Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/353

Rh "socialists" the role which in 1848 had been assigned by Marx and Engels to the "communists."

"In all the older revolutionary trends, from Herzen onwards, there had been, thought Plehanov, a strong admixture of anarchism. In his view, however, the main purpose of the political struggle must be to awaken the political consciousness of the workers and to educate them against absolutism. Barricades and bombs were not the only weapons in the political campaign.

These views had already been enunciated in the essay of 1883 on Socialism and the Political Struggle. They were reiterated in 1902 in the opening number of the review "Zarja." He here elaborated the distinction between his own "political" program and the program of Herzen and Herzen's successors, pointing out once more the anarchism that characterised these earlier revolutionaries. At this date, Plehanov had already come to accept the parliamentary tactics of the German social democracy, and subsequently therefore was consistent in his opposition to the boycotting of the duma. In conformity with these views, Plehanov declared himself opposed to the jacobin and anarchist theory of the "seizure of the reins of power," contending that in view of the unpreparedness of the masses this seizure could end only in a fiasco and would display itself in essentials to be nothing beyond an ephemeral conspiracy. When Plehanov thought of the seizure of power he had in mind that the seizure was to be effected by the masses sufficiently prepared for the social revolution, that is to say by the masses of the operatives. But Plehanov held that as far as Russia was concerned the hour for such a seizure was still far distant.

This opposition to anarchist Blanquism likewise inspired Plehanov's philosophical treatise against the narodniki, a work entitled Concerning the Evolution of the Monistic View of History. In this book, Plehanov laid the principal stress upon determinism, endeavouring to clarify the concepts of freedom and necessity. Speaking generally, as against the chance-it and trust-to-luck of Blanquism, he advocated a positivist insight into the law-abiding course of historical development as the essence and superior merit of the materialist conception of history.