Jan Wacław Machajski (

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

A. Wolski (A. Vol'ski), often corrupted in Russian as Makhaev; 27 December 1866 – 19 February 1926) was a Polish

revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society. Definition The term—bot ...

whose methodology drew from both

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

and

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

whilst criticising both as being products of the

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

Life

Machajski was born on 27 December 1866 in

Busko-Zdrój Busko-Zdrój () is a spa town in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, southern Poland. It is the capital of Busko County. As of December 2021, it has a population of 15,310. History The origin of Busko goes back to the 12th century, when a group of sh ...

. The son of a poor Polish official, Machajski was briefly attracted to Polish

nationalism Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...

as a student, but abandoned it for internationalism and

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

. He was arrested and exiled to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

in 1892, where he began to develop his critique of

Marxist revisionism In Marxist philosophy, revisionism, otherwise known as Marxist reformism, represents various ideas, principles, and theories that are based on a reform or revision of Marxism. According to their critics, this involves a significant revision of ...

in German and Russian socialism.

''Workers' Conspiracy'' in Kraków 1908–1909

The failure of the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–07) created opportunities for revolutionary activity in Poland. In early 1908 he published a single issue of ''Rabochii zagovor'' (Workers' Conspiracy) in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

. after which he moved illegally to

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

in Galicia. Here he assumed the name Jan Kizlo and had low-paid work as a

copyist A copyist is a person who makes duplications of the same thing. The modern use of the term is mainly confined to music copyists, who are employed by the music industry to produce neat copies from a composer or arranger's manuscript. However, the ...

. He and his wife also received financial support from his brother. He was also involved in revolutionary activity with Max Nomad. Thanks to an activist called simply "Kolya" who worked at the imperial mint in St. Petersburg, Machajski was able to appropriate 25,000 roubles to fund the propaganda work of ''Workers' Conspiracy''. This included more issues of the magazine ''Rabochii zagovor'', translations of his writing and other material. During this period the

Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia () was a political party in Galicia. The party was formed in 1890 as the Galician territorial organization of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria. In 1892 it took the name Social Democratic Par ...

(PPSD) was aligned with the Polish Socialist Party – Revolutionary Faction, which stressed

national independence Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international l ...

over internationalism. Initially Nomad and Machajski proved quite successful in recruiting some of their membership, which led to various smears by the PPSD, including meetings arranged simply to denounce them, on occasion involving their leader,

Ignacy Daszyński Ignacy Ewaryst Daszyński (; 26 October 1866 – 31 October 1936) was a Polish socialist politician, journalist, and very briefly Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic's first government, formed in Lublin in 1918. In October 1892 he cofo ...

Arrest in Zakopane

By the end of 1909 Nomad had left, and Machajski followed suit moving to

Zakopane Zakopane (Gorals#Language, Podhale Goral: ''Zokopane'') is a town in the south of Poland, in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998, it was part of Nowy Sącz Voivodeship; since 1999, it has ...

, where he "was arrested and sentenced to two weeks' imprisonment for illegal residence and registration under a false name, and then was allowed to leave Austria. In the spring of 1911, he and his wife settled in Paris", where they lived for six years in relative obscurity.

During the Russian Revolution

Machajski moved to

Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

in 1917, where he linked up with former comrades such as Bronislav Mitkevich and launched another Machajskist organisation. In June–July 1918 they published in Moscow ''Rabochaia revoliutsiia'' (The Workers' Revolution) which restated his views in the context of the successful Bolshevik seizure of power. Here he displayed a certain ambivalence towards the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

. He argued that their regime was offering a radical version of the "bourgeois revolution," with a parliamentary system and unfettered capitalism. This Machajski viewed as the inescapable outcome of socialist politics which would place the intelligentsia as a class in power. Thus Machajski argued that the Bolsheviks were an updated version of the

Jacobins The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality () after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club () or simply the Jacobins (; ), was the most influential List of polit ...

of the French Revolution. Their democratisation of the bourgeois system would only benefit the lower strata of the intelligentsia but offer nothing to the workers.

Ideas

Influenced by

Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. Sometimes anglicized to Michael Bakunin. ( ; – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, so ...

, he argued – in opposition to

Karl Kautsky Karl Johann Kautsky (; ; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian Marxism, Marxist theorist. A leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International, Kautsky advocated orthodox Marxism, a ...

– that the class interest of intellectuals, including Marxist social democrats, was opposed to that of manual workers, Mark Leier, review of Marshall Shatz, ''Jan Waclaw Machajski'', ''The International History Review'' Vol 11 No. 4 (November 1989), pp. 743-45 since the unproductive labour of intellectuals depended upon preserving a hereditary monopoly on education at workers' expense. Rather than put their hopes in political revolution, manual workers needed to concentrate upon pressing their economic demands through a mass general strike, until their wages equalled those of the intellectual worker and there could be a socialization of knowledge. Revolution would consist of a violent revolt of the unemployed worker-peasant.Michael D. Kennedy, 'The Alternative in Eastern Europe at Century's Start: Brzozowski and Machajski on Intellectuals and Socialism' eview of Shatz ''Theory and Society'', Vol. 21. No. 5 (October 1992), pp. 735-753 Machajski thus attempted a theoretical synthesis of anarchist political critique and Marxist political economy and theory of history (

historical materialism Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of Class society, class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. Karl Marx stated that Productive forces, techno ...

), by applying the Marxist critique of class-dominated ideology to Marxism itself. Machajski theorised a "

state capitalist State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, ce ...

" moment of social development, approximating the seizure of power by intellectuals of the state apparatus, and the oppression of the working class by intellectuals acting to further capitalism in its dying days. In comparison, Machajski theorised socialism as the direct political control of economic institutions by the working class itself. Machajski's contributions foreshadowed the debate over the nature of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and the Soviet-style societies, including the critiques of

Leninism Leninism (, ) is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin, dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary Vangu ...

Stalinism Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...

and

Maoism Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic o ...

Works

Machajski wrote predominantly in Russian. His writing is more available in Polish or French than English, though commentary on his ideas exists in English. * ''Scientific Socialism'' (1899) * ''The Evolution of Social Democracy'' (1899) * ''The Intellectual Worker'' (1905) * ''An Unfinished Essay in the Nature of a Critique of Socialism''

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Machajski, Jan Waclaw 1866 births 1926 deaths 20th-century Polish philosophers Anti-intellectualism People from Busko County People from Radom Governorate Polish anarchists Polish anti-capitalists Polish political writers Polish revolutionaries Polish socialists Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire