Бесплатный фрагмент - Human and post-human

Human and post-human.

Chapter I. Nature and Society

1.

Heinrich Heine has a philosophical poem titled “Fragen”. The young man stands before the restless sea, beneath the motionless stars on the night sky, and asks questions… “Tell me, waves, what is a man? Where does he come from? Where is he going? And who lives up there among the stars?” But, “The waves murmur with their eternal murmuring; the wind blows; the clouds rush by; the stars gleam, indifferently cold… And the madman waits for the answer!”

And why is the young man a “madman” (in Heine’s original text — “ein Narr”, a fool, jester)? Because he goes to the wrong shop. On the one hand, a person is a creation of nature, a part of it — just as much a part as a fish, an ant, a monkey, the sea, the stars, etc. And in a deeper sense, in this case, nature, represented by the young man — its active, conscious part — is addressing its unconscious part: the sea and the stars. But the inanimate world and the animal kingdom, as the unconscious part of nature, are entirely determined by nature as a whole. On the contrary, the place of man is unique because, being part of nature but possessing reason and will, he defines himself. How? Through activity, in which his reason and will are only truly manifested. However, human activity cannot be carried out in any other way than within the framework of a system of mutual connections and mutual dependence among people, i.e., in human society. Human society has been struggling with nature throughout its entire history. To a modern inhabitant of the technological world, this thesis may seem incomprehensible and strange. It is worth recalling, however, that without natural resources — oil, gas, metals, etc. — technological civilization would come to a complete standstill and collapse. The resources of “green energy” — wind, sunlight, water — are also natural resources. But what is the extraction of natural resources (or working with materials given by nature) if not a struggle against nature? Of course, this struggle should not take the form of a war of annihilation, for if a human destroy the nature, he will destroy himself.

The struggle against nature is a constant, fundamental process, in a sense this is the prosaic foundation of history, upon which the majestic and monstrous edifice of human sociality is built. The edifice is constantly and radically rebuilt in the course of profound socio-economic transformations. Along with the edifice, its inhabitant — the human being — also changes. From this, it is clear that a person is an “unfinished project”, a subject in the process of constant formation (which is why the young man in Heine’s poem is a “fool” also because he is seeking a complete formula, an unchanging stone answer to the question “What is a human?”).

2.

Just as a child in the first years of life is completely dependent on parents and is entirely under their “power”, so at first a human is completely dependent on nature. This is what is known as a “primitive society” in which human individuality has not yet emerged. The point here is a social formation that is fundamentally biological — a clan, a tribe. Everything is subordinated to the survival of the clan. Prehistoric primitive society is the longest period in the life of the human race, lasting many tens of thousands of years. And if there weren’t something that can be considered as rudimentary manifestations of individuality, humanity would still be living in caves. Not all members of the clan suddenly, at the same time, come up with the idea of making fire by friction and using it for cooking and heating, or of attaching a sharpened stone to a stick and thus making a spear for hunting animals. These and other technical inventions and techniques came to the mind of individual, specific primitive people. James Watt, the inventor of the universal steam engine, relied on a series of scientific discoveries in the fields of thermodynamics, gas theory, chemistry, heat engineering, and others, as well as on the experience of his predecessors who had created imperfect models of steam engines. The primitive inventor, in turn, drew on sensory contemplation and observations of living natural processes. But both of them “deobjectified” objectness. For one, the objectness was given in the form of accumulated knowledge; for the other, in the form of natural material. The intellectual ability to rethink an object, to see it differently, is, by definition, an individual ability. Thus, we see that even where individuality was still absent as an existential and social fact, its germ, shadow, element still played a crucial role, giving the human community an impetus for movement.

3.

