Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:37, 9 November 2021

Part of a series on
Marxism
Theoretical works Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Capital Critique of the Gotha Programme Dialectics of Nature The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Philosophical Notebooks Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins On Practice Theses on the Philosophy of History Dialectic of Enlightenment A Critique of Soviet Economics The Long Revolution Guerrilla Warfare The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Ways of Seeing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Empire Late Victorian Holocausts Change the World Without Taking Power Caliban and the Witch An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital Capitalist Realism Capital in the Anthropocene Towards Socialism or Capitalism? The Revolution Betrayed Literature and Revolution The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice
Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ideology Philosophy of nature Philosophy in the Soviet Union Reification Marxist ethics
Critique of political economy Capital (accumulation) Crisis theory Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Factors of production Falling profit-rate tendency Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Scientific socialism Surplus product Socially necessary labour time Value-form Wage labour
Sociology Base and superstructure Bourgeoisie Class Class consciousness Classless society Commodity fetishism Communist society Critical theory Cultural hegemony Democracy Dictatorship of the proletariat Soviet Radical Democratic centralism Exploitation False consciousness Human nature Immiseration Imperialism Lumpenproletariat Metabolic rift Proletariat Private property Relations of production State theory Working class
History Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution Theory of historical trajectory
Aspects Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural Studies Ethics Film theory Geography Historiography Literary criticism Marxism and religion Sociology Philosophy
Common variants Structural Autonomist Marxism–Leninism Guevarism Maoism Titoism Trotskyism Neo-Gramscianism Regulation school Third-worldist Hegelian Budapest School Frankfurt School Humanist Neue Marx-Lektüre Open Political Praxis School Both Black Classical Communization Feminist Leninism Neo Post Western
Other variants Analytical Austromarxism Centrist Council communism Eurocommunism Instrumental Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Nkrumaism Orthodox Revisionist Situationist Socialism with Chinese characteristics Wertkritik
People Marx Engels Morris Lafargue Rubin Kautsky Plekhanov Du Bois Connolly Lenin Luxemburg Liebknecht Kollontai Bogdanov Stalin Trotsky Grossman Zinoviev Bloch Lukács Korsch Bukharin Ho Serge Gramsci Galiev Pashukanis Bordiga Benjamin Mao Basu Mariátegui Horkheimer Dutt Brecht Marcuse Kalecki Fromm Cox Lefebvre James Adorno Padmore Sartre Deutscher Hoxha Beauvoir Sombart Nkrumah Sweezy Emmanuel Hill Bettelheim Draper Jones Hobsbawm Althusser Hinton Williams Freire Mandel Sivanandan Miliband Cabral Thompson Bauman Fanon Kosik Berger Castro Guevara Liebman Heller Guattari Mészáros O'Connor Wallerstein Mies Tronti Debord Amin Hall Nairn Parenti Negri Jameson Gonzalo Dussel Harvey Laclau Bahro Poulantzas Vattimo Badiou Harnecker Altvater Anderson Löwy Vogel Sison Easthope Rancière Berman Przeworski Cohen Therborn Losurdo Ture Postone Rodney Bannerji Spivak Newton Sakai Wood Federici Wolff Balibar Eagleton Kurz Hartsock Rowbotham Mouffe Geras Brenner Davis Massey Cleaver Bishop Haraway Panitch Clarke Jessop Davis Wright Fraser Burawoy Holloway Rose Screpanti Tamás Hampton Cano Žižek Berardi Sankara Hennessy McDonnell Douzinas Roediger Foster West Ghandy Marcos Heinrich Prashad Kelley Dean Lordon Linera Fisher Li Coulthard Malm Seymour Toscano Bhattacharya Moufawad-Paul Srnicek Horvat Hamza Saito
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Constellations Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anarchism Creative destruction Conflict theory Criticism of Marxism Communism Communalism Economic determinism History of communism Left-wing politics Marxian economics New Left Old Left Municipalism Political ecology Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Market Reformist Revolutionary Social Utopian Left-wing populism Universal class Vulgar Marxism Economism Worker cooperative Workers' council
Outline Communism portal Philosophy portal Socialism portal
v t e

Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, there is currently no single definitive Marxist theory.

Some Marxist schools of thought place greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Some schools have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts which has then led to widely varying conclusions.

Marxism has had a profound impact on global academia, having influenced many fields, including anthropology, archaeology, art theory, criminology, cultural studies, economics, education, ethics, film theory, geography, historiography, literary criticism, media studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, science studies, sociology, urban planning, and theater.

Overview

Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analyzing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organization, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena including wider social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations, together with the economic system, form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organizing production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."

These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs as result of the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another, a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat, therefore capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use. Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment."

Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory, socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity.

Etymology

The term Marxism was popularized by Karl Kautsky, who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between the orthodox and revisionist followers of Marx. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted use of the term.

Engels did not support the use of the term Marxism to describe either Marx's or his own views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as real followers of Marx while casting others in different terms such as Lassallians. In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticized self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist."

Historical materialism

The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping the objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions.

Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

— Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1858

Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living. Marx's account of the theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and in the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society (social classes, political pyramid and ideologies) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered as the base and superstructure. The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, the "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base.

The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour, means of production and relations of production, i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness" that derive from the economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provokes social revolutions, whereby changes to the economic base leads to the social transformation of the superstructure.

This relationship is reflexive, in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. Those newly formed social organizations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic, expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested themselves as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe. Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production:

1. Primitive communism: co-operative tribal societies.
2. Slave society: development of tribal to city-state in which aristocracy is born.
3. Feudalism: aristocrats are the ruling class while merchants evolve into the bourgeoisie.
4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the proletariat.

While historical materialism has been referred to as a materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master-key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale, imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself." In a letter to editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym (1877), he explained that his ideas are based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.

Criticism of capitalism

According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx believed that the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting the concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital" was best not only for the wealthy capitalists but also for the workers because it provided them with employment.

Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour—the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing the social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such condition, surplus value—the difference between the value produced and the value received by a labourer—is synonymous with the term surplus labour and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker.

