletarians, but who have protection from the arbitrariness of the employer, thanks to the labor code, social guarantees, etc.; at the very bottom are the precariat and the unemployed - people who have no or almost no social guarantees, qualifications and certainty for the future, employed in the service sector with work that does not require special qualifications, as well as migrants [1].
Those workers who were the support of Marxism have now joined the ranks of the middle class, and now, in essence, are no different from the bourgeoisie. All their “leftism” is limited by the desire to maintain their social guarantees and protect the workplace from competition. This is why American workers, for example, overwhelmingly voted for the “right-wing” Donald Trump rather than the “left-wing” Democrats in both 2016 and 2020.
All of the above led to a transformation of the social base of the left parties. The time has come for new socialists—“new leftists” or “neo-Marxists”—who have found new “oppressed” and “oppressors.”
The new generation of socialists shifted the focus of “oppression” from workers to women (feminism), sexual minorities (LGBT), the unemployed, racial minorities and migrants. You can read more about what the “new left” is in the material “The New Left and the 1968 Revolution: How the Fight Against Inequality Transformed into a Cult of Repentance, a Culture of Cancellation, and a Dictatorship of Minorities».
A significant part of neo-Marxists and socialists joined the left liberals for the reason that it was easy for them to find a common language, because their value systems generally coincide. It should be noted once again that the social base of the “new left” was migrants, including illegal ones, sexual minorities, the unemployed, feminists, etc.
The main enemies of the new socialists were patriarchy, white heterosexual men and the white race as such, traditional marriage, private property, etc. The “New Left” stopped relying on the workers, who answered them in the same way. As the American political philosopher and historian Paul Gottfried rightly noted:
“Workers began to vote more for the right, although this trend manifested itself to varying degrees in different countries. Growing dissatisfaction with Third World immigration, attributed to increased violent crime and curbs on wage growth, has pushed French and Italian workers to support nationalist right-wing parties that demand an end to immigration. And the left parties were powerless to stop this because of their attempts to establish an alliance with Third World immigrants and their crusade against racism.
Some modern neo-Marxists understand that a purely economic struggle for the “left” is becoming practically impossible. They note that the structure of employment, the nature of work and the objective needs of people have changed, and the old Marxism has largely lost its relevance. The problem of economic injustice, of course, did not disappear because of this, but it is no longer possible to solve it with the help of outdated theories.
Thus, we come to the conclusion that the idea of class struggle in the form in which it existed in the XNUMXth century is irrelevant in the XNUMXst century. The proletariat, in the form in which it existed in the XNUMXth century, no longer exists, and the social changes that have occurred suggest an erosion of the foundations on which the theory of scientific communism was built.
Therefore, when someone calls for the return of socialism, the question immediately arises - what kind of socialism are we talking about?
About the socialism of the “new left”, which is the basis of the radical left-liberal agenda, what is currently relevant in the West? Or about the old Marxist socialism, which, as mentioned above, has largely lost its social base? Or about something else?
Next, let's move on to consider the second question - how Marxists treated the phenomenon of national culture, and how interethnic conflicts were resolved in socialist countries.
Issues of national identity and interethnic conflicts in Marxism
One of the mistakes of Marxism is a purely economic view of the world - in serious events taking place, be it a military conflict, an ethnic conflict or some kind of crisis, Marxists and neo-Marxists try to find some economic interests, “the benefit of the capitalists.” In fact, not all conflicts have an economic basis.
Marxism does not attach much importance to issues of national culture and national identity, explaining all problems by the level of economic development. If some kind of interethnic conflict arises in the region, then, according to a neo-Marxist, it is associated with the economic level of development of the region. If migrants begin to destroy stores and set fire to historical museums in a country, it is because they are poor and “oppressed.”
