Originally posted by
[email protected] 28, 2006 06:46 am
I feel really stupid for asking this, for as long as I have been with you comrades. But I have never really understood what it was. I know its a political Idealology that is somewhat of a broad range including philosophy, and sociology. But what exactly is it? Is it a form of socialism? I really do not get it in general? please help me comrades.
Dont sweat it, we'll help you out.
Basically the term Marxism is at the most basic level just a reference to the writings and theories of Karl Marx (although Marx's writing partner, Frederick Engels, is usually included as a part of Marxism as well).
Marx was born in 1818 in Germany and died in 1883 in England. During the earlier part of his life he was a journalist, however later in his life he and Frederick Engles would start studying the economic functions of the British economy (these studies would later form the basis of the books Capital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital) and Grundrisse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundrisse)), which at the time was undergoing industrialization and major changes in political, economic and social structures. Marx was also well-versed in philosophy.
Together Marx and Engles elaborated many theories about society that form the concept of Marxism. Among his main theories are the idea of materialism, which is essentially the idea that the way to understand history is by looking at the way actual material/physical forces influenced each other, instead of attempting to look at abstract ideas. An extremely simplistic, but possibly useful example of this could be the difference between saying "The Allies won WWII because they were more courageous" (idealist, as it is based on an abstract, immaterial concept) versus "The Allies won WWII because they had X number of factories more than the Axis, and produced weaponry at X rate, etc, etc" (which would be more materialist).
Emerging from this is the idea that the main function of human beings is production. Like a few other animals, we build things, although unlike other animals, we are not resigned to designing some certain structure (a beehive for a bee for example) but are instead only limited by the amount of labor we can produce, material resources, and our ability to conceive of what to build. Marx then claimed from this that the structure of how a society produces things determines other aspects of it, for example the relation of different groups of people inside the society (which Marx classified into classes based on their relation to how things are produced), the political structure, culture, etc. The way things are produced (and therefore society is structured) is determined by the ruling class in other words, the class of people within the society who control how things are produced. Society evolves forward as technology changes, old systems of society become outdated, classes rebel against each other, wars occur, etc. According to Marx, currently the ruling class of the First World society is the bourgeoisie or individuals who create their wealth out of ownership and trade in capital (wealth that can be used to produce things, whether it be financial capital in the form of large sums of money, or a factory to make things in), they have organized our society into capitalism. The bourgeoisie took over society in a wave of revolutions and political reforms, the best example of which and the most influential is the French revolution of 1787-1799. They took over society from the previous ruling class, the aristocracy that ran a feudal economy (based on peasantry instead of capital-based industrial production) when it was no longer able to rule society in any efficient or capable manner.
Marx essentially predicted that the working classes that exist today (people who sell their labor to survive, which includes most people in the world) would rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie and take over society themselves, as capitalism developed internal faults and became unable to efficiently run society. The difference is that according to Marx, the historical position of the proletariat means that instead of becoming a new ruling class the proletariat would abolish the class system as a whole and institute a classless, stateless society. This society would really be a whole new epoch in history, a whole new era full of potential.
So as you, it somewhat merges politics, philosophy, sociology etc. all into a theory of political-economics derived from looking at history.
So the difference is this:
Communism is a stage of human society we are attempting to achieve. Marxism is the analysis of the world that leads us to the conclusion that such a stage is possible and beneficial.
As for socialism. The term socialism comes from before Marx, it was usually used by Christians or groups of people called "Fabians" who visualized some form of society that was more egalitarian than capitalism. However, Marx critiqued them for being "idealists", for having their ideas of society arise out of mere ideas, lacking any grounding in material reality. When Marx uses the term socialism he is usually referring to the transition stage between capitalism and communism. A stage where some facets of capitalism (such as the state, or certain economic elements of capitalism) still exist, but the society is on the path towards communism. This is a huge source of contention among leftists, some claim this period has never been achieved or only for short periods of time, others claim certain states such as the USSR and/or Cuba and/or China at some point or still do embody socialism (well not USSR since it collapsed). The period of how long it would last is also contentious. Some would say months, a few years, others claim decades, even generations. So as you can see Marxism is not a variant of socialism, its the theoretical basis for analysis from which all other socialists (in the modern day at least, not too many Fabianists around) get their reasoning.
In general Marxism is a series of theories on history/society and how to analyze them. From them we have derived the terms communism, socialism, etc. but Marxism is not a variant of these, these spring from Marxism.
OK, I hope that helps? I wrote that very quickly, so if something is not clear or missing or anything, please tell me/ask. Does that answer you to some extent? Any follow-up questions? Please feel free to ask any more, Im not the most knowledgable person or best writer, but I can answer to a certain degree when I have time.