When was Marxism established?
Communism
Marxism, first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-1800s, has been the foremost ideology of the communist movement. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism, and rather than model an "ideal society" based on intellectuals' design, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of society and history through an analysis based in real life. Marxism does not see communism as a "state of affairs" to be established, but rather as the expression of a real movement, with parameters which are derived completely from real life and not based on any intelligent design. Therefore, Marxism does no blueprinting of a communist society and it only makes an analysis which concludes what will trigger its implementation and discovers its fundamental characteristics based on the derivation of real life conditions.
Sorelianism
Sorel claimed that although Marx had initially denounced Pierre-Joseph Proudhon while supporting Blanquism, that Marx later synthesized ideas from both Blanquism and Proudhonism together. Sorel claimed that Marxism had undergone a crisis in the 1880s and the 1890s when major socialist parties were being founded in France. Sorel viewed non-Proudhonian socialism as being wrong-headed and corrupt, as being inherently oppressive. Sorel claimed that a "decomposition of Marxism", as referring to the major goals and themes of the ideology, was being caused by Marx's Blanquist elements and Engels' positivist elements.
Marxism Today
Marxism Today, published between 1957 and 1991, was the theoretical magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The magazine was headquartered in London. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacques. Through "Marxism Today", Jacques is sometimes credited with coining the term Thatcherism, and believed they were deconstructing the ideology of the government of the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, through their theory of New Times. It was also a venue for the influential British Cultural Studies of Stuart Hall.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Because the 1844 manuscripts show Marx's thought at the time of its early genesis, their publication, in English not until 1959, has profoundly affected recent scholarship on Marx and Marxism, particularly regarding the relation of Marxism to earlier work in German Idealism. The young Marx had been relatively ignored until recently, because his early works were considered more "philosophical" and by some as not "scientific" enough, that is, "economic" as in "Das Kapital". However, Marxist humanists regard this book as one of the most important texts by Marx and crucial for understanding his entire thought, and Marxians also refer to it.
History of the socialist movement in the United States
German Marxist immigrants who arrived in the United States after the 1848 revolutions in Europe brought socialist ideas with them. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851 following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the United States, "Die Revolution", but It folded after two issues. In 1852, he established the "Proletarierbund", which would become the American Workers' League, the first Marxist organization in the United States, but it too proved short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership. In 1866, William H. Sylvis formed the National Labor Union (NLU). Frederich Albert Sorge, a German who had found refuge in New York following the 1848 revolutions, took Local No. 5 of the NLU into the First International as Section One in the United States. By 1872, there were 22 sections, which held a convention in New York. The General Council of the International moved to New York with Sorge as General Secretary, but following internal conflict it dissolved in 1876.
Principles of Communism
Principles of Communism (German: "Grundsätze des Kommunismus") is a brief 1847 work written by Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of Marxism. It is structured as a catechism, containing 25 questions about communism for which answers are provided. In the text, Engels presents core ideas of Marxism such as historical materialism, class struggle, and proletarian revolution. "Principles of Communism" served as the draft version for the "Communist Manifesto".
Marxism and the National Question
Marxism and the National Question ( "Марксизм и национальный вопрос") is a short work of Marxist theory written by Joseph Stalin in January 1913 while living in Vienna. First published as a pamphlet and frequently reprinted, the essay by the ethnic Georgian Stalin was regarded as a seminal contribution to Marxist analysis of the nature of nationality and helped to establish his reputation as an expert on the topic. Stalin would later become the first People's Commissar of Nationalities following the victory of the Bolshevik Party in the October Revolution of 1917.
Marxism
Libertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism, Ceaușism and Maoism. Libertarian Marxism is also often critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and 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 revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.
Karl Marx
These books laid the foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as "The Communist Manifesto". While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the secret radical organisation League of the Just. As noted above, Marx thought the League to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its "secret" or "underground" orientation and operate in the open as a political party. Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June 1847 the League was reorganised by its membership into a new open "above ground" political society that appealed directly to the working classes. This new open political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League.
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is the methodological approach of Marxist historiography that focuses on human societies and their development over time, claiming that they follow a number of observable tendencies. This was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the "materialist conception of history". It is principally a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society's way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence or, in Marxist terms, the union of its technological and productive capacity and social relations of production, fundamentally determine society's organization and development.
Antonio Negri
Unlike other forms of Marxism, autonomist Marxism emphasises the ability of the working class to force changes to the organization of the capitalist system independent of the state, trade unions or political parties. Autonomists are less concerned with party political organization than are other Marxists, focusing instead on self-organized action outside of traditional organizational structures. Autonomist Marxism is thus a "bottom-up" theory: it draws attention to activities that autonomists see as everyday working-class resistance to capitalism, for example absenteeism, slow working, and socialization in the workplace. The journal "Quaderni Rossi" ("Red Notebooks"), produced between 1961 and 1965, and its successor "Classe Operaia" ("Working Class"), produced between 1963 and 1966, were also influential in the development of early autonomism. Both were founded by Antonio Negri and Mario Tronti.
Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
The 1958 edition of "Marxism and Freedom" contained the first published English translations of Karl Marx's "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844" and of Vladimir Lenin's notebooks on Hegel's "Science of Logic". She felt a false division had been made between the "young Marx" of 1844, and the "mature Marx" of "Capital." Rather, she saw Marx's complete body of work as a development of 1844, where he broke with bourgeois society and labeled his own thought "a thoroughgoing Naturalism, or Humanism."
Anarchism
In 1864, the International Workingmen's Association (sometimes called the First International) united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon, Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats. Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organisation. Karl Marx became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the mutualists, opposed Marx's state socialism, advocating political abstentionism and small property holdings. Woodcock also reports that the American individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and William Batchelder Greene had been members of the First International. In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the League of Peace and Freedom (LPF) Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin and his collectivist anarchist associates joined the First International, which had decided not to get involved with the LPF. They allied themselves with the federalist socialist sections of the International, who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the state and the collectivisation of property. At first, the collectivists worked with the Marxists to push the First International in a more revolutionary socialist direction. Subsequently, the International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as centralist and predicted that if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would simply take the place of the ruling class they had fought against.
