From Marx to Marcos - search of the subject and the strategy of revolution

The article discusses the evolution of theories of social revolution from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. The author analyzes the basic concepts of theorists and practitioners of the armed revolutionary struggle - from the founder of the classical Communist theory of Karl Marx to the Mexican guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos. The author focuses on the analysis of changes in the understanding of the subject (“driving forces”) of the left political revolution, as well as the strategy of armed revolutionary struggle. The author comes to the conclusion about the historical evolution of the subject of the revolutionary struggle from major sustainable macro-groups (“classes”), targeted at the armed struggle, to self-born (by the network principle) unstructured protest groups, situational leaders, mild forms of the revolutionary struggle, which minimize the armed violence, though do not eliminate it completely. The author substantiates the conclusion about the absence in the modern protest movement of social forces, able to become the subject of revolution socialist orientation. This increases the danger of dominance of the social protest of extremist nationalist and religious political spectra. The author offers two models of response to this threat: the growing influence of the reigning centre-right conservative parties of Russia; return to center-left positions of the social democratic movement of the countries of the European Union.