WI: No Marx or Engels

What if the most famous theorists of leftist thought never existed? Would communism exist as an organized ideology? Would their absence help or hinder the improvements in the life of the average worker that have happened in the past century and a half? Would leftist thought benefit from being more nebulous, so that A) ideologies like Marxism-leninism, maoism, etc. never ossify and become as opposed to each other as they are to the capitalists, and that B) the right never has a solid enemy to organize against? Would it be hindered by the fact that there is no solid ideology to organize people behind?
 
anyone?
For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.
 
I guess anarchism will fill the void. The question is, then, what happens when anarchist revolutions begin to flare around the world and, more importantly, what happens if one succeeds and takes over a country. Would they just loose the counter-revolutionary/foreign invasion war?
 
Interesting WI.
My tuppence: The international working class movement would be in worse shape than it is today.


What does "The Waters of Mars" have to do with the WI?
 
Many many others

You know, there were many many others theorists that were far more popular in that period. Owenism and Fabianism were popular in Britain, Fourier, Blanqui and Louis Blanc in France, Kautsky, Lassalle and Bebel in Germany... It was just a stroke of luck that such a good writer made us forget all about them. Otherwise, one of these authors or someone else like Gramsci, Della Volpe would have united these tendencies...
 
I don't think you can say that Marx really invented "Socialism" and there's still going to be a political left, the Paris Commune, arguably the Revolutionary French Republic and a few British Groups (Owenists, Luddites ect) that were all sort of Proto-Socialists.

In my head; either one of these groups (my bet's on Owenism or some form of Co-Operatisism) taking the torch of Marxism, which could be for the best; or Socialism is rolled into generic Liberalism and economic policy is seen as less important than other factors of life or *Socialism remains very divided.
 
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