A Nationalistic Dialectical Materialism?

by Authenticity

Introduction

Dialectical materialism, the Marxist framework crafted by Karl Marx and refined by Friedrich Engels, analyzes societal evolution through economic structures, class struggles, and historical dynamics. Emerging in Marx’s The German Ideology and Capital, and codified by Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, it asserts that material conditions, particularly modes of production, propel history, with capitalism’s contradictions driving class conflict toward a socialist future. This paper investigates Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism, critiques its predictive shortcomings — such as overestimating proletarian revolution and sidelining nationalism or cultural factors — and explores reinterpretations by Brooks Adams, Ernst Niekisch, Benito Mussolini, and James Burnham. Adams viewed capitalism’s centralization as cyclical decline, advocating state-led reforms to avert collapse. Niekisch blended class struggle with national revival, rejecting Marx’s internationalism for culturally rooted socialism. Mussolini favored state corporatism over revolution, emphasizing totalitarian order in agrarian Italy. Burnham foresaw a managerial class replacing capitalists, reflecting Soviet and fascist bureaucratic trends. Situating these thinkers within the industrial and interwar turmoil of the 19th and 20th centuries, this study corrects misattributions, like overstating Engels’ role, and highlights dialectical materialism’s broad influence across ideological spectrums, from conservatism to fascism, while affirming its relevance to enduring challenges like inequality, alienation, and institutional erosion in today’s capitalist landscape.

Marxist Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical materialism posits that the economic base of society — comprising the means of production (tools, factories, technology) and relations of production (class structures, labor divisions) — shapes its superstructure, including culture, politics, law, religion, and ideology. Marx argued that history unfolds through stages driven by class conflict, where contradictions within each economic system precipitate its transformation into a new form. In The German Ideology, The Communist manifesto, A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy, and Das Kapital Marx outlined a sequence of historical stages: primitive communism, slave-based agrarian societies, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and ultimately communism.

In primitive communism, early human societies operated without classes, sharing resources collectively, as seen in hunter-gatherer communities. As agriculture developed, surplus production enabled slave-based societies, such as ancient Greece and Rome, where elites owned slaves who worked the land. Feudalism emerged in medieval Europe, characterized by lords controlling land and serfs bound to it, with production centered on agrarian estates. Marx identified feudalism’s decline in the contradictions that empowered a rising merchant class, the bourgeoisie. Monarchial policies, such as England’s enclosure movements in the 16th–18th centuries, expanded private property, while technological advancements — like the compass, printing press, and early mechanization — facilitated trade and wealth accumulation. These shifts enabled the bourgeoisie to challenge feudal lords, culminating in events like the English Civil War and the French Revolution, which dismantled feudal structures and ushered in capitalism.

Capitalism, with the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, transformed production through ownership of the means of production — factories, machinery, and capital. The Industrial Revolution marked its zenith, introducing steam-powered machinery, factories, and urbanization. Marx and Engels viewed these changes as progressive, dismantling traditional institutions — monarchies, the Catholic Church, guilds, and localized identities — which they saw as barriers to human emancipation. In The Communist manifesto, they praised capitalism’s dynamism, noting it “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life” by fostering global markets and innovation. However, they were scathing criticism of capitalism’s flaws. Economic instability, evidenced by crises like the Panic of 1837 and 1873, revealed market volatility. Workers faced grueling conditions — 12–16-hour shifts in dangerous factories, child labor, and wages barely sustaining survival — as documented in Engels’ The Condition of The Working Class In England. Marx’s concept of alienation highlighted workers’ disconnection: from the products they made (owned by capitalists), the creative process (reduced to repetitive tasks), fellow workers (pitted in competition), and their own humanity (laboring for survival, not fulfillment). Property centralization concentrated wealth among a few, leaving most proletarians — industrial workers — propertyless and impoverished. Marx argued that these contradictions would escalate, predicting that a major conflict, such as the Great War, would catalyze a proletarian revolution.

