The political ideas of marx and engels: Marxism and totalitarian democracy, 1818-50

Abstract

The Imposing Growth of non-Communist scholarship on Marx during the last several years has swept away many Cold War vulgarities and, by focusing interest on his early philosophical writings, exposed the profound humanist roots of Marx's value system. But there has been no equivalent volume of new interest in the specifically political ideas and values of Marx and Engels. The conventions of the Cold War assign the two men unambiguously to the totalitarian camp, identifying them completely with the repressive one-party dictatorships that have been created in their names. Communists themselves, while rejecting the label "totalitarian," have been equally insistent that Marx and Engels opposed Western-style "bourgeois" democracy and favored "proletarian dictatorship" under the guidance of a single vanguard party, at least until the mythic day when the state itself would disappear.