The word liberalism is tarnished and devalued, although it comes from the greatest of human words, the word freedom. If we take the principles of liberalism in their ideal purity, in their supra-historical, timeless meaning, then they are a direct expression of the metaphysical nature of the human personality, a political formulation of unconditional respect for the freedom of the spiritual being. The essence of liberalism is in the natural, inalienable, absolute in their own way

8 This was written back in the era of the existence of the "Union of Liberation", which collapsed after October 17.

the source of the rights of the individual, in freedom and equality; The realization of liberalism is the replacement of violent relations between people by free relations, and it rests on the ultimate ideal, the union of people based on inner freedom. True liberalism sees the source of individual rights not in state power, whatever it may be, even if it is an expression of the sovereign will of the people, but in absolute values, independent of the will of individuals, a part of the people, or the whole people. Therefore, the "declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen" is not a declaration of the will of the people, the accidental will of people, but is a revelation of the absolute values contained in the metaphysical essence of the free spirit. The freedom and rights of the individual are above all power, even if it be the power of the people, above all desires and interests, even the working class. The right of private property was proclaimed by the accidental and relative will of people (a certain social group), but the right of freedom of conscience or freedom of speech was the revelation of an absolute, super-historical good. And the whole task is to educate the will of people, the will of creative social groups in respect and love for the absolute values expressed in the "Declaration of Rights". And woe to those who are tempted by temporal goods and prefer them to eternal freedom, who subordinate the valuable to the useful and do not understand that there are inalienable rights. Pure, true liberalism, untainted by the touch of social forces that have betrayed freedom in the name of their interests, asserts the absolute significance of the human person and does not in principle make his rights dependent on accidental historical forces, therefore it expresses the tasks of people's social life, sets goals, and has an undying value. The idea of the natural rights of the individual and their guarantees in the social system, the idea of freedom and equality, cannot become obsolete, the understanding of the meaning of social development as a process of liberation, the roots of which lie in the metaphysical depth of human nature, will not become obsolete. Chicherin understood this depth of liberalism and perfectly connected it with idealist metaphysics. He stands head and shoulders above the ordinary liberal positivists, who defend liberalism without understanding its essence and significance. In this way, Chicherin correctly established the initial foundation in the construction of social philosophy. He is a first-class philosopher and jurist. But then Chicherin made a fatal mistake.

What is the attitude of liberalism to democracy? Democracy is only one of the definitions of liberalism, its explanation, its inevitable conclusion from the principles of liberalism. Non-democratic liberalism is essentially a contradictio in adjecto, and the anti-democratic liberal currents that already manifested themselves in the era of the Great French Revolution were a logical and ethical distortion of the ideas of liberalism for the sake of class interests, a manifestation of historical and class limitations. Once the absolute significance and inalienable rights of every human person are recognized, then democracy with all its conclusions is ideologically affirmed and class distinctions are denied. The "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" is the proclamation of the kingdom of democracy; it requires respect not only for the rights of the individual (of every person regardless of his external position), but also for every individual will through which the creation of new forms of life must pass. Consistent and sincere individualism is always democratic, since for it there is only the individual personality as such, its spiritual nature and its inner uniqueness, and not the social determinations of the personality, which turn it into a part of the whole, obscure its appearance. To defend social and political inequality is to encroach on the sanctum sanctorum of individualism, to place things above man, to exalt one human individuality for its things (social advantages) and to belittle another for the absence of these things. In an evaluation based on social and political inequality, individuality as such disappears, becomes obscured, the spiritually insignificant triumphs over the spiritually significant, because dress determines the attitude towards a person. This kingdom of philistine values, by which the bourgeois world lives, has ruined human individuality. Real spiritual aristocracy is possible only in a democracy, only after the masters of the historical stage cease to be strong by their social position, and not by their spiritual power. It is precisely because we are individualists, because we recognize the profound spiritual differences of individuals, because we recognize the value of the human person as such, in his inner nature, that we demand the most resolute democracy and long for the cessation of the power of things over men. Let life create the personality and put its individual stamp on it, and not the things that belong to the individual, not the impersonal things whose power was so brilliantly grasped by Marx. And perhaps socialism is the only reagent by which the difference of spiritual individualities can be manifested and each of them can be defined in its real uniqueness. And in any case, it needs to be justified before the court of individualism as its historically relative means. This justification is given by modern history...