This revolution would establish socialism, where the proletariat collectively owns property and controls production. A transitional state, the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” would manage this phase, redistributing resources and suppressing bourgeois resistance, as outlined in Engels’ Anti-Dührin. Over time, the state would “wither away” as class distinctions dissolved, leading to communism — a classless, stateless, moneyless society where production meets collective needs, guided by the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” Marx envisioned communism as history’s endpoint, resolving economic contradictions and liberating humanity.

Marx and Engels accurately diagnosed capitalism’s volatility, exploitation, and social alienation, yet their predictions faced significant challenges. The proletarian revolution they anticipated in advanced industrial nations — Germany, Britain, France, or the United States — did not materialize. Instead, socialist revolutions erupted in agrarian or semi-feudal societies: Russia (1917), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Vietnam (1975), and others. These deviations contradicted Marx’s expectation that socialism required a mature capitalist base with a large proletariat. For example, pre-revolutionary Russia was predominantly agrarian, with 80% of its population as peasants under a semi-feudal monarchy. The Bolshevik Revolution established a socialist state, but industrialization occurred under Soviet planning, not capitalism. After the USSR’s collapse in 1991, Russia adopted capitalism, reversing Marx’s linear progression.

Similarly, China’s revolution succeeded in a peasant-dominated society, and post-1978 reforms under Deng Xiaoping embraced market capitalism, integrating China into global markets while retaining state control. Cuba and Vietnam followed nationalist paths, prioritizing sovereignty over universal class struggle, and later adopted capitalist elements. These outcomes suggest dialectical materialism underestimated the resilience of pre-capitalist structures and the complexity of revolutionary contexts. Moreover, socialism often reinforced traditional institutions, contrary to Marx’s vision of their dissolution. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country” strengthened Russian national identity to unify diverse ethnicities, as seen in propaganda celebrating Slavic heritage. Socialist states like China promoted family units as social stabilizers, with policies encouraging traditional roles. Religion persisted — Orthodox Christianity in Russia, Confucianism in China, Catholicism in Cuba — often co-opted by states to bolster legitimacy. In Vietnam, Buddhist traditions endured alongside socialism. These trends highlight dialectical materialism’s oversight of cultural and national forces, which interacted dynamically with economic changes.

The failure of industrial revolutions and socialism’s unintended conservatism prompted alternative interpretations, particularly from right-wing and nationalist thinkers. These figures adapted Marxist tools — class analysis, economic determinism — to critique capitalism and propose distinct historical frameworks, emphasizing cyclical decline, national revival, state-led order, or bureaucratic dominance.

Alternative Interpretations

Brooks Adams and The Cyclical Theory of Civilizations

Brooks Adams, an American historian and political theorist, presented a cyclical theory of history in The Law of Civilization and Decay, The Theory of Social Revolutions, A Problem in Civilization, and The Collapse of Capitalistic Government. Departing from Marx’s linear progression toward communism, Adams argued that civilizations rise and fall through economic centralization and decay, driven by resource distribution, class dynamics, and societal priorities.

In The Law of Civilization and Decay, he posited that societies begin decentralized, with power and property widely distributed, fostering innovation, trade, and cultural vitality. Over time, wealth consolidates, forming monopolies that prioritize profit over creativity, spirituality, and social cohesion. This centralization impoverishes the majority, erodes trust, and stifles progress, leading to collapse. A new cycle emerges with decentralization, new modes of production, and technological advances, restarting the process. Adams applied this framework to ancient Rome, offering a detailed case study. Rome’s rise stemmed from abundant resources — iron, copper, grain — and strategic trade networks across the Mediterranean, as outlined in A Problem In Civilization. By 100 BCE, Rome’s wealth and military prowess made it a dominant power, attracting merchants and tribute from conquered territories like Carthage and Greece. However, internal decay began with the expansion of the slave class. Initially, landlords employed indebted freemen, who worked to repay loans. Over generations, inherited debts enslaved their descendants, creating a hereditary underclass. Conquest further swelled the slave population with foreigners — Gauls, Iberians, Africans — displacing freemen into urban poverty or slavery, as Roman legions brought captives to labor in latifundia (large estates).

