The End of an Illusion

Abstract

This volume attempts to discover, by looking at many varieties of evidence, to what extent the working class of the USSR has been the beneficiary of a revolution which was ostensibly carried out on its behalf, and of over sixty years of rule in its name by a communist party. The motive force behind Marx’s analysis of society — probably the most potent intellectual influence of the last two centuries — was the desire to put right the injustice presented by the exploitation of the majority in industrial countries, the proletariat, by the minority, the bourgeoisie. Russian social democracy, of course, derived from Marx.