Gradually, human begins to free himself from complete dependence on nature, and the process accelerates. The more tools, methods, and techniques a primitive human has at his disposal — in other words, the better armed he is in the struggle against nature — the faster new tools, methods, and techniques emerge. There is a transition from passive appropriation — hunting and gathering — to active influence on the material of nature — agriculture and animal husbandry. This transition is accompanied by a revolution in tools (metalworking) and means of transportation (the invention of the wheel). The social organization is transforming. In the regions of the Earth most favorable for agriculture (the so-called “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East, as well as the valleys of China’s largest rivers), the clan-based organization is being replaced by an organization in the form of a peasant community — neighbouring families. Shamans and tribal leaders are becoming a thing of the past. As a superstructure over the peasant community, an Asian form of state emerges — a military-bureaucratic despotism. In Europe, the breakdown of the tribal system occurs later. Here, the state takes on a different form — the form of a polis (city-state). Free peasant-commoners in Ancient Greece and Rome take an active part in the life of the polis. As is well known, democracy emerged in Hellas.

The difference between the Asian, despotic, and the European, polis form of state is explained by practical necessity. Agriculture in the regions of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Indus and Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow Rivers requires irrigation. The construction of irrigation systems in the ancient world required coordination of efforts and labor discipline among peasant communities. The centralized vertical structure of the military-bureaucratic despotism became the political form that most effectively solved this problem. Its further expansion into regions where irrigation was not required was driven by the spread of a specific culture. Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China provided (often in the process of directly conquering territories) neighboring regions with technology (methods and tools of labor) and models of economic and socio-political organization. Hellas and Rome were peripheral “islands” in relation to the East, and therefore unique forms of social organization and culture were able to develop on their soil.

4.

Within the rigid framework of vulgar Marxism, feudalism follows the slave-owning system. However, slavery was the dominant form of economy, in the precise Marxist sense of the term (as the main source of surplus labour and surplus product), only during a short period in the late Roman Republic and the Early Empire, at the height of large estates — latifundia — as well as large craft workshops, mines and quarries (1st century BC — 2nd century AD). For the rest of the time of the “slave-owning system”, the bulk of the product was produced by personally free peasant-commune members. The surplus labor of the peasants was appropriated by the polis or the despotism (through taxes and labor services). On the other hand, slavery legally and actually existed in Western Europe during the period of “feudalism”, up until the 13th century. In Asia, it existed up until the 18th century. It can also be recalled that Rome had a typically “feudal” class system: there were the classes of senators, equites, plebeians, freedmen, etc., and there was a monarch — the emperor. Thus, the boundary between “slavery” and “feudalism” is greatly blurred. From a cognitive perspective, it is more productive to view the entire historical period from the disintegration of primitive tribal society to capitalism as the period of an “agrarian society”. The term “agrarian society” highlights two essential aspects: the fact that land is the primary value in this society, and the fact that the main producer is the peasant.

5.

In a tribal, primitive society, a human, by and large, had no individuality. His life was inseparable from the life of the tribe, sanctioned by the tribe (expulsion from the tribe was tantamount to death; a person cast out of the tribe accepted his doom, as if dying even before physical death), and proceeded solely for the reproduction of the tribe. Here, everyone was equal, but everyone was the same. A primitive person endowed the natural phenomena with a soul. Likewise, the dead were presented in his world as spirits. The spirit of a stone was no worse or better than the spirit of a living (or deceased) member of the clan. The clan member is equalized, merged with both living and non-living nature. And only the consequences of glimpses of individual abilities of deobjectification, accumulating over many millennia, ultimately led the clan system to deisintegration and destruction. “World history” begins.

In an agrarian society, a human first acquires individuality and becomes capable of recognizing himself as a person, as “I”. The first and main reason for that is the differentiation of labor functions. As modern research shows, in primitive society there was no clear differentiation even between the labor of men and women. Women and even children took part in hunting (sometimes in supporting roles, sometimes on their own), while men, due to circumstances, often switched to gathering. In an agrarian society, various types of labor become separated, and these types of labor (agriculture, livestock breeding, craftsmanship, mental labor) are, in turn, differentiated into numerous specializations. For example, in ancient agrarian society, specific types of labor emerges: science, culture and art, political activity, economic management, etc. All of this represents the specialization of mental labor. Thus, the mental and physical strengths of an individual are concentrated on a specific, particular activity. An individual is aware of the difference between his own activity and other types of activity, as well as the differences between types of activity in general. Since the first step towards self-consciousness is always the differentiation of oneself from the surrounding world (“I” becomes “I” only through differentiating oneself from “not-I”), and since a person manifests himself in activity, the division and specialization of labor act as a real, objective basis for the emergence of the individual “I”. Individuality is born as the separation of a person from the undifferentiated unity of common-tribal activity.

