In the disciplines of science and technology, a reconciliation of any gap between theory and practice (or differences between ideas and reality) is resolved by controlled experiments, unprejudiced observation of them and repeated confirmation of any results, whether positive or negative. In technology a prototype is constructed and tested. This is a form of evaluation which is rarely possible in the social, spheres of life, because control and unprejudiced observation in the social sphere of human affairs, is notoriously difficult to implement. Hierarchical mass society systems are based upon differences and prejudices, both large and small. So in the vast majority of cases, the gap between social theory and social reality within social affairs is so great, that there is little or no chance of unprejudiced experimentation. For this reason, those issues considered important enough, attract an intellectual, form of assessment by argument and discussion. The so-called ‘battle of ideas’ In such cases  competing opinions, based upon evidence, logic and/or speculation are tested against each other in public or private and any resolution is decided by the agreement or otherwise of those concerned individuals who are interested or affected by the issue.

In view of the number of extreme political, social, climate, environmental,  military and economic circumstances taking place in the 21st century, this process of subjective judgement and intellectual resolution to the gap between social theory and social practice is occuring on many levels. Despite the plethora of national and international laws enshrining the rights of citizens, the elites in most countries are currently conducting ruthless class based wars against their own citizens and against nature as well as wars of extermination (at genocidal levels) against the citizens of other hierarchical mass societies. So the gap between the anthropocentric theory and practice of human living, from the ‘liberal’ perspective  has become increasingly wide again. One particular current aspect of this widening  gap between anthropocentric based theory and practice, that I have been addressing lately is the huge gap between those on the  left who adhere theoretically to an Anticapitalist position and their almost total neglect of addressing how moribund their theoretical view of revolution has become in the 21st century.

Thus the anthropocentric focus upon the social crisis of humanity continually eclipses the biological crisis within the wider integrated and interdependent reality of life on earth.  In this article I will therefore focus more upon this moribund anticapitalist view of revolution than on the gap between the Anticapitalist view of social revolution and their marginal concern for the ecological balance of the planets total biosphere. This marginalisation of the increasing eco/biological crisis continues in the 21st century even though at a real world practical level, it is upon this integrated biological balance (for air, water, food) that everything else depends. Consequently, the anthropocentric view of revolution that most of the current Anticapitalist left are following is a theoretical one that was formulated almost two centuries ago during the 18th and 19th centuries. And it was based primarily upon the industrialisation of the mode of production and the changed economic role and social status of the industrialised labouring classes.

This practical transformation of the mode of production, from one based on the application of natural sources of energy creation and application (human and animal), to one based upon socially organised factories and inorganic sources of energy and mechanical forms of application, was from an anthropocentric perspective considered revolutionary. This radical technological reform of human labour from one mode of historical production to another, therefore triggered a whole series of social and theoretical responses – both positive and negative. On the one hand this transformation was hailed as a blessing (bringing freedom from land-based serfdom) and on the other as a curse (introducing factory based dangers and wage slavery). However, a third theoretical tendency emerged which welcomed the severing of the labouring population from working for the landed gentry and viewed the factory methods of mass production as enabling the future creation of sufficiently plentiful essential resources to satisfy everyone in society. At the same time this positive spin on socio-economic change assumed that commodity production for the masses would compensate the working population for the negative aspects of the new high intensity technological form of repetitive drudgery.

Therefore, the initial Ludite tendency of workers smashing up capitalist forms of machinery by some working populations, gave way to two other tendencies; 1, the theoretical tendency to advocate and implement measures of ‘Reform’ through social ‘pressure’ to make improvements to the industrial system, 2, the tendency to theoretically advocate ‘Revolution’ by suggesting that workers should take over the industrial system and overthrow the existing elite governance of it. One of the most profound theoretical advocates of this early revolutionary trend among the Ant-capitalists, was Karl Marx. However, it needs to be stressed that due to the limited occurance of actual working class revolutions, the 19th century theories of Marx and others were never tested in practice. Thus Marx remained mainly a social theorist, utilising philosophy, history, economics, and political ideas to try to intellectually convince his readers of the accurate correspondence between the results of his economic studies and his theories of human alienation and of the workers potential to successfully engage in socio-economic revolution.

