Revolutionary democracy: emancipation in classical marxism 1st edition marik all chapters ebook PDF
Democracy: Emancipation in Classical Marxism 1st Edition Marik
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Adventures of the symbolic post Marxism and radical democracy Breckman
https://textbookfull.com/product/adventures-of-the-symbolic-postmarxism-and-radical-democracy-breckman/ Emancipation, Democracy and the Modern Critique of Law: Reconsidering Habermas 1st Edition Mikael Spång (Auth.)
Published in 2018 by Haymarket Books P.O. Box 180165 Chicago, IL 60618 773-583-7884 www.haymarketbooks.org info@haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-60846-730-3
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This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.
Cover design by Rachel Cohen.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
CONTENTS
Foreword by David McLellan
Preface to the 2018 Edition
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. From Radical Democracy to Proletarian Democracy
3. Class, Party, and Forms of Self-Organization
4. Revolutionary Strategy and Democracy
5. Democracy in the Proletarian Dictature
6. Vanguard Party and Revolutionary Strategy: Bolshevism Before the February Revolution
7. Bolshevism in 1917
8. Bolshevism and the Experience of Soviet Power
9. Bureaucratization and Bolshevism
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
It is with great pleasure that I introduce to the reader this very scholarly— but also profoundly politically relevant—book.
For too long, particularly in the West but not exclusively there, the revolutionary core of Marx’s thought has been obscured by interpretations that professed to investigate superstructural elements at the expense of political engagement.
From the beginning of the twentieth century the ongoing debate centred on the relationship of the party to the proletariat and the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the working class. Even those who seemed to believe in a semi-automatic breakdown of capitalism—Kautsky or Luxemburg in their different ways—were enthusiastic about party organization (Kautsky) or such tactics as the mass strike (Luxemburg). But with the growing reformism of large sections of the working class in the West, including the Trade Union leadership, and the lack of the clear polarization of society, Lenin’s idea of a “vanguard” party which would instil revolutionary ideas into the working class became attractive. With the success of 1917, the Leninist model in which the party incarnated the consciousness of the working class (as theorized by Lukács) became dominant. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, this conception was used to implement a violent revolution from above. In China the party, claiming to embody the consciousness of a largely non-existing proletariat, tended to become equally divorced from the people, in spite of such efforts as the Cultural Revolution. Those in the West, like Korsch and the Council Communists, who retained their commitment to workers’ selfemancipation, were disillusioned. The Frankfurt School and the structuralists both reflected this lack of faith in the revolutionary potential of the working class. The only thinker to unite predominant interest in the superstructure with active commitment to politics was Gramsci.
It is in this context that the return to the revolutionary and democratic core of Marxism in the present work is welcome. In the careful dissection of the ways in which Marx and the Bolsheviks united theory and practice, Dr. Marik gives us an important contribution to our understanding of the relation of Marx and the Bolsheviks to democracy. There is an excellent discussion of Marx’s views on the Paris Commune. The contributions of Engels, Bebel and Zetkin are well explicated. And Dr. Marik clearly shows the effect of the fateful ban on factions within the party in 1921—no control over the leadership and growing bureaucratization. It is no surprise, therefore, that the thinker for whom Dr. Marik has the most admiration is Luxemburg. It should be noted also that the analysis is much enriched by the careful attention to the question of gender displayed in the various political, and historical contexts discussed.
This is a major work of scholarship. The footnotes alone embody an excellent bibliographical guide to the vast literature involved. This book is unsurpassed as a guide to the theoretical and practical achievements of Marx and the Bolsheviks—and to their shortcomings. I recommend it to all potential readers unreservedly.
David McLellan Visiting Professor of Political Theory, Goldsmiths College, University of London
PREFACE TO THE 2018 EDITION
This book was in the making for many years and was produced in a different age. Originally conceived as a PhD thesis in 1986, when the Soviet Union was still in existence, its focus was on the links and discontinuities between the theories and praxis of Marx and Engels and that of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Also, it aimed to examine the recurrent charge that Lenin’s ideas gave rise to Stalinism. In India, the bulk of the Marxist left was split between parties of Stalinist and Maoist origin (and often continued to be Stalinist or Maoist). Some of them had moved or were moving round to the position that democracy had only one possible form, which was parliamentary democracy, and that the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship had its roots in Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ practices and theories. Others, in wishing to be ‘orthodox’, defended the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the authoritarian regimes of Stalin, Mao, or the Khmer Rouge. One could discern similar trends in left parties and intellectual currents of Stalinist origin worldwide. So a preliminary hypothesis was that there had in fact been a revolutionary democratic politics that existed in the nineteenth century, within which the working class played a major role, and that classical Marxism was strongly involved in that politics. It was further my position that Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ relationship with Marx, Engels, and the left wing of international Social Democracy was something requiring close study, rather than making a priori assumptions based on later communist practice. I had the great fortune of having Sipra Sarkar as one of my teachers of Western political thought as well as Soviet history. While critical of the Bolsheviks for many of their ideas and deeds, Sarkar insisted on challenging such a priori thinking and pointed to the need to look at primary texts and also to contextualize them. Her lectures on liberalism also highlighted the distinctions between liberalism and democracy as political movements and ideologies, so that ‘liberal democracy’ was shown to be a
questionable doctrine of very recent (often post-1917) origin. Many of these ideas would find their way into the work as it was completed in the mid1990s.
Only after the completion of the thesis did it dawn on me that my own engagement with the women’s movement and my positions within it found no resonance in the work. There followed some years when I was working on Marxist women and the revolutionary movement in Germany, Russia, India, and elsewhere. My political position was also being shaped by the impact of globalization in India. From 1986 to 1995, while researching for my thesis, I found much of the anti-Stalinist left to be dogmatic in their rejection of feminism or dismissive towards it and the women’s movement. Furthermore, they often held an instrumental attitude to women in or around the movement and its organizations. Within the far left organizations, including those critical of Stalinism, there were sometimes women comrades personally committed to the women’s liberation movement, but the organizations collectively often displayed a ‘Marxism’ or a ‘Leninism’ that continued to absorb a fair amount of sexism. At the same time globalization and the increasing brutality of capitalist exploitation made it evident to me that the feminist movement in its growing NGO-ized form was not an answer. It appeared that there were two inadequate forces at work. There was a women’s movement that, in its search for ways to provide assistance to masses of women, had from the end of the 1980s been turning to donors and their funds, created NGOs, which, despite laudable intents, ended up as hierarchical organizations more concerned with lobbying and carrying out partially donor-driven agendas than with building the militant mass movements of earlier times. And there was an anti-Stalinist Marxism which appeared to claim that uttering ‘working-class self-emancipation’ was enough, without looking at special oppressions that kept the class fractured and which had to be addressed in an autonomous way.
It was only after the most aggressively dogmatic groups split from the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (at that time the Indian Section of the Fourth International) that I joined it, in 1996. By then, the reformist left in India, above all the Communist Party (Marxist) CPI(M), had started adapting to the Indian ruling class and its turn to neoliberal solutions. In provinces where CPI(M)-led governments were in power, the impact was very negative for working people, and within an overall increase of
exploitation, gender inequity also grew. Building a revolutionary socialist party that would also be explicitly feminist was necessary, since otherwise, for women activists, there would be the dual problem of the women’s movements and the Marxist parties’ downplaying of gender oppression. I began to search for the historical roots of women’s struggles within Marxism, which led to a major revision of the study, with practically every chapter being rewritten to bring socialist women’s struggles in conversation with a more standard narrative of Marxism and democracy. My involvement with other research and political work sometimes slowed down this process of revision but also enriched it.
