Marxism and the Elite Paradox

Bertrand Russell, a socialist who traveled to Moscow in

1920, noticed the Bolsheviks better resembled

religious

fanatics than political theorists.

When Lenin wanted to prove a point, he'd quote Marx and Engels the way

a pastor recites scripture. In his history of Western philosophy,

Russell later laid out the rest of the parallels.

God, the active force shaping the world, becomes dialectical

materialism. Marx takes the form of the Messiah, the

elect are replaced by the proletariat, the Communist Party is the

church, the second coming is communist revolution, hell is

punishment for the capitalists, and the communist commonwealth

is portrayed

as heaven. The manifesto states that its ends can only be achieved

by, quote, "The forcible overthrow of all

existing social conditions." Marx wanted to destroy the world and

assumed his undefined heaven would arise from its ashes.

So who converts to this Marxist faith?

If Marxism is a doctrine that supposedly speaks on behalf of

the oppressed and downtrodden, why is it so often adopted

by the elites? Marx himself, while railing against the evils of the

bourgeoisie, came from an upper middle class family

that owned vineyards and

employed domestic servants. Friedrich Engels, his biggest supporter

and personal financier, drew his money from the family textile

business. Vladimir Lenin's father had attained

hereditary nobility and

his family owning property and employing servants.

Trotsky's father was a prosperous landowner in what is now Ukraine.

Mao Zedong's family was considerably better off than ordinary

Chinese

peasants. Fidel Castro's family had a large estate.

Che Guevara was born into a relatively affluent family.

Pol Pot's family had unusually strong connections to the Cambodian

royal court, and he came across Marxist doctrine

while studying

abroad in Paris. All of these well-off men would go on to

create, support, or lead revolutions that killed millions of the people

they claimed to represent. But this is not an accident, and

Marx said so himself. The manifesto explains that, quote, "A

portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat and, in

particular, a portion of bourgeoisie ideologists who

have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the

historical movement as a whole." He wrote an excuse for his own

class position into the founding text.

Lenin built on this notion, arguing that workers left to

themselves only reach trade union consciousness,

supposing that socialist theory has to be instilled in them from the

outside by educated elites, what he would call the vanguard.

Marxist thought leaders admit the workers were never the ones who came

up with it. So while the common narrative is

that Marxism and

communism are doctrines for the benefit of the poor, the men who built

and led them were almost without exception the elite.