Peter Struve

Peter Struve

Peter Struve ( Russian Пётр Бернгардович Струве , Pjotr ​​Berngardowitsch Struwe ; born January 26, 1870 in Perm ; † February 26, 1944 in Paris ) was a German-born Russian politician, economist and philosopher. He is considered to be the main representative of so-called “ legal Marxism ”.

Life

Peter Struve was a grandson of the Dorpater astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve . His father Bernhard Wilhelm von Struve (1827-1889) was governor of Astrakhan and Perm . Struve graduated from the Law Faculty of the University of Petersburg , was editor-in-chief of the magazines Legal Marxism , New Word and Beginning from 1890 . In 1896 he took part in the 4th Congress of the Second International . After the 1st party congress of the RSDLP in 1898, Struve was called upon by the members of the Central Committee to draft the manifesto of the RSDLP , from which he soon renounced. At the end of the 1890s, Struve finally went over to the camp of bourgeois liberalism and became an opponent of revolutionary Marxism, especially the doctrine of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat . From 1902 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Befreiung ( Oswoboshdenie ), from 1903 leader of the Bund der Befreiung . In 1905 Struve became a member of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadetten) and was at the head of its right wing. In 1907 he was a member of the Second State Duma and editor of the Russkaya Mysl magazine . He was hostile to the October Revolution of 1917. In the years of the civil war from 1918 to 1920, Struve acted as an advisor to the counter-revolutionary General AI Denikin and belonged to the White Guard government under PN Wrangel . After the collapse of the counter-revolution, he emigrated; in Prague and Paris he directed the publications of the Cadet Government. In 1934 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Thought and work

Struve adhered to liberal ideas from a young age and saw socialism as a means of achieving liberal ends. During his student days in Petersburg, he was known as a connoisseur of western currents in philosophy and sociology.

Struve was a supporter of the "Europeanization" of Russia and believed that the working class in particular would drive this process forward. He was the leading figure in a group that dealt with social and philosophical studies in the years 1890–91. During a one-year stay at the University of Graz in 1891, Struve immersed himself in the neo-Kantian literature, which had influenced him from an early age. His writing began with a criticism of the positions of the so-called “ Narodotics ” on the peasant question and the question of the prospects of capitalism in Russia.

In reviews and articles that he wrote in the years 1892–93, he pointed out that the class stratification of the rural population and the development of a merchandise management system were not only inevitable, but also beneficial for the country.

In his first works, especially in the Critical Comments on the Economic Development of Russia (1894), Struve tried to prove the progressiveness of capitalism and its positive social consequences. Already at this point in time he rejected Marx's theory of labor value. He later called for other foundations of Marxist theory to be revised - the theory of surplus value , the theory of reproduction, and the theory of general capitalist accumulation. Over time, Struve developed more and more into a staunch opponent of socialism . He opposed a revolutionary replacement of capitalism and instead called for reform measures such as the review of legal norms and the creation of factory legislation .

Until 1902, Struve had called his philosophical position critical positivism , but afterwards he made the transition to a religious worldview. In the revolution from 1905 to 1907 Struve went from liberalism to reaction, devoted himself entirely to the fight against socialism and distanced himself from the legacy of political economy .

Publications (selection)

• The Marxian theory of social development . In: Archive for Social Science and Social Policy, Vol. XIV, Tübingen 1899
• Размышления о русской революции [Thoughts on the Russian Revolution]. Российско-болгарское книгоиздво [Russian-Bulgarian book publisher], Sofia 1921
• Collected Works in 15 volumes, ed.Richard Pipes, Ann Arbor, MI, University Microfilms, 1970

literature

• Klaus von Beyme : Political Theories in the Age of Ideologies: 1789-1945 , Wiesbaden 2002, pp. 320–328 ( on Google Books )
• Leszek Kołakowski : Struve and the legal Marxism , in: The main currents of Marxism - emergence, development, decay , Vol. 2, Munich 1977–1978, pp. 405–417
• Richard Pipes : Struve. Liberal on the Left. 1870-1905. Cambridge / Mass, Hanard University Press 1970
• Richard Pipes: Struve. Liberal on the Right. Cambridge / Mass. Harvard University Press 1980
• Bastian Wielenga: Lenin's path to revolution: a confrontation with Sergej Bulgakov and Petr Struve in the interest of a theological reflection . Kaiser, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-459-00778-8 (dissertation Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin 1971, 535 pages).

Web links

• Newspaper article about Peter Struve in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the basic data of Struve's life and thought, see: Goetz Heininger: Struve, Pjotr ​​Bernhardowitsch , in: Werner Krause, Karl-Heinz Graupner, Rolf Sieber (ed.): Ökonomenlexikon . Berlin, Dietz 1989, pp. 558-560
2. ↑ See R. Pipes: Struve, Liberal on the Left. 1870-1905. Cambridge / Mass, Harvard University Press 1970