Marxism

Marxism

is

the

political

practice

and

social

theory

based

on

the

works

of

Karl

Marx,

a

19th

century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels.

Marx

drew

on

G.W.F.

Hegel's

philosophy,

the

political

economy

of

Adam

Smith

and

David

Ricardo, and theorists of 19th century French socialism, and was perhaps inspired by the earlier

Paris Commune, an organized civil protest in France and brief socialist ruling of Paris, to develop

a

critique

of

society

which

he

claimed

was

both

scientific

and

revolutionary.

This

critique

achieved its most systematic (albeit unfinished) expression in his masterpiece, Capital: A Critique

of

Political

Economy,

more

commonly

known

as

Das

Kapital.

Today,

outside

the

officially

nations,

membership

of

Marxist

political

parties

is

relatively

small,

but

Marxism

continues to enjoy significant intellectual respect in many circles.

Marxism

is

based

on

the

works

of

the

nineteenth

century

philosopher,

Karl

Marx's

death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis

for their politics and policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and conflicting.

One

of

the

first

major

political

splits

occurred

between

the

advocates

of

democratic

socialism,

who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within existing bourgeois parliamentarian

frameworks,

and

communists,

who

argued

that

the

transition

to

a

socialist

society

required

a

revolution

and

the

dissolution

of

the

capitalist

state.

Social

democracy

(sometimes

called

its Marxist roots by increments, while communism resulted in the formation of various communist

parties which became members of the Third International. The contemporary meanings of these

terms was initially very different: Lenin, for example, was considered a social democrat until the

mutation of the latter movement.

Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary social movements and political parties around

the world, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, relatively few countries

have governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although social democratic parties are

in power in a number of Western nations, they long ago distanced themselves from their historical

connections to Marx and his ideas. As of 2005, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of

China

had

governments

in

power

which

describe

themselves

as

socialist

in

the

Marxist

sense.

However, the private sector comprised more than 50% of the Chinese economy by this time and

the

Vietnamese

government

had

also

partially

liberalized

its

economy.

The

Laotian

and

Cuban

states maintained strong control over the means of production. While Marx theorized that such a

socialist

phase

would

eventually

give

way

to

a

classless

society

in

which

the

state

essentially

ceases

to

exist

and

workers

collectively

own

the

means

of

production

(communism,)

such

a

development

has

yet

to

occur

in

any

historical

self-claimed

Communist

state,

often

due

to

an

initial authoritarian regime's unwillingness to relinquish the power it gained in revolution. These

historically

communist

states

have

generally

followed

a

socialist,

command

economy

model

without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage.

North Korea is another contemporary Communist state, though the official ideology of the Korean

Workers'

Party

(originally

led

by

Kim

Il-sung

and

currently

chaired

by

his

son,

Kim

Jong-il,)

Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by the leadership of

the Soviet Union. Libya is often thought of as a socialist state; it maintained ties with the Soviet

Union

and

other

Eastern

bloc

and

Communist

states

during

the

Cold

War.

Colonel

Muammar

al-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, describes the state's official ideology as Islamic socialism, and has

labelled it a third way between capitalism and Marxism.

Some

libertarian

members

of

the

laissez-faire

and

individualist

schools

of

thought

believe

the

actions

and

principles

of

modern

capitalist

states

or

big

governments

can

be

understood

as

Communist Manifesto, for qualitative change to the economic system, and focuses on a few steps

that

Marx

and

Engels

believed

would

occur,

as

workers

emancipated

themselves

from

the

capitalist system, such as

have been implemented

—

not by Marxists but in the forms of Keynesianism, the welfare state,

new

liberalism,

social

democracy

and

other

minor

changes

to

the

capitalist

system,

in

most

capitalist states.

To Marxists these reforms represent responses to political pressures from working- class political

parties and unions, themselves responding to perceived abuses of the capitalist system. Further, in

this

view,

many

of

these

reforms

reflect

efforts

to

or

capitalism

(without

abolishing it) by coordinating economic actors and dealing with market failures. Further, although

Marxism

does

see

a

role

for

a

socialist

government

in

representing

the

proletariat

through

a

revolutionary

period

of

indeterminate

length,

it

sees

an

eventual

lightening

of

that

burden, a

Contents [hide]

1 The Hegelian roots of Marxism

2 The political-economy roots of Marxism

2.1 The liberal challenge

3 Class analysis

4 Marxist revolutions and governments

4.1 Marx's views on the structure of communist society

4.2 The October Revolution

5 See also

5.1 Other articles about Marxism

5.2 Related topics

6 External links

[edit]

The Hegelian roots of Marxism

Marx's immensely rich and varied politico-theoretical preoccupations are initially apparent in his

study

of

Hegelian

philosophy.

Hegel

proposed

a

form

of

idealism

in

which

the

development

of

ideas

into

their

contraries

is

the

guiding

theme

of

human

history.

This

process,

dialectic,

sometimes

involves

gradual

accretion

but

at

other

times

requires

discontinuous

leaps

--

violent

upheavals of previously existing status quo. World-historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte

are, on the Hegelian reading, symptoms and tools of the underlying impersonal dialectical process

rather than shapers of the same.

