Review of Hugh Seton-Watson, The Pattern of Communist Revolution (London: Methuen, 1953)

Abstract

Abstract Wight described this book as “a comparative historical analysis of Communist movements throughout the world. … Communism is a product of the European socialist movement, which itself has a double origin: industrialism and the development of democratic ideas. … Outside Europe, Communism appears when industrialism appears, and both have been produced by the impact of the West. ‘The great attraction of Bolshevism [in China], and especially of Lenin’s doctrine of imperialism, was that it could reconcile admiration for Western civilization with resentment against Western policy in China’; and this has a universal application. Lenin’s tactic was a partnership between the disciplined conspiratorial Bolsheviks and the ignorant, gullible masses. … More important, it explains why Communism has had its greatest triumphs in the industrially backward regions of the world. In industrially advanced countries the Communist cadres as well as their followers come chiefly from the workers, but in backward countries the Communist cadres come from the intelligentsia and the followers from the peasants. Mao Tse-tung has written a new chapter in Marxist theory by defining the peasants, instead of the proletariat, as the revolutionary vanguard. … On the relations between the Chinese and Russian régimes he maintains a judicial balance: there is a latent conflict of interest between the two Powers, but it is prudent to assume that in the foreseeable future Mao will show himself more Communist than Chinese. Communism is a substitute for the liberation promised to those who accept the Gospel.”