So apart from the Paris Commune, experimental confirmation of such working class based revolutionary ideas was mostly absent during Marx’s life time and therefore acceptance or rejection of his ideas was based on being intellectually convinced by how logical and convincing the ideas seemed to those considering them. Yet even amongst those who were totally appalled by the social effects of the capitalist mode of production, the ideas advocated by Marx, only convinced a very small minority. That remained the case until the early 20th century when a new generation of convinced revolutionary advocates in 1917 and beyond were presented with the opportunity to practically implement at least some of Marx’s ideas. In Russia a minority of self-identified Marxist revolutionaries had gathered in a political tendency bearing the name Bolsheviks. In China advocates of peasant led bottom up revolution, became identified as Maoists; and in Cuba as Castroists.

With the conquest of power, the Bolshevik pro-Marxists in Russia and the Maoist pro-Marxists in China, began the mass production of low cost editions of the works of Marx and later Lenin, Stalin and Mao. These cheap editions were shipped around the world and became relatively popular in countries which had populations seeking to overthrow governments, either their own government or the governmental control of powerful colonial or imperial foreign countries. Marx by this process was both popularised and substantially distorted.

Consequently, in reality within Russia, China and Cuba, the Marxists there implemented very few of Marx’s ideas and the modes of production they constructed in these countries remained hierarchical, ruthlessly authoritarian and exponentially exploititive. The economic categories they encouraged and presided over, remained based upon wage labour and capital and these continued to define the economic activity of all three countries. Workers and peasants remained workers, the revolutionary leaders became the administrative elite and ‘capital’ (i.e. stored up past labour), became controlled by that political elite. Indeed, Lenin, elevated by his ‘disciples’ to the status of a ‘Pope’ of Marxist Ideology, at one point described his version of this hierarchical mass society model he led as State Capitalism.

For those interested in much more detail of this departure of Marxists from Marx in the case of Russia there is a free download document on this blog entitled ‘Revolutionary-Humanism and the Anti-capitalist Struggle’. It is available in two parts. Within it I have documented in considerable detail how the events in Russia and the later Soviet Union under the control of Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks quickly descended into an authoritarian dictatorship. Suffice it to say that the gap between the theories of Marx and the real practice of the Leninists, Maoists and Castroists was an immense one. Previously, in considering a series of bourgeois revolutions of the period, Marx had written the following;

“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far — not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world — that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one. (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League” (London, March 1850), in Marxist Internet Archive,)

The above extract has often been used by modern apologists of the Leninists/Marxist theory of revolution (one more use occured this month) to rationalise their continued advocacy of Leninism and Bolshevism and thus by implication that they adhered to the theories of Marx. However, in assuming that Lenin closely followed Marx they were entirely wrong. He and the Bolsheviks did not. Lenin was more impressed by Fredrick Winslow Taylors ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ (i.e. time and motion studies in capitalist based production) than Karl Marx’s ideas on the emancipation of the working classes – by their own efforts. Lenin wrote:

“There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals.” (Lenin Complete Works. Volume 27 page 268)

Having gained state power, dictatorial powers were implemented in Soviet industry and agriculture by Lenin (et al) in order to “raise the intensity of labour” (Lenin p 258). In fact this ‘intensity’ was of repetitive, polluted, long duration, factory labour.  Revealingly, in advocating a return to the ideas of Lenin a modern supporter of his in 2025, not only reproduced the first extract above by Marx, but failed to include any reference to the  following paragraph in the ‘Address’ by Marx in which Marx suggested in the wake of any successful worker-led revolution, that;

“…from the first moment of victory, mistrust must be directed no longer against the conquered reactionary party, but against the workers previous allies, against the party that wishes to exploit the common victory for itself alone…..The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, muskets, cannon and munitions must be put through at once, ….However, where the latter is not feasible the workers must attempt to organise themselves independently as a proletarian guard with commanders elected by themselves and with a general staff of their own choosing and to put themselves at the command, not of the state authority but of the revolutionary community counsels which the workers have managed to get adopted.” (ibid. Emphasis added RR)

Now in my opinion, based upon considerable historical research, the whole basis of this 19th century theoretical perspective by Marx was inevitably an idealised and abstract formulation of revolution and what social symptoms cause them to occur. I suggest this perspective was based more upon theoretical logic and hope, than on reality. Furthermore, the practical reality of revolution in Russia, China and Cuba eventually demonstrated that the logic of politically based revolutionary transformations, as advocated by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky etc., was flawed and so failed to materialize in all three cases. Furthermore, the basis of Marx’s general view of an industrial worker-led revolution has also been rendered mostly obsolete by the passage of time and by the subsequent development of the capitalist mode of production.

