How did the mechanics and energy required to operate the economics and military goals of the Soviet Union cause a deviation of basic Marxism?

Answer 1

On the surface, it may seem easy to see why Marxism had to be altered to fit the 20th Century. Karl Marx's future world dealt in a vacuum that only required letting the future take its natural scientific course, thereby creating a utopia. It's quite easy to predict from an armchair what the future will be. The reality of running the Soviet Union, already off to a less than Marxian model, caused problems in reaching the utopian world of communism.

Scholars have pointed out three conflicting elements that came to light in the closest thing yet in the world to become what Marx predicted. These elements can be boiled down to the following beliefs among the leaders of the new Soviet state:

* The notion of a scientifically predetermined course for history in which political power and leadership belonged legitimately only to those who did understand the scientific key to history, the true Marxists; ( this automatically excludes Stalin and is much closer to Trotsky )

* The notion that the achievements of certain democratic values from the humanistic 18th and 19th centuries would automatically ride along with the transition from capitalism to socialism; ( the so-called Fabian Society beliefs in England for example ) and

* The notion that all nations would pass through the class struggles system of feudal to bourgeois-capitalist to socialist stages. From socialism via some mystical process in which the state would wither away and a classless society would emerge.

As the world turned, not only would Utopia vanish, but it's final hope the Soviet Union would for all practical purposes evolve into a fascist Russian Federation.