Marx, revolution, and the credibility problem

Claude.marx_revolution_credibility.pdf

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Marx, revolution, and the credibility problem Abstract: Why have Marxist revolutions consistently produced authoritarian regimes rather than the liberated society Marx envisioned? This paper argues that revolutionary failure is not contingent but structurally determined by commitment problems inherent to the Marxist theoreticcal and philosphcia program. Drawing on the self-enforcing constituttional literature and time-consentity problem, we identify three credibility challenges that jointly render the revolutionary project unlikely: i) a horizontal commitment problem, ii) a vertical commitment problem, and iii) an inter-class commitment problem. Using backward induction and game theory we show that these problems interact to produce a problematic structural logic: anticipating that post-revolutionary commitments will fail, negotiations collapse; anticipating violent confrontation, revolutionary movements adopt hgoghly hierarchial organizational forms (militarization, hierarchy, ideological rigidity, no space for dissetn) that are more likly to conduce towards authoritarian outcomes. The paper argues that Marxist revolution is inherently fragile because its demands—abolition of private productive property, withering of the state—eliminate the conditions for credible commitment: bright-line rules, ongoing bargaining leverage, and institutional constraints on authority. The same analytical tools that explain why liberal constitutional agrements succeed explain why revolutionary transformation cannot. While this paper remain agnostic on Marx's diagnosis of capitalism, it does demonstrae the institutional impossibility of his cure.