I don’t have the exact quote, if I did I would just search it and find it myself, but it essentially states that the communist revolution (or “revolution” in general, but it was related to socialism) would happen in industrialized countries first and then spread to non-industrialized ones. It was something like revolution starting in rich countries first and then in “poor” ones. Or I could be misremembering the quote entirely and it was the exact opposite point being made: revolution would begin in the non-industrialized countries and then spread to the industrialized.
Does that makes sense? I hope I’m making sense. I remember hearing this in class but I forgot who was named as the owner. Was it Marx? Lenin? Engels? Someone else? I keep forgetting to ask my professor so I’m asking here. I need it to make a point in my paper.
This is a notion that goes as far back as Engel’s principles of communism (section linked), that the revolution would be more likely in countries where the productive forces were the most developed, spreading outwards. Many (European) authors wrote something like that a lot basically up to the Russian revolution, where an actual successful revolution happened outside the imperial core and the European revolutions failed to follow through.
AFAIK this was also the basis for one of the early theoretical splits between the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and Trotsky in-between, with their theories of two-stage revolution/stagism (first a bourgeois revolution is necessary to end feudalism and develop capitalism, then a socialist revolution) or permanent revolution, which IIRC at some point was used to advocate for exporting the revolution to the imperial core in order to receive material support back from the developed nations.
Now after the many ML revolutions peripheral nations, this position is reserved mostly to Western chauvinist social-democrats or revisionists, specially those who deny or ignore the theory of imperialism. AFAIK the standard notion now is that, with the exportation of capital and labour exploitation, and the opportunity for broad national anti-imperialist alliances, the peripheral nations are the ones with greater revolutionary potential.
I may be wrong there, and if so, I’d be glad to be corrected.
The quote is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, who wrote in his book “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (1916):
“The chain of events in international politics is now dragging the capitalist world towards an imperialist war. The struggle for markets, the struggle for raw materials, and the struggle for spheres of influence—all these are now leading to military conflicts. The bourgeoisie of the advanced countries is driving the masses into war, while the working class is striving to resist this drive. But the working class cannot achieve victory unless it rises to the level of a conscious understanding of its own interests and its own tasks. The slogan ‘Peaceful coexistence’ between nations is a deception, a fraud, a lie. The only peace that the bourgeoisie can offer us is a peace of exploitation, a peace of oppression, a peace of hunger and want. The proletariat must wage a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie for the overthrow of the rule of capital.”
In this passage, Lenin argues that the capitalist system leads to imperialism and conflict between nations, and that the working class must rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie in order to establish a more just society. He does not explicitly state that revolution will start in industrialized countries and then spread to non-industrialized ones, but he suggests that the struggle for power and resources between nations will lead to global conflict and ultimately to the downfall of capitalism.
It’s worth noting that Karl Marx also wrote extensively about the potential for revolution and the role of the working class in bringing about change, but he did not make the specific argument you mentioned.
Credit goes to the huggingchat (meta-llama/Llama-2-70b-chat-hf)
