Abstract
For further proof that Marx did not jump to the conclusion that any one line of development was inevitable or desirable, even though he had recognised the ultimately progressive function of the spread of capitalism to areas with a less dynamic mode of production, we need only consider his discussion of Russia’s problems and prospects.
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Notes
Engels, ‘Nachwort’, pp. 428–9; Eng. trans. in Selected Works (1970), vol. II, p. 399. Similar though somewhat more superficial views were advanced in the 1930s by the Peruvian Marxist Mariátegui. Looking at the pre-colonial indigenous structures through rose-tinted spectacles he asserted that, because so many vigorous peasant communities still survived, Peru could make a direct transition, ‘without the long evolution that other peoples have suffered’, to the collective economic organisation that he regarded as socialism. ‘I believe that no other “backward” people, anywhere, offers conditions so favourable for a primitive agrarian communism, still alive in the strength of its institutions and its profound collective spirit, to be transformed under proletarian rule into one of the firmest possible foundations for the socialist society envisaged by Marxist socialism.’ (José Carlos Mariátegui, Ideologia y Politica, Amauta, Lima, 1969, pp. 65, 68.)
Wolfe comments thus on this prediction: ‘It was a prevision as brilliant as that of Lenin when he warned Trotsky of the consequences of an undemocratic revolution and minority party government, and that of Trotsky when he warned Lenin of the dangers inherent in his hierarchical, centralised, undemocratic party structure. They were like the three blind men who grasped three different parts of an elephant. Marxists contend that their method of sociological analysis enables them to predict the future. If these three Marxist prophecies could but have been added together, they would indeed have constituted a brilliant example of foresight and warning.’ (Bertram D. Wolfe, Three who Made a Revolution, Dial Press, New York, 1948
V. I. Lenin, ‘Speech on the Agrarian Question’ at the RSDLP (1906) Unity Congress, in Sochinenya, vol. X, p. 254; Eng. trans. vol. X, p. 280.
V. I. Lenin, ‘The Role and Function of the Trade Unions under the NEP’, Resolution approved by the Central Committee of the RCP(b), 12 Jan. 1922, in Sochinenya, vol. XXXIII, p. 161; Eng. trans. vol. XXXIII, p. 186.
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© 1977 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Melotti, U. (1977). The Marxist Debate on Russia’s Problems and Prospects. In: Marx and the Third World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15801-0_22
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