Another reason is social differentiation. The unity of the clan gives way to the division of society into classes and social groups. Property emerges. One Christian theologian wrote that: “Love was lost by the one who first said “this is mine’. And the first to utter these words was Cain” (1). In a secular interpretation, the idea is repeated by Rousseau: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying “This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: “Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself belongs to no one!” (2). The theologian and Rousseau are right: property is a source of discord, conflict, and struggle between people, large groups of people, and states. But at the moment of its emergence, private property represented a step forward. Property, like the division of labor, is the real basis for distinguishing the “I” from the “not-I,” a formative factor of self-consciousness. Historically, along with the division of labor, property became a factor in the emergence of human individuality from the undifferentiated darkness of the cave of primitive society. However, this step forward was paid for with the Cainite mark of material private property — the “struggle of all against all”, the alienation of a person from other people, from nature, and from himself. Thus, the development of human individuality, from the very beginning of world history, occurs under the weight of a deforming force.

In accordance with labor and social differentiation, the religious beliefs of an agrarian society developed. The spirits of ancestors and natural phenomena were forgotten. In pagan polytheism, gods appear as personifications of some human activity or social relations. Hermes is the patron of trade, Mars is the god of war, Hephaestus is the god of blacksmiths, Apollo is the god of art, Zeus, the ruler of Olympus, is a hypostatized image of social hierarchy, and so on and so forth. As society became more complex, and inequality and social contradictions grew, there arose a need for a form of religion that could more effectively prevent the disintegration of society. Monotheism became such a form. Historically, monotheism emerged in Palestine as the religion of a small tribe, hemmed in on all sides by powerful neighbors (Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, Babylonia), as a response to the threat of ethnocultural and political disintegration. Subsequently, monotheism became the form of world religions.

It is noteworthy how monotheism reflects the fact of the emergence of human individuality. On the one hand, god in the Old Testament acts as the tribal god of the Jews. On the other hand, god “communicates” with the tribe not directly, but through chosen individuals — Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and a succession of prophets. The Book of Job, in fact, leaves the theme of the tribe outside the narrative framework and presents a tense and intense dialogue between god and man. In the New Testament, the fate of the tribe is reinterpreted. God is incarnated in a person, and individual salvation through faith and living according to the commandments comes to the fore. Thus, both in the Old Testament and, especially, in the New Testament, the supernatural turns to the “I” of the person; in a religious form, human individuality is highlighted and emphasized. This sharply distinguishes monotheism from paganism, and even more so from primitive animism.

6.

The Roman Empire of the 1st–2nd centuries AD represented the peak of economic development of an agrarian society in the West. The facts established by modern science indicate that the level of Roman technology in crafts, agriculture, and construction, as well as the overall volume of production, was only achieved in Western Europe by the 17th–18th centuries. The decline and fall of Rome, and the historical gap of the Middle Ages that followed for nearly fifteen hundred years, serve as a reminder of the fallacy of the belief in linear, progressive advancement. In fact, catastrophe is inherent in world history, just as progress is; more precisely, progress in history has always made its way through the putrefying vapors of various social, economic, and natural disasters.

Another fact that debunks the illusions (both of “anti-capitalists” and “pro-capitalists”) that the economy is always and under any conditions more important than consciousness, ideology, and social structure is that throughout the history of agrarian society, up until the early 19th century, China and India surpassed Europe in terms of economic strength. According to research, in 1820, Asia accounted for almost two-thirds of the world’s population and three-fifths of the world’s income. China and India together accounted for half of the world’s population and half of the world’s income.

