Having failed to analyse the reality of economic and social relations, Mikhailovsky declares that they are not conforming to the ideal, an ideal he simply plucks from the air, based on the combining together of what he sees as “good” from across a range of sources. He simply sets up, in opposition to the reality he has run from, another Utopia.
“It is obvious that a theory based on this was bound to stand aloof from actual social evolution, for the simple reason that our utopians had to live and act not under social relations formed from elements taken from here and from there, but under those which determine the relation of the peasant to the kulak (the enterprising muzhik), of the handicraftsman to the buyer-up, of the worker to the factory owner, and which they completely failed to understand. Their attempts and efforts to remould these un-understood relations in accordance with their ideal were bound to end in failure.” (p 190)
This was the basic position adopted by the Russian socialists prior to the appearance of the Russian Marxists, such as Plekhanov, Lenin and others, who formed scattered groups across the country, coming together in reading circles. Given the nature of the police state that existed in Russia, that in itself dictated the way that the Marxists were able to present their ideas, and to confront the ideas of the previous socialist movement. On the one hand, the Marxists could only present their real positions in codified terms, in their open propaganda, or else, not only would that material be seized and censored, but those responsible for it would be arrested, gaoled or sent into exile. So, such material could only be produced covertly, and circulated via hectographed copies, which were discussed in the reading circles, as was the case with this work by Lenin. When the Marxists grew in size, and needed to move beyond these small discussion circles, this posed a problem for them.
An effective party, which is what Lenin wanted the RSDLP to become, could not function by operating in the shadows. It had to be able to present its spokespeople out in the open, and have them be able to intervene in all areas of public life, like any other party. Lenin attempted to reconcile these problems in his pamphlet “What Is To Be Done?”. In it, he bases his model for this political party on the German SPD. It should, he argues, like the SPD, be a professional party, whose representatives are full-time politicians. They must, he says, be able to talk on the same level as the politicians of the bourgeois parties, on any topic.
But, such a party could never say openly what needed to be said, given the particular conditions in Russia. It would, therefore, have to be organised on two levels, with a much smaller core of revolutionary activists who would operate covertly. This core group should be made up of people who could specialise in such covert activity, who could organise in such a way that they could minimise the risk of being infiltrated by the Tsarist secret police, who could move around their equipment and operations to prevent detection and so on. Lenin makes clear that this form of organisation, of this core group, is only necessary, because of the conditions existing in Russia, and that it is not appropriate for a mass revolutionary party. However, it is this organisation that later “Leninists” have depicted as being the essence of the Leninist Party. It is, of course, convenient for sects that never grow from one year to another to depict the reality of their existence as conforming to these principles of Leninism.
But, the difficulty of the Marxists in presenting their arguments also facilitated the existing groups of socialists and populists, because they could present the open writings of all sorts of individuals who labelled themselves “Marxists” as being the position of authentic Marxism. At the same time, they could duplicitously claim not to have seen, or be aware of, the position of authentic Marxism, because those ideas were only circulated covertly.
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