Our Differences

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Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. Although he supported the Bolshevik faction at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, Plekhanov soon rejected the idea of democratic centralism, and became one of Lenin and Trotsky's principal antagonists in the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet. He also opposed the Soviet regime which came to power in the autumn of 1917. He died the following year. Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.
Here we present, for the first in a digital version, his big critique of anarchism, social democrats, centralism and of course of imperialism and capitalism. A must read for anyone interested in political theory and history! This e-book contains an active table of contents, a short note from the publisher and a photo. See a couple of selected quotes from the book:
We have already said that the basic premises of Tkachov’s programme are borrowed from the same source that the Russian anarchists derived their political wisdom from. Bakuninist theories lay at the basis of both groups’ teachings. But we know that Bakunin’s influence did not end there. He had pupils in the “West” too, i.e., in the very countries which he so readily contrasted with Russia. And it is remarkable that the Western followers of the author of Statehood and Anarchy attribute to the state the same overwhelming role in the history of the relations of their “West European” classes as Messrs. Tkachov and Tikhomirov ascribe to it in Russia alone, “as distinct”, so to speak, from other countries. “Suppress government dictatorship”, says Arthur Arnoult to the French workers, “and there will be facing one another only men of the same kind, only economic forces whose balance would be immediately established by a simple law of statics ... It is, therefore, the state, and the state alone, that is the cause of your weakness and your misery, just as it is the cause of the strength and the impertinent presumption of the others.” In this case the Western anarchists reason with greater courage and logic than the Russian Bakuninists and Tkachovists. In the history of every country without exception they reduce to nil the significance of the economic factor which their Russian “partners” hold to be condemned to inactivity only in Russia. The distinctive feature of Russian exceptionalism is thus turned into a cosmopolitan spectre of anarchist ignorance.
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As Marx notes, all facts of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The history of the French Jacobins is a majestic tragedy, lull of burning interest. But the history of the conspiratorial plans of the modern Blanquists despite the heroism of individuals remains a farce whose tragi-comicality lies in the complete inability of the cast to understand the meaning and character of the impending working-class revolution.
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From the standpoint of the Social-Democrat a true revolutionary movement at the present time is possible only among the working class; from the standpoint of the Blanquist the revolution relies only partly upon the workers, who have an “important” but not the main significance in it. The former assumes that the revolution is of “particular importance” for the workers, while in the opinion of the latter the workers, as we know, are of particular importance for the revolution.