World revolution
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- For other uses, see World revolution (disambiguation).
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World revolution is a Marxist concept of a violent overthrow of capitalism that would take place in all countries, although not necessarily simultaneously.
Arguably, the international situation in the years immediately following World War I was the closest the world ever came to such a revolution. The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia sparked a wave of socialist and communist uprisings across Europe, most notably the German Revolution and the Hungarian Revolution, which made large gains and met with considerable success in the early stages. Particularly in the years 1918-1919, it seemed plausible that capitalism would soon be swept from the European continent forever. Given the fact that European powers controlled the majority of Earth's land surface at the time, such an event could have meant the end of capitalism not just in Europe, but everywhere.
With the prospect of world revolution so close at hand, Marxists were dominated by a feeling of overwhelming optimism, which in the end proved to be quite premature. The European revolutions were crushed one by one, until eventually the Russian revolutionaries found themselves to be the only survivors. Since they had been relying on the idea that an underdeveloped and agrarian country like Russia would be able to build socialism with help from successful revolutionary governments in the more industrialized parts of Europe, they found themselves in a crisis once it became clear that no such help would arrive (see Socialism in one country).
After those events and up until the present day, the international situation never came so close to a world revolution ever again. Revolts across the world in the 1960s and 1970s, coupled with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the establishment of the New Left together with Civil Rights Movement, the militancy of the Black Panther Party and other armed groups, and even a bit of a resurgence in the labor movement, for a time once again made it seem as though world revolution was not only possible, but actually imminent -- thus the expression, "The East is Red, and the West is Ready". However, this radical spirit soon ebbed in the 1980s and 1990s by a conservative backlash and free-market reforms in China (which had for a time been the new inspiration for international communism), as well as in Vietnam.
The Communist International, or Comintern, founded in March 1919, began as an independent international organization of communists from various countries in around the world. After the Russian Civil War it evolved into a Soviet-sponsored agency responsible for coordinating the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide. Functioning as a unified world party, it had as its aim the accomplishment of a world revolution. However, as Fascism grew in Europe in the 1930s, the ComIntern strategy was changed. Instead of immediate revolution, ComIntern opted for a Popular Front against Fascism. Later Comintern was disbanded in 1943, on the request of the Western allies of the Soviet Union.
Within Marxism, Lenin's detailing of Marx's concept of the labor aristocracy, as well as Lenin's description of imperialism and (separately, though not necessarily unrelatedly) Trotsky's theories regarding the corruption of the Soviet Union under Stalinism, offer several explanations regarding why the world revolution has not occurred to the present day.
In the worlds described in Soviet science fiction, the world revolution usually has already taken place.
