this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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It is now my life mission to destroy the west (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 weeks ago by hamid@crazypeople.online to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] GlacialTurtle@lemmy.ml -5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

To be annoyingly accurate, Marx still held the belief that the west would be the first to revolt and establish socialism

And he literally contradicts this, not just in this but his other research and letters, and even later editions of the communist manifesto.

https://monthlyreview.org/articles/marx-and-engels-and-russias-peasant-communes/

“The very existence of the Russian commune is now threatened by a conspiracy of powerful interests,” he noted—but if that threat is defeated, it “may become the direct starting-point of the economic system towards which modern society is tending; it may open a new chapter that does not begin with its own suicide.”14

Marx and Engels repeated that argument the next year in their preface to the second Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto.

In Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Marx and Engels did not study Russian conditions out of academic curiosity. On the contrary, they believed that Russia, once the heartland of backwardness and reaction, had become “the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe,” so understanding it was a political necessity. This understanding fueled their consistent support for radical populists who took action against the Tsarist regime, and caused them to distance themselves from people who were limited to analysis and commentary. Their approach was motivated, as Marx wrote in another context, by the conviction that “every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.”

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know why you're continuing to double and triple-down. We agree that Marx believed Russia could have sidestepped capitalist development and gone straight from feudalism to the communalist movement to socialism to communism. However, he did not think this was more likely than revolution in western Europe. He simply saw it as it was, a great but likely squandered opportinity.

In other words, if Marx believed there was a 75% chance the revolution would first come to western Europe, and a 25% chance it would come to Russia, it is correct to say that he believed it would most likely come first to western Europe. It is, therefore, equally incorrect to say that he believed it could only happen in western Europe, as you allege I say (but I have disproven this), as it would be to say that Marx believed it would happen in Russia first (as you appear to be saying).

[–] GlacialTurtle@lemmy.ml -5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don’t know why you’re continuing to double and triple-down.

Because you keep repeating something which is not true.

However, he did not think this was more likely than revolution in western Europe.

This is directly contradicted by his letters and actions. He and Engels were directly corresponding with Russian revolutionaries, and literally surmised a Russian revolution could in fact be the first to set off a world revolution and was actively interested in aiding it. You're just refusing to take in new information.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.

Marx thought Russia had a unique opportunity to sidestep capitalist development, and kick off revolution in the west. He made it clear that if conditions continued as they had, however, that this opportunity would never materialize. I've read Capital and its post-scripts, I've read his letters to Russian revolutionaries. I used to be an anarchist, and these get thrown around all the time to make it seem like Marx was supportive of anarchism at the end of his life (which he wasn't). This isn't new information to me, you're just confusing Marx saying Russia had a great opportunity to skip capitalism with Marx saying he thought Russia would in fact do so.