So far as its advocates are
concerned, Marx and the whole modern Socialist movement might as well never
have existed at all. They take us back three-quarters of a century, to the
era before Marx, to that past so remote in intellectual and moral
character, though recent in point of time, when the working class of no
country in Europe possessed the right to vote--when the workers were
indeed proletarians and not citizens; not only propertyless, but also
"without a fatherland."
In truth, it is not difficult to understand how this theory has found
acceptance in Russia. It was not difficult to understand why Marx's
doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian
Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more
quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of
Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses
would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian
communal institutions. It was quite easy to understand the change that came
with Russia's industrial awakening, how the development of factory
production gave an impetus to the Marxian theories. And, though it presents
a strange paradox, in that it comes at a time when, despite everything,
Russian capitalism continues to develop, it is really not difficult to
understand how and why pre-Marxian conceptions reappear in that great land
of paradoxes.
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