As a result, when this book went off to a publisher in 2005–06, and was eventually published in 2008, certain important new studies could not be taken into account. The first temptation, on learning that a new edition would be published, was to envisage looking into it. But it is evident that were I to do so, the present volume would increase massively in size. Instead, it was better to accept that this work needs to be supplemented by certain studies and only briefly discuss them.
In chapter 6, I had argued that “while there was no direct transmission from Marx to Lenin, the early writings of Lenin reveal, if anything, an excessive veneration for the Marxist orthodoxy. The nature of the Marxist influences on Lenin must, therefore, be understood. His understanding of Marxism was deeply influenced by Plekhanov as well as by the political practice of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) especially up to 1914.” There had been further discussions on this in subsequent pages. Lars T. Lih’s study has of course gone much further and presented a major challenge to any scholarship that tries to delink Lenin from the wider classical Marxist tradition and relate him to Jacobinism or Blanquism.1 While Harding had rejected the charge of Jacobinism earlier, and Le Blanc, Vanaik, and I had been among those talking about a different reading of What Is to Be Done? than just ‘stick bending’, Lih certainly did more than that.2 He established in a massive way how overrated What Is to Be Done? is in much of modern Leninology. He also enabled readers to understand the book as a polemic, something that Lenin had explained explicitly a few years after he wrote it, but something that anti-Lenin as well as ostensibly ‘Leninist’ scholarship has chosen to forget. So the context and the texts that the polemic addressed have been brought to life, and in the process, the
‘German’ orthodoxy of Lenin strongly underscored. What Lih has done subsequently, in a series of papers, is to argue that Lenin was a good orthodox Kautskyian, and it was Kautsky who was a backslider during 1914 and after.3 At the Historical Materialism conference in London in 2011, I, along with another Indian comrade, had the opportunity to have a short exchange with Lih. We argued, and he conceded, that in 1914 and after, Lenin did accept that, at least from 1909 or 1910, there were important divergences. A difference of thrust nonetheless remains.
The point that requires discussion here is not whether Lenin saw himself as a follower of Kautsky (and whether Kautsky was a revolutionary Marxist in 1902 or for several years afterwards), but whether the revolutionary party that Lenin and his comrades helped build was simply what Kautsky and others had been talking about. Lih’s work is based primarily on textual exegesis. Paul Le Blanc and I, by contrast, tried to relate Lenin and other leaders and their writings to the historical process. Lih presents the views of his critics as though they are simply treating Lenin as a foolish man who did not realize what he was doing. It is possible to present a somewhat different and more coherent argument. It is well known that in 1917, Lenin called for a socialist revolution in Russia, even though that which he had all these years defined as a bourgeois-democratic revolution had not been achieved. Land had not passed to peasants. A democratic constitution had not been won. A de facto eight-hour day was being imposed where workers had power but it was not legalized.
In other words, in 1917, moments of crises and success and an acute observation of reality led Lenin to a permanentist perspective. Marx and Engels had first theorized about the revolution in permanence in the nineteenth century, something repeatedly discussed by scholars and activists examining classical Marxism. This involved a possibility, in countries where the bourgeoisie was weak and the working class relatively mature, of proletarian hegemony leading to the revolution being pushed beyond bourgeois limits to the establishment of working-class rule. One can mention the writings of Michael Löwy, Hal Draper and also Kunal Chattopadhyay as well as the author of this book.4 But the absence of a revolutionary situation for many years meant that until 1904, this perspective would be forgotten by Marxists, with social and political development in West Europe seeming to have overtaken the strategy. It
should be noted that even in his old age, Engels in a letter to Turati proposed similar strategic perspectives for Italy, but most leaders of the social democratic parties did not look at this strategy seriously until the turn of the century.5 It was from around the time of the Russian revolution of 1905 that a number of writers took up Marx’s term and concept. But in the Russian revolutionary movement it eventually came to be associated in particular with Lev Trotsky, who would develop it during the revolution of 1905 and express it both in his writings and his speeches after 1905. Lenin would reject the possibility that the revolution could bring the ‘bourgeoisdemocratic’ and the proletarian stages together, or that the ‘bourgeoisdemocratic’ tasks that he described could be achieved only under lasting working-class rule (the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’). On a couple of occasions he categorically rejected Trotsky’s stance. So, in 1917, his change of position was a major development.6 But he did not then sit down and write an essay declaring that there had been something wrong with his earlier position. Was this dishonesty? If Lenin had been a scholar writing a PhD thesis or a major piece of research, and if he there ‘forgot’ to mention that he had previously opposed that standpoint, or did not carry out a survey of literature to show that one Lev Trotsky had already arrived at substantially similar positions twelve years earlier, he might face such accusations. But Lenin was a revolutionary activist in the middle of a revolution. He showed his agreement with Trotsky by seeking unity, by supporting this newcomer in the party in major ways, and he showed his change of mind by demanding that dogmatic adherence to “Old Bolshevism” be discarded.
In the same way, it is of course true that from the 1890s, Lenin’s goal was to build a Marxist workers’ party like that of German Social Democracy (hereafter, SPD)—(that is, a fusion of Marxist theory with large numbers of militant workers), and he believed Kautsky to be a part of the revolutionary wing. So did Luxemburg, who knew Kautsky from a much closer association. But Kautsky, very clearly from 1909 on, began moving away from his previous revolutionary position. This is further discussed when I take up Witnesses to Permanent Revolution, but some comments are appropriate here. His refusal to publish Luxemburg’s article on the proposal for a general strike in connection with the demand for securing universal suffrage in Prussia showed an unwillingness to create any tension with the
party bureaucracy.7 On the question of militarism too, his position shifted.8 The other important difference is the Bolsheviks eventually built a party that had a different kind of relationship with the working class, compared to that of the SPD.9 Lenin’s fury at the betrayal by Kautsky is well recorded. Clearly, he was angry because he had in the past held Kautsky in greater esteem than many of the others.
But the Bolshevik Party was a different kind of party than the SPD. There have been plenty of studies. I do not want to repeat what such studies have shown.10 I simply want to stress that not just Lenin but also Trotsky, to take one other obvious example, would both furiously polemicize with Kautsky, indict Kautskyism and yet recognize Kautsky as one of their teachers and a teacher of their entire generation of revolutionary Marxists. But by the early 1920s, both of them would also recognize that there was some difference between the SPD, including much of its orthodox currents, and themselves.