The Roman legal system exacerbated this, institutionalizing debt bondage. Courts allowed landlords to buy, sell, or kill debtors, concentrating wealth among elites, as Adams detailed in The Theory of Social Revolutions. By the 1st century CE, capital depletion crippled agriculture and mining — Rome’s economic foundations. Landlords, unable to pay taxes, strained imperial revenues, forcing reliance on conquest for slaves and plunder. This was unsustainable; wealth remained in few hands, barely sustaining elites even in prosperity. Currency devaluation through inflation, particularly under emperors like Nero and Diocletian, eroded trust in denarii, disrupting trade. The shift from loyal Roman legions to mercenaries — often Germanic tribesmen — weakened defense, as mercenaries prioritized pay over allegiance.

The capital’s relocation to Constantinople under Constantine (330 CE) redirected wealth eastward, and the empire’s division into East and West fragmented authority. Western Rome’s fall in 476 CE to Germanic tribes — Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals — many integrated as slaves or soldiers, marked the cycle’s end. Adams attributed this to centralized wealth, spiritual decay, and foreign infiltration, which eroded Rome’s cohesion, as explored in The Law of Civilization and Decay.

Post-Rome, medieval Europe decentralized, with power dispersed among petty monarchies, feudal lords, and guilds. In A Problem In Civilization, Adams described feudal economies as localized, controlled by lords overseeing serfs and guilds regulating crafts — blacksmiths, weavers, masons. Unlike Rome’s debt-driven system, guilds protected workers and consumers, setting wages, prices, and quality standards, fostering stability. The Catholic Church emerged as Europe’s most powerful institution, wielding spiritual and political authority. By the 11th century, it unified monarchies for the 1095–1291 Crusades, which introduced resources!— silk, spices, gold — and reopened trade routes to the Levant and Asia, spurring economic growth. This marked the feudal system’s unraveling. The Church’s wealth — monasteries, tithes — rivaled monarchs’, creating tensions. The Reformation shattered Catholic hegemony, enabling monarchs like Henry VIII to seize Church assets, as in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Technological advances — gunpowder, cannons, navigation — empowered merchants, who leveraged private property laws and exploration to amass wealth. The discovery of the Americas in 1492 flooded Europe with silver and gold, fueling trade and undermining feudal constraints. Merchants, emboldened by monarchial support, viewed guilds and lords as obstacles, advocating liberal policies.

The French Revolution crystallized this shift, abolishing feudalism, executing Louis XVI, and enshrining bourgeois dominance through liberalism and capitalism. Adams saw capitalism’s early phase as decentralized, with small businesses and agrarian economies, as in post-revolutionary America. However, the Industrial Revolution accelerated centralization. Steam engines, textiles, and railroads birthed industrial giants — Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Carnegie’s steel empire — outcompeting smaller firms, as Adams noted in The Collapse of Capitalistic Government. By the late 19th century, monopolies dominated, wielding power rivaling states.

Adams criticized capitalism’s chaos, echoing Marx but from a conservative perspective. In The Theory of Social Revolutions, he decried labor conditions — 12-hour shifts, child labor in coal mines, wages below subsistence — and corporate corruption, citing railroad monopolies bribing legislatures. Unlike Marx, who saw alienation as a revolutionary spark, Adams lamented family erosion and standardized education, which he believed stifled creativity and authority, as Russell Kirk emphasized in The Conservative Mind. He viewed democracy as capitalism’s “ally and dupe,” unable to enforce sacrifice or leadership, fostering social conflict and decay, as articulated in Speculators In Theories. To avert collapse, Adams proposed state planning — regulating monopolies, enforcing labor protections — and imperialism to secure resources, citing America’s expansion into the Philippines. Unlike Marx’s revolutionary socialism, Adams sought reform to preserve order, valuing religion, family, and national interest. His cyclical view rejected Marx’s end-of-history communism, seeing civilizations as perpetually rising and falling, each cycle shaped by centralization’s inevitable decay.

Ernst Niekisch and National Bolshevism

Ernst Niekisch, a German thinker of the Conservative Revolutionary movement, developed National Bolshevism, blending Marxist class struggle with fervent nationalism, as articulated in Class Struggle, Technology: The Devourer of Man, and The Poison of Civilization. Active during the Weimar Republic and early Nazi era, Niekisch opposed both liberal capitalism and Hitler’s fascism, advocating a synthesis of German nationalism and Soviet-style socialism. Unlike Marx, who saw class struggle as a universal, anti-nationalist force driving progress toward communism, Niekisch interpreted it as a revolt against national decay, restoring sovereignty and cultural vitality.

