I do not know about the context, so I am going to guess that it is either fabricated to create infighting among the worker class or Marx was refering to the misinterpretation from the redefinition of Socialism and dictatorship. I could guess that Socialism originally meant economy that is managed and governed by the working class contrary to the modern American definition of command economy. Dictatorship originally does not mean absolute rule by one people contrary to the indoctrination by modern American schools. Communism means equal reward regardless of merit or labor, but Marx further state that true Communism only occurs in an economic stage where equal reward is practical contrary to the Capitalist claim that Marxists should disregard material conditions. State Capitalism also has a different definition as well in Marx’s writing and there is the assumption that Capitalism already involve state intervention in the economy to benefit the Capitalist class.
I don’t know about the provenance of this exact quote, but Engels said similar things in some of his polemics. Specifically, he railed against people who applied dialectical materialism in a mechanical way, as a sort of algebra of history, and didn’t bother to really look at facts on the ground or see situations in their proper nuance. Negation of the Negation has some line like: “Knowledge of the general categories of history no more enables me to understand history than knowing the principle of overtones and proportional division of a string enables me to play the violin.”
I do not know about the context, so I am going to guess that it is either fabricated to create infighting among the worker class or Marx was refering to the misinterpretation from the redefinition of Socialism and dictatorship. I could guess that Socialism originally meant economy that is managed and governed by the working class contrary to the modern American definition of command economy. Dictatorship originally does not mean absolute rule by one people contrary to the indoctrination by modern American schools. Communism means equal reward regardless of merit or labor, but Marx further state that true Communism only occurs in an economic stage where equal reward is practical contrary to the Capitalist claim that Marxists should disregard material conditions. State Capitalism also has a different definition as well in Marx’s writing and there is the assumption that Capitalism already involve state intervention in the economy to benefit the Capitalist class.
I don’t know about the provenance of this exact quote, but Engels said similar things in some of his polemics. Specifically, he railed against people who applied dialectical materialism in a mechanical way, as a sort of algebra of history, and didn’t bother to really look at facts on the ground or see situations in their proper nuance. Negation of the Negation has some line like: “Knowledge of the general categories of history no more enables me to understand history than knowing the principle of overtones and proportional division of a string enables me to play the violin.”
So there’s a chance the Marx quote is genuine.