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p More than a hundred and twenty years have elapsed since Marx and Engels laid the foundation of their teaching. These years have borne out the correctness and strength of this teaching. Enriched and enlarged by the great Lenin, Marxism is today exercising a growing influence on the entire course of human history.

p Marx and Engels gave the working people an unconquerable weapon in the battle against exploiters, for socialism. It is not fortuitous that though it has been repeatedly “buried” by its enemies, Marxism continues to remain in the centre of the ideological struggle, stirring revolutionary enthusiasm in the working people and evoking the rage and hate of their class enemies.

p The basic problems of the transition from capitalism to socialism are propounded in many works of the founders of Marxism, including Manifesto of the Communist Party, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, The Class Struggles in France, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France, and in the documents of the First and Second Internationals, most of which were written personally by Marx and Engels, with their direct participation or on their initiative.

p The founders of Marxism regarded the socialist revolution as a process entailing the forcible overthrow of capitalist power and the transfer of power to the proletariat, the dismantling of the bourgeois state machine and the settingup of institutions through which the proletariat could exercise its political power. In the broad sense, the words socialist revolution imply the establishment of socialist relations of production, the gradual abolition of class society and its contradictions, the removal of the existing division of labour and the eradication of the contradictions between town and countryside.

p Marx and Engels worked out the theory of two stages 11 of communist society. They indicated that the transition from capitalism to the first stage of communism, i.e., socialism, would embrace a certain period of history. This period of fundamental social changes could only be one of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a period in which society’s economic, political and cultural life would be characterised by a number of specific features.  [11•* 

p Brilliant practicians and skilful organisers of the working-class movement, Marx and Engels headed the first international associations of the proletariat. They devoted much of their energy and time to the publication of newspapers, thereby helping to prepare the working class for the revolutionary battles. They took a direct part in class battles, helping the revolutionary workers to organise. They wrote a vast number of works on the tactics of the workingclass movement at different stages of the revolutionary struggle and in the specific conditions of different countries, profoundly analysing the practical revolutionary activity of the masses and their organisations. This analysis of practice enabled them to enrich revolutionary theory. Yet the adversaries of Marxism assert that Marx and Engels were only theoreticians far removed from the real problems of revolutionary practice.  [11•** 

p The revolutionary theory evolved by Marx and Engels mirrored the experience of the struggle of the working class in different countries and this made it invincible.

p Let us examine the attitude of Marx and Engels to the 12 revolutionary potentialities of Russia. This is important because in foreign countries efforts are being made to pass over or distort their views on this question.

p Marx and Engels searchingly analysed the prospects for the development of the revolutionary movement in Russia, examining the situation in Russia in the light of the general laws of the revolutionary struggle as discovered by them and taking into account the specifics of Russian reality. They stressed the revolutionary significance of the struggle for the abolition of serfdom and for the national rights of the peoples enslaved by tsarism. As early as 1858 Marx wrote that in Russia “inflammable material has accumulated under her own feet which a strong blast from the West may suddenly set on fire”.  [12•*  In connection with the Polish national liberation uprising in 1863 he drew the conclusion that “in Europe the era of revolution has broadly re-opened”.  [12•** 

p Later, in the mid-1880s, Engels repeatedly noted that Russia was the key to the successful accomplishment of the revolution in Europe and that, possibly, the first European revolution would take place in Russia. In a letter to August Bebel on December 11-12, 1884, he wrote that “as things are at present, an impulse from outside can scarcely come from anywhere but Russia”.  [12•*** 

p “What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are approaching the 1789. The revolution must break out there in a limited period of time; it may break out any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a match to be applied to it"  [12•****  (from a letter from Engels to Vera Zasulich on April 23, 1885). To Paul Lafargue Engels wrote on October 25-26, 1886: “If a revolution were to break out in Russia it would create a whole complex of the most favourable conditions.”  [12•*****  Some months later he said he believed that “it really looks like the beginning of the end in Russia, and this will be the beginning of the end in Europe.”  [12•*)  “A revolution in Russia today would save Europe 13 from the calamity of a world war and lay the beginning of a world-wide social revolution,”  [13•*  he wrote to Nadejde on January 4, 1888.