Niekisch viewed history through class conflicts that liberated nations from moribund elites. The French Revolution overthrew a decadent aristocracy, enabling Napoleon’s empire and French resurgence. The Russian Revolution toppled a stagnant tsarist regime, transforming a backward agrarian state into a global power under Lenin and Stalin. In Class Struggle, Niekisch argued that successful revolutions fused class and national aspirations, citing Russia’s Bolsheviks rallying peasants and workers under anti-imperialist banners. Unlike Marx’s internationalist proletariat, Niekisch’s working class fought for national revival, rejecting cosmopolitanism. Like Marx, Niekisch critiqued capitalism’s individualism and technological advances, which alienated workers and eroded identities.

In The Poison of Civilization, he described factories reducing workers to mechanized cogs, stripped of community and purpose. Capitalism’s global markets dissolved national cultures, replacing them with homogenized consumerism, as seen in Americanization — jazz, films, mass production — spreading across 1920s Europe. Unlike Marx, who saw this as a necessary stage toward socialism, Niekisch viewed it as catastrophic, predicting workers’ “doom” unless they revolted to establish a collectivist socialism prioritizing national interests. Niekisch admired the Soviet Union, China, and Turkey for subordinating technology to collective goals.

In Technology: The Devourer of Man, he praised Soviet planning, which harnessed industrialization for state power, not profit, citing electrification and the Five-Year Plans (1928–1932). China’s early communist policies and Turkey’s Kemalist reforms similarly disciplined technology for national ends, preserving cultural identity. Niekisch contrasted this with Western capitalism’s “techno-individualist spirit,” which he accused of “biological destruction,” annihilating organic communities for profit. His vivid metaphor — “the demon of technology foams in rage” — underscored his belief that only collectivism could tame capitalism’s excesses. Unlike Marx’s stateless communism, Niekisch envisioned a disciplined, nationalist socialism, preserving hierarchy, culture, and duty. He rejected Marx’s hostility to religion and tradition, seeing them as anchors of national cohesion. His socialism aligned with Germany’s Prussian heritage — militarism, order, collective sacrifice — opposing both liberal chaos and Nazi racialism. Imprisoned by the Nazis, Niekisch’s ideas influenced post-war nationalist movements, blending left-wing economics with right-wing cultural priorities.

Benito Mussolini and The Stages of Capitalism

Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist leader from 1922 to 1945, outlined a materialist-inspired theory of capitalism’s evolution in his 1933 speech On The Corporate State, published in ARPLAN. Influenced by Werner Sombart, who coined “late-stage capitalism,” Mussolini’s framework, while rooted in fascism’s idealist philosophy, paralleled dialectical materialism’s focus on economic stages. He identified three phases of capitalism, critiquing its trajectory and proposing a state-led alternative.

1. Heroic Capitalism (1830–1870): This “dynamic period” saw rapid industrialization, factories, railroads, and urbanization across Europe and America. Competition drove innovation — textiles, steam engines — and the state acted as a passive observer, as in Britain’s laissez-faire policies. Wars, like the Crimean War, were brief and localized, unlike later global conflicts. Mussolini admired this era’s vitality, seeing it as capitalism’s peak before decline.

2. Stagnant Capitalism (1870–1914): Monopolization defined this phase, ending free competition. Wealth concentrated in trusts and cartels, as in Germany’s steel industry or America’s railroads. Capitalists sought state intervention — tariffs, subsidies — to protect profits, reversing laissez-faire. Businesses grew so powerful they shaped culture, politics, and education, molding societies to serve elite interests, as seen in media consolidation and lobbying.

3. Super-Capitalism (1914–onward): Driven by “unlimited consumption,” this stage standardized humanity. Mussolini envisioned a dystopia where “all babies are born the same length” for uniform cradles, and people crave identical toys, uniforms, books, films, and machines. Capitalism became a social force, reducing individuals to consumer drones, eroding individuality and national spirit. He cited America’s Fordist assembly lines and Hollywood as harbingers, predicting global cultural homogenization.

