Translator’s Note: As with all things ‘Anti-Soviet’, the reality is quite different to the assumption. The greatest threat to the safety, continuation and development of humanity was not Soviet Socialism, but is rather US anti-Intellectualism. This institutionalised ‘stupidity’ has blighted the US from its earliest days and turned its own Revolution into a confirmation of the bourgeois status quo. The US remains the only country to have a) invented atomic weapons, and b) to have used those atomic weapons. Millions of Africans were transported to the US to be used as ‘slaves’ on the plantations. These men, women and children were assumed to be little more than animals resembling human-beings and treated in a truly despicable and inhuman manner. White slave owners would use African men, women and children for their own sexual gratification – training generations of slaves that ‘rape’ was a natural part of their lives -both homosexual and heterosexual. African men and boys were routinely raped by their White male owners – which created a climate of ‘normalising’ male rape. Within other capitalist countries, the upper and middle classes made a similar use of the bodies of their respective working classes. Of course, women and girls have always suffered from the brutality of male domination, but working-class men and boys have also suffered non-consensual homosexual activity. This is not consensual sexual activity, but rather ‘rape’, exactly the kind of homosexuality that Soviet Law sought to stop and eradicate. The following is a coherent anti-fascist article written by Maxim Gorky (but not included in his collected works), which is often said to have been liked by Joseph Stalin (but not mentioned in his collected works). It is used by anti-Soviet ideologues to create a false paradigm which suggests a continuous pogrom by the Soviet State against gay people (despite having not been translated into English) – a lie for which there is no evidence outside of US anti-intellectualism. Hitler came to power in 1933 and was being courted by the British royal family and the likes of Winston Churchill. In 1934 (the year of this article’s publishing), Hitler had abolished democracy and had served notice of his intended pogroms. Bizarre stories were coming out of Germany of sadistic SS Officers using the bodies of young recruits for their sexual gratification – stories that turned-out to be true. The Nazi German State perpetuated an upper-class ‘cult of deviant homosexuality’, whilst simultaneously persecuting ordinary people engaged in consensual and loving homosexual relationships. It is this ‘deviant’ homosexuality that the Soviet States always opposed, and which Maxim Gorky is proudly discussing in this article. The anti-Soviet ideologues appear to be deliberately confusing these two clear categories, and through their deception, are laying the foundations for the ‘toleration’ of aberrant sexual abuse. ACW 29.10.2018
‘The world is ill’ – it is not only the Bolsheviks that assert this, it is also affirmed by the lyrically-oriented humanitarians, who finally understand that the ‘philanthropy’, ‘mercy’, ‘generosity’ (and other sentiments) that bipedal predators have used to try and camouflage and hide their true wolfish ‘nature’ – these feelings are inapplicable to reality – as such sentiments are difficult to turn into a product, they do not find consumers and adversely affect the growth of commercial and industrial profits.
‘The world has gone wild’ – people who have chosen to defend and justify the irresponsible, inhuman power of capital throughout the world over the working people, are defending the equally senseless and limitless exploitation by the masters of energy – and in doing so, they speak louder and louder.
The history of the ‘disease’ of capitalism begins almost immediately after the bourgeoisie wrested power from the weakened hands of the feudal lords. We can assume that the first to note this disease and cried desperately about it was Friedrich Nietzsche, a contemporary of Karl Marx. There are no accidents, all phenomena of life are justified, and it is not by chance that in those years when Marx scientifically and irrefutably substantiated the inevitability of the death of capitalism, the inevitability of the power of the proletariat, Nietzsche, with the fury of a sick and intimidated fanatic, preached the legitimacy and boundlessness power of the ‘blond beast’. Before Nietzsche denied the bourgeois state, religion and morality whilst arguing for the singular right to unlimited egoism, there was Max Stirner, who through his denial and anarchist lies, in essence denied ‘humanism’, but it was this very ‘Humanism’ that the bourgeoisie began to develop in the Middle Ages, and which marked the beginning of its struggle against feudalism and the church – the ideological leader of the feudal lords. The inconvenience and inconsistency of this ‘humanism’ in the everyday practice of the bourgeoisie was realised very early on, as evidenced by the Church reforms of Luther, Calvin and others. In essence, this reform was reduced to the fact that the “humanitarian” gospel was replaced by the Bible, which not only considers it completely natural, but even praises the enmity of the tribes, the extermination of people, robbery, deception and all that, without which Bourgeois States cannot exist. Until Luther, the Church taught the labourers – the true builders of culture – to suffer and endure for the sake of Christ, Luther taught in the 16th century (during the revolutionary uprising involving peasants and artisans) live and work in such a way that it is easy for the kings and barons to enjoy you. Luther said ‘Be patient, give in, give up both your body and property, do not rebel against the authorities and against the rapist.’