Social Democratic Federation
The British Marxist movement effectively began in 1880 when a businessman named Henry M. Hyndman read Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" in French translation while crossing to America. Upon his return to London, Hyndman sought out Marx, then an exile living not far from his home. Hyndman, who had run for parliament earlier that year, decided to start a new political organization which he called the Democratic Federation and in June called its foundation convention, consisting of an assortment of radical grouplets and individuals.
Class conflict
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German born philosopher who lived the majority of his adult life in London, England. In "The Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx argued that a class is formed when its members achieve class consciousness and solidarity. This largely happens when the members of a class become aware of their exploitation and the conflict with another class. A class will then realize their shared interests and a common identity. According to Marx, a class will then take action against those that are exploiting the lower classes.
List of communist ideologies
Marxism–Leninism is a synthesis of philosophical and economic theories of Karl Marx with the revolutionary political theories of Vladimir Lenin. Lenin brought Marxism into the 20th century, with his original theoretical contributions such as his analysis of imperialism, principles of party organization, and the implementation of socialism through revolution and reform thereafter. As the official ideology of the Soviet Union, Marxism–Leninism was adopted by communist parties worldwide with variation in local application. Parties with a Marxist–Leninist understanding of the historical development of socialism advocate for the nationalisation of natural resources and monopolist industries of capitalism and for their internal democratization as part of the transition to workers' control. The economy under such a government is primarily coordinated through a universal economic plan with varying degrees of market distribution. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, many communist parties of the world today continue to use Marxism–Leninism as their method of understanding the conditions of their respective countries.
Historiography
World history is the record of the spirit's efforts to attain knowledge of what it is in itself. The Orientals do not know that the spirit or man as such are free in themselves. And because they do not know that, they are not themselves free. They only know that One is free... The consciousness of freedom first awoke among the Greeks, and they were accordingly free; but, like the Romans, they only knew that Some, and not all men as such, are free... The Germanic nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realize that All men are by nature free, and that freedom of spirit is his very essence.
Karl Marx introduced the concept of historical materialism into the study of world historical development. In his conception, the economic conditions and dominant modes of production determined the structure of society at that point. In his view five successive stages in the development of material conditions would occur in Western Europe. The first stage was primitive communism where property was shared and there was no concept of "leadership". This progressed to a slave society where the idea of class emerged and the State developed. Feudalism was characterized by an aristocracy working in partnership with a theocracy and the emergence of the Nation-state. Capitalism appeared after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrew the feudal system and established a market economy, with
private property and Parliamentary democracy. Marx then predicted the eventual proletarian revolution that would result in the attainment of socialism, followed by Communism, where property would be communally owned.
History
The Marxist theory of historical materialism theorises that society is fundamentally determined by the "material conditions" at any given time – in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families. Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe. Marxist historiography was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse of communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says it has been reduced to the margins of scholarship.
History of communism
At the start of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by Tsar Nicholas II, with millions of the country's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty and the anti-communist historian Robert Service noted that "poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in". The man responsible for largely introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov, although the movement itself was largely organised by a man known as Vladimir Lenin, who had for a time been exiled to a prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs. A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country, although it soon divided into two main factions: the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov. In 1905, there was a revolution against the Tsar's rule, in which workers' councils known as "soviets" were formed in many parts of the country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform, introducing an elected government, the Duma.
Main Currents of Marxism
Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution () is a work about Marxism by the political philosopher Leszek Kołakowski. Its three volumes in English are: "1: The Founders", "II: The Golden Age", and "III: The Breakdown". It was first published in Polish in Paris in 1976, with the English translation appearing in 1978. In 2005, "Main Currents of Marxism" was republished in a one volume edition, with a new preface and epilogue by Kołakowski. The work was intended to be a "handbook" on Marxism by Kołakowski, who was once an orthodox Marxist but ultimately rejected Marxism. Despite his critical stand toward Marxism, Kołakowski endorsed the philosopher György Lukács's interpretation of Karl Marx.
Eduard Bernstein
Bernstein distinguished between early Marxism as being its immature form, as exemplified by "The Communist Manifesto" written by Marx and Engels in 1848, that he opposed for what he regarded as its violent Blanquist tendencies. He instead favoured Marxism in its mature form. This mature form of Marxism holds that socialism could be achieved by peaceful means through incremental legislative reform in democratic societies.
Karl Marx
Marx's theories about society, economics and politics – collectively understood as Marxism – hold that human societies develop through class struggle. In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that, like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class' development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marxism
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.
Communist League
The Communist League ( "Bund der Kommunisten)" was an international political party established on June 1, 1847 in London, England. The organisation was formed through the merger of the League of the Just, headed by Karl Schapper and the Communist Correspondence Committee of Brussels, Belgium, in which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the dominant personalities. The Communist League is regarded as the first Marxist political party and it was on behalf of this group that Marx and Engels wrote the "Communist Manifesto" late in 1847. The Communist League was formally disbanded in 1852, following the Cologne Communist Trial.
History of communism
In the 1840s, a German philosopher and sociologist named Karl Marx (1818–1883), who was living in England after fleeing the authorities in the German states, where he was considered a political threat, began publishing books in which he outlined his theories for a variety of communism now known as Marxism. Marx was financially aided and supported by another German émigré, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who like Marx had fled from the German authorities in 1849. Marx and Engels took on many influences from earlier philosophers and politically they were influenced by Maximilien Robespierre and several other radical figures of the French Revolution, whilst economically they were influenced by David Ricardo and philosophically they were influenced by Hegel. Engels regularly met Marx at Chetham's Library in Manchester, England from 1845 and the alcove where they met remains identical to this day. It was here that Engels relayed his experiences of industrial Manchester, chronicled in the "Condition of the Working Class in England", highlighting the struggles of the working class.
Marxist schools of thought
British Marxism deviated sharply from French (especially Althusserian) Marxism and like the Frankfurt School developed an attention to cultural experience and an emphasis on human agency while growing increasingly distant from determinist views of materialism. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain formed the Communist Party Historians Group in 1946. They shared a common interest in "history from below" and class structure in early capitalist society. Important members of the group included E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill and Raphael Samuel.
