Elite Coups as Revolutionary Betrayal
Lenin’s Bolsheviks and similar groups staged top-down coups with small, disciplined cadres rather than genuine mass movements. The October Revolution involved a tiny percentage of Russian society seizing power, not the worker uprising Marx envisioned. Actual worker councils (soviets) were quickly neutralized when they showed independence. Mao’s Long March involved a professional revolutionary core, not spontaneous worker action. These vanguard parties claimed to represent workers while systematically excluding them from real decision-making.
