Marxism Definition and Meaning: We explain what Marxism is, its origin, main ideas and other characteristics. Also, why it is criticized.
What is Marxism?
Marxism is the doctrine of interpretation of reality proposed in the 19th century by Karl Marx (1818-1883), German philosopher, sociologist, economist and journalist. This model of thought revolutionized the way of understanding society and its history, as well as the forces that develop in it.
Furthermore, it was the theoretical basis for later contributions or reinterpretations by revolutionaries, thinkers and politicians such as Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Georg Lukács (1885-1971) or Mao Zedong (1893-1976), among others. Maybe you should definitely read about Slavery once!
Marxism derives its name from the surname of its creator, whose joint work with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) served as inspiration for the emergence of different revolutionary political models throughout the 20th century, such as the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Communist Revolution and the Cuban Revolution.
According to his reading of history, the destiny of humanity was the advent of a classless society, which he ultimately called communism. On the other hand, the Marxist critique of capitalism and its model of interpreting history are part of the so-called “schools of suspicion”, central philosophies in 20th century thought, along with Freudian psychoanalysis.
Many of its postulates are still valid and much of its thought survives in later doctrines, known as post-Marxist. You must read about Enlightenment once!
Characteristics of Marxism
Marxism can be characterized as follows:
- The doctrine of Marxism was composed, as formulated by Marx and Engels, of three main ideas: a philosophical anthropology, a theory of history and a socio-economic program.
- Marxism proposed a methodology, called Historical Materialism, to understand the development of societies throughout history. According to it, history is pushed forward by tensions between social classes, to gain control of the means of production. Thus, each important change in the mode of production corresponded to a substantial change in history.
- The philosophical antecedents of Marxism are the works of Feuerbach and Hegel: from the former he took the materialist vision of history and from the latter the application of a dialectic of materialism. For the writing of his works, Marx was also influenced by the French socialism of Saint-Simon and Babeuf.
- The term “Marxism” was popularized by the Austro-Hungarian theorist Karl Kautzky (1854-1938), since neither Marx nor Engels ever spoke in those terms.
The corpus of Marx’s thought consists mainly of the following works:
- Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844).
- The Communist Manifesto (1848).
- A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).
- Capital. Critique of Political Economy (1867).
- The German Ideology (1932, posthumous).
Origin of Marxism
Marxism as a doctrine was born in the 19th century, following the popularization of the ideas of Marx and Engels. They were inspired by the various previous socialist currents, known from then on as Utopian Socialism, since Engels coined the term Scientific Socialism for the Marxist perspective.
Something important to keep in mind is that Marx did not invent socialism, which preceded him, but rather he provided it with his own philosophical and anthropological perspective.
Main ideas of Marxism
The main ideas of Marxism can be summarized in its four fundamental postulates, which are:
The materialist analysis of human history:
According to Marxism, the history of our species is nothing more than the projection in time of a class struggle, that is, the confrontation between the different social sectors that have made up society, to take control of the means of production. The latter, therefore, are managed by the dominant class, which imposes a mode of production according to its convenience and possibilities: the slave mode of production, typical of Antiquity; the feudal mode of production, belonging to the Middle Ages; the industrial mode of production, typical of bourgeois industrial society; and finally, the one projected by Marx, the socialist mode of production.
Criticism of the capitalist economy:
In his analysis of capitalism, Marx uses the concepts of his historical materialism to identify the mode of production of the capitalist bourgeoisie, which can be simplified into the reproduction of capital and the exploitation of the labor force of the working class. The latter, lacking capital and ownership of the means of production, must sell its labor capacity to the capitalists, with which they will produce consumer goods, in exchange for a salary. This salary serves the working class to consume the goods it needs, among which are the same ones that it produced through its own effort. Then, these goods are sold and the capitalist obtains a profit in capital, which Marx called “surplus value,” and for which he did not perform any work. The surplus value can be invested and generate more capital, enriching the capitalist without the working class participating in the profits of its own labor.
The notion of “ideology”:
This concept is proposed by Marxism to explain the forms of mental domination that the capitalist system uses to keep the dominated classes in place. In Capital, Marx explains that it operates as a “fetishism of the commodity,” which keeps the working classes consuming.
The advent of communism:
Marx also projected his gaze into the future, and predicted that communism would be the future society of capitalism: a classless society, in which the “exploitation of man by man,” as he called it, would not be necessary. Although he did not explain what this communism would consist of or explain how it could be sustained, he did propose a roadmap that would lead from late capitalism to the dictatorship of the proletariat and finally to a classless society.
Social classes according to Marxism
Marxism’s vision of capitalist society was able to distinguish between three social classes, engaged in a constant struggle to ascend to the pyramids of socioeconomic power and take over the means of production. These classes are:
The bourgeoisie:
Which is the dominant class in capitalist society. These are the owners of the means of production: factories, shops, etc. They are the capitalist owners, who keep the surplus value of the workers’ work.
The proletariat:
Made up of the different working classes, who have nothing else to offer the system than their ability to work (specialized or not, with different levels of preparation or professional training) in exchange for a salary. It is also known as the working class.
The lumpenproletariat:
Or the unproductive class, where there are marginal individuals who do not contribute to production in any way.
Criticisms of Marxism
There are many critics of Marxism, both from an academic and philosophical point of view, as well as from a political and practical one. On the one hand, its vision of capitalism and its prophecy about the arrival of communism turned out to be much more short-term than initially thought, since the capitalist system remained standing despite the collapse of the communist regimes of the 20th century, and continues its uncertain but continuous march.
Many even went so far as to accuse Capital of being an outdated and obsolete manual, or also of having become, together with much of Marx’s work, a new sacred text for his fanatical militants. Sigmund Freud himself criticized the place of Marxism in contemporary culture, comparing it to that occupied by the Koran in fundamentalist Islamic society.
On the other hand, the Marxist regimes of various kinds (Marxist-Leninist, Marxist-Maoist, Marxist-Juche, etc.) that emerged in the 20th century with the aim of establishing a classless, more egalitarian and more prosperous society, generally failed in their intention to provide their citizens with a higher level of happiness and development.
Not only because their economic practices may have been questionable, despite their relative successes in social matters, but because their political models always involved dictatorship and totalitarianism. In addition, they had a very high human cost during and after the Revolution.
The USSR, Maoist China, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge are just some of the nations that lived under communist regimes and suffered from poverty, repression and genocide. These examples constitute, for their detractors, the greatest moral argument against the application of the so-called “Marxist manuals.”