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto (originally Manifesto of the Communist Party) is an 1848 political pamphlet by the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London (in German as "Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei") just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the "Manifesto" was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.
Karl Marx
In 1843, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical leftist Parisian newspaper, the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher" ("German-French Annals"), then being set up by the German socialist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals and thus Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, they found the living conditions difficult, so moved out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the "Jahrbücher" was dominated by the latter and the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin. Marx contributed two essays to the paper, "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question", the latter introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of communism. Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful, largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria, leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies (Ruge nevertheless refused to fund the publication of further issues and his friendship with Marx broke down). After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, "Vorwärts!" ("Forward!"). Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just, a utopian socialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings, but did not join. In "Vorwärts!", Marx refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, at the same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.
History of left-wing politics in the United States
The first secular American socialists were German Marxist immigrants who arrived following the 1848 revolutions, also known as Forty-Eighters. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851, following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the U.S., called "Die Revolution". It folded after two issues. in 1852 he established the "Proletarierbund", which would become the American Workers League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S. But it too was short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership.
Marxist schools of thought
Neo-Marxism is a school of Marxism that began in the 20th century and hearkened back to the early writings of Marx before the influence of Friedrich Engels, which focused on dialectical idealism rather than dialectical materialism. It thus rejected economic determinism, being instead far more libertarian. Neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to orthodox Marxist thought.
American Left
The first secular American socialists were German Marxist immigrants who arrived following the 1848 revolutions, also known as Forty-Eighters. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851 following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the U.S., called "Die Revolution", but It folded after two issues. In 1852 he established the "Proletarierbund", which would become the American Workers' League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S., but it too was short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership.
Historical materialism
Marx and Engels first state and detail their materialist conception of history within the pages of "The German Ideology", written in 1845. The book, which structural Marxists such as Louis Althusser regard as Marx's first 'mature' work, is a lengthy polemic against Marx and Engels' fellow Young Hegelians and contemporaries Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Max Stirner. Stirner's 1844 work "The Unique and its Property" had a particularly strong impact on the worldview of Marx and Engels: Stirner's blistering critique of morality and whole-hearted embrace of egoism prompted the pair to formulate a conception of socialism along lines of self-interest rather than simple humanism alone, grounding that conception in the scientific study of history.
Western philosophy
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis, originating from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It analyzes class relations and societal conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxist analyses and methodologies influenced political ideologies and social movements. Marxist understandings of history and society were adopted by academics in archaeology, anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology and philosophy.
Chinese Marxist philosophy
Marxist philosophy was initially imported into China between 1900 and 1930, in translations from German, Russian and Japanese. This was before the formal dialectical materialism of the Communist Party, in which many independent radical intellectuals embraced Marxism. Many of them would later join the Party. Chinese Dialectical Materialism began to be formalized during the 1930s, under the influence of Mitin's New Philosophy. In the late 1930s, Chairman Mao Zedong would begin to develop his own sinified version of Dialectical Materialism that was independent of the Soviet Philosophy. Maoist Dialectics remained the dominant paradigm into the 1970s, and most debates were on technical questions of dialectical ontology. In the 1980s the Dengist reforms led to a large-scale translation and influence of works of Western Marxism and Marxist Humanism.
Socialism in India
The socialist movement began to develop in India with the Russian Revolution. However, in 1871 a group in Calcutta had contacted Karl Marx with the purpose of organising an Indian section of the First International. It did not materialise. The first article in an Indian publication (in English) that mentions the names of Marx & Engels printed in the "Modern Review" in March 1912. The short biographical article titled "Karl Marx – a modern Rishi" was written by the German-based Indian revolutionary Lala Har Dayal. The first biography of Karl Marx in an Indian language was written by R. Rama Krishna Pillai in 1914.
Marxism
Marxist sociology is the study of sociology from a Marxist perspective. Marxist sociology 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 during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 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).
Democracy in Marxism
In the 19th century, "The Communist Manifesto" (1848), by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, called for the international political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve a Communist revolution; and proposed that, because the socio-economic organization of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers' revolution would first occur in the economically advanced, industrialized countries. Marxist social democracy was strongest in Germany throughout the 19th century, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany inspired Lenin and other Russian Marxists.
Conflict theories
Of the classical founders of social science, conflict theory is most commonly associated with Karl Marx (1818–1883). Based on a dialectical materialist account of history, Marxism posited that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions leading to its own destruction. Marx ushered in radical change, advocating proletarian revolution and freedom from the ruling classes. At the same time, Karl Marx was aware that most of the people living in capitalist societies did not see how the system shaped the entire operation of society. Just as modern individuals see private property (and the right to pass that property on to their children) as natural, many of the members in capitalistic societies see the rich as having earned their wealth through hard work and education, while seeing the poor as lacking in skill and initiative. Marx rejected this type of thinking and termed it "false consciousness", explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than the flaws of society. Marx wanted to replace this kind of thinking with something Friedrich Engels termed "class consciousness", the workers' recognition of themselves as a class unified in opposition to capitalists and ultimately to the capitalist system itself. In general, Marx wanted the proletarians to rise up against the capitalists and overthrow the capitalist system.
Marxist schools of thought
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation, analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation. While it originates from the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marxism has had several different schools of thought.
Political philosophy
The Marxist critique of capitalism—developed with Friedrich Engels—was, alongside liberalism and fascism, one of the defining ideological movements of the twentieth century. The industrial revolution produced a parallel revolution in political thought. Urbanization and capitalism greatly reshaped society. During this same period, the socialist movement began to form. In the mid-19th century, Marxism was developed, and socialism in general gained increasing popular support, mostly from the urban working class. Without breaking entirely from the past, Marx established principles that would be used by future revolutionaries of the 20th century namely Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro. Though Hegel's philosophy of history is similar to Immanuel Kant's, and Karl Marx's theory of revolution towards the common good is partly based on Kant's view of history—Marx declared that he was turning Hegel's dialectic, which was "standing on its head", "the right side up again". Unlike Marx who believed in historical materialism, Hegel believed in the "Phenomenology of Spirit". By the late 19th century, socialism and trade unions were established members of the political landscape. In addition, the various branches of anarchism, with thinkers such as Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon or Peter Kropotkin, and syndicalism also gained some prominence. In the Anglo-American world, anti-imperialism and pluralism began gaining currency at the turn of the 20th century.
Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx
Marx was born on 10 March 1796 in Karlsruhe, the son of a Jewish antiquarian, and attended the Karlsruhe Lyceum, where he was taught by Johann Peter Hebel and Karl Christian Gmelin. In 1813 he began studies in philosophy and medicine in Heidelberg, where, in 1817, he participated in the Old Heidelberg "Burschenschaft" as a friend of Heinrich Carl Alexander Pagenstecher. He had contacts with Jean Paul and attended "inter alia" lectures by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, becoming a follower of his. In 1817 he completed his studies and, in 1818, passed his exams with distinction. For his work on the subject, "Die Struktur und das Leben der Venen" he was awarded a prize by the university. In 1818, he probably participated in the founding of the first Freiburg "Burschenschaft", having been in Freiburg a member and mentor of "Genossenschaft/Verein zur Bearbeitung wissenschaftlicher Gegenstände", from which the Freiburg Burschenschaft developed. When he then went to Vienna for further studies, he was a corresponding member of the Old Freiburg Burschenschaft. In Vienna he also got to know Karl Ludwig Sand through his burschenschaft connexions. In 1819, Sand murdered the poet, August von Kotzebue, Marx was in Vienna on 19 June 1819 for "burschenschaft-related activities" and was taken into custody for nine months and then released without charge. In 1820 he was awarded his doctorate in medicine in Jena. Thereafter he went to Göttingen, where he worked as an assessor at the Göttingen University Library, received his habilitation in 1822 at the Faculty of Medicine, became a professor extraordinarius in 1826 and a professor ordinarius in 1831. He taught there for the rest of his life, but also had a doctor's practice. In Göttingen he met Heinrich Heine, his discussions about medicine and his treatise, "Goettingen in medicinischer, physischer und historischer Hinsicht" are mentioned in his travel journal, "Die Harzreise". Heine was also treated by Marx in Göttingen.
Historiography of Germany
Karl Marx followed the Hegelian dialectic method, but inverting it to make material factors (especially economic factors) superior to virtual forces. Marx introduced the concept of historical materialism into the study of world historical development. In his conception, the economic conditions and dominant modes of production determined the structure of society at that point. In his view five successive stages in the development of material conditions would occur in Western Europe. The first stage was primitive communism where property was shared and there was no concept of "leadership". This progressed to a slave society where the idea of class emerged and the State developed. Feudalism was characterized by an aristocracy working in partnership with a Church and the emergence of the Nation-state. Capitalism appeared after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrew the feudal system and established a market economy, with private property and Parliamentary democracy. Marx then predicted the eventual proletarian revolution that would result in the attainment of socialism, followed by Communism, where property would be communally owned.
Marxism
Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist and socialist revolutionary who 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".
Communist Party of China
Marxism–Leninism was the first official ideology of the Communist Party of China. According to the CCP, "Marxism–Leninism reveals the universal laws governing the development of history of human society." To the CCP, Marxism–Leninism provides a "vision of the contradictions in capitalist society and of the inevitability of a future socialist and communist societies". According to the "People's Daily", Mao Zedong Thought "is Marxism–Leninism applied and developed in China". Mao Zedong Thought was conceived not only by Mao Zedong, but by leading party officials.
While non-Chinese analysts generally agree that the CCP has rejected orthodox Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought (or at least basic thoughts within orthodox thinking), the CCP itself disagrees. Certain groups argue that Jiang Zemin ended the CCP's formal commitment to Marxism with the introduction of the ideological theory, the Three Represents. However, party theorist Leng Rong disagrees, claiming that "President Jiang rid the Party of the ideological obstacles to different kinds of ownership [...] He did not give up Marxism or socialism. He strengthened the Party by providing a modern understanding of Marxism and socialism—which is why we talk about a 'socialist market economy' with Chinese characteristics." The attainment of true "communism" is still described as the CCP's and China's "ultimate goal". While the CCP claims that China is in the primary stage of socialism, party theorists argue that the current development stage "looks a lot like capitalism". Alternatively, certain party theorists argue that "capitalism is the early or first stage of communism." Some have dismissed the concept of a primary stage of socialism as intellectual cynicism. According to Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a China analyst, "When I first heard this rationale, I thought it more comic than clever—a wry caricature of hack propagandists leaked by intellectual cynics. But the 100-year horizon comes from serious political theorists".
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with revisionist Marxism as developed in post-First World War Social Democratic parties. Some writers also contrast it with Marxism–Leninism as it developed in the Soviet Union, while others describe the latter as firmly within orthodoxy: Orthodox Marxism rested on and grew out of the European working class movement that emerged in the final quarter of the 19th century and continued in that form until the middle years of the twentieth century. Its two institutional expressions were the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, which despite the great schism in 1919, were marked by a shared conception of capital and labour. Their fortunes therefore rose and fell together. Trotskyism and Left communism were equally orthodox in their thinking and approach, and therefore must be considered left-variants of this tradition.
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Maoism was considered synonymous with Mao Zedong Thought (also known as Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought) from the 1960s onwards—when many anti-revisionist Marxist organisations sided with China following the Sino-Soviet split—until 1993, when the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) formalised Marxism–Leninism–Maoism as a new and higher stage of Marxism–Leninism. This caused a split in the Maoist movement, with the adherents of Mao Zedong Thought leaving the RIM and congregating around the International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations.
History of communism
Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism, an ideology conceived by noted sociologist Karl Marx during the mid-19th century. Marxism subsequently gained a widespread following across much of Europe and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of failed revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced the Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society.
Autonomism
Autonomist Marxism—referred to in Italy as "operaismo", which translates literally as "workerism"—first appeared in Italy in the early 1960s. Arguably, the emergence of early autonomism can be traced to the dissatisfaction of automotive workers in Turin with their union, which reached an agreement with FIAT. The disillusionment of these workers with their organised representation, along with the resultant riots (in particular the 1962 riots by FIAT workers in Turin, "fatti di Piazza Statuto"), were critical factors in the development of a theory of self-organised labour representation outside the scope of traditional representatives such as trade unions.
