ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century socialism was divided into three general currents. Marxism was based on the writings of Karl Marx, and placed the working class as a key agent of social change. In contrast, utopian socialism pointed to intellectual arguments and enlightened ruling class interests, rather than the working class, as the agent of change. Despite anarchism’s early significance, its political importance was eclipsed with the 1917 October or Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. John Reed, a journalist from the United States, recorded these events in Ten Days That Shook the World. The success of using government structures to change society inspired many anarchists to join with Marxists in the 1920s to create communist parties throughout the Americas. The victory of Fidel Castro’s guerrilla troops over the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1959 was the single most important event for socialist movements in the Americas in the 20th century.
