Marxism essay

Marxism essay

Essay On Marxism,�� Best Marxism Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

WebMarxism is the Arrangement of Communism Words: Pages: 2 Karl Max is a German philosopher and socialist. He work has everlastingly affected the field of human WebAug 10,  · Marxism Marxism started in its early years as an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry centered upon a WebThis essay will discuss Karl Marx () and his theory Marxism. This essay will discuss the history of Marxism, how it was created and the positive and negative WebNov 22,  · Marxism is a worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and societal conflict. Marxist sociologists believe that economics are what WebJan 22,  · Contribution of Marxism and Imperialism in Shaping the Modern International Political System. Therefore, the postulated concepts of class struggles, materialism, ... read more

The aristocrats, however, were too proud to admit their appreciation of the goods delivered from afar by the merchants. The growth of small market economies gave accidental results along the process, like technological advances, for example. Their trading centers grew from small towns into big medieval cities called burghs, where the French word, bourgeois or city dweller came from. Feudalism, did not have total ideological control over society that it ruled. The Church itself was shook by schisms and the movement called Protestantism led by Martin Luther. They finally found a kind of Christianity that suited well with their economic interest. The highly cultural period called the Renaissance, also, gave encouragement to a generation of freethinkers.

A couple of centuries later came the dawn of the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Using Marxist dialectical analysis on this period of history, feudal Europe under the Catholic Church was the thesis. It was ridden with contradictions within i. its undemocratic and very oppressive rule on the majority that resulted into crises. The anti-thesis was growing power of the merchants that eventually challenged the church and the nobility. Feudalism, a backward system compared to the rising capitalism became futile in the face of technological advances favoring the bourgeoisie. Its armed hostility to science and reason during the Inquisition would eventually backfire in the irony of history.

Spain may had all the gold plundered from her colonies, but England had the Industrial Revolution. In military warfare, the Spanish galleons were no match to the English steam-powered battleships. French feudalism embodied in the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV was ignorant of its coming downfall. Louis XVI paid the price, literally, with his head when it was negated by the guillotine. With its economic power, the revolutionary bourgeoisie eventually became the political masters of the situation, issuing the historical Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The modern institution of democracy had sown the seeds of socialism inside the womb of capitalism. Marxism was only possible when the political, philosophical, and economic ground in Europe became favorable now to the bourgeoisie. It took the politics of the French socialists but rejected their utopianism. It applied the dialectics of Hegel in analyzing the changing society but without his idealism and mysticism. His thorough research about capitalism in the London library during his exile made it possible to complete the book, Das Kapital , an in depth dialectical analysis on capitalism. Marx saw capitalism as the most dynamic system throughout history.

It has dominated the world within just three centuries. The endless drive for profit constantly revolutionizes technology. Capitalism has created vast wealth but also enormous poverty, a kind of crisis very peculiar from the rest of the crises in history. Too many cars on sale, but too many who can not afford to buy them. Too much food stuffs in the grocery and the marketplace, letting the unsold goods to rot, while there are too many hungry and malnourished people. Capitalism, that has created vast inequality and modern social conflicts, will never be exempted from the laws of Hegelian dialectics.

Because the corporate system is alive and dynamic, it is subject to contradictions. And contradictions lead to revolutionary situations. Optimistically, Marx already saw its agents of negation. He advocated for the workers of the world to unite, to redistribute the wealth that they have created in the first place, and create a more humane system based on human need not corporate greed. Once the working class achieve complete victory over capital, humanity will then reach the end of history. His revolutionary ideas written years ago still remains relevant today more than ever to fight for a just society. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.

But this is not all. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. It is these three sources of Marxism, which are also its component parts that we shall outline in brief. I The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Throughout the modern history of Europe, and especially at the end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth.

Marx and Engels defended philosophical materialism in the most determined manner and repeatedly explained how profoundly erroneous is every deviation from this basis. Their views are most clearly and fully expounded in the works of Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti- Dühring, which, like the Communist Manifesto, are handbooks for every class-conscious worker. The main achievement was dialectics, i. 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. The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system develops—how capitalism, for instance, grows out of feudalism. Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation. We see, for example, that the various political forms of the modern European states serve to strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. II Having recognized that the economic system is the foundation on which the political superstructure is erected, Marx devoted his greatest attention to the study of this economic system.

Classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in England, the most developed of the capitalist countries. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic system, laid the foundations of the labour theory of value. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent on its production. Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things the exchange of one commodity for another Marx revealed a relation between people. The exchange of commodities expresses the connection between individual producers through the market. Money signifies that the connection is becoming closer and closer, inseparably uniting the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole.

The wage-worker sells his labour-power to the owner of land, factories and instruments of labour. The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family wages , while the other part of the day he works without remuneration, creating for the capitalist surplus-value, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class. Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed. In industry, the victory of large-scale production is immediately apparent, but the same phenomenon is also to be observed in agriculture, where the superiority of large-scale capitalist agriculture is enhanced, the use of machinery increases and the peasant economy, trapped by money-capital, declines and falls into ruin under the burden of its backward technique.

The decline of small-scale production assumes different forms in agriculture, but the decline itself is an indisputable fact. By destroying small-scale production, capital leads to an increase in productivity of labour and to the creation of a monopoly position for the associations of big capitalists. Production itself becomes more and more social—hundreds of thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a regular economic organism—but the product of this collective labour is appropriated by a handful of capitalists. Anarchy of production, crises, the furious chase after markets and the insecurity of existence of the mass of the population are intensified.

