The Fall of the Soviet Union, Marxism, and Linear Versus Multilinear Historical Materialism: Debunking the Ortho-dogmatism of Steve Paxton’s Unlearning Marx
Carlos L. Garrido
Abstract
This article critically examines Steve Paxton’s argument in Unlearning Marx: Why the Soviet Failure Was a Triumph for Marx, which claims that the collapse of the Soviet Union confirms a linear, stage-ist interpretation of historical materialism. According to Paxton, socialism can only emerge from fully developed capitalism; therefore, the Soviet experiment, rooted in a largely pre-capitalist society, was historically doomed and its fall vindicates Marx. Although Paxton’s argument is logically valid within a rigid, linear schema of historical development, this article demonstrates that his reading rests on outdated and doctrinaire premises. Drawing on Marx’s late writings, particularly the Kovalevsky notebooks, the unsent letter to Mikhailovsky, the correspondence with Vera Zasulich, and the 1882 Russian preface to the Communist Manifesto, the article reconstructs Marx’s mature, multilinear understanding of historical development. These texts reveal a Marx who rejected universal, stage-bound sequences and recognized the possibility that pre-capitalist communal forms could transition to socialism by appropriating and retooling the technological advances produced by global capitalism. This reinterpretation exposes the shortcomings of Paxton’s framework and challenges attempts to read Soviet collectivization and industrialization as analogous to capitalist primitive accumulation. Instead, the article argues that early Soviet development should be understood as an effort to create the material preconditions for socialism without reproducing a capitalist mode of production. The article concludes by contrasting Paxton’s thesis with contemporary Chinese Marxist analyses of the Soviet collapse, which locate the roots of counterrevolution not in insufficient capitalism, but in ideological, political, and strategic errors within the socialist project.
Keywords
Marxism, historical materialism, multilinear development, Soviet Union, Steve Paxton, Marx, primitive accumulation, collectivization, industrialization, Russian populism, Vera Zasulich, Kovalevsky notebooks, Marxist theory, Enlightenment rationalism, socialist transition, Chinese Marxism, Dr. Carlos L. Garrido