Marxism
"Classical Marxism" denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. "Marxism", as Ernest Mandel remarked, "is always open, always critical, always self-critical". As such, classical Marxism distinguishes between "Marxism" as broadly perceived and "what Marx believed", thus in 1883 Marx wrote to the French labour leader Jules Guesde and to Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue—both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggle.
World Congress on Marxism
The first congress was held in Beijing on October 10–11, 2015. More than 400 Chinese and foreign scholars attended the congress. The second congress was held in Beijing on May 5–6, 2018. It coincided with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. The theme of the second congress was "Marxism and a Human Community with Shared Destiny".
Historian
Marxist historiography developed as a school of historiography influenced by the chief tenets of Marxism, including the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Friedrich Engels wrote "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844", which was salient in creating the socialist impetus in British politics from then on, e.g. the Fabian Society. R. H. Tawney's "The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century" (1912) and "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (1926), reflected his ethical concerns and preoccupations in economic history. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946 and became a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to history from below and class structure in early capitalist society. Members included Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson.
Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Marxist theory on imperialism was conceived by Lenin in his book, "" (published in 1917). It was written in response to the theoretical crisis within Marxist thought, which occurred due to capitalism's recovery in the 19th century. According to Lenin, imperialism was a specific stage of development of capitalism; a stage he referred to as state monopoly capitalism. The Marxist movement was split on how to solve capitalism's resurgence and revitalisation after the great depression of the late-19th century. Eduard Bernstein, from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP), considered capitalism' revitalisation as proof that capitalism was evolving into a more humane system, further adding that the basic aims of socialists were not to overthrow the state, but rather to take power through elections. On the other hand, Karl Kautsky, from the SDP, held a highly dogmatic view, claiming that there was no crisis within Marxist theory. Both of them, however, denied or belittled the role of class contradictions in society after the crisis. In contrast, Lenin believed that capitalism' resurgence was the beginning of a new phase of capitalism; this stage being created because of a strengthening of class contradiction, not because of its reduction.
Crisis of Marxism
Crisis of Marxism (aka “crisis in Marxism”) was a term first employed in the 1890s after the unexpected revival of global capitalist expansion became evident after the Great Depression of Europe from 1873-1896, which eventually precipitated a crisis in Marxist theory. The crisis resulted in a series of theoretical debates over the significance of economic recovery for the strategy of the socialist movement, leading to ideological fragmentation and increasingly sectarian debates. By the 1890s, orthodox Marxists came to believe that capitalism was on the “verge of breakdown,” while the socialist movement was on the “verge of revolutionary triumph,” but due to a renewed burst of capitalist and industrial activity such interpretations could no longer be maintained in Western Europe.
Justice and the Market
Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto postulated that the era of feudal aristocracy and the capitalism experienced in 1847 at the time of its writing, would be replaced with communism, or as we now know it, a socialist society. Communists from a Marxian perspective are described as persons that understand the world and are enlightened to the interests of the proletariat. Marx surmised that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers to rule by the working class and would see the battle of democracy as won.
Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study
Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study is a 1961 book by George Lichtheim, in which the author provides a study of the development of Marxism from its origins to 1917. It has been seen as a classic discussion of the subject, though it has received some criticism.
Marx (disambiguation)
Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist and founder of Marxism.
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
Lenin argues that Marxism, on the contrary, is a consistent theory resulting from the processing, critical re-interpretation and creative development of the best that human thought produced in the nineteenth century. According to Lenin, the theoretical sources of Marxism are classical German philosophy, classical English political economy, and French utopian socialism. The direct predecessors who made the greatest impact on the philosophical views of Marx and Engels were Hegel and Feuerbach. In a changed form, Hegel’s dialectical ideas became the philosophical source of materialist dialectics. In their critique of Hegel’s idealist views, Marx and Engels relied on the whole of the materialist tradition, and above all on Feuerbach’s materialism. Dialectical materialism is the result of a radical creative transformation of Hegel’s and Feuerbach’s systems on the basis of a new interpretation of social and natural reality:
Marx deepened and developed philosophical materialism to the full, and extended the cognition of nature to include the cognition of human society. His historical materialism was a great achievement in scientific thinking.
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism (M–L–M or MLM, formerly known as Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought) is a political philosophy that builds upon Marxism–Leninism and some aspects of Mao Zedong Thought which was first formalised in 1993 by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.
Communism
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet "The Communist Manifesto".
Marxism–Leninism
The philosophy of Marxism–Leninism originated as the pro-active, political praxis of the Bolshevik (Majority) faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Lenin's leadership transformed the Bolsheviks into the party's political vanguard of professional revolutionaries, who elected leaders and determined policy by way of democratic centralism. The Bolsheviks' vanguardism of pro-active, pragmatic commitment to achieving revolution was their advantage in out-manoeuvring the Liberal and Conservative political parties who advocated social democracy without a practical plan of action for the Russian society they wished to govern; thus, Leninism allowed the Bolshevik Party to assume command of the October Revolution, in 1917.
History of communism
Although Marxist theory suggested that the places ripest for social revolution—either through peaceful transition or by force of arms—were industrial societies, communism was mostly successful in underdeveloped countries with endemic poverty such as the Russian Empire and the Republic of China. In 1917, the Bolshevik Party seized power during the Russian Revolution and created the Soviet Union, the world's first Marxist state. The Bolsheviks thoroughly embraced the concept of proletarian internationalism and world revolution, seeing their struggle as an international rather than a purely regional cause. This was to have a phenomenal impact on the spread of communism during the twentieth century as the Soviet Union installed new communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe following World War II and indirectly backed the ascension of others in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Pivotal to this policy was the Communist International (also simply known as the Commintern), which was formed with the perspective of aiding and assisting communist parties around the world and fostering revolution. This was one major cause of tensions during the Cold War as the United States and its military allies equated the global spread of communism with Soviet expansionism by proxy.
