Those of us who mostly know about Alexander Herzen from the works of Isaiah Berlin—which is probably just about everyone in the English-speaking world who has heard of him at all—probably have a clear image in their mind of who he was, and what he stood for. Among the various Russian socialists and revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, we know, Herzen stood out as the proto-liberal; the anti-totalitarian. When others dreamed of sacrificing whole generations and civilizations on the altar of Revolution, Herzen stood apart and begged for reason, temperance, and empirical methods.
It's the image of Herzen that found its way, for instance, into Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia—itself based on Berlin's works. Those of us who have read Berlin's Russian Thinkers will recognize this version of Herzen easily: it's the reason he became one of our liberal heroes and archetypes before we'd even read him.
And it's possible that this version of Herzen still exists—in the pages of his other works. But I just finished reading From the Other Shore—a collection of thoughts about the failed 1848 revolution in France—and I have to say: I do not recognize the portrait Berlin describes in any of its pages.
The book is very powerful and worth reading, don't get me wrong. It's a profound historical and human document. But it has very little to do with the great themes that Berlin described as most characteristic of Herzen.
It is largely an impassioned—and entirely justified—denunciation of the hypocritical bourgeois republicans who sold out the workers in 1848—ultimately turning their rifles on the proletariat in order to suppress the June uprising of that year. Herzen's critique strikes home—but it is largely directed against liberals who wanted to suppress social democracy, not against "left totalitarians." Anything in its pages would warm the hearts of other socialist revolutionaries—and probably did (which is why Lenin later celebrated Herzen as a forebear).
Berlin condemns the Soviet Union's later canonization of Herzen as a proto-Bolshevik as one of history's great posthumous deceptions and ironies. But maybe Lenin was closer to the truth than Berlin was. Certainly that's the impression I come away with from this book.
Undaunted, Berlin attaches an introduction to this 1979 Oxford edition of From the Other Shore & The Russian People and Socialism, in which he again presents us with the Berlin model of Herzen's ideology:
"Herzen attacked with particular indignation those who appealed to general principles to justify savage cruelties and defended the slaughter of thousands to-day by the promise that millions would thereby be made happy in some invisible future, condoning unheard-of miseries and injustices in the name of some overwhelming but remote felicity. This attitude Herzen regards as nothing but a pernicious delusion [...] for the distant ends may never be realized, while the agonies and sufferings and crimes of the present remain only too real."
As we know from collections like The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Berlin here is describing his own views; and they are very good ones. But for the life of me—I cannot discover (from this book at least) that they were actually Herzen's views.
Berlin likes to quote the passage from this book in which a character rhetorically asks: "Do you truly wish to condemn all human beings alive to-day to the sad role of caryatids supporting a floor for others some day to dance on[?]" But before taking this passage as a clarion call for anti-totalitarianism, of a Berlin variety, it has to be read in context—and counterpoised to other passages which suggest the opposite attitude.
Admittedly, it's hard to speak with absolute confidence about what Herzen "is saying" in this book, since much of it is written in the form of dialogues between unnamed speakers. One must beware, then, of attributing a belief to Herzen just because it comes from the lips of a fictional interlocutor in this volume (as does the passage quoted above that Berlin liked to cite).
Still, Herzen often gives to the interlocutor in the volume many of the best lines and the finest closest arguments. He seems to have the last word—and this, as Herzen reportedly told Dostoevsky (according to Berlin's introduction), was rather the point. So we are somewhat justified in regarding some of these fine passages of rhetoric attributed to the interlocutor as reflecting Herzen's own considered views (or at least—as viewpoints which attracted him in some way).
And if we understand the interlocutor to be speaking for Herzen, or at least for a part of Herzen—then we are dealing with a perspective very different from Berlin-style empirical liberalism.
Yes, the interlocutor does say that line about not sacrificing people now living for the sake of the "Moloch" of progress. But in context, he is just making a philosophical point about how things need to be justified by their present existence or not at all, since nothing lasts forever—something like Archibald MacLeish's point in the poem "The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever."
If people and generations can only be justified by their final ends, the interlocutor argues, then the only meaning is death—since the final end of all people is to die.