But why, despite the high level of economic development, were neither Rome nor the Asian giants able to make the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one, to capitalism as a form of social organization?

In the Roman Empire, proto-capitalist relations developed. A system of loan interest and financial transactions was in operation (loans and deposits, non-cash payments, tax-farming contracts, contracts for the supply of goods, etc.). There were merchant associations (societas) aimed at pooling funds for trade and commercial enterprises. There was an extensive system of guilds (collegia). Not only merchants (negotiatores) and bankers (argentarii), but also representatives of the upper classes — equestrians and senators — were involved in trade, production, and financial enterprises. The high level of Roman production, trade, and social organization is evidenced by the fact that Roman law became the foundation for the commercial codes of capitalist countries in the modern era. And yet, the puzzle did not come together. There was no transition to capitalism.

It is necessary to immediately reject the superficial and external causes of Rome’s decline and downfall, which are sometimes cited. The pressure of the “barbarians” on the Roman borders existed throughout the entire existence of the Republic (for example, as early as 390 BC, the Gauls captured and burned Rome) and the Empire. However, prior to the internal crisis, Rome not only coped with it but also pursued an active policy of conquest. The so — called “Antonine plague” of 165—180 A.D. is not the cause of the decline, although it was a severe blow that, according to various estimates, claimed from 5 to 10 million lives (10% — 15% of the empire’s population). However, for example, during the “Justinian plague” 400 years later, the mortality rate was much higher (up to 25% of the population, according to modern estimates), but the epidemic did not lead to a profound crisis or the downfall of Byzantium. The syphilis epidemic (which in those times manifested in a very aggressive and deadly form) at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries claimed about 5 million lives out of the 60-million population of Europe at that time (excluding Ottoman Turkey and Russia), but this did not stop (and did not even pause) the rapid development of Western European society. Even less worthy of attention are pseudoscientific, vulgar hypotheses, such as the idea that lead water pipes undermined the health of the Romans.

Theoretically, Rome had the opportunity to begin moving from an agrarian society to an industrial-capitalist one. This was hindered primarily by a lack of coherence and desynchronization of a number of, so to speak, “progressive” processes within the structure of Roman society and in the sphere of ideology.

As has already been said, slavery reached its peak in the 1st–2nd centuries AD. But at the same time, an opposing trend was gaining strength. As is well known, a slave is completely uninterested in the results of his labor. Seeing the opportunity for greater income, many slave owners would free their slaves. The former slave, now a freedman (libertus), would then become personally dependent on their former master (patronus). He gave his patron a portion of the income from a plot of land, a shop, or a workshop (an analogue of monetary rent) or worked for him for a certain period of time without pay (an analogue of corvée). Freedmen became a widespread social class in the Roman Empire. On the other hand, free-born members of peasant communes underwent mass pauperization. Unable to withstand competition with latifundia, peasants sold their plots en masse and either migrated to cities, where they found themselves in the position of unemployed lumpen, or agreed to conditions of dependence on large landowners. The high level of development of commodity-money relations achieved in Rome and the mass dispossession of the direct producer created objective prerequisites for the emergence of relations of wage labour and capital.

This does not mean that large-scale social upheavals and crisis could have been avoided. Nowhere and never has the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one occurred in an evolutionary and peaceful manner. The transition of Western European society from an agrarian to an industrial one can be viewed as a crisis of social transformation that lasted for three and a half centuries (1492–1848), marked by religious and civil wars (revolutions), cultural and political movements (the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment), and counter-movements (the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the Counter-Reformation, the “Holy Alliance”). The question is not about the inevitability of the crisis, but about where the path out of the crisis leads.

Capitalism is a program of subordinating nature to human, a program aimed at minimizing humans dependence on nature. Capitalism requires corresponding ideological forms, without which it simply cannot be a functioning system. A spiritual upheaval grows out of objective trends, serves as a catalyst for these trends, and always precedes a socio-political upheaval. The spiritual upheaval began in Europe in the 16th century in a religious form — as the Reformation.