Mikhailovsky understood the connection between individualism and democracy, and this was his strong point. Chicherin did not understand this and could not understand it, his bright mind was distorted by class traditions and prejudices, he was chained to the fictitious values of bourgeois society. All his life Chicherin was afraid even of a purely political liberal democracy, and in order to hide himself from its victorious demands, he made the most pitiful compromises with his philosophy of law, substituting for natural law, always radical in spirit, for historical law, under the shadow of which the ruling classes of modern society could calmly feel themselves. The attitude to democracy that Chicherin derived from his idealistic liberalism was also a purely logical fall. Liberalism and democracy are one and the same, and if we nevertheless subordinate the latter to the former, it is because we fundamentally place freedom above the people, law above power. But the people must be free, and the free establishment of a new social order must pass through the individual will of the whole people.

Chicherin's attitude to the social movement is already completely shameful for the thinker. This cold, reasonable mind began to swear and showed the most monstrous incomprehension. Chicherin was a very poor economist and was already quite Quixotic in defending Manchesterism when it was abandoned by everyone. This did not do credit to Chicherin's economic sagacity and economic education, but, perhaps, did credit to the steadfastness of his character. He never yielded an inch of economic individualism and was the most stubborn Old Believer, he was ready to defend some Bastiat when everyone had long forgotten about him. Chicherin intertwined the high traits of his individual character, which inspired respect for everyone, with a very unpleasant persistence in prejudice, partiality and unwillingness to move forward, to search. He never doubted anything, this stony, rational man. It is Chicherin's merit that he was one of the first to revolt against the Narodnik idealization of the commune and to give it a more correct interpretation. In this he can even be recognized as the predecessor of Russian Marxism. There is nothing to refute Chicherin's socio-economic delusions, it is too elementary. I will point out only one very important aspect of this issue.

Chicherin's socio-philosophical fall, like the historical fall of the bourgeoisie, was the proclamation of the historical right of private property as a natural right. This was not only logically defective, not only was it a manifestation of the bourgeois class narrow-mindedness and historical relativity of the bourgeois epoch, but it was also an encroachment on the individual dignity of the human person, since it associated the value of man with impersonal things that were not created by him. Economic individualism was historically an accidental predicate of liberalism and did not enter into its true essence. The liberal "declaration of rights" is consistently applied and developed by the modern social movement. For example, the German Social-Democracy is the only liberal party that really fights against reaction in the name of freedom, and the German "liberals" are the least likely to claim this title, since they have betrayed freedom in the name of their social welfare. Social democracy is only a method of consistent development and implementation of the principles of liberalism. We must not forget this. If democracy is an inseparable deduction from the essence of liberalism, then democracy also inevitably becomes social. And the creative task is to eliminate the discrepancy between the social content and the forms of the "declaration of rights", which ideologically condemned the class structure of society. We must boldly and fearlessly make the most consistent consequences from the liberal-democratic "declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen," that is, we must recognize the struggle for liberation from social enslavement as a struggle consistently liberal and justified by the metaphysical presuppositions of our liberalism.

But the so-called "idealists" do not attach their feelings and their pathos to certain ways and forms of exercising individual rights, freedom and equality. We consider these ways and means of struggle to be very complex and diverse, we have no fetishistic attachment to things outside of man, for example, to strictly defined forms of social order. We accept the inner essence of democracy, which we consider to be identical with the inner essence of liberalism; But doctrinaire socialism, which squanders religious feelings on unworthy occasions and attaches them to the material organization of life, is alien to us and seems to be an outrage upon the highest dignity of the human spirit. We do not imagine the ultimate social perfection, but if we were to draw utopias, we would consider the most worthy state of the final triumph of individualism, the union of people based on inner freedom and love, and not on external organization. Let it be what the modern socialist movement strives for, inasmuch as it liberates man from the oppression of things, and therefore it is in a certain sense for us "twice two makes four." In the social sphere there is nothing to oppose it, only it does its work, and all bourgeois reaction is impotent and dead. But in this way it is not yet possible to create a new kingdom of the spirit, and it is impossible to defeat that spiritual bourgeoisness which is corroding not only the ruling but also the oppressed classes of modern society. This gives me an excuse to move on to the other side of Chicherin's worldview.