In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion. Under the capitalist mode of production, those results are more subtly achieved because workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitive work relationship with a capitalist in order to earn the necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary in that they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve, thus exploitation is inevitable and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat the worker.

Alienation (German: Entfremdung) is the estrangement of people from their humanity, and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and so generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterization of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition is not prerequisite.

Social classes

Marx distinguishes social classes on the basis of two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups:

• Proletariat: "he class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live." The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat as the worker's labour generates a surplus value greater than the worker's wage.
  • Lumpenproletariat: the outcasts of society, such as the criminals, vagabonds, beggars, or prostitutes, without any political or class consciousness. Having no interest in national, let alone international, economic affairs, Marx claimed that this specific sub-division of the proletariat would play no part in the eventual social revolution.
• Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat. They subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie.
  • Petite bourgeoisie: those who work and can afford to buy little labour power (i.e. small business owners, peasants landlords and trade workers). Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of the means of production eventually would destroy the petite bourgeoisie, degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
• Landlords: a historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
• Peasantry and farmers: a scattered class incapable of organizing and effecting socio-economic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat while some would become landlords.

Class consciousness denotes the awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses as well as its capacity to rationally act in their best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and thus the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Without defining ideology, Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces."

Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas), are determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology, Marx says that "he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity.

Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything.

This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries, land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of the society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism. Through working class revolution, the state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on co-operation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be the end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history.

Marx saw work, the effort by humans to transform the environment for their needs, as a fundamental feature of human kind. Capitalism, in which the product of the worker's labour is taken from them and sold at market rather than being part of the worker's life, is therefore alienating to the worker. Additionally, the worker is compelled by various means (some nicer than others) to work harder, faster and for longer hours. While this is happening, the employer is constantly trying to save on labour costs by paying the workers less and figuring out how to use cheaper equipment. This allows the employer to extract the largest amount of work and therefore potential wealth from their workers. The fundamental nature of capitalist society is no different from that of slave society, in that one small group of society exploits the larger group.

Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated and the motive of furthering human flourishing is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state has its origins in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared.

Communism, revolution and socialism

According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death."

According to orthodox Marxist theory, the overthrow of capitalism by a socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought, all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for the majority of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialization of production is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, along with the failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I, led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism.

Schools of thought

Classical

Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde—both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives the paraphrase, "If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist." Accusing Guesde and Lafargue of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and "of denying the value of reformist struggles, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, 'ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')."

American Marxist scholar Hal Draper responded to this comment by saying: "There are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike."

Libertarian

Libertarian Marxism emphasizes the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism such as left communism emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism.

Libertarian Marxism is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France; emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.

Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism, council communism, De Leonism, Lettrism, parts of the New Left, Situationism, Socialisme ou Barbarie and workerism. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Raya Dunayevskaya, Daniel Guérin, C. L. R. James, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Negri, Anton Pannekoek, Fredy Perlman, Ernesto Screpanti, E. P. Thompson, Raoul Vaneigem, and Yanis Varoufakis, the latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist.

Humanist

Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to human thriving" from a critical perspective rooted in Marxist philosophy. Marxist humanists argue that Marx himself was concerned with investigating similar questions.

Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works such as Capital. They hold that it is necessary to grasp Marx's philosophical foundations to understand his later works properly.

Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and to interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism. Where other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as a natural science, Marxist humanism reaffirms the doctrine of "man is the measure of all things" – that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory.

Academic

According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists.

Archaeology

The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under the administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin, a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country.

These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe, who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society.

Sociology

Marxist sociology, as the study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive (empirical) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilization of a revolutionary working class." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain the complex dynamics of modern society."

Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. As well as Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology. The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism, of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During the 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been a backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states (see sociology in Poland) but it remains dominant in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by those communist states that remain (see sociology in China).

Economics

Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution. Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox, ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of the global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle such as creative destruction have been fitted for use in capitalist systems.

Education

Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilizing its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren, especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analyzed the forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S. and Marvin Gettleman's examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesized Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while other's like John Holt analyze adult education from a Marxist perspective. Other developments include the educational aesthetics of Marxist education, Marxist analyses of the role of fixed capital in capitalist education, the educational psychology of capital, the educational theory of Lenin, and the pedagogical function of the Communist Party. The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era.

Historiography

Marxist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by Marxism, the chief tenets of which are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below. Friedrich Engels' most important historical contribution was Der deutsche Bauernkrieg about the German Peasants' War which analysed social warfare in early Protestant Germany in terms of emerging capitalist classes. The German Peasants' War indicate the Marxist interest in history from below and class analysis, and attempts a dialectical analysis.

Engels' short treatise The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was salient in creating the socialist impetus in British politics. Marx's most important works on social and political history include The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, and those chapters of Das Kapital dealing with the historical emergence of capitalists and proletarians from pre-industrial English society. Marxist historiography suffered in the Soviet Union, as the government requested overdetermined historical writing. Notable histories include the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), published in the 1930s to justify the nature of Bolshevik party life under Joseph Stalin. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946.

While some members of the group, most notably Christopher Hill and E. P. Thompson, left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the common points of British Marxist historiography continued in their works. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is one of the works commonly associated with this group. Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits is another example of this group's work. C. L. R. James was also a great pioneer of the 'history from below' approach. Living in Britain when he wrote his most notable work The Black Jacobins (1938), he was an anti-Stalinist Marxist and so outside of the CPGB. In India, B. N. Datta and D. D. Kosambi are considered the founding fathers of Marxist historiography. Today, the senior-most scholars of Marxist historiography are R. S. Sharma, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, D. N. Jha, and K. N. Panikkar, most of whom are now over 75 years old.

Literary criticism

Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate. According to Marxists, even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific ideological function, based on the background and ideology of the author. Notable Marxist literary critics include Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Terry Eagleton, and Fredric Jameson.