Marx, and the circle of Young Hegelians of whom he was one, retained much of Hegel's way of

thinking.

But

Marx,

Hegel

on

his

head,

in

his

own

view

of

his

role,

by

turning

the

idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas,

instead of the other way around. In this, Marx was following the lead of another Young Hegelian,

Ludwig

Feuerbach.

What

distinguished

Marx

from

Feuerbach,

however,

was

his

view

of

Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it

purported

to

replace,

namely

the

reified

notion

of

God

found

in

institutional

Christianity

that

legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give ontological

priority to what he called the

said in an 1846 essay they entitled

In

direct

contrast

to German

philosophy,

which

descends

from

heaven

to

earth, here

we

ascend

from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor

from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We

set

out

from

real,

active

men,

and

on

the

basis

of

their

real

life

process

we

demonstrate

the

development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in

the

human

brain

are

also,

necessarily,

sublimates

of

their

material

life

process,

which

is

empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest

of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance

of

independence.

They

have

no

history,

no

development;

but

men,

developing

their

material

production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking,

and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by

life.

Also, in his

world,

in

various

ways,

the

point

is

to

change

it,

and

his

materialist

approach

allows

for

and

empowers such change. In 1844-5, when Marx was starting to settle his account with Hegel and

the Young Hegelians in his writings, he critiqued the Young Hegelians for limiting the horizon of

their critique to religion and not taking up the critique of the state and civil society as paramount.

Indeed

in

1844,

by

the

look

of

Marx's

writings

in

that

period

(most

famous

of

which

is

the

and

Philosophic

Manuscripts

a

text

that

most

explicitly

elaborated

his

theory

of

alienation and that was only published in the twentieth century), Marx's thinking could have taken

at

least

three

possible

courses:

the

study

of

law,

religion,

and

the

state;

the

study

of

natural

philosophy; and the study of political economy. He chose the last as the predominant focus of his

studies for the rest of his life, largely on account of his previous experience as the editor of the

newspaper

Zeitung

on

whose

pages

he

fought

for

freedom

of

expression

against

Prussian censorship and made a rather idealist, legal defense for the Moselle peasants' customary

right

of

collecting

wood

in

the

forest

(this

right

was

at

the

point

of

being

criminalized

and

privatized

by

the

state).

It

was

Marx's

inability

to

penetrate

beneath

the

legal

and

polemical

surface

of

the

latter

issue

to

its

materialist,

economic,

and

social

roots

that

prompted

him

to

critically study political economy.

Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history, otherwise known as historical

materialism (although Engels was the one who coined this term and Marx himself never used it),

in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are

independent

of

their

will,

namely

relations

of

production

appropriate

to

a

given

stage

in

the

development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production

constitutes

the

economic

structure

of

society,

the

real

foundation,

on

which

arises

a

legal

and

political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode

of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that

determines their consciousness.

In this brief popularization of his ideas, Marx emphasized that social development sprang from the

inherent

contradictions

within

material

life

and

the

social

superstructure.

This

notion

is

often

understood as a simple historical narrative: primitive communism had developed into slave states.

Slave states had developed into feudal societies. Those societies in turn became capitalist states,

and

those

states

would

be

overthrown

by

the

self-conscious

portion

of

their

working- class,

or

proletariat, creating the conditions for socialism and, ultimately, a higher form of communism than

that

with

which

the

whole

process

began.

Marx

illustrated

his

ideas

most

prominently

by

the

development of capitalism from feudalism and by the prediction of the development of socialism

from capitalism.

The base- superstructure and stadialist formulations in the 1859 preface took on canonical status in

the

subsequent

development

of

orthodox

Marxism,

but

some

believe

that

Marx

regarded

them

merely as a short-hand summary of his huge ongoing work-in-progress (which was only published

posthumously

over

a

hundred

years

later

as

These

sprawling,

voluminous

notebooks

that

Marx

put

together

for

his

research

on

political

economy,

particularly

those

materials

associated

with

the

study

of

communism

and

pre-capitalist

communal

production,

in

fact,

show

a

more

radical

turning

on

his

head

than

heretofore

acknowledged

by

most

mainstream

Marxists

and

Marxiologists.

In

lieu

of

the

Enlightenment

belief in historical progress and stages that Hegel explicitly stated (often in a racist, Eurocentric

manner, as in his

decidedly empirical approach to analyzing historical changes and different modes of production,

emphasizing

without

forcing

them

into

a

teleological

paradigm

the

rich

varieties

of

communal

productions

throughout

the

world

and

the

critical

importance

of

collective

working-class

antagonism in the development of capitalism.

Moreover,

Marx's

rejection

of

the

necessity

of

bourgeois

revolution

and

appreciation

of

the

obschina,

the

communal

land

system,

in

Russia

in

his

letter

to

Vera

Zasulich;

respect

for

the

egalitarian

culture

of

North

African

Muslim

commoners

found

in

his

letters

from

Algeria;

sympathetic

and

searching

investigation

of

the

global

commons

and

indigenous

cultures

and

practices

in

his

notebooks,

including

the

Notebooks

that

he

kept

during

his

last

years, all point to a historical Marx who was continuously developing his ideas until his deathbed