One Road from Marx: On the Vision of Socialism, and the Fate of Workers' Control, in Socialist Thought

Abstract

In 1899 a little-known, now long-forgotten, Polish revolutionist named Waclaw Machajski published a small book, The Evolution of Social Democracy, which provoked consternation in the nascent Marxist movement in Russia. Its thesis was that the new messianism of socialism masked an ideology of discontented intellectuals, and that the new socialist society would simply replace one ruling class with another, so that the workers would still remain exploited, albeit this time by a new class of professional leaders.