MARX AND ENGELS

At first glance one is struck by the dearth of substantive references to Marx and Engels in contemporary Soviet writing on international relations. True, Marx and Engels are often enough hailed as offering the first genuinely systemic view of society and the world, but little beyond this is said in indication of Marx and Engels' actual contribution to the study of relations among states. Such silence, though, is hardly surprising, since in fact neither Marx nor Engels devoted any sustained attention to international relations, though they frequently wrote of world politics, which could encompass the role of classes, and the various diplomatic constellations and maneuvers of the day. It is interesting to note, however, that most of what Marx in particular had to say about international relations was concerned with relations among states, on the whole diplomatic, military, and colonial affairs. Like other historians of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels saw through the prism of great power politics, and not in the perspective of a “Europe des nations.” And, as in the case of Lenin, whose authority is constantly invoked in Soviet writings on international relations, the materialist conception of history, despite its stress on economic determinism, is modified by the role they attribute to voluntary human activity, especially where revolutionary action is concerned.