Leon Trotsky: "Declaration of Rights" and "Velvet Book"

[except for a partial English translation my own translation of the Russian text in Vostnochnoe Obozrenie No. 56 and 57, 13/26 and 14/27 March 1901, reprinted in Sochineniya, Vol. 20, Moscow-Leningrad 1926, compared to the German translation. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

I

You remember, dear sir, how the tiers état (third estate) came to social self-consciousness, with what force and decisiveness it expressed itself, expressed itself on behalf of the society with which it identified itself. You remember both the solemn sounds of the Marseillaise, this powerful anthem of young historical forces, and the cult of the goddess of Reason, this ingenious folly, in which a proud human mind, intoxicated by its victory, wanted to turn the world into its temple and humanity, revived by the power of thought, into its priests.

You also remember how the English communities, without the Gaulish splendour, without the dazzlingly bright French colours, but with striking in their consistency Anglo-Saxon persistence, step by step, conquered society for their own domination. Beautiful pages of world history!

Indeed, in the words of a German newspaper summing up the results of the past century, the bourgeoisie was not lazy in the social struggle!

Capturing the economic, and after it every other field, it bridled poetic, scientific and philosophical thought, turning it, on the one hand, into a gigantic productive force, thanks to which technology moves not groping and stumbling, but confidently and continuously, and on the other, making it an instrument of its spiritual domination, necessary for justification (both in others and in its own eyes) and for maintaining economic domination. From the depths of society, mainly from among the bourgeoisie itself, a whole stratum, a whole class of professionalists of thought in all its modern ramifications, emerged ...

With energy, with haste, with faith, with fanaticism, this idea worked for the benefit of the development of bourgeois production, and with it the class rule of the bourgeoisie, justifying this domination, substantiating it, elevating it to an absolute imperative by appealing to reason, this supreme author of forms of social being ...

But now bourgeois production with all its complex working mechanism of political and legal, scientific and philosophical wheels, levers, screws and inclined planes has established itself, consolidated itself among the debris and fragments of a feudal production building ... alas! the golden age did not come.

Then came the time of weariness of the bourgeois spirit, which had lost faith in itself. The best ideologues recoiled from the bourgeoisie, which from a representative of society turned into a separate class with egoistic and private interests. Its putrefaction went deeper and deeper ... Seeing the general disappointment, it tried to replace its former faith, its cooled enthusiasm with systematic hypocrisy - alas! they didn’t believe it ...

Here is the source, the inexhaustible source of Weltschmerz (world sorrow), whose poetic groans announced the bourgeois universe and cursed life with rhymed lines! … Here is the source, the inexhaustible source of pessimism that has developed into harmonious philosophical systems and condemned the universe itself in harmonious deductions! ..

Weltschmerz and pessimism! These are the repentant cries of the "knights of the spirit", with such zeal, with such selfless fanaticism, who fought for the planting of the czardom of the bourgeoisie and then with a face twisted with horror saw what they considered almost entirely the work of their own hands.

The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, this "triumphant pig" of today, listened with distrust and suspicion to unexpected speeches in its ears, accustomed only to stencilled words of flattery, to the charming rustle of banknotes and the melodic tinkling of gold: it did not understand the social source of these amazing speeches, full of social drama, nor their providential sense of the present and the future; but it saw in them the only thing that was close and understandable to it – its profit. The obese bourgeois signed up as pessimists and, with references to Byron, Heine, Leopardi and Schopenhauer, said to the ominously worried mass of workers: “I am rich, but wealth did not give me joy. I took over political power, but political power did not give me satisfaction. I am the master of science: it says yes when I tell it to say yes; it denies when I command to deny - but science also did not give me happiness. Therefore, do not strive to be like me!" Shameful pages of world history!

The "knights of the spirit" cursed the bourgeoisie with poetic and philosophical curses; they spat on its blurry face, but the bourgeois calmly wiped his face and, under a hail of accusatory speeches, "accumulated surplus value."

What was left for the rebellious intelligentsia to do? It tried all means: it admonished the bourgeoisie, it sincerely urged it to be imbued with the spirit of social idealism - in vain! It turned to its past, appealed to its conscience and nobility - fruitless! It cursed and castigated with sarcasm, branded it and made it the subject of merciless laughter - to no avail! The bourgeoisie turned its back on it and found itself new ideologues, the very ones who say yes when they are told to say yes. True, these ideologues are without brilliance and colour, without lofty hopes and confidence, but they are ready to serve their master with faith and truth for a decent reward.

