On Oligarchy, Class, and the Forgotten Architecture of Non-Domination.
Leftists keep gaslighting about the influence of socialism, Marxist rhetoric and tactics and Communism. The historical development of these contributed to the loss and displacement of the republican tradition, particularly by arguing to be its superior and next stage of progress.
Marxist theory explicitly framed republican and liberal forms as a transitional stage to be superseded, not perfected. That is not a right-wing invention.
Marx and Engels treated bourgeois republicanism and liberal constitutionalism as historically progressive relative to feudalism, yet incomplete and destined for replacement. Capitalist property relations, representative institutions, and formal equality under law were described as the political superstructure of a temporary mode of production. The next stage, socialism, leading to communism would abolish the conditions that made those institutions necessary. Later variants (Leninist vanguardism, various Western Marxist adaptations, democratic-socialist reformism) retained the progressive teleology even when they rejected the specific Soviet model. Rhetoric about completing the democratic project, expanding rights beyond formal equality, or treating markets and limited government as obstacles to genuine freedom is continuous with that framing.
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