Aesthetics

Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art and beauty, among others. Marxists believe that economic and social conditions, and especially the class relations that derive from them, affect every aspect of an individual's life, from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks. Some notable Marxist aestheticians include Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Lifshitz, William Morris, Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, Ernst Fischer, Louis Althusser, Jacques Rancière, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Raymond Williams.

History

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Marx addressed the matters of alienation and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist mode of production and historical materialism. He is famous for analysing history in terms of class struggle, summarised in the initial line introducing The Communist Manifesto (1848): "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Together with Marx, Engels co-developed communist theory. Marx and Engels first met in September 1844. Discovering that they had similar views of philosophy and socialism, they collaborated and wrote works such as Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After Marx was deported from France in January 1845, they moved to Belgium, which then permitted greater freedom of expression than other European countries. In January 1846, they returned to Brussels to establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.

In 1847, they began writing The Communist Manifesto (1848), based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. Six weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them and they moved to Cologne, where they published the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a politically radical newspaper. By 1849, they had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian authorities pressured the British government to expel Marx and Engels, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused.

After Marx's death in 1883, Engels became the editor and translator of Marx's writings. With his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)—analysing monogamous marriage as guaranteeing male social domination of women, a concept analogous, in communist theory, to the capitalist class's economic domination of the working class—Engels made intellectually significant contributions to feminist theory and Marxist feminism.

Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union

With the October Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks took power from the Russian Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks established the first socialist state based on the ideas of soviet democracy and Leninism. Their newly formed federal state promised to end Russian involvement in World War I and establish a revolutionary worker's state. Following the October Revolution the Soviet government was involved in a struggle with the White Movement and several independence movements in the Russian Civil War. This period is marked by the establishment of many socialist policies and the development of new socialist ideas mainly in the form of Marxism–Leninism.

In 1919, the nascent Soviet Government established the Communist Academy and the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute for doctrinal Marxist study as well as to publish official ideological and research documents for the Russian Communist Party. With Lenin's death in 1924, there was an internal struggle in the Soviet Communist movement, mainly between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky in the form of the Right Opposition and Left Opposition respectively. These struggles were based on both sides different interpretations of Marxist and Leninist theory based on the situation of the Soviet Union at the time.

Chinese Revolution

The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems.

At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and more widely World War II, the Chinese Communist Revolution took place within the context of the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese Communist Party, which was founded in 1921, was in conflict with the Kuomintang over the future of the country. Throughout the Civil War Mao Zedong developed a theory of Marxism for the Chinese historical context. Mao found a large base of support in the peasantry as opposed to the Russian Revolution which found its primary support in the urban centers of the Russian Empire. Some major ideas contributed by Mao were the ideas of New Democracy, mass line and people's war. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was declared in 1949. The new socialist state was to be founded on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

From Stalin's death until the late 1960s, there was increasing conflict between China and the Soviet Union. De-Stalinization, which first began under Nikita Khrushchev and the policy of detente, were seen as revisionist and insufficiently Marxist. This ideological confrontation spilled into a wider global crisis centered around which nation was to lead the international socialist movement.

Following Mao's death and the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping, Maoism and official Marxism in China was reworked. This new model was to be a newer dynamic form of Marxism–Leninism and Maoism in China. Commonly referred to as socialism with Chinese Characteristics this new path was centered around Deng's Four Cardinal Principles which sought to uphold the central role of the Chinese Communist Party and uphold the principle that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that it was still working to build a communist society based on Marxist principles.

Late 20th century

In 1959, the Cuban Revolution led to the victory of Fidel Castro and his July 26 Movement. Although the revolution was not explicitly socialist, upon victory Castro ascended to the position of prime minister and adopted the Leninist model of socialist development, forging an alliance with the Soviet Union. One of the leaders of the revolution, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, subsequently went on to aid revolutionary socialist movements in Congo-Kinshasa and Bolivia, eventually being killed by the Bolivian government, possibly on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although the CIA agent sent to search for Guevara, Felix Rodriguez, expressed a desire to keep him alive as a possible bargaining tool with the Cuban government. He posthumously went on to become an internationally recognised icon.

In the People's Republic of China, the Maoist government undertook the Cultural Revolution from 1966 through to 1976 to purge Chinese society of capitalist elements and achieve socialism. Upon Mao Zedong's death, his rivals seized political power and under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, many of Mao's Cultural Revolution era policies were revised or abandoned and much of the state sector privatised.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the collapse of most of those socialist states that had professed a Marxist–Leninist ideology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emergence of the New Right and neoliberal capitalism as the dominant ideological trends in Western politics championed by United States president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher led the West to take a more aggressive stand towards the Soviet Union and its Leninist allies. Meanwhile, the reformist Mikhael Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985 and sought to abandon Leninist models of development towards social democracy. Ultimately, Gorbachev's reforms, coupled with rising levels of popular ethnic nationalism, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991 into a series of constituent nations, all of which abandoned Marxist–Leninist models for socialism, with most converting to capitalist economies.

21st century

At the turn of the 21st century, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam remained the only officially Marxist–Leninist states remaining, although a Maoist government led by Prachanda was elected into power in Nepal in 2008 following a long guerrilla struggle.

The early 21st century also saw the election of socialist governments in several Latin American nations, in what has come to be known as the "pink tide"; dominated by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez, this trend also saw the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Forging political and economic alliances through international organisations like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, these socialist governments allied themselves with Marxist–Leninist Cuba and although none of them espoused a Stalinist path directly, most admitted to being significantly influenced by Marxist theory. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing-in of his cabinet, two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007. Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist, while others consider him an honest revolutionary leader who made major mistakes due to him lacking a Marxist analysis.

For Italian Marxist Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala in their 2011 book Hermeneutic Communism, "this new weak communism differs substantially from its previous Soviet (and current Chinese) realization, because the South American countries follow democratic electoral procedures and also manage to decentralize the state bureaucratic system through the Bolivarian missions. In sum, if weakened communism is felt as a specter in the West, it is not only because of media distortions but also for the alternative it represents through the same democratic procedures that the West constantly professes to cherish but is hesitant to apply."

Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has announced a deepening commitment of the Chinese Communist Party to the ideas of Marx. At an event celebrating the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, Xi said "We must win the advantages, win the initiative, and win the future. We must continuously improve the ability to use Marxism to analyse and solve practical problems", adding that Marxism is a "powerful ideological weapon for us to understand the world, grasp the law, seek the truth, and change the world." Xi has further stressed the importance of examining and continuing the tradition of the CPC and embrace its revolutionary past.

The fidelity of those varied revolutionaries, leaders and parties to the work of Karl Marx is highly contested and has been rejected by many Marxists and other socialists alike. Socialists in general and socialist writers, including Dimitri Volkogonov, acknowledge that the actions of authoritarian socialist leaders have damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution."

Criticism

Criticism of Marxism has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines. This includes general criticism about lack of internal consistency, criticisms related to historical materialism, that it is a type of historical determinism, the necessity of suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified.

Some Marxists have criticised the academic institutionalisation of Marxism for being too shallow and detached from political action. Zimbabwean Trotskyist Alex Callinicos, himself a professional academic, stated: "Its practitioners remind one of Narcissus, who in the Greek legend fell in love with his own reflection. ... Sometimes it is necessary to devote time to clarifying and developing the concepts that we use, but indeed for Western Marxists this has become an end in itself. The result is a body of writings incomprehensible to all but a tiny minority of highly qualified scholars."

Additionally, there are intellectual critiques of Marxism that contest certain assumptions prevalent in Marx's thought and Marxism after him, without exactly rejecting Marxist politics. Other contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are viable, but that the corpus is incomplete or outdated in regards to certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School is one example.

General

Philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski pointed out that "Marx's theory is incomplete or ambiguous in many places, and could be 'applied' in many contradictory ways without manifestly infringing its principles." Specifically, he considers "the laws of dialectics" as fundamentally erroneous, stating that some are "truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means" and some just "nonsense"; he believes that some Marxist laws can be interpreted differently, but that these interpretations still in general fall into one of the two categories of error.

Okishio's theorem shows that if capitalists use cost-cutting techniques and real wages do not increase, the rate of profit must rise, which casts doubt on Marx's view that the rate of profit would tend to fall.

The allegations of inconsistency have been a large part of Marxian economics and the debates around it since the 1970s. Andrew Kliman argues that this undermines Marx's critiques and the correction of the alleged inconsistencies, because internally inconsistent theories cannot be right by definition.

Epistemological and empirical

Marx's predictions have been criticized because they have allegedly failed, with some pointing towards the GDP per capita increasing generally in capitalist economies compared to less market oriented economics, the capitalist economies not suffering worsening economic crises leading to the overthrow of the capitalist system and communist revolutions not occurring in the most advanced capitalist nations, but instead in undeveloped regions.

In his books The Poverty of Historicism and Conjectures and Refutations, philosopher of science Karl Popper criticized the explanatory power and validity of historical materialism. Popper believed that Marxism had been initially scientific, in that Marx had postulated a genuinely predictive theory. When these predictions were not in fact borne out, Popper argues that the theory avoided falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses that made it compatible with the facts. Because of this, Popper asserted, a theory that was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma.

Socialist

Democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that socialism can be accomplished only through extra-legal class conflict and a proletarian revolution. The relationship between Marx and other socialist thinkers and organizations—rooted in Marxism's "scientific" and anti-utopian socialism, among other factors—has divided Marxists from other socialists since Marx's life.

After Marx's death and with the emergence of Marxism, there have also been dissensions within Marxism itself—a notable example is the splitting of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Orthodox Marxists became opposed to a less dogmatic, more innovative, or even revisionist Marxism.

Anarchist and libertarian

Anarchism has had a strained relationship with Marxism since Marx's life. Anarchists and many non-Marxist libertarian socialists reject the need for a transitory state phase, claiming that socialism can only be established through decentralized, non-coercive organization. Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticized Marx for his authoritarian bent. The phrases "barracks socialism" or "barracks communism" became a shorthand for this critique, evoking the image of citizens' lives being as regimented as the lives of conscripts in a barracks.

Noam Chomsky is critical of Marxism's dogmatic strains and the idea of Marxism itself but still appreciates Marx's contributions to political thought. Unlike some anarchists, Chomsky does not consider Bolshevism "Marxism in practice", but he does recognize that Marx was a complicated figure who had conflicting ideas. While acknowledging the latent authoritarianism in Marx, Chomsky also points to the libertarian strains that developed into the council communism of Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek. His commitment to libertarian socialism has led him to characterize himself as an anarchist with radical Marxist leanings.

Economic

Other critiques come from an economic standpoint. Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev writing in 1898, Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz writing in 1906–1907 and subsequent critics have alleged that Marx's value theory and law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that Marx drew conclusions that actually do not follow from his theoretical premises. Once these alleged errors are corrected, his conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by and equal to aggregate value and surplus value no longer holds true. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit.

Both Marxism and socialism have received considerable critical analysis from multiple generations of Austrian economists in terms of scientific methodology, economic theory and political implications. During the marginal revolution, subjective value theory was rediscovered by Carl Menger, a development that fundamentally undermined the British cost theories of value. The restoration of subjectivism and praxeological methodology previously used by classical economists including Richard Cantillon, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Jean-Baptiste Say and Frédéric Bastiat led Menger to criticise historicist methodology in general. Second-generation Austrian economist Eugen Böhm von Bawerk used praxeological and subjectivist methodology to attack the law of value fundamentally. Gottfried Haberler has regarded his criticism as "definitive", arguing that Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx's economics was so "thorough and devastating" that he believes that as of the 1960s no Marxian scholar had conclusively refuted it. Third-generation Austrian Ludwig von Mises rekindled debate about the economic calculation problem by arguing that without price signals in capital goods, in his opinion all other aspects of the market economy are irrational. This led him to declare that "rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth."

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that Marx's economic theory was fundamentally flawed because it attempted to simplify the economy into a few general laws that ignored the impact of institutions on the economy.

