“Legal Marxism”

Also known as “Struvism”, a bourgeois reformist trend of thought that was popular among Russian bourgeois intellectuals in the late 19th century under the banner of Marxism. “Legal Marxism” quoted Marxist words, but it always distorted and vulgarized Marxist principles. “Legal Marxism” opposes Marx’s labor theory of value and surplus value and advocates the vulgar political economy of Neo-Kantianism. It advocates abandoning the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, replacing the revolutionary Marxism with the theory of reforming the bourgeois society, replacing historical materialism with economic materialism, and regarded capitalism as the highest stage of social development. The essence of “legal Marxism” was the promotion of bourgeois reformism, which was criticized by Marxists since it came into being.

Main proponents of “legal Marxism” were Peter Struve, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, and Sergei Bulgakov. In the 1890s, the Russian workers’ movement surged, and Marxism was widely disseminated across Russia. Some liberal bourgeois intellectuals covered themselves under Marxism and often published articles on legal newspapers and periodicals allowed by the Tsar government. In his book What Is to Be Done? Lenin called their theory as “legal Marxism”.

“Legal Marxism” started from the standpoint of the liberal bourgeoisie and waged a struggle against Narodnism, pointing out the inevitability of the development of Russian capitalism and its progressiveness in replacing feudalism, thus playing a certain positive role. Lenin once formed a temporary alliance with “legal Marxists” in the struggle against the Narodniks. However, based on their class standpoint, “legal Marxists” always turned their criticism of the Narodism into beautification of the capitalist system, regarded capitalism as a model of social and economic development, praised the bourgeoisie, called for learning from this class which had replaced feudal aristocracy in Western Europe, and denied the historical necessity that the capitalist system would inevitably crash with the development of its internal contradictions. In 1894, Peter Struve published the Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development, which distorted the basic principles of Marxism and was regarded as the representative work of “legal Marxism”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the “legal Marxists” echoed Bernsteinism and attacked against both Marxism and Narodnism, which was exposed and criticized by Lenin. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, many of the “legal Marxists” became constitutional democrats, completely divorced from and openly attacked Marxism. In 1909, Struve and others compiled the Anthology of Milestone Essays (also translated as Landmarks or Signposts), and openly supported the reactionary rule of Stolypin. After the victory of the October Revolution, many people became white guards, and Struve himself became a member of the reactionary government led by Denikin and Wrangel.

“Legal Marxism” started from the standpoint of the liberal bourgeoisie and “criticized Marx” in the guise of Marxism to defend the capitalist system. Its main arguments are: it only admits the inevitability and progressivity of the development of capitalism in Russia, and exaggerates it; at the same time, it denies the class contradiction and class struggle of capitalism, and denies the inevitability of its demise, opposes and distorts a series of postulates of Marxist political economics, including labor theory of value, theory of capital accumulation and concentration, theory of ground rent, social reproduction theory, theory of working-class precariousness, theory of capitalist reproduction and economic crisis, etc. “Legal Marxists” refuse to accept the historical inevitability of the demise of capitalism but flaunt their “objectivist” stance and make an abstract interpretation of capitalism that exceeds their own class, to agree with the capitalist system and oppose the proletarian revolution and dictatorship. Philosophically, they are followers of Neo-Kantianism. Politically, they are advocates of bourgeois reformism.

Lenin once established a temporary alliance with “legal Marxists” and published a collection of essays criticizing the Narodniks, but he recognised the liberal bourgeois nature of legal Marxism from the very beginning. In his articles “The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book” (1895),” Once More on the Theory of Realisation” (1899), and “Uncritical Criticism” (1900), Lenin criticized the views of “legal Marxism” from both politics and theory.