This of course leads us to a related and significant debate. Not just Lih but others have contributed in an important way to a recovery of the heritage of the Second International. The achievement of the Marxists Internet Archive is paramount. And at least one book requiring special mention is Witnesses to Permanent Revolution.11 It shows that Kautsky, before and during 1905, stood on the left wing of international Social Democracy, not the centre, and far to the left of Plekhanov, for example. This goes beyond a personal reevaluation of Kautsky, of course. Day and Gaido present a fair survey of Kautsky as the most important representative of the Marxist wing of Social Democracy, whom both Lenin and Trotsky were keen to portray as being on their side. While Kautsky did not explicitly call for the Russian revolution to lead to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the overturning of capitalist relations, he clearly objected to any alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie. In an article in 1905, Kautsky talked repeatedly about ‘Revolution in Permanence,’ saying: “The revolution in permanence is, then, precisely what the workers of Russia need…. Within a few years it could turn the Russian workers into an elite troop, perhaps into the elite troop of the international proletariat.”12 This put him alongside Rosa Luxemburg and Parvus, if not perhaps fully with Trotsky (though only with Results and Prospects would Trotsky’s full
position be articulated). Yet Day and Gaido also trace the retreat of Kautsky and his debates, not just with Luxemburg but with Mehring, Pannekoek, and Radek, over the period from 1910 to 1913. One part of the Marxist current in Social Democracy was succumbing to the pressures of party and union bureaucracy. In earlier periods, Kautsky’s writings showed him taking positions critical of the trade union bureaucracy.13 As late as 1909, when the American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers travelled to Germany, Kautsky wrote articles criticizing him, and this led to hot disputes between Kautsky and the German trade union bureaucrats.14 But by 1910, he had clearly changed his stance. Not only did he refuse to publish Luxemburg’s article, as discussed earlier, but he made clear the reasons for distancing himself from her. According to his biographer, Marek Waldenberg, he felt that the fact that his dispute with Luxemburg enabled him to take a distance from her unpopular image was a positive development.15 And in a letter to Ryazanov he was explicit: “It seems to me that in order to develop good relations between the Marxists and the trade unionists it is important to show that on this point there is a great distance between Rosa and me. This is for me the most important question.”16
There have been a considerable number of other studies. Another requiring a brief discussion is the work of August Nimtz.17 Nimtz argues in his earlier work that first, Marx and Engels played a major role in the nineteenth-century struggle for democracy. Second, in that work, he also discusses the stance they took on elections, which was different from both an anarchist and an electoralist position. In his later work on Lenin, he traces at length Lenin’s insistence that in a reactionary situation like Russia, where from 1907 civil liberties had all but disappeared, even seemingly routine trade union work was severely attacked by the police and the electoral system was thoroughly undemocratic, all forms of work, legal and illegal, electoral and underground, had to be combined. Marx and Engels had responded in advance to all types of reformists who wanted to simply enter the bourgeois parliamentary system to carry out ‘socialist’ reforms, by their sole proposed change in the Communist Manifesto, when they warned that the Paris Commune had proved that the working class could not simply lay hold of the existing state.
In the later volumes on Lenin, Nimtz is careful to warn that Leninism cannot be reduced to the specific tactics that worked in October 1917. As a result, he urges his readers to look at the political context in which Lenin saw elections, even in tsarist Russia. Nimtz’s argument fits in with the international picture elaborated in the massive work done by John Riddell, who has completed the translation, editing, and publication of the documents and debates of the Communist International, including volumes on the Third and Fourth Congresses. At these two Congresses, Lenin and his comrades, including not just a few well-known Russians but many more from various countries, worked out an alternative series of lines of inquiry for revolution. These included questions of party building, participation in elections and trade unions, and the united front of the working class. They discussed how a revolutionary party was to be built in an era when the working-class movements were split between two or more large workingclass parties, what tactics to take in connection with work in trade unions and parliamentary elections as well as the large number of discussions at the Fourth Congress on the united front of the working class. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were concerned with both highlighting what they felt were the real lessons of the Bolshevik experience and avoiding ultraleft simplifications. As we approach a hundred years since the Russian Revolution, and look back at ultraleft or sectarian attempts at “Bolshevizations” these attempts have a great significance. Without mechanical transplantation to a very different age, they have lessons for revolutionaries today.
The Riddell volumes are particularly important for us. Ever since the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, what has passed for Marxist policy on working-class united fronts is in reality a class collaborationist politics. In particular, in India, the Dutt-Bradley thesis, the proposed application of Dimitrov’s line for India, has been extremely harmful. For decades, the search for the progressive (‘national’, ‘revolutionary’ and so on) bourgeoisie has dominated the politics of the Communist Party of India (CPI), which was the Indian section of the Communist International, CPI, and most of its successor parties. [The CPI split in 1964 with the apparently radical wing forming the CPI (Marxist), and there have been further splits since then, the most important being the exodus of the pro-Mao forces in 1966, leading to the formation of the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) and other parties.] The working out of the tactics of the
workers’ united front and its clear differences with the popular frontism (involving an alliance with so-called progressive bourgeois forces) that has led to disasters, from Spain in 1936 to the rout of the left in India in recent years, is an issue of great contemporary significance. While brief references to Bolshevik experiences of the united front exist in this book (for example, the struggle against Kornilov), the experience of the Communist International was beyond its focus.
There have been other important books published in this period. I do not intend to present a full survey of the literature. But I would like to mention at least two books. Tania Puschnerat wrote a biography of Clara Zetkin.18 This work firmly situates Zetkin as a significant Marxist leader, who was of course a crucial builder of the proletarian women’s movement, but who cannot be neatly slotted as such. Zetkin’s other concerns have been taken up at length. However, Puschnerat has a perspective that is certainly different from mine. She has collapsed the differences between Stalinism and Bolshevism and argued that Zetkin’s critical stance on the Stalinist turn from 1928 made her feel that her decision to side with the Communists had itself been wrong. At the same time, Puschnerat also argues that though Zetkin had never openly supported the “Bolshevization” of the mid-1920s or the subsequent “Stalinization” of the KPD and the Comintern, she may be viewed as the type of communist cadre who, due to a belief in excessively tight discipline, unwittingly contributed to this process.19
I have attempted to argue that this subjective narrative about how tight communist discipline led ineluctably to Stalinism is not a correct view, even if we do accept that the many errors of the Bolshevik leadership in the civil war years contributed to the problems. The work of John Riddell provides us with a much more significant view of what Zetkin was doing in the early Communist International. The Third Congress debates, published in 2015, show that Lenin and his comrades, including German comrades such as Zetkin, engaged in a sustained democratic process in building an international communist movement. In a number of documents, letters and private reminiscences attached to the Third Congress proceedings, Riddell has shown the way discussions and negotiations were carried out. There was no question of imposing the will of the Russians, or even the will of a majority, in a blunt way. In a telling passage, Zetkin wrote:
Lenin told her: “The congress will wring the neck of the celebrated theory of the offensive [the idea that Communist revolutionary work must involve an offensive under all circumstances— S.M.] and will adopt a course of action corresponding to your ideas. In return, however, it must grant the supporters of the offensive theory some crumbs of consolation…. You will resist this as representing a cover-up and worse. But that will get you nowhere. We want the policy adopted by the congress to become law for the Communist parties’ activity as quickly and with as little friction as possible. To that end, our dear leftists must be able to return home without being too humbled and embittered.”20
This suggests tough conflicts as well as attempts to keep unity while maintaining principles. It does not look at all either like the Stalinist imposition of fiats or the later parodies of Bolshevism, in which every difference is seen as an earth-shaking betrayal demanding splits. Moreover, Riddell’s work suggests that to say Zetkin never openly supported certain tendencies paints a misleading picture, since it implies she covertly did provide support. On the contrary, she was one of those trying out a different way of working.21
Riddell’s volumes are crucial for an understanding of what Lenin and his comrades were trying to do in the early Communist International. The Third and the Fourth Congresses saw serious attempts at working out a different kind of revolutionary strategy for countries where some form of bourgeois democracy existed and where bourgeois stabilization had occurred compared to the Bolshevik tactics followed in Russia.
We live in a very different world. But some of the lessons of the early Comintern have a lasting significance. The Fourth Congress developed the tactics of the united front of the working class as one of the most important tools to defend working-class rights and to transform a defensive struggle into an offensive struggle. The legacy of the later Comintern has led to twin mistakes, both absorbed by many of the political forces claiming to be heirs of the Comintern. On one hand, there is the legacy of ‘Third Period’ Stalinism, the claim that Social Democracy is fascist (social fascist) and that the united front can only be made with the ranks of the reformist parties because the leaders are known traitors, lackeys of the ruling class, and so on. On the other hand there is popular frontism, which arose from the Seventh Congress, where in the name of antifascism, or opposition to certain designated enemies, not only working-class but bourgeois forces are to be involved, and in order to make these alliances, working-class revolutionary struggles have to be put on the back burner. Thus, the idea of
a united front of the working class, implying issue-based joint struggles of working-class parties and trade unions, both revolutionary and reformist, was distorted in two ways: First, the ‘united front from below’ was a de facto repudiation of the united front; second, the communist goal of using the united front for developing proletarian struggles in a firm anti-capitalist direction was given up and so-called progressive bourgeois parties were roped into alliances falsely called united fronts.
