Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/59

Rh has promoted that growth. He anticipates that the victory of manufacturers, engineers, merchants, and technicists will bring greater advantages to Russia than the victory of Napoleon brought to Spain and Germany. The growth of manufacturing industry necessitates the diffusion of science and culture, promotes the growth of improved legal conditions, etc.

Černyševskii follows Ricardo in his analysis of the process of production, recommending that the yield of the soil (rent), of capital (profit), and of labour (wages), should be weighed one against the others, and should be harmoniously distributed in accordance with the greatest good of the greatest number. It is obvious that he is thinking here of Proudhon's "disharmonies."

In What is to be Done Černyševskii introduces us to the new social order and to the "new men." This new order will rest, above all, upon a new morality, and he therefore describes for us the relationship between man and wife, and their views concerning love. It is plain that he has far less interest in the economic organisation of the new society. The formation of productive cooperative societies is recommended. These cooperatives are to be private, but it does not appear that Černyševskii regards their regulation by the state as inadmissible. His plans here are altogether vague. When circumstances make it necessary for him to discuss and advocate social reforms in connection with the concrete conditions of his day, as for example when he deals with the decay of silk-weaving in Lyons, his suggestions are extremely modest; the weavers, he tells us, must have their workshops outside the town; must cultivate a plot of land in addition to working at their looms; and so on. Černyševskii never made any practical attempt at the inauguration of cooperative production.

Important are Černyševskii's views concerning the Russian mir and its significance for the future organisation of society.

His opinions as to the social value of the mir were not consistent. In 1857 there appeared in Černyševskii's review an excerpt from Haxthausen discussing the mir, and it would appear that at first Černyševskii agreed with Haxthausen and the slavophils. Subsequently, however, he recognised the weaknesses of the mir and its tendency to oppress the individual. He conceded, moreover, to the opponents of the mir that this institution is not specifically Russian or Slav, but a European Rh