How pathetic the flight of thought is, at least among modern bourgeois economists, is shown by the following words - I take them as a example – of the "famous French economist", Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, in "Neues Wiener Tageblatt": "It would be a chimera to assume the possibility of destruction of all customs barriers between different European states in the next 100 or 200 years."

A philistine happy in his ignorance! He is so confident in the inviolability of the philistine "foundations" that for two hundred years in advance he declares as a chimera the hope not only of the abolition of these foundations - he does not even think about this! - but also for such an insignificant, from the point of view of two centuries, change as "the destruction of all customs barriers." But together, what a pathetic philistine! I'm not even talking about the great bourgeois rationalists, the forerunners of the Great Revolution, with their enthusiastic belief in the endless progress of the human species, in the imminent triumph of the supreme god - reason; but it is enough to recall progressive bourgeois theoreticians of a smaller scale, for example, the advocates of free trade, the free traders¹ of the first half of the past century, with their confidence in the imminent victory of trade "justice" over customs barriers, these "sad remnants of the guild spirit", so that the truncated thought of the modern "famous economist" appeared before us in all its ridiculous limitations. Two hundred years of intensely pulsating life and ... "customs barriers"! ..

Another example: ²Buckle, the son of a progressive merchant, sincerely believed that the rule of “enlightened businessmen” would finally make war – as a form of zoological struggle and not as the social rivalry of man against man – the property of the murky past, yet today the omnipotent organ of the bigoted British bourgeoisie, in its Christmas editorial, The Times, resounds with brazen hypocrisy: “It is the business of combatants to kill each other but ... they ought to kill each other ‘as Christians should’ ...” ³ ...

And today in connection with the behaviour of Britain in South Africa and the activity of the “enlightened businessmen” like Cecil Rhodes, Chamberlain and Co. and their protectors like Roberts and Kitchener, what murderous irony echoes in the following words of John Stuart Mill: “The British state comprehends the meaning of freedom more than others and whatever might have been its mistakes in the past it has reached in its dealings with other states an honesty and frankness that other great nations consider impossible or even undesirable.” ("[Considerations on] Representative Government.)⁴

The evolution of the bourgeoisie with its glorious beginning and its grievous end is present before us. While the bourgeoisie fought against feudalism, absolutism, Catholicism, guild restrictions and so on it embodied progress and movement forward, it was the bearer of advanced ideals and it carried society along with it.

But when having captured the field it tried to entrench itself in this position for good and preparing to retreat backwards rather than move forward, history condemned it for lack of ideals and for moral and political decomposition. Life is merciless: it strikes those who, like Lot’s wife, look back, with a fearful punishment.

Feeling the real soil under its feet shaking the bourgeoisie even gradually renounces its free-thinking and begins to seek support from supernatural powers. Mysticism becomes its spiritual diet. Brunetière more and more often goes to Rome to kiss the Pope’s slipper.⁵

All this, of course, is reflected in the literature. One example out of thousands: The famous humorous organ of German free-thinking, Kladderadatsch, made its career in the talented fight against agrarians, ultramontans, obscurantists in general. When, after the Prussian-French war, every good German bourgeois was bursting with "national self-confidence", Kladderadatsch became infected with domestic complacency and turned its satire against young social forces that did not share national intoxication. The historical nemesis was not long in coming: Kladderadatsch's satire became as flat as the forehead of a German philistine.

Or does it not deserve deep attention that the free-thinking [left liberal Eugen] Richter is becoming the subject of respectful reprints of his satirical pamphlet directed against Bebel by ... "Moskovskiye Vedomosti". And rightly so: the satirical whip does not dare to lash out at the future!

II

“In the days to come” we recently read, “the solemn transfer of exact copies of the prototypes of our weights and measures (arshine and pound) made in London from iridium platinum from the main chamber of weights and measures to the Senate building will take place. In the Senate they will be in an iron cabinet walled up against the wall. " (Vostnochnoe Obozrenie, No. 21.)

Solemn transfer of the arshin and the pound! The pound and the arshin, these are the true relics of bourgeois society!

However, the above-mentioned national units of measurement will soon be replaced by the European metre and gram: in the field of measurement, as in all others, the Russian bourgeoisie adopts the ready-made results of European technology, receives them for free, without labour and struggle. The European bourgeoisie did not get it so easily. It fought for a long time and stubbornly for freedom of thought and speech, since it needed to create that political and legal atmosphere in which science, harnessed to a solemn bourgeois chariot, would give maximum results in the sense of intensifying the productive forces.

