ABSTRACT
After Marx’s death in 1883, the complexities and tensions of his works were resolved into a dogmatic and mechanistic science. Beginning with Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, written between 1872 and 1882, and continuing through the Second International and Soviet Marxism in the 1920s and 1930s, Marxism became a universalist and monistic method. In the form of “dialectical materialism,” Marx’s work was transformed into a positivistic and teleological science of history that erased social complexity and causal contingency and promised the global victory of communism. Marx’s emphasis on the need for a mature and independent proletariat was completely lost in the bureaucratic command of workers by the Vanguard Party. Rather than assisting workers in the abolition of classes, intellectuals established themselves as a new ruling class over workers and peasants.
