Reviews (1941)

Book Review from the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

All who have enjoyed Plekhanov’s “Anarchism and Socialism” will be glad that his weightier “Materialist Conception of History” has been issued in capital book-form at a reasonable price (Socialist Book Shop, 1s. 6d.).

For a short exposition of a vitally important subject, this brilliant little work could hardly be bettered; it is a welcome relief from the heavy stuff turned out on the subject from the Moscow factory, using sheer distortion of the doctrine to justify infamous tyranny masquerading as “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Unfortunately, the I.L.P. has spoilt an otherwise good thing by retaining a “Publisher’s Preface,” which is on the usual familiar Communist Party lines. The claim is made (page 10) that Lenin and Stalin “raised Marxism to a new and higher level” by “creating a proletarian party capable of leading the revolutionary struggle.”

An excellent point made by Plekhanov is:

“By entirely eliminating teleology from Social Science, and explaining the activity of man by his NEEDS, and by the means and methods of satisfying them prevailing at a given time, the Materialist Conception of History for the first time imparts to this science the ‘strictness of which her sister—the science of nature—would often boast over her ” (page 24).

Before “Race” pretensions had assisted in bringing to birth the hideous nightmare now afflicting the world, Plekhanov pointed out that “we know of the art of the Stone Age, the art of the Iron Age, but we do not know of any distinctive arts of the so-called different ‘races,’ white, yellow, etc.”

The impatient propagandist is wisely reminded that “Man’s cognition of his situation more or less lags behind the development of the new actual relations which cause that situation to change” (page 45). Let him take heart: “Old customs” do “begin to disappear, and old rites to break down when men enter into new social relations” (page 54). The Socialist Party of Great Britain is doing its part on the political field, by administering vigorous kicks to the pants of a sluggish Body Politic, to lessen the irritating “time-lag.”

Chapter XI should be carefully pondered by enquirer and propagandist alike; to the unprejudiced enquirer it will come as a revelation; it is a model of apt illustration for the teacher. If anything better on the relation of Descartes’ philosophy to contemporary French politics and social relations has been written, the writer will be grateful for information. . . . Incidentally, it is good to see that G. H. Lewes’ early work in exploding the pretensions of “metaphysics” is acknowledged.

For anyone seeking a handy formula embracing the main truth of the M.C.H. the following is exceptionally apt: “The productive forces at man’s disposal determine all his social relations” (page 28).

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Events crowd on events with bewildering rapidity; last week’s map is to-day but an historical document; any aid to keeping fairly well abreast of recent history is welcome; the Union of Democratic Control’s pamphlet, “The Near and Middle East” (6d.), performs this service for the last few years (up to French defection) admirably. It is a sober record of sheer facts, practically free from propaganda, intent or gratuitous prophecies which characterise the highly-priced bulletins of the “Imperial Policy Group”; it is a pity that difficulties attending production entailed a scrappy and somewhat unsatisfactory map.

Augustus Snellgrove