There is nothing more tempting than to rewrite one’s work, continuously editing it in the light of one’s subsequent political experiences as well as one’s subsequent readings. I have refrained from doing that. I would however stress, perhaps more than I did in my book, that my continued study of classical Marxism has shown a much greater awareness of gender and sexuality in early Marxism, including in Bolshevik practice, something I have emphasized in essays published since this book was originally written. It has also become evident that the narrowing of the definition of class and class struggle, and the imposition of a Trotskyist orthodoxy or a ‘classical Marxist’ orthodoxy, often meant that even anti-Stalinists failed to understand how building revolutionary parties and developing revolutionary strategy had to encompass gender and other special oppressions within class and its own organizations. Otherwise, the goal of class unity becomes meaningless inside revolutionary organizations. In connection with this, it is perhaps worth revisiting the Lenin-Zetkin conversation, which I have already examined in the main text. I had argued that Lenin had certain positions one needed to question. Looking back again, one needs to raise a different point. Lenin tells Zetkin why organizing women separately is necessary, why it is not separatism. She relays this from Lenin:
What is at the basis of the incorrect attitude of our national sections? In the final analysis it is nothing but an under-estimation of woman and her work. Yes, indeed! Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades, ‘scratch a communist and find a philistine’. Of course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women.22
Note that Zetkin wrote these lines not in 1920–21, when Lenin was still around, but later. I would stress that her decision stemmed from the battle she was beginning to wage, to protect and ensure the continuity of the Communist Women’s International, the continuity of the autonomy of women’s work within the framework of the communist politics and the continuation of the struggle against sexism, the term still lacking and the
concept therefore not fully clarified but highlighted as ‘philistinism’. Experiences globally have shown us that this continues to be significant. Training women cadres, ensuring real, substantive equality within organizations calling themselves revolutionary Marxist and accepting women’s work in those organizations as having the same value as men’s work, continue to be major problems.23 Since Stalinist influence has been declining globally, it becomes more and more difficult to reduce sexism within revolutionary organizations to being residual traces of Stalinism. As Penelope Duggan remarks in her 1997 paper, “The Feminist Challenge to Traditional Political Organizing,” there are ways in which certain types of work are valued more, and others less. A young male comrade who has been a student leader, she argues, is made a leader in some other area as soon as he stops being a student. In contrast, a woman activist who has led mass movements and is capable of understanding historical materialism sufficiently to make a critical balance sheet of Engels on the family is still seen as just a specialist on women’s work.24
Whatever the limitations of the SPD left, or of the Bolsheviks, or the early Comintern, their achievements in mobilizing such huge numbers of women also need to be recognized. And, while we are moving further and further away from that era, it is therefore important to stress that the ‘toy Bolshevism’ that ignores gender or only pays lip service to it needs to learn seriously from the real revolutionary Marxist tradition.
In conclusion I would like to add another round of thanks. To IIRE, and above all to Alex de Jong, for proposing that we bring out this edition, and to Nisha Bolsey and Dao Tran for serious assistance in editing; to Mr K. K. Saxena, of Aakar Books, for agreeing to the proposal; to a community of Marxist and feminist activists and scholars, with whom I have been engaged in the course of political work and writing, even if they cannot all be formally cited in bibliographies or notes. In particular I would like to thank Paul Le Blanc, John Riddell, Sebastian Budgen, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Kunal Chattopadhyay for political exchanges and discussions.
NOTES
1 Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
2 Neil Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, vol. 1 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977); Paul Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Atlantic Highlands, NJ and London: Humanities Press, 1990); Achin Vanaik, “In Defence of Leninism,” Economic and Political Weekly 11, no. 37 (September 13, 1986): 1635, 1638-42.
3 See for example Lars T. Lih, “The Strange Case of the Closeted Lenin,” in http://links.org.au/node/4186 (4 December, 2014), Links international journal of socialist renewal; and Lars T. Lih, “Kautsky When He Was a Marxist.”
4 Michael Löwy, The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development (London: New Left Books, 1981); Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, vol. 2 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Kunal Chattopadhyay, “Between Revolution and Reaction: Marx and the Origins of the Idea of Permanent Revolution,” Jadavpur University Journal of History 10 (1989–90): 60–78.
5 Engels to Filipo Turati, 26 January, 1894, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, 2nd revised edition (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965): 468–72.
6 There have been attempts to make a case that even in 1917 Lenin had not become permanentist. See for a typical example Doug Lorimer, Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist Critique (Sydney: Resistance Books, 1998). For responses to such arguments see Ernest Mandel, “In Defence of Permanent Revolution,” International Viewpoint 33, special supplement (1983); Kunal Chattopadhyay, Leninism and Permanent Revolution (Baroda, India: Antar Rashtriya Prakashan, 1987); or J. P. Roberts, Lenin, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution (London: Wellred Books, 2007).
7 See Helen Scott, “Introduction,” especially 20–22, in The Essential Rosa Luxemburg, Helen Scott, ed. (Delhi and Patna: Daanish Books, 2010).
8 See, for example, Nicholas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism: Radical and Socialist Critics 1866–1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
9 For Bolshevik penetration see Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers’ Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983). See also Leopold Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (December 1964): 619–42.
10 Apart from Le Blanc (note 4 above), see also the works cited in the two chapters of this book dealing with the Bolsheviks prior to and during 1917. Victoria Bonnell’s book, (note 12) traces how the Bolsheviks built a party of worker militants in the period of Stolypin reaction and up to the First World War. Another study, from a nonMarxist position, shows how in the war years the Bolsheviks built a party based on masses of workers, while their opponents were more involved with building alliances with the liberal intelligentsia and other such forces. Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia,” 619–42, and pt. 2 in Slavic Review 24, no. 1 (March 1965): 1–22. The key argument I am making here is that the Bolsheviks ended up building a party of militant activists capable of taking independent initiatives in a way the SPD was increasingly not. This does not discount that in earlier years Lenin (and Trotsky) had seen Kautsky (and the SPD generally) as their ideal. But it does challenge a possible outcome of Lih’s subsequent arguments, which is that Lenin remained a Kautskyian, that he was not a permanentist, and that for the present, a Kautskyian strategy is adequate. This, after all, is a vital component of any discussion on Leninism—what does it mean today?
11 Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido, ed. and trans., Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011).
12 Ibid., 380.
13 Karl Kautsky, ‘Partei und Gewerkschaft’, Die Neue Zeit 24, no. 2 (1906): 716–35, 749–54.
14 See for a discussion D. Gaido, “Marxism and the Union Bureaucracy: Karl Kautsky on Samuel Gompers and the German Free Trade Unions,” Historical Materialism 16 (2008): 115–36.
15 M. Waldenberg, Il papa rosso: Karl Kautsky (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1980), 673–74, as quoted in Gaido, 132.
Ibid., 132.
17 August H. Nimtz, Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000). See also August H. Nimtz, Lenin’s Electoral Strategy: From Marx and Engels through the Revolution of 1905 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Lenin’s Electoral Strategy from 1907 to the October Revolution of 1917: The Ballot, the Streets—or Both (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
18 Tânia Puschnerat, Clara Zetkin: Burgerlichkeit und Marxismus (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2003). Another work is Gilbert Badia, Clara Zetkin: Eineneue Biographie (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1994).