Proletariat
Karl Marx, who studied Roman law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, used the term "proletariat" in his socio-political theory of Marxism to describe a working class unadulterated by private property and capable of a revolutionary action to topple capitalism in order to create classless society. Marx most likely encountered the term while studying the works of the liberal economist and historian , who was the first to apply it to the working class created under capitalism, and whose writings were frequently cited by Marx.
History of economic thought
Marx wrote his magnum opus "Das Kapital" (1867) at the British Museum's library in London. Karl Marx begins with the concept of commodities. Before capitalism, says Marx, production was based on slavery – in ancient Rome for example – then serfdom in the feudal societies of medieval Europe. The current mode of labor exchange has produced an erratic and unstable situation allowing the conditions for revolution. People buy and sell their labor as people buy and sell goods and services. People themselves have become disposable commodities. As Marx wrote in "The Communist Manifesto",
Maximilien Rubel
In his encounters with Marxist members of the resistance movement in this milieu Rubel was reputedly astonished by the incoherence and confusion that surrounded Karl Marx and so-called "scientific" socialism. In difficult circumstances Rubel then set to work to gain a thorough understanding of Marx's life and work. It was Rubel who originally coined the term ""marxologie"" to refer to a systematic scholarly approach to the understanding of Marx and Marxism, which he saw as quite distinct.
Timeline of Karl Marx
Marx's theories about society, economics and politics – collectively known as Marxism – hold that human societies progress through class struggle: a conflict between an ownership class that controls production and a dispossessed labouring class that provides the labour for production. He called capitalism the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," believing it to be run by the wealthy classes for their own benefit; and he predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism. He argued that class antagonisms under capitalism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat would eventuate in the working class' conquest of political power in the form of a dictatorship of the proletariat and eventually establish a classless society, socialism or communism, a society governed by a free association of producers. Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for their implementation, arguing that social theorists and underprivileged people alike should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.
19th-century philosophy
Developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-to-late-19th Century, Marxism is a sociopolitical and economic view based on the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which opposes idealism in favour of the materialist viewpoint. Marx analysed history itself as the progression of dialectics in the form of class struggle. From this it is argued that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." According to Marx, this began with the phase of primitive communism (hunter-gatherer society), after which the Neolithic Revolution gave way to slave societies, progressing into the feudal society, and then into his present era of the Industrial Revolution, after which he held that the next step was for the proletariat to overthrow the owners of industry and establish a socialist society, which would further develop into a communist society, in which class distinctions, money, and the state would have withered from existence entirely.
Marxist schools of thought
Marxism remains a powerful theory in some unexpected and relatively obscure places and is not always properly labeled as "Marxism". For example, many Mexican and some American archaeologists still employ a Marxist model to explain the Classic Maya collapse (c. 900 A.D.) – without mentioning Marxism by name.
Marxist archaeology
When they were formulating Marxism in the mid nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote many books on the subject of history, but wrote little about archaeology, or how it could be understood within a Marxist framework. According to the archaeologist Bruce Trigger, the most relevant passage that Marx made about the subject was found in his epic study of political economy, "Das Kapital", in which he had written that:
Marxist schools of thought
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844" in which Marx develops his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural conception of capitalist society. It was opposed by Louis Althusser's "antihumanism", who qualified it as a revisionist movement.
Historical materialism
In a foreword to his essay "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical" "German Philosophy" (1886), three years after Marx's death, Engels claimed confidently that "the Marxist world outlook has found representatives far beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe and in all the literary languages of the world." Indeed, in the years after Marx and Engels' deaths, "historical materialism" was identified as a distinct philosophical doctrine and was subsequently elaborated upon and systematized by Orthodox Marxist and Marxist-Leninist thinkers such as Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin. This occurred despite the fact that many of Marx's earlier works on historical materialism, including "The German Ideology", remained unpublished until the 1930's; in reality, most self-styled Marxists had not read beyond Capital Vol. 1.
Marxism
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that views class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Western Marxism
The phrase "Western Marxism" was coined in 1953 by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. While it is often contrasted with the Marxism of the Soviet Union, Western Marxists have been divided in their opinion of it and other Marxist-Leninist states.
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism.
Marxism
Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German political philosopher who together with Marx 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.
Western Marxism
György Lukács's "History and Class Consciousness" and Karl Korsch's "Marxism and Philosophy", published in 1923, are the works that inaugurated Western Marxism. In these books, Lukács and Korsch proffer a Marxism that emphasises the Hegelian components of Karl Marx's thought. Marxism is not simply a theory of political economy that improves on its bourgeois predecessors, nor is it a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. Marxism is primarily a critique, a self-conscious transformation of society. Marxism does not make philosophy obsolete, as vulgar Marxism believes; Marxism preserves the truths of philosophy until their revolutionary transformation into reality.
Marxism
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 views. Engels 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".
Classical Marxism
In 1847, Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together, based on Engels' "The Principles of Communism". They completed the 12,000-word pamphlet in six weeks, writing it in such a manner as to make communism understandable to a wide audience and published it as "The Communist Manifesto" in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled both Engels and Marx. They moved to Cologne, where they began to publish a radical newspaper, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung". By 1849, both Engels and Marx had to leave Germany and moved to London. The Prussian authorities applied pressure on the British government to expel the two men, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused. With only the money that Engels could raise, the Marx family lived in extreme poverty. The contributions of Marx and Engels to the formation of Marxist theory have been described as inseparable.
Marxian economics
Marx regarded history as having passed through several stages. The details of his periodisation vary somewhat through his works, but it essentially is: Primitive Communism – Slave societies – Feudalism – Capitalism – Socialism – Communism (capitalism being the present stage and communism the future). Marx occupied himself primarily with describing capitalism. Historians place the beginning of capitalism some time between about 1450 (Sombart) and some time in the 17th century (Hobsbawm).
