The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism

WHAT IS HOPED FROM BOLSHEVISM

To understand Bolshevism it is not sufficient to know facts; it is necessary

also to enter with sympathy or imagination into a new spirit. The chief thing

that the Bolsheviks have done is to create a hope, or at any rate to make strong

and widespread a hope which was formerly confined to a few. This aspect of

the movement is as easy to grasp at a distance as it is in Russia-perhaps even

easier, because in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of

the distant future. But the actual situation in Russia can only be understood

superficially if we forget the hope which is the motive power of the whole.

One might as well describe the Thebaid without mentioning that the her-

mits expected eternal bliss as the reward of their sacrifices here on earth.

I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the Egyp-

tian anchorites; I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to bring upon the

world centuries of darkness and futile violence. The principles of the Ser-

3 BERTRAND RUSSELL

mon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect upon average human na-

ture was very different from what was intended. Those who followed Christ

did not learn to love their enemies or to turn the other cheek. They learned

instead to use the Inquisition and the stake, to subject the human intellect

to the yoke of an ignorant and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and ex-

tinguish science for a thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not

of the teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching. The hopes which in-

spire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the

Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically, and are likely to do

as much harm. Cruelty lurks in our instincts, and fanaticism is a camouflage

for cruelty. Fanatics are seldom genuinely humane, and those who sincerely

dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a fanatical creed. I do not know whether

Bolshevism can be prevented from acquiring universal power. But even if it

cannot, I am persuaded that those who stand out against it, not from love

of ancient injustice, but in the name of the free spirit of Man, will be the

bearers of the seeds of progress, from which, when the world's gestation is

accomplished, new life will be born.

The war has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and despair

which calls aloud for a new religion, as the only force capable of giving men

the energy to live vigorously. Bolshevism has supplied the new religion. It

promises glorious things: an end of the injustice of rich and poor, an end of

economic slavery, an end of war. It promises an end of the disunion of classes

which poisons political life and threatens our industrial system with destruc-

tion. It promises an end to commercialism, that subtle falsehood that leads

men to appraise everything by its money value, and to determine money

value often merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world

where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work

shall be of value to the community, not only to a few wealthy