The workers' failure to maintain control over their own destiny
was due mainly to Russia's general objective unreadiness for a
socialist development, but also to the fact that neither the
soviets, nor the socialist parties, knew how to go about
organizing a socialist society. There was no historical
precedent and Marxist theory had not seriously concerned itself
with the problem of the socialist reconstruction of society.
However, past revolutionary occurrences had some relevance,
particularly as regards Russia, because of her general
backwardness. Following Marx and Engels, Russian Marxists were
apt to point to the Paris Commune as an example of a working-
class revolution under similarly unfavorable conditions. Trotsky
wrote, for instance, that it is not excluded that in a backward
country with a lesser degree of capitalist development, the
proletariat should sooner reach political supremacy than in a
highly developed capitalist state. Thus, in middle- class Paris,
the proletariat consciously took into its h