Marxism and Totalitarianism: Rudolf Hilferding and the Mensheviks

Marxism and Totalitarianism: Rudolf Hilferding and the Mensheviks

In April 1940 the Paris-based Russian Menshevik journal, Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik (SV), published an article by the famous Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding entitled “State Capitalism or Totalitarian State Economy?” Hilferding argued that the Soviet Union should be understood as the harbinger of a new type of social formation—totalitarianismand that the emergence of such a formation posed a major challenge to Marxist theory.