See also

• Communism
• Analytical Marxism
• Austromarxism
• Democracy in Marxism
• Freudo-Marxism
• Hegelian Marxism
• Influences on Karl Marx
• Instrumental Marxism
• Legal Marxism
• Marx's notebooks on the history of technology
• Marx's theory of human nature
• Marxian class theory
• Marxism and religion
• Marxist international relations theory
• Marxists Internet Archive
• Open Marxism
• Outline of Marxism
• Post-Marxism
• Pre-Marx socialists
• Reification (Marxism)
• Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence
• The Marxism of Che Guevara
• Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
• Marxism and the U.S.A.
• Rethinking Marxism
• Specters of Marx

References

Citations

1. Wolff, Richard, and Stephen Resnick (August 1987). Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-8018-3480-6. The German Marxists extended the theory to groups and issues Marx had barely touched. Marxian analyses of the legal system, of the social role of women, of foreign trade, of international rivalries among capitalist nations, and the role of parliamentary democracy in the transition to socialism drew animated debates ... Marxian theory (singular) gave way to Marxian theories (plural).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-415-24187-8. Marxist political economists differ over their definitions of capitalism, socialism and communism. These differences are so fundamental, the arguments among differently persuaded Marxist political economists have sometimes been as intense as their oppositions to political economies that celebrate capitalism.
3. O'Laughlin, B (October 1975). "Marxist Approaches in Anthropology" (PDF). Annual Review of Anthropology. 4 (1): 341–370. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.04.100175.002013. S2CID 2730688. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2019.
4. Roseberry, William (21 October 1997). "Marx and Anthropology". Annual Review of Anthropology. 26 (1): 25–46. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.25.
5. Malott, Curry (2015). Marx, capital, and education : towards a critical pedagogy of becoming. Derek Ford. New York. ISBN 978-1-4539-1602-5. OCLC 913956545.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
6. Mitchell, Don (2020). Mean streets : homelessness, public space, and the limits of capital. Athens. ISBN 978-0-8203-5691-4. OCLC 1151767935.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
7. Becker, Samuel L. (18 May 2009). "Marxist approaches to media studies: The British experience". Critical Studies in Mass Communication. 1 (1): 66–80. doi:10.1080/15295038409360014.
8. Manuel Alvarado, Robin Gutch, and Tana Wollen (1987). Learning the Media: Introduction to Media Teaching, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 62, 76.
9. Sheehan, Helena (July 2007). "Marxism and Science Studies: A Sweep through the Decades". International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 21 (2): 197–210. doi:10.1080/02698590701498126. S2CID 143737257.
10. Marx, Karl. 1859. "Introduction." A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
11. Gregory, Paul R., and Robert C. Stuart. 2003. "Marx's Theory of Change." In Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century (7th ed.). ISBN 0-618-26181-8. p. 62.
12. Engels, Friedrich (1882). "Historical Materialism". Part 3 in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
13. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852). Free will, non-predestination and non-determinism are emphasized in Marx's famous quote "Men make their own history."
14. ^ Haupt, Georges, Peter Fawcett, and Eric Hobsbawm. 2010. Aspects of International Socialism, 1871–1914: Essays by Georges Haupt (paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15. Lenin 1967 (1913). p. 15.
16. Marx, Karl. 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, translated by M. Nicolaus. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044575-7. p. 265
17. Evans, p. 53.
18. Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1932) . The German Ideology. Marx/Engels Collected Works. 5. Moscow: Progress Publisher. Retrieved 11 July 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
19. Marx, Karl (1993) . A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publisher. Retrieved 11 July 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
20. Chambre, Henri; McLellan, David T. (2020) . "Marxism". "Historical materialism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
21. Marx, Karl. 1977. "Preface." A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
22. Engels, Friedrich. 1947. "Introduction." In Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
23. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1888. "Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." Ch. 1 in The Communist Manifesto, edited by F. Engels.
24. Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1968) . "Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky". Marx and Engels Correspondence. New York: International Publishers. Retrieved 11 July 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
25. Wittfogel, Karl A. (July 1960). "The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution". World Politics. 12 (4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 487–508. doi:10.2307/2009334. JSTOR 2009334. Quote at p. 493.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
26. Lenin 1967 (1913). p. 7.
27. Marx 1849.
28. "Alienation". A Dictionary of Sociology.
29. Engels, Friedrich (1888). Manifesto of the Communist Party. London. pp. Footnote. Retrieved 15 March 2015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
30. McCarney, Joseph. 2005. "Ideology and False Consciousness." Ch. 16 in Marx Myths and Legends, edited by R. Lucas and A. Blunden. Archived from the original on 9 May 2013.
31. Engels, Friedrich. 1968. "Letter to Franz Mehring". Marx and Engels Correspondence, translated by D. Torr. London: International Publishers.
32. "The German Ideology. Karl Marx 1845". Marxists.org.
33. Castro and Ramonet 2009. p. 100.
34. Frederick Engels. "Origins of the Family- Chapter IX". Marxists.org. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
35. Jianmin Zhao; Bruce J. Dickson (2001). Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society, and Security. Taylor & Francis Group. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-415-25583-7. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
36. Kurian, George Thomas. 2011. "Withering Away of the State." P. 1776 in The Encyclopedia of Political Science. Washington, DC: CQ Press. doi:10.4135/9781608712434.n1646.
37. Hudis, Peter; Vidal, Matt, Smith, Tony; Rotta, Tomás; Prew, Paul, eds. (September 2018–June 2019). The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. "Marx's Concept of Socialism". Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190695545. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001.
38. Lenin 1967 (1913). pp. 35–36.
39. Kuruma, Samezo. 1929. "An Introduction to the Theory of Crisis," translated by M. Schauerte. Journal of the Ohara Institute for Social Research 4(1).
40. Marx, Karl; Guesde, Jules (1880). "The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier". Retrieved 11 July 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
41. Hall, Stuart; Dave Morely; Kuan-Hsing Chen (1996). Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. p. 418. ISBN 978-0-415-08803-9. Retrieved 4 March 2013. I have no hesitation in saying that this represents a gigantic crudification and simplification of Marx's work – the kind of simplification and reductionism which once led him, in despair, to say "if that is marxism, then I am not a marxist.
42. Not found in search function at Draper Arkiv.
43. Gorter, Herman, Anton Pannekoek, Sylvia Pankhurst, and Otto Rühle. 2007. Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils. Red and Black.