I want to repeat once again in connection with Chicherin what I said about Mikhailovsky. Chicherin's individualism, although idealistic, is at the same time purely rationalistic. This is a philosophical declaration of the rights of an impersonal, general, rational person. For Chicherin's idealism, as for Mikhailovsky's positivism, there is only the rational side of personality, it is interested only in the general rational nature. But the irrational sides of the personality also imperiously assert their rights, which make him an individual. The individual human being not only demands reasonable rights common to all, but also longs to break the boundaries of the rationalized world. And we would like to write a "declaration of rights" of the concrete individual spirit, taken in the totality of its nature, not dissected rationally, and experiencing in mystical, superrational experience the transcendental depth of being. This would be a challenge not only to the social, but also to the spiritual bourgeoisness of our world, to foresee the spiritual renewal that can only be achieved by the religious movement. And now I will summarize our attitude to Mikhailovsky and Chicherin, on whom we wanted to define ourselves.

Philosophically, Chicherin is closer to us, and socially, Mikhailovsky. We highly value both of them, and we are ready to learn a lot from them, but both of them belonged to the old trends, each of them was conservative in his own way and fought against new trends. Chicherin feared the growth of democracy, while Mikhailovsky looked with fear and suspicion at the irrational aspirations, at the mystical searches of the new generations. We think that the future belongs precisely to mysticism and democracy. Social democracy on the basis of positivism must lead to the greatest vulgarity, to the extinction of the spirit, but it can also create the most subtle spiritual aristocracy if it finally realizes itself only as a means to the remote, mystical goals of human life, which our small limited reason denies, but our great infinite reason recognizes.

In our social programme we adhere to the emancipatory and democratic precepts of our intelligentsia, but we give a different philosophical foundation and insist, in view of the nature of the moment we are passing through, on a sharply legal formulation of our social demands. The most diverse social forces must now converge on a loud demand for law. And this will be a historic exam for our intelligentsia. We call upon the social forces, conscious of their human dignity, to concentrate their attention and their energies on the fundamental question of Russian life, but our prospects are distant, and we shall never be reconciled to bourgeois society and to the bourgeois spirit which even the most extreme fighters for a new social order have not overcome. And let us remember that the betrayal of the principles of freedom, so brazenly committed in Western Europe, must find in us the most resolute rebuff. But we must go even further than those who are preparing this rebuff, we must not allow spiritual freedom and the consciousness of the ultimate goals of life to be betrayed, exchanged for social well-being, so that we will find ourselves spiritually poor in the hour when social renewal comes to us. And we shall not yield to our friends-enemies the coming kingdom of the spirit, any more than we shall yield to the bourgeoisie the kingdom of social democracy.

RESPONSE TO CRITICS

(On polemics. "Idealism" and science. — "Idealism" and freedom. — The attitude of "idealism" to the moment we are experiencing. — Grouping of social trends)[92]

A great deal has been written about the "idealists." Polemics against "idealists" are almost the only spiritual food that some magazines have been presenting to their readers for several years now. By polemics against "idealism" some novice writers have acquired a peculiar fame. The "idealists" gave themes to their opponents, pushed them to such questions that they would never have thought of on their own, turned them almost into philosophers and aestheticians. And all this is solely in the name of eradicating the hated and harmful "idealistic" trend. The Marxism represented in our journals bears obvious traces of decadence, a trend that is moribund and cries out for straws. Such a straw is empirio-criticism, and socially neutralized and vulgarized Nietzscheanism, and all these meaningless, purely verbal hymns of life. There was once a great teaching, mighty and glorious, and we were under its hypnotic power. It was classical Marxism, and creative forces trembled in it. N6 Marxism, which was born in a special, already passed, historical epoch, has grown old and decrepit, it is not. can already play a creative role in creating the spiritual culture of our time. The epigones of this doctrine try to patch up its old clothes, but these patches make the fabric completely unsuitable, completely alien. Whatever the philosophical or scientific qualities of Avenarius's empirio-criticism, one thing is certain: it has nothing to do with Marxism. Our degenerate Marxists have seized upon fashionable philosophy, because it is impossible to do without philosophy in modern times, and the old philosophy of Marxism has completely disintegrated. Equally alien to the spirit of Marxism are the latest naturalistic attempts to dissolve social colours in energetic metaphysics. There was also a need to embellish the dull and gray theory with vulgarized Nietzscheanism and even a slight neutralized decadence. Here our last Marxists are clearly trailing behind the spirit of the times and are making a rather comical impression. The surviving representatives of classical Marxism, or rather the knights, petrified in their immobility, must frown and look with hostility and fear at all these innovations. Like parasites, they feed on the juices of "idealism" and transform these juices into a light positivistic gruel, with which they try to destroy us.