There’s a great deal of confusion currently about the meaning of “socialism.” Is it no more than the Great Society on steroids, or a Bolshevik-style seizure of absolute power? Does it point us toward Denmark and the U.K. or toward Venezuela and Cuba? The confusion about what socialism means should not surprise us, because it began in the mind of Karl Marx himself.

To see why, we have to ask whether Marx called primarily for evolution or revolution to bring about socialism. This question is unresolved in his thought and he did not give a consistent answer to it. The evolutionary alternative stresses that the conditions for socialism have mostly matured within late capitalism, so that the transition phase from “the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” to socialism will be brief and limited in its use of coercion, a mop-up operation in which a few astonished Scrooge McDucks are chased from their Money Bins. When embracing the evolutionary path, Marx echoes Hegel’s criticism of the French Revolution for attempting to impose socialism from above through terror before socio-economic conditions were mature. On the other hand, the revolutionary alternative stresses that a violent catharsis is needed for the proletariat to bring revolution about. The labour theory of value holds that the bourgeoisie must impoverish the proletariat to the point of annihilation, until it can take no more and lashes back in fury.  In this way, it fulfills the role of the Slave in Marx’s revamping of Hegel, suffering on behalf of mankind as a whole and finally emerging as its redeemer. In this view, the transition phase may be long and bloody, not a mere mop up operation, and the violence therapeutic and cathartic, not merely a means to an end.

Marx oscillates between these two alternatives in his shifting views of Russia’s potential for revolution. Dutifully reflecting Marxism’s claims to be “scientific,” Engels replied in 1874 to a letter from a Russian populist who argues that a revolution can take place in Russia even though Russia has neither a proletariat nor a bourgeoisie — can take place, in fact, more easily because it need only bring down the Tsarist regime — that anyone who thinks this can happen without the “productive forces” created by the bourgeoisie “has still to learn the abc of socialism.” But after this patronizing put-down, Engels waffles: If the Russian tradition of “communal ownership of the land” can be preserved from its complete break-up into bourgeois small holdings, a process that the full entrenchment of capitalism in Russia would necessitate, a “higher” form of society could be achieved immediately. But “this can only happen if…a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in Western Europe” and can extend “the material conditions” created by the previous capitalist economy necessary to carry it through. In other words, revolution could occur in Russia skipping the capitalist stage for now, but only if the material benefits of the capitalist means of production were available after the true revolution in the West. Engels here essentially wrote the script for Lenin — seize power politically by toppling the autocracy, hold onto the new state as a beacon until the true revolution takes place in Europe and the proletariat can extend its assistance to complete Russia’s socio-economic evolution.

In 1882, Marx himself poses the question more sharply in the Preface to the Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto: Can Russia’s tradition of the communal ownership of the land proceed straight to “the higher form of communist common ownership” through revolutionary action now? Or must it first pass through the same “historical evolution” of capitalism and its impending dissolution now unfolding in the West? In other words, revolution or evolution? His answer: If the Russian revolution becomes “the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West so that both complement each other,” a revolution in Russia can serve as “a starting point” for communist development once the proletariat takes over in Europe.

A year before his death, Marx is in effect already giving his blessing to what will transpire when Trotsky urges Lenin not to be so scrupulous about waiting for Russia to develop socio-economically according to Marxism’s own economic theory. Roll the dice; give history a push. Then build the conditions for capitalist productivity from above, but without private property or profit. Skip the bourgeois stage and wait for help from the real proletariat in Europe after the revolution, when the advanced means of production fall into their hands. The bloody record of this emendation of Marxist theory began in 1917 when Lenin arrived at the Finland Station: The “transition phase” went on for seventy years until the regime collapsed, and the attempt to build socialism from above through rapid collectivization and industrialization claimed an estimated thirty million lives.