Marxism succeeded only where non-Western elites used it to resist the West.

Evidence

The coming to power of Marxism first in Russia and then in China and Vietnam represented a transition phase from the European international system to a post-European multicivilizational system. Marxism was a product of European civilization, but it neither took root nor succeeded there. Instead modernizing and revolutionary elites imported it into non-Western societies; Lenin, Mao, and Ho adapted it to their purposes and used it to challenge Western power, to mobilize their people, and to assert the national identity and autonomy of their countries against the West. The collapse of this ideology in the Soviet Union and its substantial adaptation in China and Vietnam does not, however, necessarily mean that these societies will import the other Western ideology of liberal democracy. Westerners who assume that it does are likely to be surprised by the creativity, resilience, and individuality of non-Western cultures. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to theories of decolonization and hybrid modernity — Marxism as an anti-imperial tool — familiar from postcolonial theory (Fanon, Said).
• SEED: Essay angle: the history of political ideas as weapons imported by the colonized — ideologies travel in reverse of the civilizational origin story. Why the West keeps assuming its defeat of communism prewires others to adopt liberal democracy.