Objectivism, as defined and condemned by Soviet Communists

Editor's note: I am not sure if Ayn Rand had any thoughts about this Russian "objectivism" when she chose the same name for her own philosophy in the 1950s. The problems Rand faced in the 1950s were different, but as someone who attended a Russian university in the early Soviet period, she probably had heard a reference or two to Russian "objectivism."

From:
M. Rozental' and P. Yudin, editors, Kratkij Filosofskij Slovar' ("A Short Philosophical Dictionary"), OGIZ (State Publishing-House of Political Literature), Moscow, 1939; cloth, 317 pp.
Pp. 198-199.

Russkij tekst (Original Russian text).

Bourgeois objectivism --
that explanation of the necessity and appropriateness of the historical process, which justifies and praises the capitalist structure. Thus, P. Struve, one of the representatives of "legal Marxism," criticizing populists not understanding the objective necessity of capitalist development in Russia in the 19th Century, advocated the rejection of struggle against capitalism on the basis that capitalism was developing with objective necessity. He denied the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism leading inevitably to proletarian revolution. In counterbalance to bourgeois objectivism, Marxism-Leninism shows, that capitalism arose from historical necessity, but that its destruction through violent revolution is likewise historically necessary. The Marxist understanding of objectivity incorporates Party-ness, obliging the evaluation of historical events from the point of view of the revolutionary proletariat.

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