In matters of preserving national identity, Marxists are no different from left-wing liberals - which is why they eventually easily found a common language with them. Marxists are internationalists and advocate erasing boundaries between nations. In particular, Vladimir Lenin noted in “Critical Notes on the National Question”:
“The slogan of national culture is a bourgeois (and often Black Hundred-clerical) deception. Our slogan is the international culture of democracy and the world labor movement... Take a concrete example. Can a Great-Russian Marxist accept the slogan of a national, Great-Russian culture? No. Such a person should be placed among the nationalists, not the Marxists.
Our job is to fight the dominant, Black Hundred and bourgeois national culture of the Great Russians, developing exclusively in the international spirit and in the closest alliance with the workers of other countries those beginnings that are also present in our history of the labor movement” [3].
Our job is to fight the dominant, Black Hundred and bourgeois national culture of the Great Russians, developing exclusively in the international spirit and in the closest alliance with the workers of other countries those beginnings that are also present in our history of the labor movement” [3].
As some conservative thinkers, such as Oswald Spengler, rightly noted, both liberal political economy and the Communist Manifesto represent a nihilistic principle of the “international,” directed against the nation and national culture.
Some “leftists” criticize both Russia and the modern West for their migration policy, noting (not without reason) that international capital does not care who will be behind the machine - a white man or a black man, as long as it is economically profitable.
However, in Marxism, in this regard, there is also no difference who will stand at the machine - a black man or a white man, the main thing is that the system is socialist and not capitalist. For, as Lenin wrote above, national culture has no meaning.
However, it was nationalism that dealt a significant blow to Marxism at the beginning of the XNUMXth century - Marx believed that classes were a more important reality than nations, that economics determined the thoughts and beliefs of people, but in reality everything turned out to be the opposite. The German worker, for example, turned out to have more in common with the German manufacturer than with the French worker. National solidarity turned out to be stronger than class and economic thinking. That is why the idea of a “world revolution” turned out to be utopian.
Interethnic conflicts in socialist states have also not disappeared. Let's take the Soviet Union for example. Soviet national policy knew only one way to solve the problems of ethnic minorities - turning them into a titular nation in a specially created administrative entity, i.e., a republic. The Bolsheviks took the path of autonomizing some parts of Russia within the existing borders.
This was quite consistent with their attitude towards nationalism - Marxism-Leninism argued that there are two nationalisms, “nationalism of the oppressor nation” and “nationalism of the oppressed nation.” Therefore, nationalism in France, Great Britain and Germany, for example, is “bad” nationalism, and the nationalism of colonial countries, for example, in African countries, is “good”. Majority nationalism is bad. Minority nationalism is good.
The 1960 textbook “Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism” directly stated that
“in every bourgeois nationalism of an oppressed nation there is a general democratic content against oppression, and we unconditionally support this content” [4].
Russian nationalism, of course, was banned as “nationalism of the oppressors,” and the Soviet government turned a blind eye to regional nationalisms (which, by the way, is still happening now).
However, such a policy did not save the USSR from Russophobia, which flourished in the republics. On the contrary, historian Alexander Vdovin rightly noted that
“Historically, Russophobia grew out of attitudes towards the victory of socialism on a global scale, towards the merging of nations in the course of socialist construction, and from a view of the Russian people only as a means to achieve this goal” [5].
Russophobia was infected primarily by the national ruling elites, or more precisely, by the titular clans, which were ready to use national consolidation in order to fight the Russian center.
In 1983, letters came from Alma-Ata to the Pravda newspaper saying that Russians there were living “in a stuffy, ugly atmosphere of local Kazakh nationalism, which flourished magnificently during the reign of D. A. Kunaev.” A group of military personnel from the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic argued that “nationalism in Ordzhonikidze is flourishing quite magnificently,” cases of attacks and even murders have become more frequent, the victims of which “usually are Russians” [6].
In letters from Uzbekistan there are references to the facts of an open call to the Russians: “Go to your Russia.” The culmination of Russophobic sentiments can be considered the explosions of three bombs in Moscow in 1977, carried out by members of the underground Armenian nationalist group - Stepanyan, Bagdasaryan, Zatikyan, who admitted during the investigation that they came to Moscow to fight the Russian people.