The crisis of Rome did not lead to a transition to capitalism, but to the disintegration and historical failure of the Middle Ages, primarily because an adequate spiritual revolution never took place. Christianity was legitimized only when the economic and social crisis had passed the “point of no return”. At the same time, the version of Christianity that was legitimized was the one that served to strengthen the class hierarchy and the power of the emperors, to conserve the life of society, and to prevent anything new from emerging. Movements within Christianity that were similar to Protestantism — Gnosticism, Montanism, Donatism, and others — were declared heresy, and repressions were launched against them. If Roman emperors had allowed the free spread of Christianity from the very beginning, and if Christianity had taken root in its original form, close to Protestantism, Roman society — of course, not immediately, but over time (let’s say, within two or three centuries) — could have transformed into an industrial-capitalist society.

The pagan gods died out for the Romans long before they came to believe in the resurrected Jesus. Some emperors (Caligula, Nero, Domitian) declared themselves to be gods even during their lifetime. The Senate added deceased emperors to the Roman pantheon. The philosophical teachings of the Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and Neoplatonists were inaccessible and incomprehensible to the broad plebeian masses. A kind of spiritual vacuum emerged in the lives of the Romans. Impoverished peasants flocked to Rome and other cities of the empire and lived off handouts and allowances distributed by the imperial authorities, as well as by magistrates and patrons. The famous cry “Bread and circuses!” became the meaning of life for many generations. The lumpen-plebeian masses demanded bread and circuses, and the authorities met their demands as best they could. Free-born Romans, even in poverty, would not agree to wage labor. They were deterred by the deeply ingrained belief that performing physical labor for someone else in exchange for money was akin to slavery. And a free Roman despised slaves, and even former slaves, freedmen.

In similar conditions of land dispossession and pauperization, European peasants found themselves, fifteen hundred years later. They also moved to the cities. However, there they encountered royal authority, which did not distribute handouts but rather brutally persecuted those who resorted to vagrancy out of poverty. Most importantly, they encountered Protestant doctrine, which, in addition to affirming that “there is neither slave nor free in Christ”, also blesses labor as a path to material well-being and wealth, sees wealth and prosperity as a blessing from God, has a negative attitude toward “extravagance” and “senseless” spending, and calls for saving and accumulation. Thus, it was precisely the stagnation and disruptions in the spiritual life of society, in the sphere of ideology and culture, that made the crisis in Rome irreversible.

The financial crisis served as the trigger for the hopeless collapse of the Roman economy. The emperors constantly clashed with the magnates and the senatorial class. In their struggle against the magnates, they sought the support of the plebeians, buying their loyalty with large-scale handouts. But most importantly, all this mass of people, deprived of any occupation, simply had to be fed so that they would not rob or rebel. Various festivities in imperial Rome accounted for half the days in the year. The plebeians received their bread and circuses. In Rome, civil wars often broke out between various contenders for imperial power. Accordingly, the loyalty of the legions also had to be bought. Furthermore, the expansionist and defensive policies along the vast expanse of the Roman borders required funds. To pay for all of this, the emperors began to resort to coin debasement, that is, reducing the amount of silver or gold in coins while maintaining their denominations. This led to hyperinflation, an increase in barter, and a decline in trade and production. For comparison, in the 16th century, a severe financial crisis broke out in Western Europe, caused by an excess of gold and silver brought in from the Spanish colonies. Hyperinflation also got out of control. However, this did not lead to a collapse, and in a sense, it even strengthened the emerging capitalist relations (for example, the financial centers of Europe moved to the Protestant Netherlands and England, while the old financial elite of Italian and German cities, which was closely tied to kings, popes, princes, and other feudal lords, lost its position).

Ancient Rome, like ancient Hellas, provided people (alas, only free citizens, not slaves) with considerable space for individual development. At least, far more significant than the subsequent dark ages of the Middle Ages and even the era of the Renaissance. After all, the Renaissance was largely a return to the long-lost and forgotten antiquity. And even much later, the Great French Revolution, in creating a new, bourgeois world, donned the garments of Ancient Rome. In Rome, with its highly developed culture, law, and the values of personal dignity and personal achievement, there was no shortage of energetic and strong people. And yet, the Roman world collapsed with a resounding crash. Where once stood luxurious imperial palaces and majestic temples, the few remaining inhabitants were herding goats…

7.