All of which is an intriguing point—and I agree with him. But it is not necessarily incompatible with the sort of cataclysmic sacrifices of entire generations and societies that other socialist revolutionaries called for. Indeed, the interlocutor goes on to use this argument as a justification for those kinds of sacrifices! He argues—in effect—that because each generation exists for itself and has its own incommensurable value—we should not regret that it perishes without deriving anything of value from the radically different world that inevitably replaces it.
Throughout the book, the interlocutor repeatedly describes socialism as a necessary but destructive purging of the old world—a sort of universal deluge that will drown everyone and everything that came before it. In short, this interlocutor (the same one quoted above who supposedly opposes sacrificing generations for the sake of mere ideals) describes the coming revolution as follows:
"When the hour strikes, Herculaneum and Pompeii will be wiped out, the good and the bad, the innocent and the guilty will perish side by side. This will not be a judgment, not a retribution, but a cataclysm, a total revolution." (Budberg trans. throughout).
(Berlin insists in his introduction that Herzen is free of that "sardonic joy" one finds in Marx "in the very thought of vast and destructive powers unchained against the bad old world"—but is that not exactly the tone one finds in this passage just quoted?)
Herzen does ask the interlocutor if the revolution must necessarily come at such a high cost, which Berlin would perhaps take as a sign that Herzen is still the proto-liberal. But recall, the other example of proto-liberalism he liked to cite comes from the interlocutor, not Herzen himself; and it is obvious moreover in this passage that Herzen gives to the interlocutor the last and best word on the subject:
"I should have thought that if the educated minority lives to see this debacle and hasn't inoculated itself with the new notions, it will find life harder," the interlocutor says. "To me these losses are proof that every historical phase has its complete reality, its own individuality, that each is an aim achieved, not a means. Therefore, each has its own virtue, its own good that perishes along with it. Do you think the Roman patricians gained much, as far as their way of life was concerned, by conversion to Christianity? And did not the aristocrats before the revolution live better than you and I do now?"
So, yes, the interlocutor is saying that each generation is an end unto itself—but he uses this point to draw the exact opposite conclusion from the one Berlin attributes to him. He is saying: let each generation pass away and perish, without shedding a tear. The bourgeoisie will not in fact gain anything from socialism; they must be sacrificed to the future. That is the proof that they have their own values, and realize their own ideals, which must be appreciated for their own sake: because they will have no role to play in the world to come.
Sometimes in this book, Herzen is not even propounding these views through the voice of the interlocutor. He drops the pose of the dialogue format, and simply tells us his opinions on the events of 1848 directly.
These passages are stirring and ever-relevant meditations on the betrayal on the part of would-be "republican" deputies, claiming to speak for the people, who nonetheless massacred and deported proletarian revolutionaries in droves following the June uprising. Everyone should read and learn from them. But they are obviously criticism of bourgeois liberalism; not of the "totalitarianism of the left," as Berlin appears to believe.
Berlin quotes out of context Herzen's observation in these passages that we must beware of terrorism committed in the name of the "Phrygian cap" as much as that carried out in the name of throne or altar. But what Herzen was condemning in this passage was the sort of bourgeois reaction that masquerades as republicanism in France—the kind that guns down striking workers and deports revolutionaries with the slogans of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" on its lips.
He is offering a critique throughout this book, then, of liberals who stopped short of revolution—who were willing to use slogans of "equality" but blanched at the prospect of what it would actually entail, once the workers started demanding a piece of the future. Herzen's polemical target is the "moderate" liberals who want it both ways—who are willing to go only "halfway" toward the implications of their own ideals; not the ultra-radical maximalists, whom he appears to endorse.
In other words, Herzen is speaking for the side of social democracy—the workers who established their proto-socialist "national worskhops" in 1848—but who were suppressed after universal suffrage brought a relatively moderate republican government in their place.
There's nothing, then, in Herzen's interpretation of these events that Marx couldn't get on board with, so far as I can tell. Where is the great distinction Berlin was always drawing between the liberal Herzen and the proto-totalitarian Marx or Bakunin, etc.?
We may ask: since the proto-socialist "national worskhops" quickly failed on both political and economic grounds—what would the victorious social democrats have put in their place? What exactly is the socialism that Herzen would favor instead of bourgeois liberalism?