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Marxist theory on imperialism was conceived by Lenin in his book, "" (published in 1917). It was written in response to the theoretical crisis within Marxist thought, which occurred due to capitalism's recovery in the 19th century. According to Lenin, imperialism was a specific stage of development of capitalism; a stage he referred to as state monopoly capitalism. The Marxist movement was split on how to solve capitalism's resurgence after the great depression of the late 19th century. Eduard Bernstein from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) considered capitalism's revitalization as proof that it was evolving into a more humane system, adding that the basic aims of socialists were not to overthrow the state but to take power through elections. Karl Kautsky, also from the SDP, held a highly dogmatic view; he said that there was no crisis within Marxist theory. Both of them denied or belittled the role of class contradictions in society after the crisis. In contrast, Lenin believed that the resurgence was the beginning of a new phase of capitalism; this stage was created because of a strengthening of class contradiction, not because of its reduction.
Karl Marx
The 1850s and 1860s may be said to mark a philosophical boundary distinguishing the young Marx's Hegelian idealism and the more mature Marx's scientific ideology associated with structural Marxism; however, not all scholars accept this distinction. For Marx and Engels, their experience of the Revolutions of 1848 to 1849 were formative in the development of their theory of economics and historical progression. After the "failures" of 1848, the revolutionary impetus appeared spent and not to be renewed without an economic recession. Contention arose between Marx and his fellow communists, whom he denounced as "adventurists". Marx deemed it fanciful to propose that "will power" could be sufficient to create the revolutionary conditions when in reality the economic component was the necessary requisite.
Marxist archaeology
Marxist archaeology is an archaeological theory that interprets archaeological information within the framework of Marxism. Although neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels described how archaeology could be understood in a Marxist conception of history, it was developed by archaeologists in the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. Becoming the dominant archaeological theory in that country, it was subsequently adopted by archaeologists in other nations, particularly the United Kingdom, where it was propagated by influential archaeologist V. Gordon Childe. With the rise of post-processual archaeology in the 1980s and 1990s, forms of Marxist archaeology were once more popularised amongst the archaeological community.
Christian communism
Contemporary communism, including contemporary Christian communism, owes much to Marxist thought—particularly Marxist economics. Not all communists are in full agreement with Marxism, but it is difficult to find any communists today who do not agree at least with the Marxist critique of capitalism. Marxism includes a complex array of views that cover several different fields of human knowledge and one may easily distinguish between Marxist philosophy, Marxist sociology and Marxist economics. Marxist sociology and Marxist economics have no connection to religious issues and make no assertions about such things. On the other hand, Marxist philosophy is famously atheistic, although some Marxist scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, have insisted that Marxist philosophy and the philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are significantly different from one another and that this difference needs recognition. In particular, Jose Porfirio Miranda found Marx and Engels to be consistently opposed to deterministic materialism and broadly sympathetic towards Christianity and towards the text of the Bible, although disbelieving in a supernatural deity. Vladimir Lenin also allowed Christians in the Bolshevik Party.
Legal Marxism
Legal Marxists held numerous open debates from the mid-1890s through the early 1900s, notably at the Free Economic Society in Saint Petersburg, and published three magazines between 1897 and 1901, all of them eventually suppressed by the imperial government:Legal Marxists became particularly influential after the arrest and imprisonment of the leaders of the revolutionary wing of Russian Marxism (including Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin) in 1895-1896. Legal Marxists and revolutionary Marxists were allied in the late 1890s within the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, whose Manifesto Struve wrote in 1898 and Legal Marxists magazines were extensively used by revolutionary Marxists living in exile or abroad to publish their writings. However, Legal Marxists became increasingly supportive of Eduard Bernstein's revision of Marxism from 1897 on, which drew criticism from Georgy Plekhanov, Lenin and other revolutionary Marxists. Struve and other Legal Marxist leaders soon abandoned philosophical materialism for neo-Kantianism while Berdyaev, Bulgakov and Frank eventually became philosophers of religion. Tugan-Baranovsky developed a theory of cyclical economic crises under capitalism, which was also criticised by revolutionary Marxists .
Orthodox Marxism
Western Marxism, the intellectual Marxism which developed in Western Europe from the 1920s onwards, sought to make Marxism more "sophisticated", open and flexible by examining issues like culture that were outside the field of orthodox Marxism. Western Marxists, such as Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, have tended to be open to influences orthodox Marxists consider bourgeois, such as psychoanalysis and the sociology of Max Weber. Marco Torres illustrates the shift away from orthodox Marxism in the Frankfurt School: In the early 1920s, the original members of the Frankfurt Institute—half forgotten names such as Carl Grünberg, Henryk Grossman and Karl August Wittfogel, were social scientists of an orthodox Marxist conviction. They understood their task as an advancement of the sciences that would prove useful in solving the problems of a Europe-wide transition into socialism, which they saw, if not as inevitable, at least as highly likely. But as fascism reared its head in Germany and throughout Europe, the younger members of the Institute saw the necessity for a different kind of Marxist Scholarship. Beyond accumulating knowledge relevant to an orthodox Marxist line, they felt the need to take the more critical and negative approach that is required for the maintenance of an integral and penetrating understanding of society during a moment of reaction. This could be described as the politically necessary transition from Marxist positive science to Critical Theory.
Marxism
The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas (1894–1976) 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 Premier 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 (1892–1957), who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society.
Marxist philosophy
Marx's philosophy is thus inextricably linked to his critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement, such as the 1875 "Critique of the Gotha Program" or "The Communist Manifesto", written with Engels (who was observing the Chartist movement) a year before the Revolutions of 1848. Both after the defeat of the French socialist movement during Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's 1851 coup and then after the crushing of the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx's thought transformed itself.
Marxism
From Marx's letter derives the paraphrase:"If that is Marxism, then I 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". On the other hand, the book "Communism: The Great Misunderstanding" argues that the source of such misrepresentations lies in ignoring the philosophy of Marxism, which is dialectical materialism. In large, this was due to the fact that "The German Ideology", in which Marx and Engels developed this philosophy, did not find a publisher for almost one hundred years.
