[WS:} I wholeheartedly second this opinion. I think that the idyllic view of the downtrodden masses rising up and bringing progress is a delusion, if not a self-defeating myth. Historically, there was nothing progressive about the proletariat itself - and Lenin keenly observed the limits of its revolutionary potential if left to its own devices. So it is quite surprising that this myth is still gaining some traction some 100 years later. The key to the success of the Russian revolution was to free human productive potential from the yoke imposed on it by property relations - only after that happened the USSR rose to the rank of world's superpower.
It is not that technology itself was the engine of progress - but rather that institutional changes that smashed the private property relations unleashed productive forces that created new technology and new resources that lifted the whole country. Technology, or rather technological potential was a key intervening variable here - Russian modernizers saw the potential that technology could achieve elsewhere, and they also saw the limitations on its development imposed by the property (land) owning class in Russia, so they smashed the latter to free the former.
We are facing a similar situation today. The productive potential of modern economy is enormous - capable of creating prosperity for everyone, yet we are told by pseudo-science of economics that somehow 'we must live withing our means" and there is no money to fund anything from infrastructure to health care. Bullshit! There is enough "money" or rather productive potential to fund everything, but that cannot be done without destroying the profitability of prior investments that property owners made. So to protect that profitability, the unleashing of full productive potential is restricted , as to to "overheat the economy" we are told, or "to live within our means."
If the Russian revolutionaries believed economists - those paid whores turning mental tricks for property owners - and decided to "live within their means" - the USSR would have never become a superpower. Likewise, as long as we the bullshit that pseudo-science of economics tells us about "balanced budgets" - the enormous productive potential of modern economy will remain artificially restrained to maintain the existing property relations, and we will indeed have "no money" for anything but private profits.
So the main goal is to smash the existing property relations and unleash full productive potential - or to "overheat the economy" to the max and fuck the investors, or better yet, give them Stalin's one wall treatment - and in the process, everyone, including the downtrodden masses will benefit.
Wojtek