Marxism
Marxism is a scientific framework for understanding human society, sociology, history, economics, and many other subjects. It was founded in the 19th century by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels after synthesizing and developing existing ideas such as French utopian socialism, British political economy, and German dialectical philosophy. Marxism includes dialectical materialism in its understanding of the natural world, and historical materialism for its understanding of society and history.[1]
Marxism was developed in a time when the industrial revolution was in full force and class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie in the emergent capitalist system was beginning. Marxism has been continuously advanced in accord with changing circumstances, the most major leap being with the development of Marxism–Leninism in the early 20th in response to the rise of moribund, imperialist capitalism and era of socialist revolution.
Theory
The basis of Marxism can be divided into three parts — dialectical and historical materialism, Marxist political economy, and scientific socialism.
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of Marxism. It is dialectical in that its means of studying and understanding the world are premised on a dialectical outlook (i.e. understanding the relationship between things) and its interpretation of phenomena is materialist (i.e. understanding the material world, not human ideals, as being the source of truth and starting part of analysis).
The application of dialectical materialism to the field of social science — economics, sociology, politics, etc. — is known as historical materialism. Historical materialism in particular provided Marxism with the analytical framework for understanding the class antagonisms and development of human society, both past and present.[2]
Political economy
The Marxist school of political economy enumerates the basis of exploitation, exchange, and other concepts relevant a mode of production. Karl Marx formulated a critical discovery relating to the dependence on the extraction of surplus-value from the proletariat as the foundation of capitalist production in works such as Das Kapital.[3]
Scientific socialism
See also
References
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1913). The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism. Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1938). Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
- ↑ Friedrich Engels (1878). Anti-Dühring. Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.
"These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations."