These facts are only apparently ironic. Reality is hidden by ideol-
ogy of both the orthodox and the revisionists; the first claims legiti-
macy on the basis of its adherence to classical ideas, and the second
claims its legitimacy on the basis of being open. But a close examina-
tion of the development of Marxist theory reveals a very different
reality. This suggests that it is from the needs and experience of revo-
lutionary movements, not the heads of intellectuals, that theoretical
advance springs.

The state of Marxist theory, both in universities and mass move-
ments, is fundamentally a product of the condition of social move-
ments and the crises of which they are in turn a product. In periods
of crisis, revolutionary sentiments revive and sharp periods of class
conflict ensue. The energy and imagination of working people spill
over to the intelligentsia. Orthodox, critical, and imaginative Marx-
ism is reborn and approaches hegemony. Marxism regains its edge
when it again becomes responsive to revolutionary movements.

It is no accident that many of those in the West who are today ad-
herents of orthodox Marxism have ties to the vital mass movements
of the less-developed countries such as Pakistan, Latin America,
Southern Africa, the Mideast, or the Philippines.

In the advanced countries, periods of the hegemony of revolution-
ary Marxism have corresponded to the presence of strong movements
that arise in the wake of serious and protracted economic crisis and
even more so in the train of war. It can thus be predicted that the
current predominance of open and reformist Marxism will be re-
versed with either protracted economic depression or warfare, either
a war against Third World insurgencies such as that in Vietnam, or a
less than total atomic war. Class warfare of the old time variety
might well be expected to be reborn in the train of the tremendous
social dislocation and frustrated expectations that such events would
entail. In fact, a rebirth of revolutionary movements in the advanced
countries may well generate imaginative innovations in Marxist
theory on the order of those that followed in the wake of the Bolshe-
vik Revolution.

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