As Marx noted in section 3 of his criticism of the Gotha Proramme, that; “ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish”, and thus needed to be discarded. Nevertheless, within the general anthropocentric based social thinking of that 19th century revolutionary period, Marx did issue a valid warning against an elite tendency which actually sprang into being within months of the October 1917 overthrow of Czarist dominated Russia.
Nothing advocated by Marx in the last extract reproduced above (or those in any of his works) was mentioned or implemented by the so-called Marxist theoreticians of Bolshevism. Not by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or any of the other members of the Bolshevik Central Committee. In fact Lenin and his entire elite ‘vanguard’ crew created and ‘managed’ an almost mirror image of the totalitarian Nazi hierarchical mass society.

In the 21st century, it also becomes notable that those who cling onto a revolutionary perspective advocated by some dead personalities (in this case Lenin) who achieved a cult status among those who have decided to become part of such a 20th century revolutionary tradition, never reveal the historical realities that repudiate or negate their heroes carefully manipulated reputation. Covering up unpleasant realities by selected quotes and selective historical ommisions seems to be an automatic reflex of followers of those they retrospectively assume to be extremely theoretically accomplished left personalities.

As a consequence of this Great Man tendency within anthropocentric ideology the advocates within the cults and sects of 20th and 21st century ‘Marxism’, have also turned Marx into an ‘authority’ figure to be mythically revered, and transformed parts of Marx’s 19th century Revolutionary-Humanist writings into religious style dogmas to be selectively preached from, whenever the opportunity arises. Some ‘Marxists’ wish to imitate the Bolshevik  failures of the past and once again promote a version of  ‘marxism’ as the dominant anthropocentric ideology of a future elite whose function like the ‘marxists’ of the past, will be to guide and ‘lead’ the ‘common people’ of the 21st century to a repeat form of hierarchical mass society, with themselves as the new Bolshevik type ruling elite.

At the current juncture as with all such un-self-critical ‘believers’ their ideological advocacy seems to be more concerned with rationalising and justifying their own orthodoxy to a form of so-called Marxist ideology (which Marx called out and denigrated whilst still alive) than to anything connected to reality. Orthodoxy and reliance on ‘authority’ figures with regard to the relevance of ideas of the present and past, is clearly easier for some than continuing the difficult effort to understand life on earth as it really has become in the 21st century.

I suggest that holding on to what was imagined to be ‘true’ in the 19th and 20th centuries is in essence no different than holding on to the imaginative revealed ‘truths’ of more ancient ‘authority’ figures. Incidentally, in this regard, Marx also wrote of his aversion to any form of authority or personality cult and cautioned against this tendency, writing;

“When Engels and I joined the secret Communist Society we made of it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.” (Letter to Blos. November 1877)

With the increasing commodification of personality cults which has morphed into 20 and 21st century political and media ‘celebrity’ worshipping forms, I suggest superstitious belief in authority in any of its forms, (left, right or centre) needs to be resolutely resisted. The fact is that over the last century and half, human socio-economic practices have changed incrementally and spread geographically and therefore human theoretical understandings of those practices need to change also. So too does the content and form of any suggestions of how to overcome or supercede the current system, that once critically studied, reveals itself to be so self-destructive and destructive of all the other essential life-support species forms of life on earth.

Missing from the majority of anthropocentric based anti-capitalist theories is the fact that the real world we have evolved to live in, primarily needs most, if not all, of the millions of species which are necessary to maintain an ecologically balanced biosphere which is thus liveable within for all organic beings. Without that complex interdependent biosphere, a modified this world – or another more egalitarian future social world – will never be possible.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2025)