Fabio Manganiello<p>The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism is an early essay by Bertrand <a class="hashtag" href="https://manganiello.social/tag/russell" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Russell</a> that is definitely worth a read.</p><p>Written in 1920, shortly after the October revolution, it shows that Russell had actually a quite favourable opinion of Marxism:</p><blockquote><p>I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men’s hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.</p></blockquote><p>However, he seems to be much closer to Gramsci’s more sophisticated idea of cultural hegemony than Marx’ dictatorship of the proletariat idea:</p><blockquote><p>A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master.</p></blockquote><p>And he was also quite prescient in outlining one of the potential outcomes of Russia after the revolution:</p><blockquote><p>The second [possible outcome] is the victory of the Bolshevists accompanied by a complete loss of their ideals and a regime of post-Napoleonic imperialism.</p></blockquote><p>He was definitely spot on in outlining the main issue of Soviet communism: that it had assumed features similar to those of a religion and it had lost the original inquisitive post-idealistic nature of Marxism. Lenin would often justify his beliefs and actions with a “Marx and Engels said so” just like Christians would justify their beliefs with a “St Paul said so”:</p><blockquote><p>If a more just economic system were only attainable by closing men’s minds against free inquiry, and plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the middle ages, I should consider the price too high.</p></blockquote><p>Later in his life, as the Soviet socialist experiment turned into a more boring one-party dictatorship, Russell became more critical and disillusioned with the feasibility of communism.</p><p>But after reading his early writings, I think it’s safe to assume that he was, if not a Marxist, at least an admirer of Gramsci’s (or Rosa Luxemburg’s) version of socialism.</p><p>This is quite important because the prevalent (simplistic) anglophone narrative is that “the West” has always been, throughout the 20th century, always compactly on the side of liberalism (a term often purposefully blurred with “post-Friedman neo-liberalism”), while the “Soviet sphere of influence” was the main (and only) proponent of the socialist model. In the States in particular the prevalent conservative view is that studying Gramsci in universities would introduce “alien” ideologies that never belonged to the anglophone world. (And, of course, I’m a bit biased here as someone who is in the uncomfortable position of considering both socialists like Gramsci and liberals like Popper as his ideological fathers)</p><p>This narrative also often throws Bertrand Russell in the bucket of “liberal thinkers” together with Popper, Hayek, or that Austrian school that was much closer to an individualistic rather than collectivistic vision for a liberal society.</p><p>It’s the same narrative that depicts the fall of the USSR as the fall of an ideology that didn’t belong to the West, an illiberal ideology that could only be implemented by using the coercive means used by the USSR, and Western liberalism (again, purposefully turned into a synonym of “post-Friedman neo-liberalism”, an ideology that actually only sprawled in the early 1980s) as the clear winner.</p><p>Reality, as usual, is never black and white. Many progressive Western intellectuals throughout the 20th century were actually quite sympathetic with socialism. The lines between progressive liberals and socialists (and even Marxists) were often more blurred than we’d expect. Up to the point where even a great liberal philosopher like Russell called communism “a necessity”. But the cultural hegemony of the post-Reagan narrative has ended up completely eclipsing and censoring those cultural contributions.</p><p><a href="https://books.fabiomanganiello.com/ubooquity/epubreader/2288/text/titlepage.xhtml" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://books.fabiomanganiello.com/ubooquity/epubreader/2288/text/titlepage.xhtml</a></p>