The great task that confronted socialist leaders in the aftermath of Marx’s death, in 1883, was the systematization and consolidation of his vast theoretical legacy into a unified and comprehensive scientific world outlook, upon which the revolutionary education of the emerging industrial proletariat could be based. The vast pedagogical responsibilities of the socialist movement, as it sought to create and mentor a class-conscious proletariat, determined the form and character of the theoretical work of the period…
In his Development of the Monist View of History, and innumerable essays, Plekhanov elaborated the world scientific outlook of “dialectical materialism,” a term he authored … It was on the basis of the theoretical and programmatic foundations, created by this extraordinary collective intellectual effort [of Engels, Mehring, Kautsky and Plekhanov], that the authority of Marxism in the European mass workers movement was established.
David North Plekhanov and the Tragedy of the Second International
“Let me add in parenthesis for the benefit of young Party members that you cannot hope to become a real intelligent Communist without making a study—and I mean study —of all of Plekhanov’s philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world.”
Lenin’s final tribute to Plekhanov, 1922
Pages: 335
Georgi Plekhanov (1857-1918) is widely regarded as the father of Russian Marxism. Initially a partisan of the Narodniks—a populist movement oriented to the peasantry—Plekhanov ultimately broke with their perspective. He, along with a handful of other leading Russian Marxists, founded the “Emanicipation of Labor” group in Switzerland in 1883. Plekhanov, who lived in exile in Europe for much of his life, played a central role in the establishment of the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP) in 1898. In the split that occurred within the RSDP in 1903, Plekhanov sided with the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks, which coalesced under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. Plekhanov adhered to the view that because of Russia’s backwardness, any revolution that occurred in the country would be of a bourgeois-democratic character, despite the fact that working class would play a major role in the event. Having taken the side of Russian nationalism in World War I by calling for the defeat of Germany, Plekhanov opposed the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in 1917. Despite his position on this question, Plekhanov played a central historical role in the development of Marxism and made significant contributions to the development of Marxist theory. Plekhanov was a leading defender of the materialist view of history, which he elaborated in great detail in The Development of the Monist View of History. Over the course of his many writings he advanced a withering critique of Narodnism, produced an extensive analysis of the socio-economic development of Russia, and wrote valuable commentary on Marxist aesthetics.