Hegel and Marx after the Fall of Communism

The Unachieved Global Preponderance of Marxism

Jan 12, 2009

The historical, philosophical as well as the political ideas of William Frederick Hegel had a profound influence upon the works and the concepts of Karl Marx.

Hegel and Marx Got It Wrong

Both Hegel and Karl Marx had frequently mentioned that dialectical movements formed history, leading to the ultimate global preponderance of communism. The only flaw in the ideas of Hegel and Karl Marx were that history did not happen as it was actually supposed to do so.

The Failure Of Communism

Communism did not in fact take over the world, it instead collapsed in the Soviet Union as well as in the states of Central and Eastern Europe, and weakening communist regimes across the rest of the globe. The remaining communist states of Cuba and North Korea were hardly the vanguard of the proletariat global revolution, whilst the People's Republic of China has successfully adopted capitalist economic policies.

Arguably the fall of communism in the Soviet Union as well as the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has damaged the creditability of the ideas of both Hegel and Marx. Communism was incapable of even surviving in the modern world let alone being capable of promoting worldwide proletarian revolutions as Marx had predicted.

Marx No Longer Vindicated By History

However to a very large extent it was the reputation of Marx that suffered the most due to the fall of communism, with Hegel only having had a very strong influence over Marx anyway.

It could also be convincingly argued that the notions put forward by Hegel and Marx had been proved to be wrong long before the end of communism in the Soviet Union as well as in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Historical dialectics had not brought about communism in the first place, only revolutions in China, Cuba, Russia, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Communism had only taken control in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe due to the Soviet Army being stationed there as a consequence of the Second World War.

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