19 Tânia Ünlüdağ-Puschnerat, “A German Communist: Clara Zetkin (1857–1933),” in Kevin Morgan, Gidon Cohen, and Andrew Flinn, eds., Agents of the Revolution: New Biographical Approaches to the History of International Communism in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, Peter Lang Publishing, 2005) 93–110.
20 John Riddell, ed. and trans., To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921 (Leiden: Brill, 2015): 1140.
21 See John Riddell, “Clara Zetkin in the Lion’s Den,” John Riddell: Marxist Essays and Commentary, January 12, 2004, johnriddell.wordpress. com/2014/01/12/clara-zetkin-in-the-lions-den.
22 Clara Zetkin, “Lenin on the Women’s Question,” https://www.marxists. org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm.
23 On this, the practical evidence within the Communist Party of India is one that I have taken up at length in several essays, which are in the process of being edited and collected as a single volume. Meanwhile, I would refer interested readers to Soma Marik, ‘Breaking Through a Double Invisibility: The Communist Women of Bengal 1939–1948’, Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (March 2013): 79–118. For the Naxalbari movement, that is, the Maoist movement in India in its first phase (though nowadays in India the term ‘Maoist’ has been preempted by the CPI [Maoist], a party focused on work mainly among adivasis or indigenous so-called tribals), see Mallarika Sinha Roy, Gender and Radical Politics in India: Magic Moments of Naxalbari (1967–1975) (London: Routledge, 2010). See also Cinzia
Arruzza, Dangerous Liaisons: The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism, Notebook 55 of the International Institute for Research and Education, Amsterdam, 2013). For documentation of how revolutionary Marxists have tried to grapple with these problems see Penelope Duggan, ed., Women’s Liberation and Socialist Revolution, Documents of the Fourth International (London: Resistance Books and Notebook 48, Amsterdam: International Institute of Research and Education, 2010).
24 In making her case that there is often a tendency to see men as the universal and women as a special case, and in turning women cadres into niche operators, Duggan makes the following argument:
“There’s also the political process among women and the way in which that is devalued. It is astonishing that leaders of women’s movement work who have led mass movements fighting for women’s rights, mass movements that have been able to create alliances with the trade union movement, with political parties, with a whole range of people; leaders of women’s work who are engaged in educational work where they explain and make a critical balance sheet of Marx and Engels and place them in their context and explain historical materialism, what it really means and how you can use it to understand women’s oppression, are consistently seen and treated as just specialists of women’s work. You may understand historical materialism sufficiently to be able to make a critical balance sheet of how Engels applied it to the family, but nonetheless you’re just a specialist of women’s work. No one suggests that these skills could be applied to any other sector
On the other hand, the young male comrade who has just been a leader of a student struggle and has shown his capacities to be a leader of the mass movement, is a leader; now he’s stopped being a student he must immediately be put somewhere else so that he can lead some other area of work and use those leadership capacities he developed in two or three years of student politics.” Penelope Duggan, ed., Women’s Liberation and Socialist Revolution, 211.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book started life as a PhD thesis nearly two decades back. My interest in Russian and Soviet history stemmed from the teaching of Ms. Sipra Sarkar, who taught us one of the two papers on the subject at the MA level. My first ideas about the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism and Stalinism came from her. The Gorbachev era had begun at that time, and this interested me into the meaning of socialist democracy and its differences with liberal democracy, as well as the class moorings of both.
The research work was undertaken while working in the Tarakeswar Degree College, and I would like to thank Sri Bidyut Kumar Das, then Principal of the College, for providing all help, especially in ensuring that I got sufficient study leave to complete my work. I would also like to thank the Indian Council of Historical Research, and particularly Professor Irfan Habib, for the award of a Senior Fellowship. My supervisor, Professor Anuradha Chanda, Department of History, Jadavpur University, provided me with both encouragement and constant constructive criticism. I would like to record my indebtedness to librarians and research institutions in various parts of the world. They include the staff of the Central Library, Jadavpur University; the Departmental Library, Department of History, and the Library of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, and in particular to Ms. Sarbani Goswami and Ms. Srabani Majumdar; the National Library, Kolkata; the Library of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; the Jawaharlal Nehru University Library, especially those in the Russian language section; Ms. Usha Chattopadhyay of the Jawaharlal Nehru Library, Bombay University; Dr. Peter Drucker, who was then the Director of the International Institute of Research and Education, Amsterdam; Dr. Tom Twiss of the Pittsburgh University Library and the staff of the Maisons de Sciences de l’Homme, including in particular Professor Gilles Tarabout.
Friends and relatives who helped in getting hold of books and articles include Satyabrata Dutta and Ratna Dutta, Neelesh Marik, Amitava Chattopadhyay, Samita Sen, Ron Lare, Cheryl Peck, Paul Le Blanc, and Bodhisatwa Roy.
Discussions with a large number of people helped at different stages. Professor Buddhadev Bhattacharyya, of the Department of Political Science, Calcutta University, and Professor A. R. Desai, were two very senior scholars who engaged in regular discussions, helped in the publication of early papers and monographs. The personal library of Professor Bhattacharyya provided an unending stream of books and articles. Other personal libraries which were tapped include the libraries of Professor Sujit Ghosh, Professor Ranajit Das Gupta, Professor Achin Vanaik and Sri Gautam Sen of the Majdoor Mukti Committee. Professor Jasodhara Bagchi, former Director, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, and Professor Gilbert Achcar are two others who have read and commented on parts or whole of the text.
While the book began as a PhD thesis, it underwent major mutations later on. My first interest, especially with the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR, was on workers’ democracy. But my activities as a left-wing feminist, along with my experience of teaching Western Political Thought for fourteen years in the Evening Courses in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, and the history of feminism and women’s struggles in Europe for eight years in the MPhil program of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, also led me to recognize the need to integrate women’s history within “general” history, instead of keeping them in separate compartments. In this context, I must record my gratitude to activists from a range of organizations, including in particular Maitreyi Chatterjee, Mira Roy, both of the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women), Kolkata; as well as other members of the Mancha; Ron Lare, trade unionist and activist in the US organization Solidarity; Dianne Feeley, Editor of the US journal Against the Current and a member of Solidarity and the Fourth International and Bani Dasgupta of the Communist Party of India and the National Federation of Indian Women. I would also like to record my gratitude to students of my MA Western Political Thought course and the MPhil, Women’s Studies course, both in Jadavpur University. Many arguments made in this book were hammered out in course of discussions in class over the years.
Two persons whose support I would like to acknowledge are Professor Partha Sarathi Gupta, who always had words of encouragement, and who insisted that I should publish what to many others had seemed a large and unwieldy thesis; and Professor David McLellan, who saw the book both as a thesis and as the final product, for which he kindly agreed to write a Foreword.
I am grateful to Sri K.K. Saxena of Aakar Books, as well as the editor whose meticulous care made the book virtually error free. My daughter Nayanika has designed the cover for the book. I would like to thank Ms. Anindita Bhaduri in assisting with the index. Ms. Sravani Biswas was of immense help in producing the digital version of the text, notably in checking the footnotes.
I also sincerely acknowledge the grant of leave whenever necessary by Pravrajika Bhaswaraprana, Principal, Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan. Without this and encouragement from my departmental colleagues I could not have finished this book on time.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the women domestic help, particularly, Pinky Haldar, Draupadi Mandal, Tapashi Majhi, and Kabita Majhi, who contributed immensely by taking care of my housework while I was busy doing my research. Their lives are daily reminders of the reality of capitalism and patriarchy in extreme forms.
