The Heritage We Renounce - Section I - One Representative Of The “Heritage” (5/5)

Skaldin was an enlightener, vehemently opposed to serfdom and all that went with it.

“The second characteristic feature common to all the Russian enlighteners was ardent advocacy of education, self-government, liberty, European forms of life and all-round Europeanisation of Russia generally. And the third characteristic feature of the “enlightener” was his defence of the interests of the masses, chiefly of the peasants (who, in the days of the enlighteners, were not yet fully emancipated or only in process of being emancipated), the sincere belief that abolition of serfdom and its survivals would be followed by universal well-being, and a sincere desire to help bring this about. These three features constitute the essence of what in our country is called “the heritage of the sixties,” and it is important to emphasise that there is nothing whatsoever of Narodism in this heritage...We have taken Skaldin as an example precisely because, while he was undoubtedly a representative of the “heritage,” he was at the same time a confirmed enemy of those ancient institutions which the Narodniks have taken under their protection.” (p 504-5)

Describing Skaldin as a bourgeois, however, required that false notions about that term also be dealt with. It had come to be associated with a selfish defence of the interests of a minority, but,

“It must not be forgotten that at the time when the eighteenth-century enlighteners (who are by general consent included among the leaders of the bourgeoisie) wrote, and at the time when our enlighteners of the forties and sixties wrote, all social problems amounted to the struggle against serfdom and its survivals. At that time the new socio-economic relations and their contradictions were still in embryo. No selfishness was therefore displayed at that time by the ideologists of the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, both in the West and in Russia, they quite sincerely believed in universal well-being and sincerely desired it, they sincerely did not see (partly could not yet see) the contradictions in the system which was growing out of serfdom. It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.” (p 505-6)

So, it could be seen that the Marxists defend the practical policies put forward by Skaldin and the like, because they represent the position of the progressive bourgeoisie, whereas the Narodniks, as representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie, oppose those positions, and, instead, try to hold on to the institutions of the past. The Marxists support the bourgeois view, “since the latter reflect the interests of the progressive social classes, and the vital interests of social development generally along the present, i.e., capitalist, path. The things that the Narodniks have changed in Skaldin’s practical wishes, or in his presentation of problems, are a change for the worse, and are rejected by the “disciples.” It is not against the “heritage” that the disciples “hurl themselves” (that is an absurd fabrication), but against the romantic and petty-bourgeois additions to the heritage made by the Narodniks.” (p 506)

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