§ 159.
THE history of the Russian social democracy is an effective refutation of Marxist historical materialism.
The forerunner of the Social Democratic party, the Group for the Liberation of Labour, was a literary association to popularise and diffuse the ideas of Marx. Plehanov's isolation after the disintegration of the party was itself an argumentum ad hominem, for it showed that philosophical ideas are not dependent upon economic relationships to the extent implied by the doctrine of historical materialism. Willingly or unwillingly, Plehanov and the orthodox Russian Marxists were a section of the socialist intelligentsia. In like manner, Marx and Engels were the teachers and organisers of the German social democracy, and according to them, too, the role of the social democratic intelligentsia was one of intellectual leadership. Hunger, said Marx, makes no history; but further, hunger makes no politics and no parties. Marxist ideas are not a mere superstructure, for they anticipate economic development. The Marxist program relates to social and political work which has yet to be performed; it is an anti-
preferred to work among the operatives. He was a member of the Zemlja i Volja, and after the split in that party was one of the leaders of the Černyi Pereděl. In 1880 Plichanov sought refuge in Europe. Here for a time he collaborated in the periodical issued by the Narodnaja Volja, but his autagonism to Blanquism severed him from his sometime friends, and he thus became the real founder of the Russian social democracy and the "father of Russian Marxism." It was remarkable that in 1895 he should have been expelled from Paris as an anarchist. In 1889 he had been expelled from Geneva, but before long was readmitted. The granting of constitutional freedom in Russia enabled Plechanov to return home. When the social democrats broke up in 1903, Plehanov, though taking the side of the minority, adopted a peculiar position which led, as previously described, to his leaving that faction and taking up a somewhat isolated position. After 1905 Plehanov published his Diary of a Social Democrat, composed after the manner of Mihailovskii and Dostoevskii. He also issued collected essays, comprising literary criticisms (The Narodniki in Belletristic Literature, viz.: Naumov, Glěb Uspenskii, and Karonin; Nekrasov; Gor'kii; Ibsen); essays on Bělinskii, Černyševskii, Herzen, and Pogodin; and philosophical articles, polemic for the most part, directed against the various opponents of historical materialism. In addition to the two works against the narodniki, I may mention his translation of Engels' book on Feuerbach, and his contributions to the Russian translation (1903) of Thun's History of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia (first published in German in 1883). In the German language he has contributed numerous articles to the "Neue Zeit." Independent works in German are Contributions to the History of Materialism (Holbach, Helvetius, and Marx), 1896; N. G. Tschernischewsky, 1894; The Fundamental Problems of Marxism, 1910.
