The communist victory in Russia was not due to the fact that material conditions for the masses became better after the Bolshevik Revolution. This was emphatically not the case. What did happen was that the organized, disciplined, communist minority acquired an iron grip on the masses by its double weapon of propaganda and terror, kept passions of class hatred and class envy at the boiling point, whipped laggards into line by ruthless regimentation, and thereby preserved their regime through years of civil war and famine. This is a cheerful, buoyant piece of work, because when it was written Russian trade capitalism was expanding and conquering markets in the Near East. It would seem that, in order to carry any semblance of plausibility, this should have been accompanied by proof that Glinka owned stock in the expanding companies-a highly improbable contingency, if one considers the economic status of Russian musicians.
Production depends on class antagonism.
No antagonism, no progress. This is the law which civilization has followed down to our own day. No proof is adduced. The greatest human constructive achievements, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the great dams and skyscrapers of modern times, are the fruit of cooperation, not of antagonism. Marx and Engels lived in an age of rising national consciousness.