1. The theory of historical materialism was invoked
by all the socialist and Marxist critics of Bolshevik-
Leninism since, if it were valid, a prima facie case
could be made against Lenin and his followers for
attempting to skip a stage of industrial development
and introduce socialism in a backward country. Lenin
and Trotsky in consequence reinterpreted the theory
by asserting that the world economy had to be treated
as a whole, that the world was already prepared for
socialism as a result of modern science, technology,
and industry, and that the
political revolution could
break out at the weakest link in the world economic
system as a whole. This would serve as a spark that
would set the more advanced industrial countries like
England, the USA, and Germany into revolutionary
motion (places where Marx and Engels had expected
socialism originally to come). This meant, of course,
that the theory of historical materialism could no
longer explain the
specific political act of revolution,
since on the theory of the weakest link, a political
revolution by a Marxist party anywhere in the world,
even in the Congo, could trigger off the world socialist
revolution.
On the theory of the weakest link, after the political
revolution successfully took its course and spread to
other countries, the world socialist revolution, marked
by the socialization of affluence, would be initiated by
advanced industrial countries, with Russia and China
once more bringing up the rear because of their primi-
tive economies. But they would be the last in a socialist
world, and only temporarily, until the world socialist
economy was established and strategic goods and
sources flowed to areas of greatest human need.
When the theory of the “weakest link” led in prac-
tice to the fact of a severed or isolated link, in conse-
quence of the failure of the October Russian Revolution
to inspire socialist revolutions in the West, the program
of “building socialism in one country” was adopted.
The attempt to build socialism in one country—and
in a bankrupt, war-torn, poverty-stricken country at
that—flew in the face of any reasonable interpretation
of historical materialism. Nonetheless, by a combina-
tion of great courage, and still greater determination
and ruthlessness, and aided by the ineptitude of their
political opponents, the Bolshevik-Leninists succeeded
in doing what the theory of historical materialism
declared impossible. There is no doubt but that a new
economy had been constructed by political means.
Despite this, however, the theory that the economic
base determines politics and not vice versa is still ca-
nonic doctrine in all communist countries.
