[One cannot disguise from oneself that] On the one hand the ‘rural commune’ is almost at its last gasp; on the other, a powerful conspiracy is waiting in the wings to finish it off. To save the Russian commune, there must be a Russian Revolution. For their part, those who hold the political and social power are doing their best to prepare the masses for such a catastrophe. While the commune is being bled and tortured, its lands sterilised and impoverished, the literary flunkeys of the ‘new pillars of society’ ironically refer to the evils heaped on the commune as if they were symptoms of spontaneous, indisputable decay, arguing that it is dying a natural death and that it would be an act of kindness to shorten its agony. At this level, it is a question no longer of a problem to be solved, but simply of an enemy to be beaten. Thus, it is no longer a theoretical problem; [it is a question to be solved, it is quite simply an enemy to be beaten.] To save the Russian commune, there must be a Russian Revolution. For their part, the Russian government and the ‘new pillars of society’ are doing their best to prepare the masses for such a catastrophe. If the revolution takes place in time, if it concentrates all its forces [if the intelligent part of Russian society] [if the Russian intelligentsia (l’intelligence russe) concentrates all the living forces of the country] to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune, the latter will soon develop as a regenerating element of Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist regime.
Damn, who knew Marx pre-watched the 20th century, so much for the “only Germany” theory
Also if you’re wondering why certain segments repeat, it’s because this is a draft, these are Marx’s unfiltered/unedited thoughts being put to paper
Yes, these letters are an incredible prefiguration of Lenin and Mao, in the year 1881, and I highly doubt either of those men had access to them in their lifetime, which means this is a robust example of convergent predictive analytics, historically tested and confirmed
Amazing what kind of gems we find when we bother to look
(3) Coming now to the ‘agricultural commune’ in Russia, I shall leave aside for the moment all the evils which weigh upon it, and only consider the capacities for further development permitted by its constitutive form and its historical context.
Russia is the only European country in which the ‘agricultural commune’ has maintained itself on a national scale up to the present day. It is not, like the East Indies, the prey of a conquering foreign power. Nor does it live in isolation from the modern world. On the one hand, communal land ownership allows it directly and gradually to transform fragmented, individualist agriculture into collective agriculture [at the same time that the contemporaneity of capitalist production in the West, with which it has both material and intellectual links . . . ], and the Russian peasants already practise it in the jointly owned meadows; the physical configuration of the land makes it suitable for huge-scale mechanised cultivation; the peasant’s familiarity with the artel relationship (contrat d’arte) can help him to make the transition from augmented to co-operative labour; and, finally, Russian society, which has for so long lived at his expense, owes him the credits required for such a transition. [To be sure, the first step should be to create normal conditions for the commune on its present basis, for the peasant is above all hostile to any abrupt change.] On the other hand, the contemporaneity of Western [capitalist] production, which dominates the world market, enables Russia to build into the commune all the positive achievements of the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute.
If the spokesmen of the ‘new pillars of society’ deny that it is theoretically possible for the modern rural commune to follow such a path, then they should tell us whether Russia, like the West, was forced to pass through a long incubation of mechanical industry before it could acquire machinery, steamships, railways, and so on. One might then ask them how they managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries [elsewhere] in the West.
So much for stage theory
16 Feb. 1881, Genève, Rue de Lausanne, No. 49, L’imprimerie polonaise.
Honoured Citizen,
You are not unaware that your Capital enjoys great popularity in Russia. Although the edition has been confiscated, the few remaining copies are read and re-read by the mass of more or less educated people in our country; serious men are studying it. What you probably do not realise is the role which your Capital plays in our discussions on the agrarian question in Russia and our rural commune. You know better than anyone how urgent this question is in Russia. You know what Chernyshevskii thought of it. Our progressive literature – Otechestvennye Zapiski, for example – continues to develop his ideas. But in my view, it is a life-and-death question above all for our socialist party. In one way or another, even the personal fate of our revolutionary socialists depends upon your answer to the question. For there are only two possibilities. Either the rural commune, freed of exorbitant tax demands, payment to the nobility and arbitrary administration, is capable of developing in a socialist direction, that is, gradually organising its production and distribution on a collectivist basis. In that case, the revolutionary socialist must devote all his strength to the liberation and development of the commune.