Here, Herzen becomes extremely vague. Indeed, he frankly confesses that he cannot really tell us what that socialism will be or how it would work any better than the failed national workshops of 1848. But he portrays this lack of a defined outcome as a virtue—a sign of the socialists' daring and imagination. "How can one go without knowing where, how can one give up what one has, without any positive prospects? If Columbus had argued like this, he would never have weighed anchor. [...] By this lunacy, he discovered a new world," Herzen writes.
In others words—we must simply sail off in the direction of socialism, without having any notion in advance of our destination. But if we cannot even describe this destination—I ask—how would we even know that we were heading in the right direction? How would we know we were moving toward socialism; rather than away from it? What if the universal deluge comes—as described above—and all it does is destroy people, without carrying them an inch further toward the goal?
"Are they ready to sacrifice contemporary civilization[?]" Herzen asks; "Will they demolish their ancestral castle for the sole pleasure of helping lay the foundation of a new house which will be built, no doubt, long after our day? A madman's question, many will say. It was one put by Christ, but not in these words."
In other words, Herzen frankly confesses that the socialism he envisions is a kind of quasi-mystical initiation—a transcendent event that cannot be explained prior to our coming conversion.
And we are asked to accept not only that this coming transformation is our fate—without being able to define what it is—but the destruction of everything else. We must embrace a universal apocalypse that sweeps away everything humankind has built up to this point: and we must march into such a consuming inferno on mere faith, mere "say-so", that there is indeed "socialism" waiting on the other side.
And then when we ask what this "socialism" might be (since Herzen is clear it is not like the catastrophe of the national workshops, which he admits were a failure; nor like the universal poverty or "Egyptian slavery" of "communism," but like something else entirely that the world has never before seen), we are again told: I can't tell you, because I don't know. We won't know until we get there.
But if you don't know, and I don't know, and none of us can even describe this mystical state that we will supposedly reach—how can we have any trust that we will actually get there? And why on Earth should we sacrifice generations of people and entire civilizations to this goal—if you can't even tell me what it is?
As David Mamet once aptly asked: "What would have prevented them from a clear statement of their goals had those goals been realizable and laudable?"
In short—Herzen is offering here the classic tropes of totalitarian thought: the mystical faith, put off into some far-distant future, in some declared ultimate end that justifies untold suffering and terrorism in order to get there.
Basically, then—Herzen is defending the exact opposite viewpoint of the one Berlin attributes to him. He is proclaiming the necessity of a universal cataclysm, an apocalyptic deluge, for the sake of "some invisible future," as Berlin calls it. He is "condoning unheard-of miseries and injustices in the name of some overwhelming but remote felicity."
As should already be clear, I'm on Berlin's side in condemning these totalitarian attitudes. But again, I can't see what, if anything, Berlin's opinions have to do with what Herzen is saying!
To be sure, these passages about the coming socialist deluge were written in the heat of passion and outrage, following the brutal, murderous suppression of the worker's revolt in 1848. Anyone could be forgiven for entertaining notions of some distant vengeance in such a moment of peak disillusion.
And in the later essays in the volume, Herzen's passions do cool somewhat. Aspects of the "liberal Herzen" we know from Berlin begin to emerge. He does condemn left-wing terrorism in one passage, while saying that it is nonetheless often humanly understandable. He does inveigh at length against the mysticism of sacrifice and martyrdom, writing that "'Mourir pour la Patrie' is not really the apex of human happiness, and [...] it would be much better if both country and the individual would remain intact." He echoes such noble anti-totalitarian sentiments as: "the republic is for man, not man for the republic."
So, yes, there are indeed traces of the version of Herzen we know from Berlin's account. But Berlin ignores other passages that press in exactly the opposite direction. His reading of Herzen therefore comes across as at best selective. If Lenin was wrong to regard him as a prophet of the revolution; Berlin was likely mistaken as well to regard him as a forebear of the twentieth century critique of totalitarianism.
I will admit that the passages in which Herzen appears to call for the destruction of all existing civilizations, for the sake of some distant and unimaginable socialist transformation, are all hedged round with uncertainty and doubt. He puts these passages in the form of dialogues in order to obtain some authorial distance. He enters caveats and qualms, all of which indicate a certain liberal and empirical temper.
But the interlocutor who calls for the mystical "revolution" seems to win the argument, at last, in these passages of the book; despite Herzen's hesitations and concerns.
It seems to me, then, that Herzen's attitude to "the revolution" in 1848 is somewhat like that of Tocqueville's toward "equality," in a celebrated passage; or of Heine's toward "communism" in the same era.