Mussolini rejected Marx’s view of capitalism as a necessary stage, arguing Italy lacked a mature capitalist phase. In 1922, Italy’s economy was 70% agrarian, with small industries — most firms employed under 500 workers, unlike Britain’s or Germany’s thousands. Guild-like corporations, rooted in medieval traditions, managed sectors, limiting bourgeois dominance. Mussolini’s corporate state aimed to transcend capitalism and socialism, synthesizing their strengths. Corporations — state-controlled bodies uniting workers, employers, and officials — would regulate production, balancing class interests under Fascist ideology. To succeed, Mussolini outlined three conditions: a single political party to ensure discipline; a totalitarian state to absorb societal energies, transforming institutions; and an “atmosphere of strong ideal tension” to inspire sacrifice. He cited fascist achievements — victory in Ethiopia, land reclamation, new cities like Littoria — as evidence of Italy’s renewal, contrasting Europe’s spiritual and economic decline under liberalism.

Unlike Marx’s worker-led revolution, Mussolini’s state-centric model prioritized order and national unity, dismissing class struggle as divisive. His critique of super-capitalism’s consumerism prefigured post-war critiques, like Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, highlighting fascism’s engagement with materialist concerns despite its idealist rhetoric.

James Burnham and The Managerial Revolution

James Burnham, an American intellectual, transitioned from Trotskyism to conservatism, publishing The Managerial Revolution to argue that capitalism would yield to managerialism, not socialism. Initially a Marxist, Burnham rejected dialectical materialism after observing the Soviet Union’s failures — persistent class hierarchies, nationalism under Stalin — and Marxism’s global decline post-1930s. Agreeing with Marx that capitalism arose from feudalism’s contradictions, driven by merchants leveraging trade and technology, Burnham concurred on its flaws: mass unemployment (Great Depression), economic crashes, and alienation, undermining mass support. However, Burnham diverged on capitalism’s successor. Instead of a proletarian revolution, he predicted professional managers — bureaucrats, executives, planners — would become the ruling class, controlling production through state and corporate structures. In The Managerial Revolution, he cited the Soviet Union, where bureaucrats held 50% of wealth, managing industries via Gosplan, not workers’ councils, contradicting socialist ideals. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany exemplified managerialism, with state planning — Italy’s IRI, Germany’s Four-Year Plan — marginalizing capitalists. America’s New Deal, with agencies like the NRA, empowered bureaucrats, reducing bourgeois autonomy.

Burnham predicted a world dominated by three managerial superpowers — USA, Nazi Germany, Japan — where wars would grow deadlier, as World War II (1939–1945) confirmed. He foresaw technological advances — radar, jets — amplifying destruction. However, Germany’s defeat and Japan’s occupation disproved his geopolitical forecast, and America’s post-war capitalism, bolstered by the Marshall Plan, persisted. Yet, Burnham’s emphasis on bureaucracy resonated, with corporate giants — GM, IBM — and government agencies expanding, mirroring his vision. China’s rise post-1980s, blending state planning with markets, partly aligns with managerialism. Burnham’s theory rejected Marx’s classless society, seeing hierarchy as inevitable. Unlike Adams’ conservatism or Niekisch’s nationalism, his focus was structural, analyzing power shifts dispassionately, influencing neo-conservative thought, as seen in his later Suicide of The West.

