It happened in Russia beause Russia had ceased to function as a cohensive state. Britain did not.
The fact that a revolution took place had nothing to do with broad based popular support for a given ideology, nor was it because the Bolsheviks were brutal, as Sam claims. It happned because it’s easy for revolution to take place when the central authority is losing its capability to govern. That can happen when you lose a big war. As it happened the fashion of the time was Marxism, but it took place in Russia and not in England because Russia fell apart and England didn’t.
No doubt they would’ve. And maybe there’s a partial answer to the OP: Western industrial societies had avenues of giving ground to workers’ demands to reduce the pressure for a full-scale revolution, and the captains of industry presumably were smart enough to realize they’d better give that ground rather than be swept away.
The pre-revolution rulers of the countries where Communist revolutions succeeded may have had fewer middle-ground options, and the rulers themselves were probably more out of touch. Czar Nicholas was certainly clueless.
For your standard-issue Latin American strongman (Batista, Somoza), there tends to be little if any in-between on loosing the reins of power - either you rule by intimidation, or you’re gone. One possible route for them is to transform themselves into benevolent despots - still ruling by fear, but sharing more of the goodies - but that’s a thin ledge too: to share enough goodies to make a difference, not only do you have to give up some wealth, but so do assorted henchmen, land barons, and whatnot, and you might wind up losing out to a coup rather than a revolution.
Chang Kai-Shek was a corrupt ruler, of course, but I don’t know Chinese history well enough to comment on whether he was also oblivious to what was going on in China, and to what extent he had room to give ground to the Communists rather than losing a civil war to them.
Vietnam was a revolution against a foreign power, in an era where that sort of revolution was pretty much a done deal once it got much popular support. Ho Chi Minh & Co. didn’t win because they were Communists; they won because they fought for Vietnam against the French and the Americans. Both the French and the Americans were clueless and out of touch, the latter even more than the former. And neither had any ground to give: either you’re the occupier, or you’re not.
And in between there was Germany, which, like Russia, had lost a big war, and had a leftist revolution in its wake, but its government still managed to put down the revolution.
The German monarchy had fallen, but the government had not entirely collapsed, and the Germans by then had at least some experience with self-government and the rule of law. The authorities were still in a position to crush the Communists. In Russia, the tsars had always been absolute rulers and had fiercely resisted any attempts to limit their autocracy or establish a parliament with any real power; with the tsar gone, anything was possible.
Why have they only happened in industrially backward countries. Russia beat us into space and had a huge industral base. You want to know why it didnt happen here. It was gaining ground ,but I thing the union movement derailed it. The distribution of wealth was greatly improved. We are setting ourse;ves up for ugliness if we continue the path President Cheney and Vice President Bush have us on. The gap between rich and poor has been the start of revolution in the past. Are we exempt. I don’t want to find out the hard way.
The Capitalist Industrial Power that existed in Marx time was a much more ruthless form of capitalism that was either unchecked or wholly supported by the State. In Marx’s eyes it seemed that it would never be brought into check without some form of Revolution.
The Great Depression ended the old model and forced states to intervene and regulate and create social saftey nets.
In the 1930’s Communism was starting to gain some popular suport in Industrialized nations that were reeling from the unemployment and poverty of the society. Germany (Specifically in Berlin), and even the United States as the Depression began saw a rize in membership to Communist and socialist groups. There were clashes in the streets and even fear of a Russia like revolution.
That changed in the mid to late thirties in one of two ways.
The State adopted some socialist policies (The United States New Deal) or the moverment was ruthlessly crushed by those on the far right ( The Nazis in Germany).
Yeah, the Bolsheviks certainly didn’t start the Revolution and most of them weren’t even IN Russia when it took place. It started out as a riot for food and fuel in the winter, ending with the Duma forcing the Tsar to abdicate. Then about oh, six months later, after Lenin and co were back in the country, THEY overthrew the Kerensky government, which wasn’t communist.
And despite the fact that Lenin’s group took the name “Bolshevik”, meaning majority, they were actually the minority, IIRC.
They were simply a bit more ruthless than the other guys…or maybe more efficient or a tad better organized I suppose. But even there they weren’t the majority even of the revolutionaries…they were just the ones who ulitimately siezed power…
Kind of says something right there about why communism hasn’t taken off in any industrialized nations.
Marx theorized that the rise of the industrial state would make the already miserable lives of most people much worse. Instead, it often did the opposite, improving the lives of many and creating a middle class with more wealth than the serfs ever dreamed about.
But this tended to happen only in societies where it was allowed – freedom-oriented ones. More oppressive societies couldn’t allow such freedom and the economics developed much differently.
Then you have the dictators who have used Marxism as merely an excuse to enslave people in the name of liberating them. Rather than using their personal desires alone to excuse their grab for power, they called upon support from a political/economic theory that made sense to some. We can draw a parallel with religious leaders who use theology for a similar purpose to a similar end; when a theory becomes religiously motivated, logic goes out the window.
The Bolsheviks had a slight majority at the 1903 Congress of the Social Democrats, which ended in the party splitting. From then until the Revolution the active Bolsheviks were actually less numerous than the Mensheviks. OTOH, by the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly they had grown much more electorally popular (but still less so than the peasant-based Socialist Revolutionaries). See post #13.
One interesting thing about that election was that Western-style democratic capitalism was an option on the table, represented by the Cadets. Why were so few people interested in it?
Sorry but no. From the very first paragraph of your link:
“Cuba had a number of communist and anarchist parties since the early period of the Republic. The original “internationalized” Communist Party of Cuba was formed in the 1920s. Founders included Blas Roca, Anibal Escalante, Fabio Grobart and Julio Antonio Mella. A member of the Comintern, it was later renamed the People’s Socialist Party for electoral reasons. Its policy was dictated from Moscow, and it supported Fulgencio Batista, in whose government it had Ministers Without Portfolio. The People’s Socialist Party was initially critical of Fidel Castro.”