All three were educated men of relative privilege, who had enjoyed the benefits of literature and civilization, and could not actually look with equanimity upon the prospect of all they knew in the world being destroyed. And yet—at the same time—they felt the logical inevitability of the coming revolution; they could not escape the moral force of the argument for equality and the right to one's daily bread.
"We may still regret the old older," Herzen writes. "Who should regret it if not we? It was good only to us. We grew up in it, we are its favoured sons; we admit that it ought to go, but we cannot withhold a tear. But the masses, crushed by toil, weakened by hunger, dulled by ignorance—what will they have to mourn at its funeral? They were the uninvited guests at the feast of life, as Malthus puts it. Their suppression was a necessary condition of our lives."
Herzen's prophecies of the coming universal deluge are therefore in some ways the products of a guilty conscience—the guilty conscience of privilege, which many of us still know today, which tells us that our leisure is only possible because others are made to work; the ease of our lives is purchased through the sweat and hunger and suffering of others. ("How can I eat if I snatch what I eat from the starving?" as Brecht once put it; "And yet I eat.")
From such a vantage point, the apocalypse of the coming socialist revolution can only be regarded with a certain horror mixed with fatalism.
Herzen then seems to dread the socialist revolution and to picture it as a barbarian invasion. His proletarians are every bit as frightening as the "Wander-rats" of Heine's poem. "This lava, these barbarians, this new world, these Nazarenes," the interlocutor says, "who are coming to finish off all that is old and impotent and clear the path for the fresh and the new—they are nearer than you think."
It's a frightening and yet intoxicating prospect for Herzen. He both fears the victorious proletariat, and yet cannot deny the validity of its moral claims. "This 'unfortunate brother' about whom so much has been said," he writes, "[...] finally asked what was to be his share in all these blessings, where were his freedom, his equality, his fraternity?"
And indeed, these questions should still haunt us. We should still be asking ourselves what answer the liberalism of individual rights and representative government—much as we believe in it—provides to the "social question." (Croce's response that the "social question" is just the eternal question of human life rings true; but does not suffice).
What answer do we give to Heine's "wandering rats"—who rightly want to be answered not with lofty words, but with food in their bellies? What good is "liberty of conscience" to one who is hungry or dying of easily treatable diseases? What does "freedom" mean when it includes the freedom to starve?
Those suffering from guilty conscience, as Herzen was—as so many of us are—may be tempted to throw up our hands, in the face of such justified queries, and say: you're right! We have no answer! Take our civilization, then! Take us to the promised land of Cockaigne, whatever it may be! We cannot ourselves imagine it, so we have no choice but to trust that you know where you are going! Lead us there, oh wander-ratten! We, the guilty and justly condemned, can only follow!
But this is the cry of intellectual despair and cowardice. It is giving up the struggle to imaginatively construct a better world and simply submitting to historical forces—even though these could end up carrying us to someplace even worse and more unjust than we were before (viz. fascism, Trumpism, etc.). As bad as things are, they can always get worse—as our present political crisis in this country obviously proves.
Destroying the "old order" does not inevitably pave the way for "the fresh and the new," as the interlocutor calls it.
We can't, then, give up on the obligation to define concrete and realizable goals. We can't let guilty conscience blind us to the good and rationally-grounded reasons to distrust bald promises of an imminent socialist paradise, if we would only close our eyes and believe hard enough. We have to actually take on the difficult intellectual task of defining our destination, before we blindly sail off in the direction of something we hope will be a new world—but which could simply prove to be the edge of our own.
As John Maynard Keynes once put it, in his essay on Trotsky in 1926: "We lack more than usual a coherent scheme of progress, a tangible ideal. All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas – and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists. It is not necessary to debate the subtleties of what justifies a man in promoting his gospel by force; for no one has a gospel. The next move is with the head, and fists must wait."
Indeed, let us find our "tangible ideal" first. Then, and only then, we can weigh what sacrifices might be justified in order to get there.
But the person who cannot even tell you what their "tangible ideal" is, or how they propose to obtain it, has no right at all to demand the sacrifice of those now living for the sake of this mystical dream.
Berlin knew that better than anyone. That's why he wrote version after version of this argument in numerous works. And I agree with him fully.
But what I can't figure out is why he attributed it to Herzen!
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