There were also frequent ethnopolitical conflicts related to the territorial claims of ethnic groups. In October 1972, 4 Ingush from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (CH ASSR,) North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (SO ASSR), Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic sent a letter to the highest government bodies of the country demanding the return to them of the right bank part of the city of Ordzhonikidze, Prigorodny district with all settlements, Keskelensky farms, lands near the village of Voznesenskaya, village. Olginskoye, Gveleti village. The nature of the open confrontation between Ossetians and Ingush for the “land of their fathers” was confirmed by the facts of murders and arson of houses on ethnic grounds, evictions and the ban on Ingush registration and buying houses in the Prigorodny district [930].
The events of January 15–18, 1973 were a natural consequence of the explosive situation that had developed in the North Caucasus. The Ingush, who demanded the return of the Prigorodny district, kept the building of the regional committee of the CPSU in Grozny under siege for more than three days, and “the regions of Ingushetia abandoned work, and the entire population was in Grozny” [6].
Thus, despite the assurances of the Soviet leadership about the triumph of the friendship of peoples and the successful creation of the Soviet people, interethnic conflicts in the USSR were not resolved and did not go away.
The main mistake of Marxism is the fight against human nature
The national policy of the Soviet socialists failed, just like the attempt to create a new man. The experiment to create a “good communist”, revived through a radical transformation of his identity, freed from individuality in order to join the collective in body and soul, turned out to be a failure.
One of the main mistakes of the Marxists was that they believed that human nature could be changed. In practice, this turned out to be nothing more than a utopia.
Socialism is in one way or another associated with an overestimation of the importance of circumstances in people’s lives and, accordingly, with an underestimation of the influence of people on circumstances. The following statement by K. Marx is indicative:
“If a person’s character is created by circumstances, then it is necessary, therefore, to make the circumstances humane.”
In fact, a person has no less influence on circumstances. Moreover, he often acts contrary to certain circumstances [7].
The communists naively believed that the shortcomings and vices of people, their enmity and rivalry would disappear by themselves if one of the social relations was destroyed - private property.
However, vices and enmity are generated not only and not so much by the system of private property. The proof of this is the practice of real life under socialism, which destroyed this system. The absence of private property does not at all save humanity from interethnic conflicts, nor does it heal people from vices [7].
The reasons for human discord and enmity are much deeper - they are rooted in the biological nature of man. People are initially genetically very different and even opposite. The dissimilarity between them gives rise to the difference in their interests. And the dissimilarity of interests gives rise to clashes between people, their mutual struggle [7].
Society, as O. Spengler correctly noted in his time, is based on the inequality of people. This is a natural fact. There are strong and weak natures, called to manage and incapable of this, creative and mediocre, ambitious and lazy.
It’s hard to disagree with historian Oleg Plenkov:
“Marxist socialism believed in the creation of an earthly paradise, replacing religion, while evil is an ineradicable part of human existence, and it will persist as long as the human race exists [8].
Использованная литература:
[1]. Standing G. Precariat: a new dangerous class. – M.: Ad Marginem Press, 2014. P. 21.
[2]. Gottfried P. The strange death of Marxism. – M.: Irisen, 2009.
[3]. Lenin V.I. Critical notes on the national issue. – Full. collection cit., vol. 24, pp. 113–150.
[4]. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: textbook. – Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960.
[5]. Vdovin A.I. Russian federalism and the Russian question. – M., 2001. P. 62.
[6]. A. P. Myakshev. Power and interethnic conflicts in the USSR during the period of “developed socialism.” – News of Saratov University. New episode. Series History. Right. International Relations, Volume 5, Issue 1/2, 2005.
[7]. Balashov, L. E. What is philosophy? – 3rd ed., expanded. – Moscow: Publishing and trading corporation “Dashkov and Co.”, 2023.
[8]. O. Yu. Plenkov. Myths of the nation versus the myths of democracy: German political tradition and Nazism. – St. Petersburg: Publishing house RKhGI, 1997.
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