Marxism is best known as a theory of the development, endemic crises, and predictable dissolution of capitalism. In addition, Marxism is a political movement that has had some successes and failures. The first aim of this book is to examine and critique the political movements that Marx directly confronted or that derived from Marx following his death in 1883, when a variety of Marxist parties arose in opposition to one another. Contrary to Marx's expectations, when socialist societies were brought into being in the twentieth century, they did not result directly from the contradictions of the advanced capitalist system, but from the effects of imperialism. Beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the revolutionary impetus had shifted from the developed West to the capitalist periphery. Marx had not speculated in any depth about the nature of the socialist society that would replace capitalism. This book attempts to assess the positive and negative lessons of this experience, particularly in Russia and China, in the light of contemporary issues. In the twenty-first century it is clear that none of these revolutions has succeeded in achieving an equitable and humane socialist society; rather, they have in the main reinvented capitalism.
