Positivist materialism and atheism had as its ethical aim the creation of the new man, and as its political aim the bringing about of the social revolution. Socialist practice had an ethical basis. Its ideal was a fundamental transformation, a social revolution, which should sweep away once and for all every form of injustice and inequality.
In practice, with one section of the revolutionary socialists, this ideal led to terrorism. The mass rising of the decabrists had given ocular demonstration of the impracticability of mass revolution.
The intellectuals, collectively forming the intelligentsia, were the leaders of the socialistic and philosophic revolution. This revolution was to liberate the mužik, the peasantry being then practically synonymous with Russia. Narodničestvo, mužikophilism, was characteristic of Russian socialism. It was not until a later date that the operatives, that urban influences, became important for socialism; and we have to remember that, after all, the urban operative who came to serve the needs of expanding industry was nothing more than a peasant. Marxism turned its attention to these operatives.
§ 151.
BY the term Marxism we understand in the first place the actual doctrines or works of Marx; but the word also signifies the movement inaugurated by Marx in philosophy, sociology (above all the philosophy of history), and economics; finally we have to think of the Marxist social democracy as a working-class party, and of the political aims and methods of that party.
Marx's doctrines and ideas speedily became known in Russia, and were widely diffused, the first translation of Capital being into Russian, Marx more than once drew attention to the fact that the Russians had always been enthusiastically receptive of his teaching, notwithstanding his criticism of Russia and his hostility to that country.
Bělinskii gave a friendly greeting to the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher" of Marx and Ruge. Prior to the year 1848, information concerning Marx had been sent to St. Petersburg by P. V. Annenkov, author at a later date of a history of literature. We have already made this writer's acquaintance as a member of Bělinskii's circle. From 1846