‘Humanism’ in our day, when the bourgeoisie is organizing fascism, itself ejects its own humanism as a worn-out mask that no longer covers the face of a predatory beast – it expels it because humanism is now perceived as one of the reasons for splitting and rotting. The facts mentioned above suggest that every time sensitive people are alarmed by the spectacle of the abominations in this world, they preach to humanity through a naive desire to soften these abominations or cover them with eloquence – these are the masters of life, or shopkeepers- who allow this sermon only as an attempt to reassure people irritated by poverty, lack of rights, oppression and other inevitable results of the world ‘cultural’ activities preferred by the shopkeepers. As soon as this irritation of the working masses took on social-revolutionary forms, the bourgeoisie responded to this ‘(progressive) action with (regressive) reaction’.
Our liberal bourgeoisie willingly submitted to the law, publicly stating after the events of 1905-1906 in the penitential collection Milestones: “We should be grateful to the authorities for protecting us from the people’s rage with bayonets.” The power was then in the hands of Minister Stolypin, who, acting dictatorially, hanged over 5,000 workers and peasants.
Nowadays, the historically and scientifically grounded, and truly universal, proletarian humanism of Marx-Lenin-Stalin – humanism, which the purpose is to completely liberate the working people of all races and nations from the iron clutches of capital – has threatenedly stood-up infront of the authorities. This truly philanthropic teaching irrefutably proved that the iron-claws of capital are created by the workers and that it is the proletarian who builds for the capitalist a ‘beautiful life’, while remaining powerless beggars.
This revolutionary humanism gives the proletariat the historically based right to rage a merciless struggle against capitalism, the right to destroy and eradicate all the vilest foundations of the bourgeois world. For the first time in the history of mankind, genuine philanthropy is organized as a creative force, it sets as its goal the emancipation of hundreds of millions of working people from under the inhuman and senseless power of an insignificant minority, it indicates to hundreds of millions of people of physical labor that this work created all the values of culture and that, relying on them, the proletariat should create a new universal culture of Socialism, which will firmly establish in the world fraternity and equality amongst the working people.
This humanism of the proletariat is not a fantasy, not a theory, but a combative, courageous and heroic practice of the proletariat of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, a practice that has already proved that in the former bourgeois, peasant, ‘barbaric’ and multi-tribal Russia, fraternity and equality of the tribes has been truly realized through the process of turning a huge amount of physical force into intellectual energy, and is indeed and incontestably developing further.
Why are the capitalists of all countries against the growth of the Revolutionary legal consciousness of the working class?
Straining until the last efforts to preserve their power over a billion working people, defending their freedom for the meaningless exploitation of labour, the capitalists have organized fascism. Fascism is the mobilization and organization (by the forces of capital) of physically and morally unhealthy detachments of an exhausted bourgeois society, the mobilization of young descendants of alcoholics and syphilitics, the mobilization of hysterical children affected by the impressions of the war of 1914-18, the children of the petty bourgeoisie, the ‘avengers’ for defeat and victory, a victory which proved to the bourgeoisie no less destructive than defeat. The psyche of these adolescents is characterized by facts of this kind: in Germany, in the first days of this May in the city of Essen, Heins, Hristen, a teenager of 14 years old, was killed his friend, Fritz Valkenhorst, a boy of 13 years. The murderer calmly said that he had dug a grave for his friend beforehand, threw him in there alive and kept his face pressed into the dirt until Valkenhorst was out of breath. This murder was motivated by the fact that he very much wanted to master drumming technique demanded by Hitler, a skill which very much belonged to Valkengorst.
Those who have seen fascist parades have seen that these are parades of rickety, scrofulous, consumptive youth who want to live with all the thirst of sick people, who can accept everything that gives them the freedom to reveal the purulent boiling of their poisoned blood. Thousands of gray, skinny people are considered healthy, whilst full-blooded people are noticeable in their absence, because they are few. These, of course, are the faces of the class-conscious enemies of the proletariat or adventurers from the petty bourgeoisie, yesterday’s Social Democrats, small shopkeepers who want to be big and whose voices the leaders of German fascism buy by giving the shopkeepers a little fuel and potatoes for nothing, that is, earned by (and stolen from) the workers and peasants. The head waiter would like to have his own small restaurant, the petty thieves would like to embark upon the theft legalized by the power of the big thieves — these are the ‘cadres’ of fascism. The fascist parade is a parade of the strengths and weaknesses of capital.