p Engels’ conclusion that in Russia revolution was approaching was testimony of his splendid understanding of the conditions obtaining in Russia: “To me the important thing is that the impulse in Russia should be given, that the revolution should break out whether this or that faction gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that matters little to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. There where the situation is strained, where the revolutionary elements have accumulated to such a degree, where the economic conditions of the enormous mass of the people become daily more impossible, where every stage of social development is represented, from the primitive commune to modern large-scale industry and high finance, and where all these contradictions are violently held in check by an unexampled despotism, a despotism which is becoming more and more unbearable to a youth in whom the dignity and intelligence of the nation are united —there, when 1789 has once been launched, 1793 will not be long in following.”  [13•** 

p The theoretical and practical work accomplished by Marx and Engels was important not only because it was founded on the practical experience of the proletarian struggle in different countries. The potency of the Marxist teaching of revolution also lies in the fact that it was the supreme expression of all preceding and contemporary concepts of social development and was, moreover, indivisible from the other aspects of Marxism, which had creatively absorbed all the achievements of human thought and raised it to a qualitatively new level. “... The genius of Marx,” Lenin wrote in an article headed “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism”, “consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.”  [13•*** 

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p Socialist ideas had been propounded long before Marx and Engels and they had become most widespread in the form of various schools and orientations of Utopian socialism, which produced entire socialist and communist concepts containing not only blissful dreams but daring forecasts of the society and man of the future. The exponents of these Utopian concepts may be divided into three main groups: Utopian Communists, Utopian Socialists and pettybourgeois Socialists.

p The Utopian Communists demanded social equality through the abolition of private ownership. Proponents of revolutionary action like Francois Emile Babeuf, Theodore Dezamy and Louis-Auguste Blanqui accentuated the importance of propaganda and organisational work among the proletariat and of conspiracies against the existing regime. Failing to understand the entire spectrum of social relations, the Utopian Communists, for instance, Etienne Cabet (whom Marx described as a popular though very superficial exponent of communism), regarded “human nature" itself as the foundation for communist society. They began to see the need for eradicating class distinctions and for a class struggle only after the revolutions of the end of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century. By the time Marxism came on the scene, the Utopian Communists had come to the realisation that the road to social equality lay through revolution and a dictatorship of the people, which had to be established to repulse possible counter-revolutionary intrigues.

p Claude Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, the classical exponents of Utopian socialism, likewise believed that the ideals of freedom and equality were unrealisable under capitalism. In their comprehensive and argumented criticism of the capitalist system they showed that it had to be replaced by socialism. Some of their ideas were later adopted by scientific socialism: planned economy, work by all members of society, abolition of hired labour, the conversion of the state into an instrument regulating economic life, and so on. However, not having a scientific method of analysing social processes, the Utopian Socialists could not understand the laws governing historical development, did not see the ways and means of remaking capitalist society into a socialist society and failed to appreciate the revolutionary role of 15 the proletariat. “One thing is common to all three,” Engels wrote of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Owen. “Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once.”  [15•*  The Utopian Socialists hoped to achieve their socialist ideal gradually, by persuasion. Their message was addressed not to the workers but to the ruling classes. Saint-Simon, for instance, believed that the improvement of scientific knowledge, morals and religion was the basis for social advancement.

p The petty-bourgeois Socialists formulated their views later, when capitalist relations had reached a higher development level. They mirrored the sentiments of the small producers who were hit by the growth of large-scale capitalist production. They rejected revolutionary methods in favour of reforms. They urged the abolition of large-scale production through the enlargement of co-operatives, with state assistance. One of their most outstanding spokesmen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, created a school that for many years opposed Marxism.

p When the question of Utopian or petty-bourgeois socialism comes up, some researchers are inclined to regard them as a past stage of the development of socio-political thought, a stage now belonging to history. But it is not as simple as that. The unscientific theories of Utopian socialism and of the petty-bourgeois Socialists continue to be revived by some spokesmen of the petty-bourgeois strata that have been drawn into the vortex of the class struggle. That is why, far from having lost its significance today, Marx’s and Engels’ profound and all-sided criticism of the Utopian and petty-bourgeois concepts of social development serves Marxists-Leninists as a dependable guide in the struggle for the revolutionary remaking of modern social life.

p The theory of revolution, of the transition from capitalism to socialism, evolved by Marx and Engels, showed the road for the then incipient working-class movement and illumined the prospects for a revolutionary struggle with the bright light of a scientific analysis.

