That is not to say that the ‘Communism’ which held sway in so many countries bore much resemblance to anything Marx had envisaged. There was a wide gulf between the original theory and the subsequent practice of Communist rule. Karl Marx sincerely believed that under communism – the future society of his imagination which he saw as an inevitable, and ultimate, stage of human development – people would live more freely than ever before. Yet ‘his vision of the universal liberation of humankind’ did not include any safeguards for individual liberty. Marx would have hated to be described as a moralist, since he saw himself as a Communist who was elaborating a theory of scientific socialism. Yet many of his formulations were nothing like as ‘scientific’ as he made out. One of his most rigorous critics on that account, Karl Popper, pays tribute to the moral basis of much of Marx’s indictment of nineteenth-century capitalism. As Popper observes, under the slogan of ‘equal and free competition for all’, child labour in conditions of immense suffering had been ‘tolerated, and sometimes even defended, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen’. Accordingly, ‘Marx’s burning protest against these crimes’, says Popper, ‘will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind.’ Those who took power in the twentieth century, both using and misusing Marx’s ideas, turned out, however, to be anything but liberators. Marxist theory, as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently refashioned by Josif Stalin in Russia and by Mao Zedong in China, became a rationalization for ruthless single-party dictatorship.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "That is not to say that the ‘Communism’ which held sway in so many countries bore much resemblance to anything Marx had envisaged. There was a wide gulf between the original theory and the subsequent practice of Communist rule. Karl Marx sincerely believed that under communism – the future society of his imagination which he saw as an inevitable, and ultimate, stage of human development – people would live more freely than ever before. Yet ‘his vision of the universal liberation of humankind’ did not include any safeguards for individual liberty. Marx would have hated to be described as a moralist, since he saw himself as a Communist who was elaborating a theory of scientific socialism. Yet many of his formulations were nothing like as ‘scientific’ as he made out. One of his most rigorous critics on that account, Karl Popper, pays tribute to the moral basis of much of Marx’s indictment of nineteenth-century capitalism. As Popper observes, under the slogan of ‘equal and free competition for all’, child labour in conditions of immense suffering had been ‘tolerated, and sometimes even defended, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen’. Accordingly, ‘Marx’s burning protest against these crimes’, says Popper, ‘will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind.’ Those who took power in the twentieth century, both using and misusing Marx’s ideas, turned out, however, to be anything but liberators. Marxist theory, as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently refashioned by Josif Stalin in Russia and by Mao Zedong in China, became a rationalization for ruthless single-party dictatorship." in the context of "Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), pp. 9-10" to mean that wisdom is timeless.