Conclusions

The thinkers under consideration — ‘Brooks Adams, Ernst Niekisch, Benito Mussolini, and James Burnham — engaged profoundly with Karl Marx’s economic critique of capitalism, yet each carved distinct paths in their analyses and prescriptions, shaped by their ideological priorities and historical contexts. Brooks Adams, in contrast to Marx’s linear vision of history culminating in class liberation, proposed a cyclical model of civilization, where societies rise and fall due to economic centralization. He viewed capitalism’s concentration of wealth and power as a harbinger of systemic decay, not merely class oppression, and critiqued its chaotic tendencies for undermining social cohesion, religion, and family structures. Unlike Marx’s call for proletarian revolution, Adams, a conservative, advocated for state-led reforms — centralized economic planning, antitrust measures, and imperial expansion—to restore order and delay collapse, emphasizing stability over radical transformation. Ernst Niekisch, reinterpreting Marx’s class struggle, redirected its focus toward national rejuvenation, explicitly rejecting Marxist internationalism. His vision of collectivist socialism sought to preserve cultural identity, hierarchical traditions, and national sovereignty, integrating technological progress under state control. This stood in stark opposition to Marx’s stateless, egalitarian communism, as Niekisch envisioned a socialism rooted in particularism rather than universalism. Benito Mussolini, while acknowledging Marx’s insights into capitalism’s exploitative phases, dismissed the necessity of a proletarian revolution, particularly in Italy’s agrarian context. He proposed a state-driven corporatist system that subordinated both capital and labor to a totalitarian framework, prioritizing national unity and order over Marxist equality. Mussolini’s approach sought to harness capitalism’s productive capacity while suppressing its divisive tendencies, aligning economic activity with state objectives. James Burnham, diverging further, replaced Marx’s revolutionary proletariat with a new ruling class of managers — bureaucrats and technocrats — who he argued were already displacing traditional capitalists. Drawing parallels with the managerial structures of Soviet communism and fascist regimes, Burnham retained Marx’s materialist lens but rejected communism’s practical viability, forecasting a global shift toward technocratic governance.

The endurance of capitalism does not negate the enduring relevance of these critiques, as contemporary developments reflect their insights. Brooks Adams’ warnings about economic centralization find validation in the rise of monopolistic corporations like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple, which dominate markets, stifle competition, and amass unprecedented wealth. His proposed reforms — antitrust legislation, labor protections, and regulatory oversight — have been partially implemented in policies like the Sherman Antitrust Act or modern labor laws, yet they have failed to curb the growing concentration of corporate power, suggesting the limits of reform within capitalism’s framework.

Niekisch’s nationalist socialism resonates with 20th-century revolutions in nations like China under Mao Zedong and Cuba under Fidel Castro, where economic redistribution was inseparable from assertions of national and cultural identity. These movements, blending socialist principles with anti-imperialist and particularist agendas, echo Niekisch’s rejection of universalist ideologies, illustrating the adaptability of class-based critiques to diverse contexts. Mussolini’s vision of state-guided markets finds parallels in the modern era of hyper-consumerism, where global brands — Nike, McDonald’s, and Netflix — standardize cultural consumption, eroding local traditions under the pretext of market choice. His corporatist ideal, where state and industry align, also mirrors contemporary public-private partnerships and state-backed enterprises in nations pursuing rapid development. Burnham’s managerialism is strikingly evident in the bureaucratization of global corporations, where executives and technocrats wield power akin to state planners, and in technocratic systems like China’s, where the Communist party integrates economic control with technological surveillance. The proliferation of administrative elites in both corporate boardrooms and government agencies underscores Burnham’s foresight into the rise of a managerial class.

Persistent and escalating challenges lend further credence to these thinkers’ warnings. Economic inequality, with the top 1% owning over half of global wealth according to Oxfam reports, continues to widen, fueling social unrest and distrust. Alienation, exacerbated by hyper-commercialized digital environments and precarious gig economies, fragments communities and erodes individual agency, as seen in rising mental health crises documented by the World Health Organization. Institutional erosion — evident in declining trust in democratic processes, with Pew Research noting historic lows in public confidence in government across Western nations — signals deeper systemic instability. While capitalism has proven adaptable, absorbing reforms and co-opting critiques, its structural vulnerabilities suggest transformation is not merely possible but probable. The precise form of capitalism’s successor remains elusive — whether a technocratic dystopia, a resurgence of nationalist economic models, a hybrid of state and corporate power, or an entirely unforeseen paradigm. Collectively, these thinkers illuminate a universal principle: all systems, no matter how dominant, are transient, subject to inevitable cycles of rise, adaptation, and decline. Their analyses compel us to interrogate capitalism’s fragility, anticipate its evolution, and remain vigilant as emergent economic and social forms reshape the global order.