Marxism, Revolution, and the Making of New Nations

It was the political activity of Europeans in the nineteenth century that was to occupy the intellectual energy of the founders of Marxism. This was because both Marx and Engels fully expected Socialist revolution in the industrial centers of their time—rich as those centers were in proletarian masses and centralized, cartelized industries. Marxist theory concerned itself with that “imminent” revolution, leaving talk of the uprisings in the less-developed regions for another day. That was to make Marxism far less relevant for our time than it might otherwise have been.