I would probably not have studied all the way that I did, but for the encouragement given by my mother, Krishna Marik. She also stood by me all these years, and took over many of my responsibilities whenever I was in need, from helping me raise my daughter to checking the proof of my PhD thesis, a task also shared by my aunt Sanhita Marik.
Finally I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my husband Kunal Chattopadhyay, who prodded me whenever I seemed to be slackening, and undertook many of the duties of a research assistant. We had our own distinct views, but discussed them. His knowledge of Marxist theory and history was valuable in carrying out my research. My academic debt to him is acknowledged only in part in the footnotes. I would like to dedicate this book to my mother and to Kunal.
Kolkata January 2008
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ADAV : Allgemein Deutsch Arbeiterverein (General German Workers Association)
Cheka : Extraordinary Commission for Combating CounterRevolution
CWF : K. Marx — The Civil War in France
DPML : H. Draper—The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” from Marx to Lenin
GCFI : The General Council of the First International: Minutes
IWA : International Workingmen’s Association (First International)
KMTR : H. Draper—Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, 4 volumes
KPD : Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)
LCW : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works
MECW : K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works
MESC : K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence
SPD/SDAP : Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic party of Germany)
SR : Socialist Revolutionary Party
SUCR : Société Universelle de Communistes Révolutionnaires (International Society of Revolutionary Communists)
Tsektran: : Central Transport Committee
Vesenkha : Supreme Economic Council
Vikzhel : Railway Union
VTsIK: : All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets
Zhenotdel : Zhenskii Otdel (Women’s Section)
1
INTRODUCTION
What is the relevance of Marxism in the contemporary world?
Revolutionary socialists are today consistently confronted with the challenge that Marxism is a failed doctrine, a despotic Utopia that has been finally superseded by the coming of an eternal market-driven democracy. Throughout most of the twentieth century, revolutionary Marxism was identified with Stalinism, and the struggle for socialism was portrayed as a conflict between two camps and two systems, where the communist system led by the Soviet Union promised food security rather than democracy. As the economy of the former Soviet Union and other bureaucratized workers’ states faced their terminal crisis, it seemed evident not only to ideologues of capitalism but also to many one-time socialists, that socialism was inferior to capitalism, and that Marxism’s lack of commitment to genuine democracy was a major factor in the “demise of Marxism.”1 Since the Soviet Union was often projected as a living embodiment of classical Marxism, the Marxist theory was portrayed as authoritarian, without a serious examination of what it said.2 Moreover, it has also been concluded that the Bolshevik theory, whether or not directly inspired by Marx, had an authoritarian agenda right from the birth of Bolshevism,3 and finally, that consciously authoritarian choices on the part of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, caused the establishment of a totalitarian regime after the October Revolution.4
We are therefore compelled to make a serious study in two parts in order to explore the original democratic commitments of revolutionary socialism, with which Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Trotsky, Alexandra Kollontai and others were associated. First, we need to ask
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What is Poetry?
T is not a very easy question to answer, but I will tell you, reader, where you can find some poetry. There is a little book just published by Little & Brown, Boston, and written by J. B. Lowell, which is full of pure and pleasing poetry—full of beautiful thoughts, expressed in musical words, and so artfully managed as to excite deep emotions in the heart. Here is a brief passage which describes one that died in early childhood.
As the airy gossamere, Floating in the sunlight clear, Where’er it toucheth, clinging tightly, Round glossy leaf or stump unsightly, So from his spirit wandered out Tendrils spreading all about, Knitting all things to its thrall With a perfect love of all. * * * *
He did but float a little way Adown the stream of time, With dreamy eyes watching the ripples play, Or listening their fairy chime; His slender sail Ne’er felt the gale; He did but float a little way, And, putting to the shore While yet ’twas early day, Went calmly on his way, To dwell with us no more! No jarring did he feel,
No grating on his vessel’s keel; A strip of silver sand Mingled the waters with the land Where he was seen no more.
Full short his journey was; no dust Of earth unto his sandals clave; The weary weight that old men must, He bore not to the grave. He seemed a cherub who had lost his way And wandered hither, so his stay With us was short, and ’twas most meet That he should be no delver in earth’s clod, Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet To stand before his God.
THE RIVER, A SONG.
Allegro.
1
Oh tell me pretty river, Whence do thy waters flow? And whither art thou roam-ing, So pensive and so slow?
2
“My birthplace was the mountain, My nurse the April showers; My cradle was the fountain O’er-curtained by wild flowers.
3
“One morn I ran away, A madcap hoyden rill— And many a prank that day I played adown the hill.
4
“And then mid meadowy banks I flirted with the flowers, That stooped with glowing lips, To woo me to their bowers.
5
“But these bright scenes are o’er, And darkly flows my wave— I hear the ocean’s roar, And there must be my grave.”
ROBERT MERRY’S MUSEUM.
Story of Philip Brusque.
(Continued from page 79.)
CHAPTER V.
Progress of events. Necessity of Government. A Constitution is drawn up and rejected.—Murder.—Anarchy.—Emilie and her lover.
W the morning came, it showed upon the bosom of the sea a few blackened fragments of the pirate ship, but beside these not a trace of it was seen. Her whole crew had apparently perished in the awful explosion.
The people on board the merchant ship were soon called from rejoicing to the consideration of their situation and the course to be pursued. Brusque endeavored to persuade them to quit the ship, and take up their abode on the island. Most of them were refugees from France in the first place, and recently from St. Domingo; in both cases flying from the perils which attended the convulsions of civilized society. Brusque urged them to seek an asylum from their cares and anxieties in the quiet retreat of Fredonia. Whether he would have succeeded in persuading them to adopt this course or not, we cannot tell, had not his arguments been enforced by the condition of the ship: she was found to be in a leaky condition, and the necessity of abandoning her became apparent; no time was indeed to be lost. Preparations therefore were immediately made for landing the people, and for taking to the shore all the articles that could be saved from the vessel.
In a few days this task was over All the inmates of the vessel had been transferred to the island, as well as a great variety of articles, either of furniture, food, or merchandise. The vessel gradually sank in the water, and finally disappeared. Thus, about seventy persons were landed upon the island, without the means of leaving it. So soft was the climate, so beautiful the little hills and valleys, so delicious the fruits—that all seemed to forget their various plans and disappointments in the prospect of spending the remainder of their lives there.
Nothing could exceed the efforts of Brusque and Piquet to make their new friends comfortable and happy. Men, women, and children, all seemed for a time to emulate each other in helping forward the preparations for mutual comfort. Tents were erected, sleeping apartments with beds or mats were provided, and in less than a week all the necessaries of life were distributed to every member of their little colony.
The reflective mind of Brusque had already suggested the necessity of adopting some system of government, for even this small colony he knew could not get along without it. Under the pressure of calamity or emergency, a spirit of mutual accommodation might exist, and for a time might enable the little society to proceed without disturbance. But he foresaw that a state of quiet and comfort would bring occasions of discontent and disorder, which must result in violence, if all could not be subjected to the sway of some just system of laws. These views he suggested to the captain of the vessel, to Emilie’s father, and to several others. It was at length agreed by some of the principal men that the people should be assembled, and the adoption of a form of government be proposed. This was done, and Brusque, the captain, and Emilie’s father were appointed a committee to draw up a constitution. They attended to this duty, and in a few days the people were called together to hear the report of the committee.