Let us not close our eyes: among the fascists there are quite a few workers from among those who do not yet understand the decisive force of the Revolutionary proletariat. Let us not hide from ourselves that capitalism, the parasite of the world, is still quite powerful, because the workers and peasants, with poor weapons and a little bread in their hands, continue to feed it with their flesh and blood. This is the saddest and shameful phenomenon of turbulent modernity. Shockingly, this submissive feeding of the enemy, brought up in the working class by its social democratic leaders, whose names are now and forever surrounded by a yellow, bold radiance of shame. Amazing is the patience of unemployed, hungry people in the face of such facts as, for example, the destruction of food products in order to keep their market price at a certain height, while unemployment rises, wages go down and the purchasing power of even the petty bourgeoisie falls.
It would seem that the human dignity of the English proletariat should be deeply and actively angered by the facts of cynical ridicule at their unemployed brothers – facts like the following: In the English County of Surrey, the world’s first confectionery for dogs opened. Any dog can get a cake in this pastry shop, and homeless and hungry dogs are provided with food and overnight. This confectionery was opened at the expense of Mr. James Patterson, who died a few weeks ago at Brockhorst.
Shameless, cynical antics of this type are becoming more frequent in England, the state of the ‘aristocratic race’. It is quite possible that under these antics that Patterson’s sense of the inevitability of his death is hidden and these antics mark Patterson’s aristocratic desire, going out of life, to be vindictively spoiled perhaps more.
Arming adolescents and young men, not just with revolvers, but also outdated ideas of nationalism and racism, raising social cynicism and sadistic passion for murder and destruction among young people, capitalists organize from this youth not only police assistants in their struggle against the Revolutionary proletariat, but treat it as poison, which will be poured into the blood of the army of workers and peasants, armed with modern mechanical technology of human extermination. The capitalists well remember that the workers and peasants, disciplined by the atrocious barracks, showed in 1918-1920 that their senseless, suicidal automatic service to the class enemy has its limit and that behind this limit are bayonets and guns – after millions of workers and peasants exterminate, disfigure each other, cease to serve the interests of capital. Of course, ‘better late than never’, but in this case one should learn from the class enemy: the capitalist destroys the worker before the worker legally has time to raise his honest hand against him.
Not tens, but hundreds of facts speak about the destructive, corrupting influence of fascism on the youth of Europe. To enumerate the facts is disgusting but necessary, whilst the memory refuses to be loaded with the dirt which the bourgeoisie is increasingly (diligently) and abundantly producing. I will point out, however, that in a country where the proletariat manages courageously and successfully (i.e. the USSR), a homosexuality that corrupts young people is recognized as socially criminal and punishable, and in a ‘cultural’ country of great philosophers, scientists, musicians, (i.e. Nazi Germany) it manifests freely and with impunity. A sarcastic saying has already taken shape: ‘Destroy homosexuals – fascism will disappear.’ It should be pointed out that the Semites, people of the race, which could – if necessary – boast of its purity, people who gave humanity so many really great masters of culture – and the greatest of them, the true Messiah of the proletariat Karl Marx – are expelled by the fascist bourgeoisie of Germany, and the fascists of England — where many Semites happened to be ‘at the helm of power’, and many were included in the country’s aristocracy — the reason the fascists of England have also began to preach shameful anti-Semitism.
At the same time, in a country where power belongs to the working class, an independent Jewish republic is organized — the Jewish Autonomous Region.
National capitalist groups are hastily preparing for a new world war, in a new way they want to redistribute the world for a wider and more convenient exploitation of the labour of workers and peasants. Small countries are once again in danger of being caught in the arms of the ‘greats’, they are again being asked to take away the right to freely develop their cultures.
