of Hegel is turned upon its head’ (Engels, Fuerbach and the End of
Classical German Philosophy, Marx and Engels, 1962, Vol. II: 387).
By placing nineteenth-century capitalism in perspective as one of
several stages of history which inevitably lead on to new, higher,
stages, Hegel’s idea of a logic of history is adopted. But instead of the
Ideal manifesting itself progressively through history, ideas
(ideology) are seen as reflecting the underlying material ‘means of
production’. As Engels puts it:
allpast history with the exception of its primitive stages was the history
of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the
products of the modes of production and exchange – in a word, of the
economicconditions of their time; that the economic structure of society
always furnishes the real basis from which we can alone work out the
ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political
institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of
a given historical period.
(Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,
Marx and Engels, 1962: 134–135)Class warfare will only cease to be the dynamic of history with the
abolition of class in the future communist society.
Much of their work was also seeking to build up a socialist
movement (the International Working Men’s Association) which
shared their moral rejection of the exploitative nature of capitalism.
As the Communist Manifestoshows, the theory can be impressively
marshalled as rhetoric to buttress an appeal to political action. The
feeling of being on the side of history, having a ‘scientific’ insight into
social processes, and being morally in the right, is a heady brew which
still appeals – especially to the young and politically idealistic.
Leninism and Stalinism
In the twentieth century the most obvious heirs to Marx have been
the leaders of the former Soviet Union. The most ideologically
creative and politically influential of these were Vladimir Illich Lenin
(born V. I. Ulyanov) [1870–1924] and Joseph Stalin (born Joseph
Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) [1879–1953]. They led this successor
state to the Russian Empire in their capacities as secretaries of the
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