Brusque proceeded to read the document, and then he made some remarks in explanation of it. He said that the plan of a constitution which had just been read was partly copied from that of the United States of America—a nation which had recently arisen
among mankind, and promised soon to be the most flourishing and happy people upon the face of the earth. He then went on to say that the constitution just read contained the following principles:
1. All mankind are born with equal rights and privileges; all are entitled to the same degree of liberty; all are equally entitled to the protection and benefit of the laws.
2. All government should spring from the people, and have the good of the people for its object.
3. That all government implies the abridgment of natural liberty, and that the people ought to submit to such abridgments, so far as the good of society required.
The constitution then proceeded to prescribe a form of government, consisting of three branches: 1st, of a President, who should see to the general affairs of the colony, and to the execution of the laws, who should be called the Executive; 2d, of three judges, who should decide all disputes, to be called the Judiciary; and 3d, of an assembly, chosen by the people every year to make laws, called the Legislature. It also established the following principles:
1. Every man of the age of twenty-one years should be a citizen, and be permitted to vote for members of the legislature and other officers.
2. A majority of votes shall be necessary for a choice.
3. The land of the island shall be divided between the families, in proportion to their numbers, by the judges, and then each person shall be protected in his possessions, and the property he acquires.
4. Any citizen shall be competent to fill any office to which he is chosen.
Such were the outlines of the constitution, as set forth by Brusque in presence of all the men of the colony A profound silence followed the remarks of the orator. But, at length, a man named Rogere rose, and said that he did not like the proposed constitution. For his part, he did not see the necessity of any government. He had, in France only seen iniquity, and folly, and crime, following the footsteps of
government, whether admitted by kings or citizens, and he believed that the best way was to get along without it. “For my part,” said he, “I believe that liberty is the greatest political good, and the moment you begin to make laws, you put fetters upon it. As soon as you establish a government, you prepare to smother or strangle it. Of what use is liberty to the eagle when you have broken his wing, or to the mountain deer when you have cut the sinews of his limbs, or to man when it is doled out by magistrates, who may say how much we shall have, and how we may exercise it? Take from man his liberty, and you sink him as far as you can to the standard of the brute! Give him liberty, and he is but little lower than the angels! Then why restrain liberty? Why take it for granted that the first step in society is to fetter human freedom and trench upon human rights? Let us be wiser than to be guided by a prejudice; let us venture to depart from the beaten path, and strike out something new. I close by moving that we dispense with government altogether; that we rely upon the moral sense of mankind, which rests upon an innate perception of justice. This is sufficient for our safety and our happiness.”
Brusque was not a little disappointed to observe, as Rogere sat down, that there was a pervading feeling of approbation of what he had said. In vain did he oppose the views of Rogere; in vain did he show that it was impossible for society to have order without laws, to maintain justice, peace and security without government. In vain did he appeal to history and the past experience of mankind. The idea of perfect freedom was too fascinating to the majority; and the assembly finally decided, by an overwhelming vote, to reject the proposed constitution, and to make the experiment of living without laws or government.
The subject, however, became a matter of discussion among the people, and they were soon divided into two parties, called the Brusqueites and the Rogereites; the former being in favor of a government, and the latter in favor of unlimited freedom. Things went on quietly for a time, for the people were all French, and their good breeding seemed to render the restraints and obligations of enacted statutes, less important. Beside, the island abounded in fruit, and there seemed such a supply of food, as to afford little ground for
dispute as to the possession of property As for shelter, the climate was so mild as to render the covering of a tent sufficient for comfort.
But occasions of collision soon arose. Some articles brought from the ship had been claimed and taken into use by one of the sailors as his own; but now another sailor insisted that they were his. An altercation of words followed between the two, and at last they came to blows. In the struggle, one of them was killed. This event cast a cloud over the little colony, but it was transient. It was forgotten in a few days. Other quarrels, however, soon followed; and finally the whole society was in a state of anarchy and confusion. It was now obvious that reason had lost its power, and that the weak were exposed to violence and injustice from the strong.
Among the people of the colony were several rude men, who, finding that there was no punishment to be feared, began to be very insolent; and it was not a little remarkable that Rogere usually associated with these persons, and seemed even to countenance their injustice and their tyranny. At last, he was evidently considered their leader, and being much more intelligent than his followers, he was soon able to govern them as he pleased. In order to secure his ascendency over their minds, he flattered them by holding forth the prospect of unbounded liberty. He encouraged them in their acts of licentiousness, and pretended that this was freedom. He sought to prejudice their minds against Brusque and the other members of the community who were in favor of a government of equal laws, by insisting that they were aristocrats or monarchists, who wished to enslave the people. Thus, by playing upon the passions of his party, Rogere soon made them subservient to his will. While he pretended to be a friend of freedom he was now actually a despot; and while his followers were made to believe that they were enjoying liberty, they were in fact the slaves of a cunning tyrant. Nor was this all. While claiming to be the liberal party, the party that favored human rights and human freedom, they were daily guilty of acts of injustice, violence and wrong, toward some of the people of the island.
It was in this state of things that, one pleasant evening, Emilie walked to the sea-shore, which was at no great distance from the tent in which she lived. The moon occasionally shone out from the
clouds that were drifting across the sky, and threw its silver light upon the waves that came with a gentle swell and broke upon the pebbly beach. The scene was tranquil, but it could not soothe the heart of Emilie, who had now many causes of anxiety. The disturbed state of the little community upon the island, the brawls and riots that were occurring almost every day, and a general feeling of fear and insecurity which she shared with her friends, had cast a deep gloom over her mind. The conduct of Rogere had been offensive to her on several occasions, but that which caused her most vexation and sorrow was the strange demeanor of Brusque, her former lover On the night of their deliverance from the pirates on board the ship, he had made himself known to her, and their meeting was marked with all the fondness and confidence of former times. But from that period, he had treated her only with common civility. He had indeed been most careful to provide for her comfort and that of her parents. Though he had been very industrious in promoting the general welfare of the colony, it was apparent that he felt a special interest in contributing to the peace and happiness of Emilie and her aged parents. By his care their tent was so contrived as to afford a perfect shelter, and it was supplied with everything which circumstances permitted, that could minister to the pleasure of its inmates. It was daily provided with the finest oranges, the freshest figs, and the choicest pineapples. And it was evident that this was all done either by Brusque himself, or by some one at his bidding. But still, he seldom came to the tent; he never sought any private conversation with Emilie; and sometimes, when he looked upon her, she could perceive that his countenance bespoke a deep but melancholy interest; and no sooner was his feeling noticed, than he hastened to disguise it.
While Emilie was walking upon the beach, she thought of all these things; of the unsettled state of the colony, the uncertainty of their fate, and of the rude manner in which she had been addressed by Rogere. But her mind dwelt longest and with the deepest interest upon the mysterious demeanor of Brusque. It was while she was pursuing this train of thought that she was startled at perceiving the figure of a man partly hidden in the shadow of a high rock which stood close to the water’s edge, and which she was now
approaching. But we must reserve the scene which followed for another chapter.
(To be continued.)
The Sun.
T sun is rising! Did you ever think of the many benefits produced by the sun? Let us go upon the top of a hill, and see the sun rise, and consider, for a moment, the effects that are produced.
Do you see that the darkness, which had fallen over the whole face of nature, is gone? Do you see that even the valley is filled with light? Does not all this remind you of God, who said, at the beginning of the world, “Let there be light, and there was light?”
Light, then, spread over the land, is one of the first effects of the sun’s rising. And do you see that the birds are all abroad now, singing their songs, and seeking their food? How happy they appear to be! And do you not feel happy too? Does not everything seem happy to see the light, and feel that day has come once more?
