ABSTRACT
PREVIEW After Marx’s death, the socialist movement shattered into separate components: the orthodox Marxists, the revisionists and Fabians, and the MarxistLeninists. Orthodox Marxism soon collapsed, a victim of its own inadaptability. Insisting on a gradual, nonviolent achievement of socialism, the revisionists and Fabians have had a great impact on virtually every non-Marxist socialist movement in the world, including our own. For his part, Lenin significantly modified Marxism, transforming it into a practical though elitist movement. He reinfused Marxism with violent impulses, and he made Marxism a political reality. Most importantly, he modernized Marxist theory and created a practical template by which to implement it. Succeeding Lenin, Stalin created an intractable totalitarian model and transformed the ideology from an internationalist theory to a nationalist doctrine. However, Stalin’s passing from the scene made increasingly clear the limited utility of the model he bequeathed. Successive efforts at reform, alternating with ostrich-like retrenchment, proved unsuccessful in forestalling the inevitable, and ultimately, the Soviet behemoth collapsed of its own dead weight.
