Yes, the world can change. The trouble is that it's impossible reliably to predict what change will result from a given action. The other trouble is that it's i

Yes, the world can change. The trouble is that it's impossible reliably to predict what change will result from a given action. The other trouble is that it's impossible reliably to predict what action will result from a given action. People are like that, be it ever so easy for a systems-oriented thinker -- like Marx, or yourself, or for that matter myself -- to forget. (Like any bad habit, this is susceptible to self-discipline.) The other other trouble is that the soi-disant "social sciences" aren't and cannot be, because controlled experiments are impossible. Historiography and inference are fine and valuable things, but inflicting one's conclusions on others is a project best approached with a maximum of trepidation. And the final trouble, the really insuperable one, lies in the fact that true collective action, the seat and soul of theoretical socialism, is in practice impossible save on the smallest and meanest scale, such as the rough music of medieval Europe, or the lynchings of the postbellum American South. In a larger arena, such as that of political action, true collectivism runs contrary to the unified intent and direction necessary to survival; begin as it may, a political movement must grow a leader or die. It may, as many, achieve both; it cannot possibly achieve neither, for the same reason its individual members cannot achieve orbit unaided, no matter how high they jump. No doubt the world can change. The Bolsheviks changed it, quite effectively. Did they make of it what they intended? Did they make of it a better world than they found it? Will you?