Letter to Alexander Potresov, April 27, 1899

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April 27, 1899

I was very glad, A. N., to receive your letter of March 27, which at last broke your long and persistent silence. A heap of questions to be discussed has indeed accumulated but there is no opportunity of having any detailed conversation here on subjects that are mainly of a literary nature. And now there is the journal: without talks with one’s colleagues one feels too cut off for writing. There is only Julius, who takes all this quite closely and actively to heart, but the accursed “long distances” prevent sufficiently detailed conversation with him.

I shall begin with what interests and agitates me now most of all—Bulgakov’s article in issues 1–2 and 3 of Nachalo. On reading your opinion of him, I was exceedingly pleased to meet with sympathy on the most essential point—the more so because, apparently, one cannot count very much on sympathy from the editorial board./dots If Bulgakov’s article made a “repellent” and “pitiful” impression on you, it absolutely infuriated me. Up till now, though I have read and re-read Bulgakov, I simply cannot understand how he could write an article so completely nonsensical and in such an extremely unbecoming tone, and how the editors found it possible not to dissociate themselves by at least a single comment from such a slashing attack on Kautsky, Like you, I am “convinced that our people are utterly [just so!] confused and puzzled”. And who wouldn’t be puzzled when told—in the name of “modern science” (No. 3, p. 34)—that Kautsky is all wrong, arbitrary, socially incredible, “with equally little of both real agronomics and real economics” (No. 1–2) and so forth? Moreover, Kautsky is not expounded, but simply distorted, while Bulgakov’s own views as part of any coherent system are entirely lacking. No man with any sense of party spirit or sense of responsibility to all the Genossen and their whole programme and practical activity would dare to take such “side kicks” (to use your apt expression) at Kautsky, without giving anything himself, but merely promising \dots a learned work on “Ost-Elbe”! Apparently, he feels himself free from all comradely obligations and responsibility, a “free” and individual spokesman of professorial science, I do not forget, of course, that under Russian conditions it is impossible to demand of a journal that it admit some Genossen and exclude others—but a journal like Nachalo is not an almanac, allowing Marxism just because it is the mode (à la Mir Bozhy, Nauchnoye Obozreniye, etc.), but an organ of a definite trend. It is incumbent on such a journal, therefore, to put a certain restraint on learned “kickers” and on all “outsiderg” in general. It is to the fact that its editors have run it as an organ of a definite trend and not as an almanac that Novoye Slovo owes its great success.

I read through Kautsky’s book before Bulgakov’s article appeared and I did not find in the latter a single at all intelligent arguement against Kautsky. What I did find was a heap of distortions of Kautsky’s ideas and theses. What shear nonsense Bulgakov talks when he asserts, for example, that Kautsky confuses technics and economics, that he tries to prove the “ruin of agriculture” (No. 3, p. 31. Kautsky says just the opposite: . 289), that he denies agriculture any tendency to develop (No. 3, p. 34), and so on!

I have already written, and sent to the editorial board a fortnight ago, a first article on “Capitalism in Agriculture (Kautsky’s Book and Mr. Bulgakov’s Article)” and am now starting on a second dealing with the end of Bulgakov’s article. I greatly fear that P.B. will reject it, either on account of its considerable length (it turns out to be larger than Bulgakov’s article, firstly, because I have to give reasons for refuting such unsupported and carelessly pronounced verdicts as, for example, that Marx was wrong in teaching that the ratio \fracv/c decreases in agriculture; secondly, because it is essential to expound Kautsky), or because a polemic is considered undesirable (of course, I have not used in the article a single abusive expression, like those above, and in general I have tried to avoid anything personal against Bulgakov. The tone in general is in no way sharper than in my article against Tugan-Baranovsky on the theory of the market ). I should be very glad to hear your opinion, when you have read Kautsky’s book and finished reading Bulgakov: what exactly do you find “true” in Bulgakov? And do you think it possible to let Bulgakov’s article in the journal go unanswered?

In general, all this “new critical trend” in Marxism, espoused by Struve and Bulgakov (P. B. is apparently in favour of Bulgakov), looks highly suspicious to me: resounding phrases about “criticism” against “dogma” and so forth—and absolutely no positive results of the criticism. Moreover, compiling an article à la Bulgakov required, besides “criticism” and sympathy for professorial “modern science tactlessness nec plus ultra.