In the masses of the proletariat of a multilingual, multi-tribal proletariat, imperialism and fascism sow the evil seeds of national enmity, racial neglect and contempt that can grow into racial hatred and hamper the development in the world of the working people of the consciousness of the unity of its class interests, saving consciousness, which alone can liberate workers and peasants across the whole world from the position of defenseless, powerless slaves to distraught shopkeepers. Their national commercial and industrial enmity can easily escalate – and already develops – into the preaching of racial hostility and racial wars. Today they are preaching – and they are already practicing anti-Semitism as a basic practice — tomorrow they will return to the preaching of anti-Slavism, recalling the shameful opinions about the Slavs of Mommsen, Treychka and others, and forgetting how many talented people gave the German culture Poles, Pomeranians, and Czechs. Since all breeders and shopkeepers in Europe produce the same goods and trade them, it is quite natural that the hostilities and wars of the German race against the Romanesque will occur, as well as against the Anglo-Saxon. Of course, there are alliances, but if you need to sell, then what prevents a betrayal? For example: there is a union in England with Japan, but the Japanese in London sell silk stockings for 3 pence, – that is for two pairs – this is, of course, a trifle, but the Japanese “dumping” is a sufficient reason for the emergence of hostility and hatred of the yellow race. Impunity for the actions of the Japanese imperialists in Manchuria – China is very tempting for the imperialists of Europe.
Racial theory is the last ‘ideological’ reserve of dying capitalism, but its rotten breathing can poison even sensible people, for people are generally corrupted by the long spectacle of unpunished enslavement by heavily armed whites of Europe against unarmed Hindus, Chinese, and Negroes.
Only the revolutionary proletariat, with its united front, can resist poisoning by the temptation of the vile and unpunished plunder of its class brothers.
This proletariat, brought up by the ideology of Marx-Lenin, really and wisely carried out by its leader Stalin, this proletariat proved to the world that in its motley-tribal country of ethnicities and races are absolutely equal in rights to life, to work, to develop their cultures. To the illiterate, who did not have writing, to half-savvy people, the Russian worker widely opened the way to knowledge. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, there is not a single numerically insignificant tribe that does not prove its thirst for culture and its ability to perceive it …
The speed of cultural growth of the population of the Union of Soviets is recognized by honest people of all countries. It would seem that honest people, recognizing this fact, should draw from it an appropriate, very simple, moral and hygienic conclusion: it is both subjective and objective much more useful, much more honest to live in a healthy environment than in an environment mortally infected with social illnesses and condemned to doom. Having recognized the proletariat as capable of social creativity, it is much more useful to promote in every way the development in it of its thirst for knowledge, its talents and consciousness in the mass of the proletariat of its historical purpose, which it has already begun to carry out in the country where 170 million live. It would seem that the self-esteem of the masters of culture, the ‘humanists’, should be deeply outraged by the facts of the denial of culture by shopkeepers, by their campaign against the growth of any technology other than wearable or designed to exterminate people. It is not noticeable that the masters of bourgeois culture were outraged by the burning of books, disliked by fascism, the preaching of misanthropy, concluded in the meanings of national and racial theories, a preparation for a fierce new war – to the senseless extermination of millions of the healthiest people, to the new extermination with age-old cultural values, the destruction of cities, the destruction of the results of the hard work of the masses, who created factories and plants, processed fields, built bridges, and roads. The madness of predators cannot be cured by eloquence, tigers and hyenas do not eat cake.
It is not always noticeable that humanity in general possesses the characteristics of “humanists”, it is not obvious that they would feel the greatest, heroic tragedy of the era and understand who its heroes are. The time is approaching when the Revolutionary proletariat will come, like an elephant, on a crazed, fussy anthill of shopkeepers — it will come and crush it. It’s unavoidable. Mankind cannot perish because a small minority of it is creatively becoming decrepit and decomposed due to the fear of life and the painful, incurable thirst for profit. The death of this minority is an act of the greatest justice, and this story commands the proletariat to commit it. Behind this great act will begin the world-wide, amicable and fraternal work of the peoples of the world, the work of free, beautiful creativity of a new life.
Is this a belief? The time has passed for the proletariat when faith and knowledge were at enmity, as lies and truth. Where the proletariat dominates, where everything is created by its mighty hand, there is no place for spreading knowledge with faith, there belief is the result of man’s knowing the power of his mind, and this belief, creating heroes, does not create and will not create gods.
NOTES: Proletariat Humanism
First published simultaneously in the newspapers Pravda, 1934, number 140 of May 23, and Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 1934, number 119 of May 23.
In a letter dated June 10, 1934 to one of his correspondents who asked to write an article for a French magazine, M. Gorky wrote: “I recommend the article“ Humanism of the Proletariat ”published in Pravda about a month ago. This article was very much approved by Comrade Stalin” (Archive of AM Gorky).
The article was not included in the authorized collections.