Didn’t say you should read all of it, you could just read the first 2, Why Socialism? and Why Marxism? and be pretty well-equipped to understand the gist of it. The guide itself is meant to be comprehensive and equip the reader to be a good organizer in real life.
Either way, Marxism was compatible with the capitalism of his time. However, Marx did not live to see the ways imperialism would begin to shift the problems of capitalism from the global north to the global south. Britain, France, Germany, and the US especially ended up becoming imperialist powers that expropriated vast amounts of wealth from the global south, raising conditions for their own working classes, delaying the revolution Marx thought would come to the global north first.
Lenin advanced Marxism by analyzing imperialism, noting that revolution would come to the global south before the north. The heightened contradictions from imperialism drove nationalist and communist movements in the global south against imperialism. This is ignoring advancements in organizing like the concept of the vanguard, etc, and is focused on all the new questions building socialism in underdeveloped countries instead of building on top of developed capitalist systems. Marx noted that the industrialization of society made collective ownership and planning more effective, but what do you do if a country that isn’t as industrialized has a revolution? That’s what Lenin answered.
Yeah… I’m not reading all that, “introductory” is a generous term, lol
Can you explain in what ways marxism was incomplete for the era of capitalism?
Didn’t say you should read all of it, you could just read the first 2, Why Socialism? and Why Marxism? and be pretty well-equipped to understand the gist of it. The guide itself is meant to be comprehensive and equip the reader to be a good organizer in real life.
Either way, Marxism was compatible with the capitalism of his time. However, Marx did not live to see the ways imperialism would begin to shift the problems of capitalism from the global north to the global south. Britain, France, Germany, and the US especially ended up becoming imperialist powers that expropriated vast amounts of wealth from the global south, raising conditions for their own working classes, delaying the revolution Marx thought would come to the global north first.
Lenin advanced Marxism by analyzing imperialism, noting that revolution would come to the global south before the north. The heightened contradictions from imperialism drove nationalist and communist movements in the global south against imperialism. This is ignoring advancements in organizing like the concept of the vanguard, etc, and is focused on all the new questions building socialism in underdeveloped countries instead of building on top of developed capitalist systems. Marx noted that the industrialization of society made collective ownership and planning more effective, but what do you do if a country that isn’t as industrialized has a revolution? That’s what Lenin answered.
That’s a very quick overview.