I sent Struve a reply to his article on the market. My sister writes to me that this reply will be published in Nauchnoye Obozreniye and that P. B. intends to answer it in the same journal. I cannot agree with you that “the crux of the question lies in the concrete impossibility of an abstractly conceivable proposition” and my main argument against P. B. is precisely that he mixes up abstract-theoretical and concrete-historical questions. “Concretely impossible” is not only realisation as put forward by Marx, but also land rent as put forward by him, and average profit, and the equality between wages and the value of labour- power, and much more besides. But the impossibility of something being realised in a pure form is not a refutation. I am quite unable to see any contradiction between my assertions in the Studies and in Nauchnoye Obozreniye, nor do I see the “bourgeois apologetics” with which Struve has been trying to frighten readers. What I find most objec- tionable in his article is the fact that he drags in critical philosophy and that he makes remarks such as that Marx’s theory of value and profit “indisputably suffers from a contradiction”. P. B. is perfectly well aware that this is disputable—why then sow confusion in the minds of our people, who so far have received no systematic proof of this contradiction and its correction from any single spokesman of the “new critical trend”?

And Bulgakov’s sally (No. 3, p. 34, note) against the theory of Zusammenbruch !—without any mention of Bernstein and with the irrevocable authority of a “learned” decree! I know about the publication of Bernstein’s new book and I have ordered it but it is hardly likely to be sent. The article about it in the Frankfurter Zeitung and in Zhizn (not a bad journal! Its literary section is really good, even better than any others!) has quite convinced me that I did not rightly understand Bernstein’s disjointed articles and that he has got himself so tangled up in lies that he really deserves to be begraben, as the author of Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus expressed it in an open letter to Kautsky. Bernstein’s arguments, which are new to me, against the materialist conception of history, etc., are (according to Zhizn) astonishingly feeble. If P. B. is such an ardent defender of Bernstein that he is all but prepared to “quarrel” over him, it is very, very sad, because his “theory” against Zusammenbruch—excessively narrow for Western Europe—is altogether unsuitable and dangerous for Russia. Do you know that it is already being made use of by our “young” people (ultra-Economists), who in one publication gave an account of the Stuttgart debates in such a way that for them Bernstein, Peus, and others were defenders of “economics, not politics”? What does P. B. think of such “allies”? If by the successes of the ultra-Economists you mean the resignation of Volgin and his closest comrades, I know about it; it was a great shock to me and I am now puzzled as to how matters stand and what the future has in store. I think it terribly harmful that this dispute with the ultra-Economists was not fully and completely ventilated in the press: it would have been the only serious way of clearing things up and establishing certain precise theoretical propositions. Instead, there is now complete chaos!

My book has come out and I have asked that it should be sent to you (I have not yet received it myself). I have heard that the P.S. to the preface was late, came under the preliminary censorship and, it seems, “got into trouble”. I shall await your comments with interest.

I ordered Karelin’s book and read it before I received it from you. I liked it very much; it is devilishly annoying that it was pared down! Aren’t you going to write a review of it?

An acquaintance of mine has sent me A. P.’s “Magazine Notes” (on the “heritage” and the “inheritors”). I wonder whether the continuation intended to carry on a further polemic with me or not? I liked A. P.’s article very much; the issue was much the worse for the cuts in the article. Truth to tell, I see no differences of opinion between us: you deal with a different question—not what the attitude of the disciples is to Russian democracy in general and whether they reject it (I wrote exclusively about this), but what the relations were between democrats of various types in the good old days. I was concerned only with Mikhailovsky’s mistake in supposing that we reject democracy altogether—whereas you fasten on his other mistake, the “slurring over” of substantially important distinctions in the “heritage”. I saw Maslov’s note in No. 3 of Nauchnoye Obozreniye directed against me, but to tell you the truth I was not interested in it. By the way, the cuts in A. P.’s article confirmed my opinion that it is “inconvenient” to take a more striking testator than Skaldin (a sad confirmation!). In general, I find the tone of the journal that of a dying body. If that is so, the end and death is only a question of time. It is simply speculation on Ratlosigkeit and bureaucracy in the department which, etc. One could hold one’s tongue without any harm and not without advantage to the cause. As a matter of fact, compared with the modern tone, our Materials could be a model of “moderation” and “solidity”

All the best.

V. U.

Write more often, if it’s not too much bother, otherwise I am quite unable to get press news from anyone.

I am sending the Historische Berechtigung by registered post. Please don’t think me careless about returning books: you did not mention any time limit and so I did not refuse comrades who asked to he allowed to read it. I shall be very grateful for the end of Karelin.

Do you have any German reviews of Kautsky? I have read only that in the Frankfurter Zeitung—irate and empty à la Bulgakov.

I am very pleased on the whole with the issues of the journal. It is splendidly, edited. Have you read Gvozdyov’s book and what do you think of it?