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p The teaching of Marx and Engels and their concrete revolutionary practice facilitated the development of a massive working-class movement and the establishment and consolidation of its first communist organisations. The struggle of the working class in the lifetime of Marx and Engels was a crucial stage of the world revolutionary movement, witnessing the bourgeois revolutions in Europe in 1848, the national movements in Germany and Italy and the revolutionary situation in Russia in 1859-1861. The class struggle was crowned by the world’s first proletarian revolution in France in 1871.

p Marx and Engels sought to give the working-class movement correct guidelines and an understanding of its objectives, and direct the spontaneous enthusiasm of the masses into the channel of revolution. As a result of their theoretical and practical work the nascent working-class movement received an invincible weapon. The Marxist theory of revolutionary struggle gradually spread to the workers’ organisations and won thousands upon thousands of adherents.

p The fundamental laws of revolutionary development, of transition from capitalism to socialism, revealed by Marx and Engels, have been strikingly confirmed in our day. The successes achieved by socialism have demonstrated that these laws are truly universal. That is why Marxism is called an eternally living, ageless teaching. That is why the references of its enemies to the “new features" of our times, to the changed character of the epoch are nothing but pitiful and untenable attempts to refute the laws of revolution.

p The enemies of socialism and communism aspire to prove that Marxism is a product of the 19th century, when capitalism was quite different. Today, they declare, capitalism has changed, and many of its past vices have vanished: the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, they claim, has disappeared, and capitalism has become democratic with many “socialist” elements; it is, they say, becoming a “welfare state”. This, the champions of capitalism maintain, makes it unnecessary to turn the capitalist into the socialist system by means of revolution. Therefore, it is claimed, Marxist theory is obsolete.

p In a conversation with the author of this book, West German Social-Democrats, notably Helmut Schmidt, tried to prove that of the teaching of Marx only his economic 17 theory has retained some importance. They asserted that the Marxists ignored the changes taking place in the capitalist world. Here is what Willy Brandt said in Trier on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marx: “Marx could not foresee that the unity between theoretical knowledge and political practice would change the destiny of the workers in the highly developed industrial countries so radically as has indeed happened. What he gave were not patented recipes valid for all time.”  [17•* 

p However, it was not Brandt, leader of the Social- Democrats and Chancellor in that part of the country of the great Marx, where some of the world’s most powerful monopolies function today, who was right, but the Communist Walter Ulbricht, leader of the first socialist state created in Marx’s homeland, who said that the analysis made by the author of Capital “gives not only an analysis of a specific stage of capitalist development but an analysis of basic processes and laws that are valid in relation to the whole of capitalism, to its substance. For that reason, in many respects Marx’s analysis conforms even more to present-day capitalism than to the capitalism of a hundred years ago."  [17•** 

p As a science Marxism does not and cannot grow old. It can be enriched, developed and augmented with a new content. But in the same way that the latest discoveries of modern physics cannot cancel the laws of motion formulated by Isaac Newton, no new experience of the class struggle can cancel the basic laws governing the development of human society, the revolutionary replacement of capitalism by communism, discovered by Marxism.

p Formulated by Marx and Engels, the general laws of social development, of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism, retain their full significance to this day. Whatever aspect of the theory of revolution we may study, we always proceed from the propositions of Marxism: for example, the historic mission of the working class, consistent champion of revolution and the principal and decisive force in the struggle to remake capitalist society into socialist and communist society; the need for the proletariat’s alliance with other exploited classes, particularly 18 with such a numerous class as the peasantry, and also with the intelligentsia and other strata; the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.

