GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF COMMUNISM Jll
as the examples of development. The opposite view, which
appears in die works of Marx and Engcls, is nothing but
nineteenth-century optimism/ 1
The issue, as Russell goes on to point out, has practical
importance to-day. The fundamental conflict in modern
civilization, according to the Marxist analysis, is that
between Communism and Capitalism. In the Communist
Manifesto, published in 1848, Marx envisages the possibility
that chaos may result from this conflict, but his usual
view, the view which pervades his later writings, is that
the conflict, after some partial victories for Capitalism,
will end in the triumph of the proletariat. This result is
in strict accordance with the dialectical theory, which
teaches that the establishment of one of two opposed
tendencies, Capitalism, will lead to the triumph of its contrary,
Communism, which will also embody all that is good
in Capitalism. In actual feet, however, the opposition may
quite possibly lead to a series of wars in which, under
modern conditions, there is a substantial chance that the
whole of civilization, as we know it, will be destroyed.
Hence not Communism, but barbarism, may well be the
next stage in the development of human history.
How Far Dialectical Development Entails Progress.
Whether Marx himself envisaged this possibility is not
clear. Had he been taxed with considerations of the kind
just mentioned, he would probably have insisted that it
had never been his intention to postulate the operation of
a necessary law of progress. 'A return to barbarism as
the result of another world war is/ he might maintain,
'perfectly consistent with the tenets of the Dialectic, as I
understand it, in its application to history* For a return to
barbarism cannot in any sense be called a development,
and it is only to development that the Dialectic applies.
Now so far as development is concerned, all that I
ever wished to maintain is that, if there is to be development
in the historical process, then the next stage in that
development must inevitably be Communism/