Well one certainly can’t argue that the Bolshevik revolution successfully created a vanguard state and began the work of abolishing hierarchy, but correspondence from 1877 makes it clear that he thought the Russian peasantry had at least a chance of skipping the capitalist stage in the journey towards socialism, as no large number of them had yet been converted into the proletariat, and he comments that they will lose the “finest chance” of avoiding the worst degradations of industrialization.
That sounds to me like he’s at least open to the idea of a peasant revolutionary force, even if the conditions in his time weren’t quite right.
Whether he would have agreed that chance was still available in 1917 is another question.
Well one certainly can’t argue that the Bolshevik revolution successfully created a vanguard state and began the work of abolishing hierarchy, but correspondence from 1877 makes it clear that he thought the Russian peasantry had at least a chance of skipping the capitalist stage in the journey towards socialism, as no large number of them had yet been converted into the proletariat, and he comments that they will lose the “finest chance” of avoiding the worst degradations of industrialization.
That sounds to me like he’s at least open to the idea of a peasant revolutionary force, even if the conditions in his time weren’t quite right.
Whether he would have agreed that chance was still available in 1917 is another question.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm
Interesting. I’ll give it a read when I’m more awake.