> The goal of those who made the French and Russian revolutions - including their leaders, let it be added - was not to replace the Bourbons and Romanovs with another unaccountable tyranny of the party or of the bureaucracy or of the supreme leader. Why and how these revolutions evolved in this direction is another question, whose answer lies in the social and economic and international context in which they were situated rather than in mass political psychology
Marx, in contrast, derives despotism from the "superstition" and "prejudice" of the masses, i.e. from "mass political psychology."
He claimed mistakenly that wage labour would work to undermine these by developing "enlightenment."
He also claimed mistakenly that conditions in the Russian peasant commune had also worked to do this.
In fact, superstition and prejudice were characteristic of the individuality of both Russian and Chinese peasants.
Marx's understanding of the requirements for the development of enlightenment is mistaken. Among other things, superstition and prejudice are much more securely anchored than he imagined and so, therefore, are despotic political forms such as those in which large numbers of individuals remain open to demagogic appeals.
Ted