Although an agrarian society is incomparably more dynamic than a primitive one, it is still quite conservative in its own right and not prone to change. This is easily understandable, as it essentially adapts to the cycles of nature and agricultural cycles. And natural cycles represent a return to the same thing. Moreover, an agrarian society does not set itself the goal of accumulating wealth and engaging in expanded reproduction, as capitalism does. Surpluses of public wealth are dissipated through religious and state holidays, large-scale construction (temples, palaces, etc.), the luxury of the elite, and the direct consumption of the population.

At the same time, the Eastern, Asian model of agrarian society was characterized by significantly less dynamism than the Western one. The reason lies in the social structure. The history of Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the Modern Era is marked by the struggle between various “centers of power”. Cities fought against secular and ecclesiastical feudal lords for their rights and privileges; the royal power, relying on the cities, fought against the feudal lords; the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (the Guelph – Ghibelline wars) and the French kings (the “Avignon Papacy”) fought against the popes; within Christianity, Protestants fought against Catholics, and so on. The autonomy of various socio-political entities was institutionalized through law. At the grassroots level, the Western European peasant enjoyed greater economic and legal independence than his Eastern counterpart, both from the peasant community itself and from the feudal lord. Peasant land in the West was held in hereditary tenure or as allodial property of families; there were no regular equalizing redistributions of plots, and the peasant community did not bear collective responsibility for the state taxes and dues of each household.

In the East, the peasant community was the foundation of the entire social order, the base upon which the state rose. Let us take India as an example. Over the course of millennia, the Indian subcontinent experienced a kaleidoscopic succession of kingdoms, empires, and invasions by conquerors who brought their own religions and established their own kingdoms and empires. But all of this swept by like a storm on the surface of the ocean, leaving its depths motionless. At the bottom lay the Indian peasant community and the caste system. That is precisely why kingdoms and empires changed so easily and quickly. The world of the peasant community is limited to the world of a single, isolated village. Naturally, in the absence of intermediate, to a certain extent autonomous and institutionalized “centers of power”, the role of the main organizer of all social life was concentrated in the hands of centralized state power. Specifically, in an Asian agrarian society, the state took shape of a military-bureaucratic despotism.

The hyper-strengthening of the state, underdeveloped competition between elements of the social structure, and the high degree of subordination of the peasant not only to the state and individual representatives of the military-bureaucratic hierarchy but also to the stagnant peasant community — all these factors determined why neither India nor China, despite their then-superiority over Europe in terms of economic volume and level of wealth, were able to make a timely transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one. As we will see later, solving the problem of historical backwardness would require them to follow their own path.

8.

Russia originally emerged at the crossroads of trade routes between two worlds, the East and the West, and absorbed the cultural influences of both worlds. Nevertheless, before the Mongol invasion, Russia, on the whole, was an eastern periphery of the West, occupying roughly the same position as Poland and Hungary. The Mongol invasion brought enormous destruction and a slowdown in development, but it also spared Russia from a very tragic fate. For, based on the example of Southern Rus, it can be assumed that Russia would most likely have turned into an analogue of the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth — a preposterous state entity that had been decaying from within long before its neighbors divided it up. Political anarchy, the omnipotence and recklessness of the landowning magnates, the nobility (szlachta) unfit for any practically useful activity yet arrogant and cocky, and the brutal exploitation of serfs for the sake of income from grain exports to Western Europe (the level of peasant exploitation that had always existed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was only briefly practiced in Russia under Catherine II) — all this led the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to its inevitable collapse.

Not having become the West, Russia did not become the East either. Peter I, transplanting external European forms onto Russian soil, was well aware that Russia cannot and should not be Europe; he saw it as self-sufficient and following its own path.