The national bourgeoisie, I repeat, subscribes "technique" already ready-made from abroad, and at the border customs office this "technique" is cleared of the elements of the European social atmosphere adhered to it and in such a neutralised form it serves to the needs of the national commercial and industrial classes. ... As a result, almost nothing is left to the share of the "historical mission" of the social creativity of our tiers état.

No matter how carefully you listen to the voices emanating from the milieu of our third estate, the most that you will hear is the voice of a merchant from Odessa, a merchant from Tambov, a merchant from Tsarevokokshaisk, who distinguishes intervention from command, but all these are just separate voices, scattered, randomly appearing and also accidentally silenced. This is not the voice of the class, for, as a class, our bourgeoisie is voiceless. It has no definite socio-historical horizons. The lack of ideas left its mark on it from the very first steps of its historical career.

Let me give you an instructive anecdote.

Some Kamyshinsk councillor remarked to his mayor that "according to the law" he was not entitled to preside over the city commissions, to which the latter objected to him in something like this: "Well, what is it that 'according to the law'? But I must preside over you, since you are all uneducated and incompetent people. " ("Severny Kuryer” [Northern Courier], No. 394.)

"Uneducated and incompetent people"! Isn't this a classic characteristic of the national tiers état. Of course, lack of education here should be understood not in the direct, but in a broader sense. As for simple education, the new Derunov generations have succeeded in something. We have a new type of merchant, as Mr. Boborykin reported to the public at one time, a merchant who, according to fashion, dyes his neck in brown, combing the back of his head according to English fashion, who has long since replaced the parental "estot" and "eftot" with two or three foreign dialects with a supernatural acquaintance with their tabloid parts, made himself thoroughly and conscientiously acquainted with all varieties of Parisian and other nudities, but in terms of civic traditions and public interests, this new product (in essence, cosmopolitan, not national) is an absolutely failure, too.

The absence of serious social pretensions leaves an empty space. But the psyche, both individual and class, fears emptiness, like nature in the minds of antiquity. It is on this basis, too, that a society for the restoration of the old Russian costume emerges, or the idea of restoring the Velvet Book takes hold.

The last fact is quite interesting. The "Velvet Book" was instituted in 1807 in order to "perpetuate in posterity the memory of the families of the first-class and first-guild merchants". This book safely rested in the archives of the Department of Heraldry. But now the Simbirsk merchants, who had received "the enlightenment of their mind" unknown from where, remembered their first guild and first class affiliation and at a recent meeting of the merchants decided to engrave their glorious names on the pages of the Velvet Book, so that "one could see the continuance of the family of each merchant from the very beginning of their origin". I believe that the venerable Simbirsk merchants could have omitted "the very beginning of their origin" without prejudice to their glory, because God knows how clean this beginning is ... But the point, of course, is not this, but that the facts cited represent, it seems, the broadest manifestation of the social self-determination of our commercial and industrial classes.

It is not for nothing that pure liberalism, with all the Manchester symbols of faith, faded away in our country, not having time to flourish: it had absolutely no social basis under it. Manchester ideas could be imported, as the Ekonomichesky Ukasatel [Economic Gazette] did, but the social milieu that nurtured them could not be imported. Liberalism is according to its historical origin the doctrine of the progressive bourgeoisie: our bourgeoisie, at best, is able to think of the entries in the "Velvet Book", and even only if the authorities would first introduce this book in the department of Heraldry. Note the following. The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie in Western Europe has always been more progressive than the landowning classes. But in our country? While zemstvos, these predominantly landlord bodies, despite a lot of unfavourable conditions, managed to develop in their practice certain, albeit minimal, traditions associated with more or less broad social needs and demands, city dumas are in general striking in their impersonality and inertia. Under the broad, soft wings of protective tariffs and patronising duties, our commercial and industrial classes indulge in a sweet civic slumber, while the landowning classes are induced by these very tariffs and duties to various, generally uncomfortable comparisons, parallels and conclusions that evoke in them the need of a wider activity.

At the present time, when Russia is so fast ... with the railways ... with ... etc., etc., etc., it is unreasonable, of course, to talk about the stillbirth of our capitalism, about its lack of a future, etc. etc., etc. But at the same time, the current reality does not at all provide a sufficient basis for flirting about the historical mission of the Russian bourgeoisie and its public merits, present or future. The fact is that the concept of capitalism is incomparably broader than the concept of the bourgeoisie, and if capitalism, along with negative phenomena, brings with it positive ones, then the latter cannot in any way include those who are embodied in unprincipled, passive, "uneducated" and "incompetent" applicants for places in the "Velvet Book".