Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/397

Rh of his personal development, he tells us that at first he joined the social democrats, but was repelled by their anti-terrorist campaign against the social revolutionaries and the anarchists—for Nestroev felt himself to be an anarchist. He therefore went over to the social revolutionaries, considering that in this party his own watchword, "A life for a life," adopted from Stepniak, was effectively realised. Lavrov's Historical Letters, Mihailovskii's writings, Thun's History of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia, and Stepniak's Underground Russia, confirmed him in his decision.

But Nestroev grew tired of the ordinary social revolutionaries, and developed into a maximalist. We have learned what were the practical demands of the maximalist section of the social revolutionaries, and can now come to a definitive judgment.

The program of this section lacks definiteness in its details and as a whole; we see in it a non-organic synthesis of anarchism and Marxist socialism.

Nestroev formulates the task of maximalism in five demands: promotion of the class consciousness of the workers; their organisation into a class; the revolutionising of the will; the destruction of the fetichism of private property; the destruction among the people of the sentiment of legality, and the strengthening of the sentiment of revolt.

Not one of these demands conflicts with Marxism. There is not even any contradiction between Marxist rationalism and the voluntarist idea of revolutionising the will, although Nestroev is somewhat prejudiced against the leadership of the intelligentsia. What distinguishes Nestroev's maximalism from Marxism is his distinctively ethical outlook. Socialism definitely represents to him the ethical "thou shalt," the sense of moral duty, that which is ethically desirable.

But the question arises, how far that which is ethically desirable can also be considered possible. Now we learn from Nestroev that from the point of view of possibility, maximalism is justified provided that the social revolution can be realised forthwith. Apart however from the considerations which led Nestroev while in Siberia to doubt whether revolution was salutary, we are compelled to enquire whether maximalism has not, first of all, to weld its adherents into a class and to educate them for the revolution. And will not this education take a very long time before we can hope that the