Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by Peter Singer

There is one other element of Marx’s views that, with the benefit of hindsight, we may consider conducive to authoritarian forms of communism. One of Marx’s predictions, as we have seen, was that the proletarian revolutions that abolished private property would occur in the most advanced industrialized countries, in which the working class constituted the overwhelming majority of the population. Since the workers owned nothing, and were living close to subsistence, they had, as Marx and Engels famously pointed out, ‘nothing to lose but their chains’ (CM 271). They could, therefore, reasonably be expected to be enthusiastic supporters of communism. In fact, however, the first successful communist revolution took place in Russia, the least industrialized of the major European powers. In 1917, Russia’s small industrialized working class was heavily outnumbered by agricultural workers and small rural landholders. Rural areas are typically more conservative than urban areas, and rural landholders stood to lose a great deal from the abolition of private property. It is not surprising, therefore, that communism could only be imposed on Russia with the use of considerable force and, when resistance appeared, increasing brutality that led to the murder and incarceration of millions of people.