POL 315
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MARXISM
event, as the dictatorship succeeded in redirecting the society toward the
socialist utopia, more and more people would adopt the socialist ethic,
meaning willingness to work to one's capacity and to share the fruits of
labor with the rest of society. This concept is clearly the most
revolutionary aspect of Marx's thought. Like all leftists, he believed
people could change, redirecting their lives and actions toward more
desirable goals. To this end, Marx expected the dictatorship to
encourage people to abandon their selfish, atomistic ways, adopting
collective or organic values.
In the Communist Manifesto of 1848 the assumption had been that the
workers would rise up spontaneously to overthrow their oppressors, but
Lenin feared that the dominant ideology would induce a 'false
consciousness' that would blind them to their own interests and induce
them in effect to connive in their own oppression. His concern seemed
particularly plausible in the case of Russia, which was a desperately
poor country that had progressed little beyond agrarian feudalism; it had
barely entered the stage of industrial capitalism (as required by orthodox
Marxism) and was very far from having developed an enlightened
revolutionary proletariat. What was needed, in Lenin's view, was a
vanguard party of professional revolutionaries - an elite group of
radicalized intellectuals like himself - who would lead the workers to
revolution and guide them in setting up a temporary dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Many of the problems for communism in its various 20th-century
incarnations can be traced back to the fundamental loss of faith in the
people that was reflected in Lenin's development of the vanguard theory
and what became known as Marxism-Leninism. Marx well understood
the psychology of dominance and oppression. The ruling ideas of every
epoch are the ideas of the ruling class; the prevailing 'ideology' - the
system or scheme of ideas expressed in the media, in education etc.,
always reflects the views of the dominant class, determining orthodox
opinion, defending the status quo, and so serving to justify unequal
relations of economic and political power.
Recognised now as one of the most momentous documents ever
published, The Communist Manifesto- made surprisingly little impact on
its first appearance. A short tract of fewer than 12,000 words, written in
collaboration with Friedrich Engels and published in 1848, it was
originally intended as a (platform for the largely ineffective,
quarrelsome and short- lived Communist League. In the Manifesto's
closing lines, Marx gives perhaps the most resounding and portentous
rallying cry ever delivered: The Communists disdain to conceal their
views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only
by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling
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