Do you observe that vast sheet of white vapor that is rising from yonder valley? It is rising in consequence of the warmer air that is produced by the rising of the sun. Do you not feel that the shining of the sun upon you makes you warmer?
Warmth, then, diffused over the earth, is another effect produced by the rising of the sun. And how pleasant is this warmth! But do you know, that, if it were not for the warmth of the sun, the trees and plants and flowers would not grow? Do you know, that, without this warmth, all the earth would be covered with ice, and that all men and animals would die?
You see, then, how important the sun is, and how great are the benefits of the light and heat which it sends abroad over the world. Let us be thankful to God every morning for the light and heat of the sun. These are the sources of life to everything that grows or feels.
Night.
T sun is setting in the west! It seems to go down behind the hills. Darkness is creeping over the valleys. The birds have ceased their song, and are gathering into the forest or the thick branches of the trees.
The hen has gone to her shelter, and gathered her chickens under her wing The flies and gnats and butterflies are gone to their rest. The cows and sheep have lain down to their repose.
Stillness seems to have come over the world. The sun has set. It is dark. It is getting chill and damp. It is night.
Do you see those little shining points in the sky? What are they? We call them stars, but they are worlds far away, and probably they are covered with trees, and hills, and rivers, and cities, and people.
We cannot go to them, nor can any one come from them to tell us about them. They are God’s worlds, and they are no doubt as useful as they are beautiful.
How wonderful is night! How fearful would it be if it were to last forever! But we know that the sun will come to-morrow, to give us its cheerful light and heat. Let us go to rest, then, for night is made for sleep.
But let us first think of that great and good Being, who has made all these wonders of nature. Let us put our trust in Him. In his care we are safe. But we must ask his protection, and seek his forgiveness for all our faults.
Oh, how fearful would it be if there were no God! How sad would it be, if God were not our friend! How sad would it be, if we were to be unkind to others, and to feel that He might not be kind to us! How
sad would it be, if we were so wicked as to feel afraid of Him, the best and kindest of all beings!
This would indeed be dreadful. But we may all be good if we try to be so. Even if we have done wrong, we may go to Him, and ask his forgiveness; and if we ask sincerely, He will not refuse it.
Did you never disobey your father or mother, and, having done so, have you not begged their pardon? And, having done this, have you not been forgiven? And is not this forgiveness pleasant to the heart? Let me tell you, that God is as ready to be kind and forgiving to his children, as parents are to be so to theirs.
Let no fear of God, then, prevent your loving Him, praying to Him, or asking his forgiveness. The more you have sinned, the more careful you should be to look up to Him, and pray to Him, and ask his counsel and pardon. Those who have been most wicked, have most reason to love God; for his kindness is great enough to pardon even them.
H ’ F .—The father of the poet Hogg, the famous Ettrick Shepherd of Scotland, was a man of peculiar character in one respect—he never would confess or allow that he could be beaten or defeated in anything. One wintry day, he and his son were out on a hill during a snow-storm, looking after the safety of the sheep, when, the old man having inadvertently gone too near the brow, the snow gave way, and he was precipitated to the bottom. The Shepherd, alarmed for the safety of his father, looked down the side of the hill, and not only saw him standing on his feet seemingly, unhurt, but he heard him crying, at the top of his voice, “Jamie, my man, ye were aye fond of a slide a’ ye’re days; let me see you do that!” The above expression displayed his self-esteem; he wished to pass the accident off upon his son for a feat. On another occasion, having slipped his foot on going up a hill, and fallen prostrate on his nose, he said to an individual accompanying him, “Eh, I think I had like to have fallen!” Once an unruly mare having run away with him, a group of men observed him rush past with a face of great concern and fear; but when the beast had exhausted its strength, and allowed itself to
be once more guided by the rein, Mr Hogg came back, making a great show of mastery over it, and muttering, so as to be heard by the bystanders, “I think I hae sobered her!”
A certain physician at sea made great use of sea-water among his patients. Whatever disease came on, a dose of the nauseating liquid was first administered. In process of time the Doctor fell overboard. A great bustle consequently ensued on board, in the midst of which the captain came up and inquired the cause. “O, nothing, sir,” answered a tar, “only the Doctor has fallen into his medicine-chest.”
Queen Elizabeth on Horseback.
Queen Elizabeth, of England.
T are very few persons who are famous in history, about whom more has been said and written than Queen Elizabeth of England. She was the daughter of Henry VIII., a severe and haughty king, who died in 1547, leaving his son Edward VI., to reign in his stead. He died in a short time, and his elder sister, Mary, succeeded to the throne.
The reformation, as it is called, had begun in the time of Henry VIII., and he, with a violent hand, put down the Roman Catholic religion in his dominions; but Mary was a Catholic, and she revived it, imitating, and perhaps exceeding the bigotry and intolerance of her father in repressing it. In speaking of this period, an English historian says, “The cruelties, indeed, which were perpetrated for several years, under the pretext of advancing true religion, would almost surpass belief, did not their record depend upon authority which there is no gainsaying. Men, women, and even children, died a death of which the bare contemplation causes the blood to curdle.”
Among the persons who suffered martyrdom at this period, were three celebrated bishops, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. The characters of Ridley and Latimer, both as scholars and divines, presented at least as many points of contrariety as of agreement. The first was moderate, learned, and reflective; the last, bold, simple, frank, and thoroughly uncompromising. Having been tried and convicted of heresy, they were ordered to suffer death by burning, and Oxford was named as the city in which the execution should take place. They were accordingly led out into a wide street, and tied to the stake; the executioners, probably with the humane desire of lessening their sufferings, having fastened round the middle of each a bag of gunpowder. During the interval when the fagots were in the act of being lighted, Ridley addressed some words of pious consolation to his companion. The undaunted Latimer scarcely
heard him out: “Fear not, good brother,” replied he, “but be of good cheer. We shall this day kindle such a torch in England, as I trust in God shall never be extinguished.” Soon after he had spoken, the flames reached the gunpowder, and he was blown to atoms. Ridley suffered longer and more intensely; but after his frame had been consumed to ashes, it is said that his heart was found entire,—an emblem, as his contemporaries declare, of the firmness with which he gave his body to be burned for the truth’s sake.
The fate of Cranmer was, in many respects, more melancholy, perhaps more instructive, than that of his brothers in suffering. He was first convicted of high-treason, but obtained, on his earnest supplication for mercy, the queen’s pardon. Hating the man, both on public and on private grounds, she desired to destroy his character as well as his life; and it must be confessed that she had well-nigh succeeded. Being transferred from the Tower to Oxford, he was arraigned on a charge of heresy, before a court constituted with a marked attention to form, and by a commission obtained direct from Rome. He defended himself with great modesty as well as talent; but from such a court only one verdict was to be anticipated;—he was found guilty. The fear of death seems to have operated with extraordinary force upon Cranmer. Again he implored the queen’s mercy, in terms partaking too much of the abject; and being beset by many temptations,—by the terrors of the stake on one hand, by promises of favor and protection on the other,—in an evil hour his constancy gave way, and he signed a recantation. The triumph of his enemy was now complete. Notwithstanding this humiliating act, the sentence of death was confirmed; and he was carried, as custom required, into the church of St. Mary, where an appropriate sermon was preached.
During the whole time of divine service, Cranmer kept his eyes rivetted on the ground, while the tears chased one another, in rapid course, over his cheeks. The audience attributed his emotion to remorse; and it was expected, when he indicated a desire to address the populace, that he would before them acknowledge the enormity of his transgressions, and ask their prayers. But the persons who harbored this idea had deluded themselves. After running over a sort
