I’ve just finished reading Notes from Underground, and I must confess to reading few books that have touched the core of my being in such a way. The Underground Man makes the following denunciation of all theories based on man as a rational animal, and demonstrates why, even if ‘Marxist science’ was true, and the dialectic was heading inexorably towards socialism, I could never bring myself to be a Marxist.
The impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.
‘Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall…and so on, and so on.’
Merciful heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason, I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice two makes four.
I couldn’t have put it better myself. So what if socialism is inevitable? If that is the case, then it means that the world is moving towards a society of universal slavery and tyranny. I would rather have climate change destroy the planet and the entire human race than live under such misery. At least the anarchy of capitalism gives me a semblance of choice, which I would not have in a society where everything and everyone is directed, controlled, subjected to calculation and regimentation by a centripetal force known as the ‘vanguard’. As Dostoevsky puts it in another passage:
What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever the independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice…
No wonder the Bolsheviks hated Dostoevsky so…