However, even before Peter the Great and after him, Tsarist Russia remained an agrarian society. From the beginning of the 19th century, its developmental delay from Western European countries grew. The abolition of serfdom and the reforms of Alexander II did not turn Russia into an industrial society. In the early 20th century, before the revolution, peasants made up about 80% of the population. About 60% of the population was illiterate.

Russia was too vast, too diverse, and too contradictory to follow the “Prussian path” of transitioning to an industrial society — the path of “the agonizingly slow dying off of the rotting parts of the national organism” (3), as Lenin put it. The alternative to the “Prussian path” was the revolutionary path. And, naturally, it required its own ideological form. In the West, the ideological form of the industrial revolution was first Protestantism, and then the secular ideas of the French encyclopedists (formal equality of civil rights, separation of powers, etc.). In Russia, Marxism served as such an ideological framework.

9.

Original Marxism, of course, was not reduced to a program of industrial revolution, although it acknowledged its necessity and supported it. In the Russian version (Bolshevism), original Marxism underwent a significant metamorphosis. However, it also underwent an equally significant metamorphosis in the Western European, social-democratic version. The program of social harmony based on capitalism, the satisfaction of wage labor through high wages and a system of social benefits, and the apologia of bourgeois democracy — Marx rejected it as illusory. But the most important thing is that, objectively, at its very core, it ran counter to the understanding of anthropological issues that is the center, the starting point, and the final destination, the Alpha and Omega, of Marx’s theory (we will return to this issue later).

Original Marxism, of course, was not reduced to a program of industrial revolution, although it acknowledged its necessity and supported it. In the Russian version (Bolshevism), original Marxism underwent a significant metamorphosis. However, it also underwent an equally significant metamorphosis in the Western European, social-democratic version. The program of social harmony based on capitalism, the satisfaction of wage labor through high wages and a system of social benefits, and the apologia of bourgeois democracy — Marx rejected it as illusory. But the most important thing is that, objectively, at its very core, it ran counter to the understanding of anthropological issues that is the center, the starting point, and the final destination, the Alpha and Omega, of Marx’s theory (we will return to this issue later).

The reasons why the social-democratic version of Marxism prevailed in Europe were rooted in the specific features of the social structure. Between the bourgeois state and the lower social strata, there was and is a powerful and extensive network of institutions of “civil society” — political, professional, corporate, commercial and non-commercial, cultural, scientific and recreational associations. Almost the entire network is under the control of the large, medium and, especially, the petty bourgeoisie. The European proletariat began to embourgeoisify even during the lifetimes of Marx and Engels and quickly lost the characteristics of a class that had “nothing to lose but its chains” (4). In turn, the petty bourgeoisie has always constituted a huge part of European society. The European philistine has never wanted and does not want anything other than a well-fed and peaceful life. He has never interested and still does not interested at whose expense it is. In relatively prosperous times, the European philistine supports various social democrats. In times when the social order he is accustomed to begins to unravel, he supports the fascists. This is not about individual people. Individual representatives of any classes and social groups may be as morally and intellectually developed, progressive, humane, and “good” as one wishes. We are talking about the orientations and moods of the masses, which are shaped by objective conditions.

In Tsarist Russia, only the rudiments of “civil society” institutions existed between the military-bureaucratic state hierarchy and society (powerless and impoverished “zemstvos”, etc.). Moreover, the state of the St. Petersburg imperial period, became increasingly alienated from society. Between the landowning latifundists and the large bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the mass of impoverished peasants and workers on the other, there was no such large stratum of prosperous petty bourgeoisie as in Europe.

The Russian Revolution and Bolshevism became the “lesson” that Asia learned. Without the Russian Revolution, there would have been no revolution in China. China, like Russia, adopted the ideas of Marxism in order to make an accelerated transition, by historical standards, from an agrarian society to an industrial one. “We have fallen behind the advanced countries by 50–100 years. We must cover this distance in ten years. Either we do this, or we will be crushed” (5), Stalin said in 1931. The USSR, and then China, solved the problem of industrialization, and, in general, minimized (and in many areas eliminated) the economic and technological gap from the West.