44. Screpanti, Ernesto. 2007. Libertarian Communism: Marx Engels and the Political Economy of Freedom. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
45. Draper, Hal. 1971. "The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels." The Socialist Register 4:81–104. Archived 2011-07-23 at the Wayback Machine.
46. Chomsky, Noam. 16 February 1970. "Government In The Future" (Lecture). The Poetry Center in New York. Archived 2010-11-21 at the Wayback Machine.
47. "A libertarian Marxist tendency map". Libcom.org. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
48. Varoufakis, Yanis. "Yanis Varoufakis thinks we need a radically new way of thinking about the economy, finance and capitalism". Ted. Retrieved 14 April 2019. Yanis Varoufakis describes himself as a "libertarian Marxist
49. Lowry, Ben (11 March 2017). "Yanis Varoufakis: We leftists are not necessarily pro public sector – Marx was anti state". The Wews Letter. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
50. Alderson 2017, p. 17. sfn error: no target: CITEREFAlderson2017 (help)
51. Smith 1998. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSmith1998 (help)
52. Fromm 1966, pp. 69–79 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFFromm1966 (help); Petrović 1967, pp. 35–51 sfnm error: no target: CITEREFPetrović1967 (help).
53. Marcuse 1973, pp. 1–48. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarcuse1973 (help)
54. Spencer, Robert (17 February 2017). "Why We Need Marxist-Humanism Now". London: Pluto Press. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
55. Edgley 1991, p. 420. sfn error: no target: CITEREFEdgley1991 (help)
56. Gross, Neil; Simmons, Solon (2014). "The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors". In Gross, Neil; Simmons, Solon (eds.). Professors and Their Politics. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 19–50. doi:10.1353/book.31449. ISBN 978-1-4214-1335-8.
57. Trigger 2007. pp. 326–40.
58. Green 1981. p. 79.
59. Johnson, Allan G. 2000. The Blackwell dictionary of sociology: a user's guide to sociological language, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-21681-2, pp. 183-84.
60. "Marxist Sociology." Encyclopedia of Sociology. Macmillan Reference. 2006.
61. About the Section on Marxist Sociology Archived 2009-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
62. Wolff and Resnick, Richard and Stephen (August 1987). Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0801834806. Marxian theory (singular) gave way to Marxian theories (plural).
63. Malott, Curry (16 July 2021). "Vygotsky's revolutionary educational psychology". Monthly Review Online. Retrieved 29 July 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
64. McLaren, Peter (2016). This fist called my heart. Marc Pruyn, Luis Huerta-Charles. Charlotte, NC. ISBN 978-1-68123-454-0. OCLC 945552771.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
65. Rikowski, Glenn (1997). "Scorched earth: Prelude to rebuilding Marxist educational theory". British Journal of Sociology of Education. 18 (4): 551–574. doi:10.1080/0142569970180405.
66. Rasinski, Lotar; Hill, Dave; Skordoulis, Kostas (2019). Marxism and education: international perspectives on theory and action. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-89169-5. OCLC 1129932782.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
67. Allman, Paula (2007). On Marx : an introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx. Rotterdam: Sense. ISBN 978-90-8790-192-9. OCLC 191900765.
68. Lewis, Tyson E. (2012). "Mapping the Constellation of Educational Marxism(s)". Educational Philosophy and Theory. 44 (sup1): 98–114. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00563.x. ISSN 0013-1857. S2CID 144595936.
69. De Lissovoy, Noah (2011). "Pedagogy in Common: Democratic education in the global era". Educational Philosophy and Theory. 43 (10): 1119–1134. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00630.x. ISSN 0013-1857.
70. Bourassa, Gregory N. (2019). "An Autonomist Biopolitics of Education: Reproduction, Resistance, and the Specter of Constituent Bíos". Educational Theory. 69 (3): 305–325. doi:10.1111/edth.12370. ISSN 1741-5446. S2CID 212828309.
71. Ford, Derek R. (2016). Communist study : education for the commons. Lanham, Maryland. ISBN 978-1-4985-3245-7. OCLC 957740361.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
72. Malott, Curry (2021). History of education for the many: from colonization and slavery to the decline of U.S. imperialism. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-350-08571-8. OCLC 1100627401.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
73. Gettleman, Marvin (1 January 1999). "Explorations in the History of Left Education in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe". Paedagogica Historica. 35 (1): 11–14. doi:10.1080/0030923990350101. ISSN 0030-9230.
74. Grande, Sandy (2004). Red pedagogy : Native American social and political thought. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0-7425-1828-0. OCLC 54424848.
75. Holst, John D. (2002). Social movements, civil society, and radical adult education. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey. ISBN 0-89789-811-7. OCLC 47142191.
76. Ford, Derek R.; Lewis, Tyson E. (1 March 2018). "On the Freedom to Be Opaque Monsters: Communist Pedagogy, Aesthetics, and the Sublime". Cultural Politics. 14 (1): 95–108. doi:10.1215/17432197-4312940. ISSN 1743-2197.
77. Ford, Derek R. (1 August 2014). "Spatializing Marxist Educational Theory: School, the Built Environment, Fixed Capital and (Relational) Space". Policy Futures in Education. 12 (6): 784–793. doi:10.2304/pfie.2014.12.6.784. ISSN 1478-2103. S2CID 147636876.
78. Rikowski, Glenn (2020). Stanković, Vesna; Matić, Pejnović (eds.). The psychology of capital. Belgrade: Institute for Political Studies. pp. 9–31. ISBN 978-86-7419-330-3. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
79. FitzSimmons, Robert; Suoranta, Juha (2020). "Lenin on Learning and the Development of Revolutionary Consciousness". Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies. 18 (1): 34–62.
80. Malott, Curry (2015). "Right-to-Work and Lenin's Communist Pedagogy: An Introduction". Texas Education Review. 3: 32–43. doi:10.15781/T2ZW18X7W.
81. Boughton, Bob (2013). "Popular education and the 'party line'". Globalisation, Societies and Education. 11 (2): 239–257. doi:10.1080/14767724.2013.782189. ISSN 1476-7724. S2CID 143914501.
82. Ford, Derek R. (16 April 2017). "Studying like a communist: Affect, the Party, and the educational limits to capitalism". Educational Philosophy and Theory. 49 (5): 452–461. doi:10.1080/00131857.2016.1237347. ISSN 0013-1857. S2CID 151616793.
83. Ford, Derek R.; Jandrić, Petar (19 May 2021). "Postdigital Marxism and education". Educational Philosophy and Theory: 1–7. doi:10.1080/00131857.2021.1930530. ISSN 0013-1857. S2CID 236356457.
84. Carmichael, Patrick (1 April 2020). "Postdigital Possibilities: Operaismo, Co-research, and Educational Inquiry". Postdigital Science and Education. 2 (2): 380–396. doi:10.1007/s42438-019-00089-0. ISSN 2524-4868. S2CID 214035791.
85. Ford, Derek R. (21 June 2021). "Pedagogically Reclaiming Marx's Politics in the Postdigital Age: Social Formations and Althuserrian Pedagogical Gestures". Postdigital Science and Education. 3 (3): 851–869. doi:10.1007/s42438-021-00238-4. ISSN 2524-4868. S2CID 237850324.
86. Bottomore, T. B. 1983. A Dictionary of Marxist thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
87. The Communist Manifesto (1847). Chapter one.
88. History.com Staff (2020) . "Russian Revolution". History.com. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 11 July 2020
89. McMeekin, Sean (2017). The Russian Revolution: A New History. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465039906.
