Where would Marxism be if there had not been the 1917 revolution?

It should be started with the fact that the theory of Marxism was built on a critique of capitalism and the desire to create a new type of society called socialism. Marxist economic theory analyzed the economic relations in a capitalist society and came to the conclusion that in such a society, the people of bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat, extracting profit from their labor. The main reasons for exploitation are private ownership of the means of production and wages determined by market conditions. Marxists followed the abolition of private property and the creation of a socialist society, where the means of production are publicly owned, and production is carried out on the basis of the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” They believed that equality and justice could be achieved only by organizing such a society. Also they hold the view that exploitation would be eliminated by those factors.

Even today, Marx’s works are actively cited by many scientific figures. His name is known to every educated person, his ideas are used in many academic fields, and Marxist theory itself enjoys enormous scientific status. However, it should be noted that all this is almost completely outside of practical economics. But the geopolitical tension observed today, driving the world economy into a deglobalization trend, and countries into a process of increasing protectionism against the backdrop of growing internal social problems, calls into question the possibility of a practical return of Marxism.

Therefore, it is important to look at one of the most modern areas of studying the scientist’s works - identifying the reasons due to which Marx’s ideas once became a kind of “mainstream”. This is precisely the task that American researchers Magness and Makovi set themselves in their work “Mainstream Marx: the effect of the Russian Revolution on the influence of Karl Marx.”

The works of Karl Marx spread rather slowly into the British, American and even German academies and were practically not seriously recognized by them. His ideas were considered internally contradictory and easily superseded by other developments (for example, marginalism). Thus, Marx’s ideas, without receiving any noticeable success or recognition in scientific debates, gained significance in the context of complicated geopolitical events in the form of the onset of the October Revolution of 1917. As a result, the non-Marxist socialist government of Alexander Kerensky was overthrown, and the Bolsheviks supporting the Marxist movement came to power.

For many foreign observers, the theory of Marxism became the key to understanding the “Bolshevik threat,” especially when real attempts to provoke similar upheavals began in Europe. Further dissemination of Marx's ideas followed after Lenin gained political power. The Soviet state became the main translator of Marx's works, Lenin organized the practice of pilgrimages to Marx's grave and one of several attempts to transport his remains to Moscow. In addition, the propaganda of the ideology of Marxism was observed through the works of art that Lenin directed.

It was then that Marxist theory was most distorted. The embodiment of this distortion was the creation of the USSR. This was not an exact embodiment of Marx's model. In general, no real economy could become the embodiment of Marx’s theory in its pure form. As a result, the implemented model was the model that is commonly called today a planned socialist economy.

Much of Marx's theory was not implemented in practice. For example, instead of social property according to Marx there was the concept of state property. The economy of the USSR was based on the principles of centralized planned management. There was no free pricing, competition, or motivation for more productive labor, since all resources and produced goods were distributed centrally (“from each according to his abilities - to each according to his needs”).

Suffice it to remember that Karl Marx himself noted that the transition to socialism is possible only in developed capitalist countries. True socialism can only be built by politically and culturally developed people. Otherwise, it will only be a “parody of socialism”. In addition, Marx said that the revolution of transition from capitalism to socialism can occur peacefully and non-peacefully. The “non-peaceful path” and the “parody” of socialism were implemented in the USSR.

Magness and Makovi believe that the 1917 Russian Revolution was the main driving force for the further general acceptance of Marx's ideas. This hypothesis is tested by analyzing the number of mentions of the ideas of Marxism in the period between the death of Karl Marx and the beginning of the revolution and in the period after its end.

Before the revolution, the scientist was a widely known but relatively insignificant figure in the scientific community. However, after these events ended, Marx's economic theories subsequently entered the academic mainstream as they began to transform other non-economic disciplines.

Magness and Makovi built a model based on the synthetic control method, which allowed them to project the situation in the academic arena under the condition that the 1917 revolution had not occurred.

This model showed an interesting result: the actual citation index of Mars’ works is much higher than the simulated (assuming no revolution) indicator. Scientists have examined the impact of the October Revolution on the spread of Marx's ideas in English, German and French scientific works. It is interesting that the greatest number of citations of Marx is observed in the works of French authors. However, French citation patterns remain an outlier compared to both English and German citation patterns. The advent of the 1917 coup had little effect on the mention of Marx only in French works.

Based on this, the authors concluded that this political event played an important role in the emergence of Marx as an outstanding and authoritative thinker of that time. At the same time, economists emphasize that they do not equate the universal recognition of Marx only with the onset of the revolution in Russia and note the importance of the scientist’s developments, but put forward a hypothesis about a close correlation between the “mainstream” of Marxism and the October revolution of 1917. This political shock became an impetus for the general recognition of Marx’s ideas against the background of his initial rejection by professional economists.

The second conclusion that the researchers made is that modern scholars must reconsider the interpretation of the ideas of Marxism in light of their inextricable connection with the troubling events of the Soviet Union. While much of the discussion surrounding the bicentenary of Marx's birth has sought to separate consideration of his contemporary relevance from the totalitarian record of twentieth-century communism, the rise of Marx's stature brought about by the revolution shows that the two cannot be easily separated.

It is not enough to portray Soviet communism as a deviation from true Marxist doctrine, since the intellectual implementation of Marxist theory is closely intertwined with the formation of the Soviet Union. In assessing how this historical connection shapes current interpretations of Marx, it is necessary to grapple with the consequences of the intellectual dominance of Marxism in the early twentieth century as a Soviet political project.

1. V.A. Pisemsky “Economic theory of K. Marx” (Effects Faculty of Moscow State University, Moscow)

2. The Mainstreaming of Marx: Measuring the Effect of the Russian Revolution on Karl Marx's Influence (Phillip W. Magness, Michael Makovi), Journal of Political Economy, volume 131, number 6, June 2023.