Marxism, Revolution, and Development

Abstract

The nineteenth century had brought with it changes that were not always immediately apparent to those intellectuals charged with the responsibility of making it all comprehensible. It is not difficult to appreciate why understanding the evolving revolutionary circumstances proved so difficult—particularly for Marxists. Collectively, they were heir to an extraordinary abundance of theoretical material, penned by the founders of their doctrine over half a century in time and in correspondingly different political environments. Never immediately transparent, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the nineteenth century texts left them by Marx and Engels were subject to variable interpretation. That followed from the fact that by the end of the nineteenth century, both of the founders were dead. The thinkers of the twentieth century were heirs of the thought of the nineteenth, but there was no authoritative voice that might interpret events in terms of doctrine or judge the merits of contending strategies in circumstances never envisioned by the founders. By the end of the century, there already were a variety of candidate interpretations of what the complexities in Asia or the less-developed nations of the time might mean for Marxists, or what a proper revolutionary response to those exigencies might be.²

In China, the rotting semi-civilization of the oldest State in the world meets the Europeans with its own resources…. The mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners…. [There is] a universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners … a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality.

—Friedrich Engels¹