90. "Quotes from Mao Tse Tung". Marxists.org.
91. Franke, Wolfgang, A Century of Chinese Revolution, 1851–1949 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1970).
92. Ellison, Herbert J., ed. The Sino-Soviet Conflict: A Global Perspective (1982) online
93. "1964: On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World". www.marxists.org.
94. Schram, Stuart (1989). The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521310628.
95. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 27 August 2019. Retrieved 27 March 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
96. Bourne 1986.
97. Coltman 2003.
98. "Collection: Cuban revolution collection | Archives at Yale". Archives.yale.edu.
99. D'Encausse, Helene Carrere. 1993. "The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations," translated by F. Philip. New York: The New Republic. ISBN 978-0-465-09812-5. p. 16.
100. "List Of Communist Countries Today". WorldAtlas. 30 November 2018. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
101. "New Maoist-led government installed in Nepal". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
102. Nathalie Malinarich. BBC News, Chavez accelerates on path to socialism. Retrieved 19 June 2007.
103. Declaración PolÃtica de la JIR, como Fracción Pública del PRS, por una real independencia de clase (Extractos) – Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Replay.web.archive.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-26.
104. Sanabria, William, La Enmienda Constitucional, Orlando Chirino y la C-CURA. Archived 18 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine
105. Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala. Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx Columbia University Press. 2011. p. 122
106. Shepherd, Christian (4 May 2018). "No regrets: Xi says Marxism still 'totally correct' for China". Reuters.
107. Jiang, Steven (18 May 2018). "At the height of his power, China's Xi Jinping moves to embrace Marxism".
108. "China's huge celebrations of Karl Marx are not really about Marxism". Qz.com.
109. Phillips, Ben (1981). "USSR: Capitalist or Socialist?". The Call. 10 (8). Retrieved 16 July 2020.
110. Garner, Dwight (18 August 2009). "Fox Hunter, Party Animal, Leftist Warrior". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
111. Volkogonov, Dimitri (1991). Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. Translated by Harold Shukman. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 173. ISBN 9780297810803.
112. Kirby, Mark (2000). Sociology in Perspective. Heinemann. p. 273. ISBN 978-0-435-33160-3.
113. Ollman, Bertell (1957). Criticisms of Marxism 1880-1930. University of Wisconsin--Madison. pp. 1, 6.
114. Howard, M. C., and J. E. King. 1992. A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
115. Popper, Karl (2002). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-415-28594-0.
116. Keynes, John Maynard. 1991. Essays in Persuasion. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-393-00190-7
117. Callinicos 2010. p. 12.
118. Baudrillard, Jean (1975) . The Mirror of Production. Translated by Mark Poster. New York: Telos Press. ISBN 9780914386063.
119. Held, David (1980), p. 16.
120. Jameson, Fredric (2002). "The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin's Sociological Predecessor". In Nealon, Jeffrey T.; Irr, Caren (eds.). Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique. SUNY Press. pp. 11–30. ISBN 978-0-7914-5492-3.
121. Kołakowski, Leszek (2005). Main Currents of Marxism. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. pp. 662, 909. ISBN 9780393329438.
122. M. C. Howard and J. E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990, chapter 7, sects. II–IV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
123. See M. C. Howard and J. E. King, 1992, A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
124. Kliman states that "Marx’s value theory would be necessarily wrong if it were internally inconsistent. Internally inconsistent theories may be appealing, intuitively plausible and even obvious, and consistent with all available empirical evidence––but they cannot be right. It is necessary to reject them or correct them. Thus the alleged proofs of inconsistency trump all other considerations, disqualifying Marx’s theory at the starting gate. By doing so, they provide the principal justification for the suppression of this theory as well as the suppression of, and the denial of resources needed to carry out, present-day research based upon it. This greatly inhibits its further development. So does the very charge of inconsistency. What person of intellectual integrity would want to join a research program founded on (what he believes to be) a theory that is internally inconsistent and therefore false?" (Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital": A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007, p. 3, emphasis in original). However, in his book, Kliman presents an interpretation where these inconsistencies can be eliminated. The connection between the inconsistency allegations and the lack of study of Marx’s theories was argued further by John Cassidy ("The Return of Karl Marx," The New Yorker, 20 & 27 Oct. 1997, p. 252): "His mathematical model of the economy, which depended on the idea that labor is the source of all value, was riven with internal inconsistencies and is rarely studied these days."
125. Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital", Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, p. 208, emphases in original.
126. "GDP per capita growth (annual %)". World Bank. 2016. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
127. Popper, Sir Karl (1963). "Science as Falsification". Stephenjaygould.org. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
128. Popper, Karl Raimund (2002). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Psychology Press. p. 449. ISBN 978-0-415-28594-0.
129. Bakunin, Mikhail (5 October 1872), "Letter to La Liberté, quoted in Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971", Marxists.org
130. Sperber, Jonathan (2013), Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life, W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN 9780871403544.
131. V. K. Dmitriev, 1974 (1898), Economic Essays on Value, Competition and Utility. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press
132. Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1952 (1906–1907), "Value and Price in the Marxian System", International Economic Papers 2, 5–60; Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1984 (1907), "On the Correction of Marx's Fundamental Theoretical Construction in the Third Volume of Capital". In Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk 1984 (1896), Karl Marx and the Close of his System, Philadelphia: Orion Editions.
133. M. C. Howard and J. E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990, chapter 12, sect. III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
134. "What We Can Know About the World". Mises.org. 1 December 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
135. von Mises, Ludwig (2008). Omnipotent Government. Read Books. ISBN 978-1-4437-2646-7.
136. Haberler, Gottfried (1966). Drachkovitch, Milorad M. (ed.). Marxist Ideology in the Contemporary World: Its Appeals and Paradoxes. Books for Libraries Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-8369-8154-4.
137. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (PDF). Ludwig von Mises Institute. 18 August 2014. ISBN 978-1-61016-454-2.
138. Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James A. (1 February 2015). "The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 29 (1): 3–28. doi:10.1257/jep.29.1.3. hdl:1721.1/113636. S2CID 14001669.

