WI... Marx & Engels never write their book?

[Nekromans]

Okay: It's 1840. A guy called Karl Marx has just died of 'flu, and another man - called Friedrich Engels - has been murdered by a highwayman. What effects will this have on the world as we know it?

Number One: No Soviet Union,meaning No Cold War (between US and USSR, anyway.)

Number Two: Germany has a harder time on the Eastern Front, as Russia doesn't give in as much.

Number Three: Hitler is dismissed as an insane lunatic, as there is no political enemy for him to unite Germany against. The furthest to the Left are the Socialists and Trade Unionists, who aren't seen as much of a threat to Society.

[Max Sinister]

2: Russia had practically lost when the Octoberrevolution happened. If the government keeps on fighting, many Russians will simply desert, and chaos ensues.

[Justin Pickard]

I don't think that (1), (2) or (3) are inevitable. Something totalitarian, probably initially vaguely anarcho-socialist or Bakuninite, will emerge to fill the void.

[Tom Veil]

I can't tick off the names, but Marx was not the only socialist that a bunch of backwater intellectuals could co-opt into a New Mongolian Empire. The Bolsheviks would have found a guiding philosophy. Of course, if we assume that Marx was the best-sounding philosopher to suit their purposes, then the Bolsheviks might have less support and fewer members going into the Revolution. That might mean that they never do it, and Russia stumbles along in a Weimar-type democracy after WWI, or it might mean that the Revolutionary War will just take longer and be bloodier.

[Wendell]

Lein could still take to a form of radicalism, and most Socialist parties in the XIXth century centered around the ideas of Marx, even if in revised form.