first manifested itself as Christian or religious socialism, Russian socialism was from the outset a philosophic movement, influenced by western philosophic doctrines.[1]
In his philosophy of religion, Plehanov follows Feuerbach, whose anthropomorphic theory he supplements for the first stages of evolution by Tylor's animism. But for Plehanov the essential ideas of religion are the reflex of the productive forces of society and of material conditions in general. (For him philosophy, too, is a reflex, law is a reflex—in fact we have too much reflex altogether!) Plehanov does not merely deny revelation but he contests the existence of an inborn subjective need for religion. He follows Comte in holding that religion is essentially a lower stage in the theoretical elucidation of the world; that the main theological doctrines (for example, that of the creation of the world by God, a conception itself based upon the analogy of primitive or more advanced technical acquirements) are hypotheses to be abandoned as reason gains strength. For Plehanov, therefore, there is no inner connection between morality and religion. Morality, as a systematic formulation of the mutual relationships of human beings, arises antecedently to religion, and is not subordinated to religion until a subsequent stage of development, when duties are represented as the commands of the godhead. When despotism prevailed, God was conceived as a despot, but the fod of the deists has his heavenly constitutionalist parliament—thus literally does Plehanov reecho the teaching of Feuerbach. Religion, says Plehanov, is destined to disappear, and is already disappearing in proportion as man comes to understand social life and its relationships, and in proportion as he acquires power over nature and himself.
It is plain that Plehanov supplements Feuerbach's philo-
- ↑ Social democracy, with its parliamentary minimum program, can more readily be accepted than can theoretical Marxism by a practising clerk in holy orders. We must of course take into account the differences of creed. A Protestant pastor in Germany or America differs from a Russian pope. Work among the sectaries is political in character, is an advocacy of social reform. (See, for example, "Razsvět" [Dawn], a periodical edited for the social democracy in Geneva, during the year 1904, by Bonč-Bruevič.) Lunačarskii claims Bulgakov as a Christian socialist; also Solov'ev and Tolstoi, although he admits that Tolstoi should rather be termed a Christian anarchist, and that Solov'ev was not really a socialist. Nor is it accurate to speak of the sometime Marxists as Christian socialists. They have abandoned Marxism, and Plehanov, in his polemic against these adversaries, has good reason for speaking of them as "Mr. So and So," no longer as "Comrade So and So."