p These and other pivotal tenets of Marxism help the Communist parties to frame a correct strategy for the struggle even when considerable changes have taken place in society’s social structure as a result of the development of statemonopoly capitalism.

p The conclusions of the founders of Marxism underlie the strategic thesis of the communist movement that as any other social revolution the socialist revolution is a long process affecting all facets of the life of society. The teaching of Marx and Engels underlies the concept that the victory of socialism in individual countries influences the development of the world revolution and that the entire world revolutionary process is inter-dependent. The proposition on the leading role of the Communist Party in the period of preparation for and accomplishment of the socialist revolution and during the building of socialism also rests on the ideas propounded by the founders of Marxism.

p And does not the slogan of the unity of the working class, a unity demanded by Marx and Engels, remain the overriding slogan of the communist movement? Implementation of this slogan makes it possible to achieve success in the revolutionary struggle in capitalist countries and in the building of socialism, and it opens up prospects for the triumph of the working people throughout the world.

p Even when it just appeared and took shape, Marxism displayed its superiority over other theories of social development, winning the ideological battle forced on it. Marx and Engels proved that the Right and “Left” varieties of opportunism were untenable. From the Right, it will be recalled, the revolutionary theory was attacked by Lassalleanism. This form of opportunism is linked with the name of Ferdinand Lassalle, a leader of the German working-class movement, whom to this day the Social-Democratic Party of Germany regards-as its teacher. Lassalle called for the creation of an independent organisation of the working class that would fight for universal suffrage by equal, direct and secret ballot. Contending that there was no sense in the workers’ struggle for higher wages, Lassalle saw the 19 solution in workers’ producers’ associations, in which the proletariat would be an entrepreneur. Created on the basis of universal suffrage, the “people’s state" would, according to Lassalle, lead to progress and freedom. On this basis the Lassalleans co-operated with the reactionary Chancellor Leopold von Bismarck against the liberal bourgeoisie in the hope of winning suffrage in exchange. Everybody knows what came of this.

p While subscribing to the idea of an independent organisation of the working class, Marx and Engels fought Lassalle’s theories, which were unscientific and hostile to the interests of the proletariat. Lassalleanism is most fully exposed in Critique of the Gotha Programme, which subjects to a scathing scientific criticism Lassalle’s specious interpretation of the laws of the movement of wages, his idealistic assessment of the role of the class state, and so on.  [19•* 

p Marx and Engels waged a resolute struggle also against anarchism, one of whose spiritual fathers was Pierre- Joseph Proudhon. A major result of this struggle was the more profound elaboration of the political teaching of Marxism and of the tactics of the proletarian class struggle. The focal issue was linked with the attainment of socialist objectives: the ways of abolishing the bourgeois state, the revolutionary transformation of society, the forms of collective ownership as the foundation for absolute liberty and equality, and the ways of organising society after the victory over the bourgeoisie. In the First International the anarchists, led by the Russian petty-bourgeois revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin who was their leading ideologist, were opposed to the authoritarian principle in the organisation of society and, above all, to the teaching on the political party of the working class.

p The struggle which Marx and Engels waged against opportunism in the working-class movement was subsequently continued in two directions—against Right and against 20

p “Left" opportunism. To this day the communist movement has to fight the reformists among the Social-Democrats and the revisionists in their own ranks, against petty-bourgeois pseudo-revolutionism that leads to anarchism and adventurism. In this struggle the communist movement draws on the experience of Marx and Engels. Their uncompromising attitude towards any deviation from proletarian theory and their passion and argumentation in proving the truth teach the Communists to be flexible and, at the same time, principled in firmly and consistently upholding the general line of our movement.

For more than a century historical development has been following the path foretold by Marxist theory. The Marxism of the modern epoch is Leninism, the legitimate successor and continuer of the entire revolutionary-theoretical and revolutionary-practical cause left to mankind by Marx and Engels.