Young Marx
Vladimir Lenin claimed Marx's first mature work as "The Poverty of Philosophy" (1847) in his own work "State and Revolution" (1917). Althusser, who was a champion of this young–mature dichotomy in his criticisms of Marxist humanism (Praxis School, John Lewis and the like) and existential Marxism, claimed in the 1960s that "The German Ideology" (written in 1845), in which Marx criticized Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and other Young Hegelians, marked the break with this young Marx. Furthermore, the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel in his "The Place of Marxism in History" (1986) also broke Marx's intellectual development into several different stages. Althusser presented, in his "For Marx" (1965), a number of other opinions:
Chinese Marxist philosophy
Chinese Marxist Philosophy is the philosophy of dialectical materialism that was introduced into China in the early 1900s and continues in the Chinese academia to the current day.
Karl Marx
In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871, when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, "The Civil War in France", a defence of the Commune.
Georges Sorel
Sorel had been politically monarchist and traditionalist before embracing orthodox Marxism in the 1890s. He attempted to fill in what he believed were gaps in Marxist theory, resulting in an extremely heterodox and idiosyncratic view of Marxism. For instance, Sorel saw pessimism and irrationalism at the core of Marxism and rejected Karl Marx's own rationalism and "utopian" tendency. Sorel also saw Marxism as closer in spirit to early Christianity than to the French Revolution. He did not view Marxism as "true" in a scientific sense, as orthodox Marxists did, but believed Marxism's "truth" lay in its promise of a morally redemptive role for the proletariat, within a terminally decadent society.
Karl Marx
In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, "The Communist Manifesto" was first published on 21 February 1848. "The Communist Manifesto" laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the "Manifesto" presents the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal political parties and groups at the time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism.
Marxism
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.
Jefferson School of Social Science
The Jefferson School of Social Science was established by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1943 as part of that organization's effort to expand the teaching of Marxism to the working class. Communists of the day believed that Marxism was a form of science which it believed was being willfully ignored in the public schools and sought to correct what it viewed as a systemic educational shortcoming. Moreover, the Communist Party sought to bolster community goodwill through its efforts as part of its Popular Front effort to integrate itself into American society.
Western Marxism
The Western Marxists placed more emphasis on Marxism's philosophical and sociological aspects, and its origins in the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (for which reason it is sometimes called Hegelian Marxism) and what they called "Young Marx" (i.e. the more humanistic early works of Marx). Although some early figures such as György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci had been prominent in political activities, Western Marxism became primarily the reserve of the academia especially after World War II. Prominent figures included Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
History of socialism
In Europe, harsh reaction followed the revolutions of 1848, during which ten countries had experienced brief or long-term social upheaval as groups carried out nationalist uprisings. After most of these attempts at systematic change ended in failure, conservative elements took advantage of the divided groups of socialists, anarchists, liberals, and nationalists, to prevent further revolt. The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), also known as the First International, was founded in London in 1864. Victor Le Lubez, a French radical republican living in London, invited Karl Marx to come to London as a representative of German workers. The IWA held a preliminary conference in 1865, and had its first congress at Geneva in 1866. Marx was appointed a member of the committee, and according to Saul Padover, Marx and Johann Georg Eccarius, a tailor living in London, became "the two mainstays of the International from its inception to its end". The First International became the first major international forum for the promulgation of socialist ideas. In 1864 the International Workingmen's Association (sometimes called the "First International") united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon, Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats.
Orthodox Marxism
Luxemburgism is an informal designation for a current of Marxist thought and practice that originates from the ideas and work of Rosa Luxemburg. In particular, it stresses the importance for spontaneous revolution which can only emerge in response to mounting contradictions between the productive forces and social relations of society and therefore rejects Leninism and Bolshevism for its insistence on a "hands-on" approach to revolution. Luxemburgism is also highly critical of the reformist Marxism that emerged from the work of Eduard Bernstein's faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. According to Rosa Luxemburg, under reformism "[capitalism] is not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms".
Marxists Internet Archive
The archive was created in 1990 by a person — known only by his Internet tag, Zodiac — who started archiving Marxist texts by transcribing the works of Marx and Engels into E-text, starting with the "Communist Manifesto". In 1993 the accumulated text was posted on a gopher site at csf.colorado.edu. Volunteers joined and helped spread and mirror the main archive. However, the main site and its mirrors were hosted on academic servers and by the end of 1995 almost all had been shut down.
History of communism
At the time, Marxism took off not only in Germany, but it also gained popularity in Hungary, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Netherlands, although it did not achieve such success in other European nations like the United Kingdom, where Marx and Engels had been based. Nonetheless, the new political ideology had gained sufficient support that an organisation was founded known as the Second International to unite the various Marxist groups around the world.
However, as Marxism took off it also began to come under criticism from other European intellectuals, including fellow socialists and leftists. For instance, the Russian collectivist anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticised what he believed were the flaws in the Marxian theory that the state would eventually dissolve under a Marxist government, instead he believed that the state would gain in power and become authoritarian. Criticism also came from other sociologists, such as the German Max Weber, who whilst admiring Marx disagreed with many of his assumptions on the nature of society. Some Marxists tried to adapt to these criticisms and the changing nature of capitalism and Eduard Bernstein emphasised the idea of Marxists bringing legal challenges against the current administrations over the treatment of the working classes rather than simply emphasising violent revolution as more orthodox Marxists did. Other Marxists opposed Bernstein and other revisionists, with many including Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov sticking steadfast to the concept of violently overthrowing what they saw as the bourgeoisie-controlled government and instead establishing a "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Politics of Fidel Castro
Marxism is the socio-political theory developed by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century. It holds as its foundation the idea of class struggle, i. e., that society mainly changes and progresses as one socio-economic class takes power from another. Thus, Marxists believe that capitalism replaced feudalism in the early modern period as the wealthy industrial class, or bourgeoisie, took political and economic power from the traditional land-owning class - the aristocracy and monarchy. In the same process, Marxists predict that socialism will replace capitalism as the industrial working class, or proletariat, seize power from the bourgeoisie through revolutionary action. In this way, Marxism is believed by its supporters to provide a scientific explanation for why socialism should, and will, replace capitalism in human society.
Karl Marx
On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence, beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently published "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844", convincing Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history. Soon, Marx and Engels were collaborating on a criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer. This work was published in 1845 as "The Holy Family". Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually Marx and Engels abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well.