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cyberdad
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19 Dec 2022, 3:39 pm

One of the primary tenants of the arguments common to both Marx and Engels was the societal symptom of wealth being concentrated in the hands of few. At the time they lived, the wealth disparity was so stark that it had 100 years before precipitated peasant revolution in France and then subsequently in Russia.

But yes, they were focussed on localised semi-fuedal relationships between aristocratic landowners and peasants and newly industrial merchants and the working class. At that time the idea of communism like class relations never mean't to be applied to colonial subjects of empires.



naturalplastic
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20 Dec 2022, 12:47 am

Marx came up with his theory of class warfare after an exhaustive analysis of western european society. Concluded that society had gone through phases, and that in his time capitalism was 'the mode of production'. So the class struggle was between workers and the owners class. He thought that the great communist revolution would happen in western europe, or even in the United States. Never envisioned that it would happen in Slavic east european country like Russia, nor that his ideas would spread to the third world. But in a feudalist society you dont need to be a genius scholar to analyze society. "Class warfare" between peasants and feudal lords is obvious to the most illiterate peasant.Hense why his ideas spread east and southward on the planet faster than they spread westward.



cyberdad
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20 Dec 2022, 5:09 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
"Class warfare" between peasants and feudal lords is obvious to the most illiterate peasant.Hense why his ideas spread east and southward on the planet faster than they spread westward.


He also didn't understand intercultural psychology. Many of the eastern societies that took up communist "ideas" and repackaged them, were collectivist societies where it was socially undesirable to question authority. But actually the mode of revolution is much the same, English educated middle class intellectuals were sold on the ideas put forward by Marx and Engels and they translated these writings into Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and other languages which could be understood by peasant leaders who were empowered/motivated to form cooperatives that supported uprisings, not from the ground up but from top-down.