Isn't socialist revolution ultimately inevitable?

Question

Whenever I see news of a strike on TV I am reminded of Marx's historical materialism. He said that history progresses through class conflict: the oppressed class overthrows the oppressive class and that's how things go. The proletariat have separate interests from the bourgeoisie.

So, will class antagonisms not one day reach a boiling point and a stage when the two classes cannot any longer co-exist?

Answer 1

An interesting question!  More than likely history will always repeat itself.

An example would be Rome, right?  When it started burning, it was due to internal strife, not an enemy from outside of this civilization.  

More than class antagonisms, there is a natural cycle to all civilizations:  we start with pre agrarian (sp?), move on to pre industrial, and end in technical eras.  Due to these advancing systems, the older grow older, and the younger generations decrease.  This is due to a kind of "class" system.  A technical world requires more time, therefore there is less time to devote to child rearing.  Eventually, an epidemic blows through, wiping out individuals in all classes, thus creating new civilizations that start with the healthiest survivors instead of the wealthiest.

Communism and socialism are wonderful in the "pure" sense, but human greed always follows.  Then you have workers getting poorer, and the rich getting richer.  Corruption occur with power, and absolute power corrupts.

Interesting, eh??

Answer 2

No, the new system is clever. It is three-tiered. There are oppressors, and then two classes of economically oppressed peoples; those that spend their life working for the rich and those that don't. Us workers (the compent among the oppressed, those that would usually spark unrest and revolution) are perfectly willing to trade our lives for big screen TVs and 40-year mortgages on trailers - just because we have it better than lazy uncle JimBob.

Answer 3

It won’t be a revolution like Marx envisioned because world-wide governance is much more subtle, pervasive, and powerful today than it was in Marx’s day. You won’t see another Russian Revolution.

Look at socialism in Western Europe and you will see the future. Currently, the socialists in Europe can’t take their economic beliefs as far as they want because too much money and talent would flow to the U.S. if they did. But it might be only a matter of time before the American working class awards itself massive entitlements by populating congress with left-wing representatives. Then European politicians can go all the way with their agenda.

However, modern socialism is no longer a tool for common people to rise to power. Instead it is a means for the ruling class to halt unauthorized upward economic mobility. That’s not what Marx had in mind, but that is the reality of socialism/communism where social class is solidified and no one rises to a position of controlling resources without the approval of the political masters.

Answer 4

No. I don't agree. Read the "10 Planks" of the "Communist Manifesto." Look at the amount of government force necessary to make them work. Understand that the comment about our own 14th Amendment is not joking--and that I am no Communist conspiracy theorist. I simply know that it takes government force to make anything but laissez faire capitalism work.

It is not inevitable that people, let alone Americans, would allow such force to be used. But it has been used. In Russia, China, Cuba, N. Korea, etc. And by the allowance of the creation of the "citizen of the United States," which did not exist as a legal entity until the 14th Amendment, our own government has increasingly, bit by bit, gathered enough implicit power to make us do what it wants because we willingly believe that since it is our Constitution, it cannot be wrong.