Page "Karl Marx" Paragraph 33

In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir.

While admitting that Russia's rural " commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia ", Marx also warned that, in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage, it " would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it ( the rural commune ) from all sides.

" Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that " normal conditions of spontaneous development " of the rural commune could exist.

However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx points out that " at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production.

" In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past.

He wrote that " the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type — collective production and appropriation ".

He added that " the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc.

societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies ".

Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under the title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.