If, however, the commune is destined to perish, all that remains for the socialist, as such, is more or less ill-founded calculations as to how many decades it will take for the Russian peasant’s land to pass into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and how many centuries it will take for capitalism in Russia to reach something like the level of development already attained in Western Europe. Their task will then be to conduct propaganda solely among the urban workers, while these workers will be continually drowned in the peasant mass which, following the dissolution of the commune, will be thrown on to the streets of the large towns in search of a wage.
Nowadays, we often hear it said that the rural commune is an archaic form condemned to perish by history, scientific socialism and, in short, everything above debate. Those who preach such a view call themselves your disciples par excellence: ‘Marksists’. Their strongest argument is often: ‘Marx said so.’
‘But how do you derive that from Capital?’ others object. ‘He does not discuss the agrarian question, and says nothing about Russia.’
‘He would have said as much if he had discussed our country,’ your disciples retort with perhaps a little too much temerity. So you will understand, Citizen, how interested we are in Your opinion. You would be doing us a very great favour if you were to set forth Your ideas on the possible fate of our rural commune, and on the theory that it is historically necessary for every country in the world to pass through all the phases of capitalist production.
In the name of my friends, I take the liberty to ask You, Citizen, to do us this favour.
If time does not allow you to set forth Your ideas in a fairly detailed manner, then at least be so kind as to do this in the form of a letter that you would allow us to translate and publish in Russia.
With respectful greetings, Vera Zassoulich
My address is: Imprimerie polonaise, Rue de Lausanne No. 49, Genève.
This is my favorite letter from the list, it’s shows how early Marxism penetrated the Russian imagination and how distortions of Marx began even while he was alive lmao
Also shows how seriously early Russian revolutionaries took theory and the esteem they held Marx in
Even earlier than this, we should look at the communist manifesto and the activities/hopes of the Communist League in Germany. In 1848, Germany was a semiperipheral state which had yet to have a bourgeois revolution. The communist league policy with regards to German socialist revolution is remarkably similar to the bolshevik stance on Russian socialist revolution, i.e. only completeable if a core power (France in this case) also has a socialist revolution
This reminds me of this book:
The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism
Some of what you’re talking about is in this book it would seem.
This is all really interesting, thank you for posting these!
zhenli真理 comments on this:
Marx did not believe that revolutions could not happen in poor countries, this is a myth. Marx outright defended the notion that Russia could have a communist revolution and pushed back against those who disagreed. The idea that history has to unfold in a very specific order is a reductionist understanding of Marxism which Marx himself did not subscribe to.
This reductionist view of Marx views his class analysis as fully predictive, capable of explaining and predicting absolutely everything, and all history must follow a very specific path. Marx disagreed with this, pointing out that in feudal society you had multiple subordinated classes, and so it wasn’t certain whether or not it would necessarily develop into capitalism or not, because the peasantry could, under the right historical conditions, also be a revolutionary class. He referred to the peasantry as having a “dual character” which could either be eliminated to make way for the bourgeoisie, or eliminate the bourgeoisie to make way for a society based on peasant communes, and that you couldn’t predict this for certain from the classes alone as it would depend on other external factors, on the “historical context.”
[D]oes this mean that the development of the ‘agricultural commune’ must follow this route in every circumstance [in every historical context]? Not at all. Its constitutive form allows of the following alternative: either the element of private property which it implies gains the upper hand over the collective element, or the reverse takes place. Everything depends upon the historical context in which it is situated… Both solutions are a priori possibilities, but each one naturally requires a completely different historical context.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/draft-1.htm
This notion is even reiterated in the Manifesto, so I’m not sure why everyone misses it. Marx and Engels even there speculated that the Russian revolution could possibly be a communist one if somehow the peasantry could get an upper hand over the rising bourgeoisie.
[I]n Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882
