Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/184

158 failure to direct their interest towards all sides of social life, and for their narrowness in regarding the folk as consisting of mužiks alone. To Mihailovskii, the folk was the entirety of the working classes of society, and he therefore was decisively opposed to Voroncov's unsympathetic attitude towards the intelligentsia, whilst he rejected the liberal and bourgeois identification of the folk with the nation—the political nation. But he never forgot that the enormous majority of Russians are mužiks, and that for this reason political and social activities must be mainly concentrated upon the mužik.

When he spoke of the intelligentsia he was thinking of the scientifically and artistically cultured members of the community. This intelligentsia, liberal and progressive in its political and social ideals, though detached from the folk, honestly devotes itself to the service of the folk, and with the judgment as well as with the emotions. The intelligentsia, therefore, consisting of workers, of persons who are working on behalf of the folk, must be sharply distinguished from the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeoisie is composed of non-workers, it is the class of those who pay the workers.

Mihailovskii's views concerning the mir and the artel resembled those of his predecessors, and he was at one with the narodniki in holding that these institutions, being of a social nature, must be preserved. Mihailovskii, however, laid less stress than did some of the narodniki upon the social significance of the mir, precisely because his socialism was less exclusively based upon the economic system. This is manifest, likewise, in his utterances concerning the manual workers. Mihailovskii censures the Marxist intellectuals for their tendency to exalt labour over the labourer. In his view, neither the operatives nor the mužiks were to be regarded as constituting the entire folk.

Mihailovskii was opposed to capitalism. As we are aware, he considered that the division of labour, with its antisocial consequences, was the outcome of capitalism; whereas the narodniki held less decisive views upon this matter. Some of Mihailovskii's strictures upon the capitalisation and industrialisation of agrarian Russia have been declared reactionary. The interpretation is unsound. We must keep in mind Mihailovskii's fundamental philosophic and sociological doctrines, for these give the true meaning to his concrete and practical declarations. Mihailovskii never failed to apply