ABSTRACT
The communist revolution is the only way, it is said, to purge desperately troubled societies of the impediments to economic and political regeneration. The communist state, which for Marx was to wither away, has become one of the most powerful and effective instruments for manipulation seen by the eyes of man; and communism, originally conceived as the result of economic modernization, has instead become the revolution of underdevelopment. The Leninist innovations—statism, elitism, developmentalism—that cause communism to resemble fascism in such striking ways and that lead some scholars to speak of totalitarianism as a genus, with fascism and communism as two species. They are, in such a large degree, "Marxists," even as they discard the most fundamental, the most crucial idea of the master, namely, that the revolution follows, rather than precedes, economic and social modernization. The non–Western world especially, intellectuals and educated men in general find communism compelling; the vision of an enlightened, mobilizing and modernizing a backward society.