Bibliography

• Bourne, Peter (1986). Fidel: A Biography of Fidel Castro. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
• Callinicos, Alex (2010) . The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx. Bloomsbury, London: Bookmarks. ISBN 978-1-905192-68-7.
• Castro, Fidel; Ramonet, Ignacio (interviewer) (2009). My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-1-4165-6233-7. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
• Coltman, Leycester (2003). The Real Fidel Castro. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10760-9.
• Green, Sally (1981). Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe. Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire: Moonraker Press. ISBN 978-0-239-00206-8.
• Lenin, Vladimir (1967) . Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
• Marx, Karl (1849). Wage Labour and Capital. Germany: Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
• Trigger, Bruce G. (2007). A History of Archaeological Thought (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-60049-1.

Further reading

• Agar, Jolyon (2006), Rethinking Marxism: From Kant and Hegel to Marx and Engels (London and New York: Routledge) ISBN 041541119X
• Avineri, Shlomo (1968). The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge University Press.
• Dahrendorf, Ralf (1959). Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804705608.
• Jon Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge, England, 1986.
• Michael Evans, Karl Marx. London, 1975.
• Kołakowski, Leszek (1976). Main Currents of Marxism. Oxford University Press.
• Parkes, Henry Bamford (1939). Marxism: An Autopsy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Robinson, Cedric J.: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 1983, Reissue: Univ North Carolina Press, 2000
• Rummel, R.J. (1977) Conflict In Perspective Chap. 5 Marxism, Class Conflict, and the Conflict Helix
• Screpanti, Ernesto; Zamagni, Stefano (1993). An Outline of the History of Economic Thought.
• McLellan, David (2007). Marxism After Marx. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Sheehan, Helena (1985, 1993, 2017) Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History London: Verso Books.

External links

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

v t e Social democracy
History	Age of Enlightenment Frankfurt Declaration French Revolution Godesberg Program Humanism Internationalist–defencist schism Keynesianism Labor movement Marxism Orthodox Revisionist Nordic model Reformist–revolutionary dispute Socialism Revolutions of 1848 Utopian socialism Welfare capitalism
Concepts	Civil liberties Democracy Economic Industrial Representative Marxist Dirigisme Environmentalism Environmental protection Fair trade Gradualism Internationalism Land reform Labor rights Left-wing nationalism Mixed economy Nationalization Negative and positive rights Progressivism Reformism Left Socialism Revolutionary socialism Secularism Social corporatism Social justice Social market economy Socialist state Capitalism Socialism Trade union Tripartisme Welfare Welfare state
Variants	Democratic socialism Ethical socialism Evolutionary socialism Liberal socialism Socialism of the 21st century Third Way
People	Ambedkar Allende Ardern Attlee Awolowo Batlle y Ordóñez Bebel Ben-Gurion Bernstein Betancourt Bhutto Blair Blanc Brandt Branting Brown Callaghan Cárdenas Chávez Clark Craxi Crosland Corbyn Curtin Daszyński Debs Douglas Drees Ebert Ecevit Engels Fraser Gaitskell Gandhi González Goulart Hardie Hilferding Jaurès Jenkins Junmai Katayama Kautsky Kerensky Kéthly Kirk Lagos Lassalle Layton Lenin Lévesque Liebknecht (father) Liebknecht (son) Luxemburg MacDonald Mandela Marx Morales Myrdal Nehru Palme Plekhanov Prodi Russell Sanders Savage Stauning Thomas Den Uyl Webb Whitlam Wilson Woodsworth Zhordania
Organizations	International Trade Union Confederation International Union of Socialist Youth Party of European Socialists Progressive Alliance Socialist International Young European Socialists
By region	Austria Germany United States
Related	Communism "The Internationale" Socialism Types of socialism
Economics portal Politics portal Socialism portal

• Marxism
• Communism
• Criticism of religion
• Democratic socialism
• Eponymous economic ideologies
• Eponymous political ideologies
• Karl Marx
• Left-wing politics
• Materialism
• Naturalism (philosophy)
• Philosophical movements
• Philosophical traditions
• Sociological theories
• Socialism
• Social democracy
• Social theories
• Theories of history
• Types of socialism