marxism

Society

2022

We explain what Marxism is, its origin, main ideas and other characteristics. Also, why it is criticized.

Marxism changed the way of understanding society and history.

What is Marxism?

Marxism is the doctrine interpretation of the 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 the society and his history, as well as the forces that develop in it.

In addition, it was the theoretical basis for later contributions or reinterpretations by revolutionaries, thinkers and politicians such as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), León Trotski (1879-1940), Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Antonio Gramsci (1891- 1937), Georg Lukács (1885-1971) or Mao Zedong (1893-1976), among others.

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 your reading of history, the fate of the humanity was the advent of a society without lessons, to which he finally called communism. On the other hand, the Marxist critique of capitalism and his model of interpretation of history are part of the so-called "schools of suspicion", central philosophies in the thought of the 20th century, together with Freudian psychoanalysis.

Many of his postulates are still valid and much of his thinking survives in later doctrines, known as post-Marxists.

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: one anthropology philosophical, 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 her, the story is pushed forward by the tensions between the social classes, for taking control of the means of production. Thus, at each major 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 first he took the materialist vision of history and from the second the application of a dialectic of materialism. For the writing of his works, Marx was also influenced by the socialism French of Saint-Simon and Babeuf.
  • The term "Marxism" was popularized by the Asutro-Hungarian theorist Karl Kautzky (1854-1938), since neither Marx nor Engels ever spoke in those terms.

The corpus of Marx's thought is mainly composed of the following works:

  • Maneconomic and philosophical writings of 1844 .
  • The communist manifesto .
  • A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy .
  • Capital. Critique of Political Economy .
  • The idgerman eology (1932, posthumous).

Origin of Marxism

Friederich Engels developed historical materialism together with Marx.

Marxism as a doctrine was born in the 19th century, as a result of the popularization of the ideas of Marx and Engels. These were inspired by the different 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 endowed 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 materialistic 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, of the confrontation between the different social sectors that have made up society, to gain control of the means of production. The latter, therefore, are managed by the ruling class, which imposes a mode of production at its convenience and possibilities: the slave production mode, typical of the Antiquity; the feudal mode of production, belonging to medieval; the industrial production mode, typical of bourgeois industrial society; and finally, the one projected by Marx, the socialist mode of production.
  • Criticism of economy capitalist. In his analysis of capitalism, Marx uses the concepts of his historical materialism to identify the mode of production proper to society. bourgeoisie capitalist, which can be simplified in the reproduction of the capital and the exploitation of work force of the working class. The latter, lacking capital and ownership of the means of production, must sell to the capitalists their work capacity, with which they will produce goods of consumption, in exchange for a salary. This salary serves the working class to consume the goods it needs, among which are the same that it produced through its efforts. Then these goods are sold and the capitalist makes a capital gain, which Marx called "capital gain”, And for which he did not do any work. The surplus value can be invested and generate more capital, enriching the capitalist without the working class participating in the profits of their own labor.
  • The notion of "ideology". This concept is proposed by Marxism to explain the forms of mental domination that the capitalist system employs to hold the dominated classes in place. In CapitalMarx explains that it operates as a "commodity fetishism" that keeps the working classes consuming.
  • The advent of communism. Marx also projected his gaze towards the future, and predicted that communism would be capitalism's future society: a classless society, in which "exploitation of man by man”, As he called it. Although he certainly did not explain what that communism would consist of or explain how it could be sustained, he did propose a roadmap that, starting from late capitalism, would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat and finally to a classless society.

Social classes according to Marxism

The vision of Marxism of capitalist society knew how to discern between three social classes, engaged in a constant struggle to ascend towards the pyramids of socio-economic power and take control of the means of production. These classes are:

  • The bourgeoisie. What is the ruling class in capitalist society. They are the owners of the means of production: factories, shops, etc. They are the capitalist owners, who keep the surplus value of the workers' labor.
  • The proletariat. Made up of the different working classes, who have nothing to offer to the system other than their work capacity (specialized or not, with a different degree 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 not few critics of Marxism, both from an academic and philosophical point of view, as well as a political and practical one. On the one hand, his vision of capitalism and his prophecy about the arrival of communism turned out to be much more short-term than initially thought, since the capitalist system remained standing in the face of the collapse of the communist regimes of the 20th century, and continues its march uncertain, but ongoing.

Many even went so far as to accuse Capital of being an outdated and obsolete manual, or also of having become, along 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 by comparing it with that of the Koran in fundamentalist Islamic society.

On the other hand, Marxist regimes of various kinds (Marxist-Leninists, Marxist-Maoists, Marxists-Juche, etc.) that emerged in the 20th century with the aim of establishing a society without social classes, more egalitarian and more prosperous, in broad lines, they failed in their intention to provide their citizens a higher level of happiness Y developing.

Not only because their economic practices may have been questionable, even despite their relative successes in social matters, but also because their political models always went through the dictatorship and the totalitarianism. In addition, they had a very high human cost during and after the Revolution.

The USSR, Maoist China, Fidel Castro's Cuba, Khmer Rouge Cambodia are just some of the nations who lived 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”.

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