By increasing the dependence of the workers on capital, the capitalist system creates the great power of united labour. Marx traced the development of capitalism from embryonic commodity economy, from simple exchange, to its highest forms, to large-scale production. And the experience of all capitalist countries, old and new, year by year demonstrates clearly the truth of this Marxian doctrine to increasing numbers of workers. Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital. Various socialist doctrines immediately emerged as a reflection of and protest against this oppression.

Early socialism, however, was utopian socialism. It criticized capitalist society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it had visions of a better order and endeavored to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation. But utopian socialism could not indicate the real solution. It could not explain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism, it could not reveal the laws of capitalist development, or show what social force is capable of becoming the creator of a new society. Meanwhile, the stormy revolutions which everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, accompanied the fall of feudalism, of serfdom, more and more clearly revealed the struggle of classes as the basis and the driving force of all development.

Not a single victory of political freedom over the feudal class was won except against desperate resistance. Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more or less free and democratic basis except by a life-and-death struggle between the various classes of capitalist society. The genius of Marx lies in his having been the first to deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine of the class struggle. People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.

Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organize those forces for the struggle. Independent organisation of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa.

The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly. CRITICISM According to Leszek Kołakowski, the laws of dialectics at the very base of Marxism are fundamentally flawed: some are "truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means", yet others just "nonsense"; some Marxist "laws" are vague and can be interpreted differently, but these interpretations generally fall into one of the aforementioned categories of flaws as well.

The Marxian vision took the overwhelming complexity of the real world and made the parts fall into place, in a way that was intellectually exhilarating and conferred such a sense of moral superiority that opponents could be simply labelled and dismissed as moral lepers or blind reactionaries. Marxism was — and remains — a mighty instrument for the acquisition and maintenance of political power. Many anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory, such as historical materialism and the labour theory of value, and gone on to criticise capitalism - and advocate socialism - using other arguments.

Some contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are viable, but that the corpus is incomplete or somewhat outdated in regards to certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may therefore combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber: the Frankfurt school is one example. Dmitriev, writing in , Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, writing in , and subsequent critics have alleged that Marx's value theory and law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that Marx drew conclusions that actually do not follow from his theoretical premises.

Once those errors are corrected, Marx's conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by, and equal to, aggregate value and surplus value no longer holds true. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit. There are also doubts that the rate of profit in capitalism would tend to fall, as Marx predicted. Okishio, in , devised a theorem Okishio's theorem showing that if capitalists pursue cost-cutting techniques and if the real wage does not rise, the rate of profit must rise. The inconsistency allegations have been a prominent feature of Marxian economics and the debate surrounding it since the s. Proponents of the Temporal Single System Interpretation TSSI of Marx's value theory, like Kliman, claim that the supposed inconsistencies are actually the result of misinterpretation; they argue that when Marx's theory is understood as "temporal" and "single-system," the alleged internal inconsistencies disappear.

In a recent survey of the debate, Kliman concludes that "the proofs of inconsistency are no longer defended; the entire case against Marx has been reduced to the interpretive issue. It proposes that technological advances in modes of production inevitably lead to changes in the social relations of production. This economic 'base' of society supports, is reflected by and influences the ideological 'superstructure' which encompasses culture, religion, politics and all other aspects of humanity's social consciousness. It thus looks for the causes of developments and changes in human history in economic, technological, and more broadly, material factors, as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social classes and nations.

Law, politics, the arts, literature, morality, religion — are understood by Marx to make up the superstructure, as reflections of the economic base of society. Many critics have argued that this is an oversimplification of the nature of society; they claim that the influence of ideas, culture and other aspects of what Marx called the superstructure are just as important as the economic base to the course of society, if not more so. More than this neither Marx nor I ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. However, this also creates another problem for Marxism.

If the superstructure influences the base then there is no need for Marx's constant assertions that the history of society is one of economic class conflict. This then becomes a classic chicken or the egg argument as to whether the base or the superstructure comes first. Peter Singer proposes that the way to solve this problem is to understand that Marx saw the economic base as ultimately real. Marx believed that humanity's defining characteristic was its means of production and thus the only way for man to free himself from oppression was for him to take control of the means of production. According to Marx, this is the goal of history and the elements of the superstructure act as tools of history.

Even if Singer's interpretation of Marx's intuitions on the "goal of history" is faithful to Marx's original intent, that still would not make this view point necessarily true. In fact, Karl Popper has argued that both the concept of Marx's historical method as well as its application are falsifiable, and thus it cannot be proven true or false: The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations for example in Marx's analysis of the character of the 'coming social revolution' their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree.

In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a 'conventionalist twist' to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status. REFRENCES  Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Selected Correspondence. p  Singer, Peter Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Hans Bakker. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Retrieved December 28, Cohen" PDF. Radical Philosophy 36 Spring, , pp. Progress Publishers, Moscow, RELATED PAPERS. What is to be Done? Leninism, anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution Today.

Marxism as a science of interpretation: Beyond Louis Althusser. The Political Thought of Karl Heinrich Marx Home Page Research marxism Essay. marxism Essay Better Essays. Open Document. How convincing was the Marxist critique of the capitalist state? All of these theorists are coming from a Marxist perspective , using ideas and terms developed in Marxist theory, though only Althusser actually claims to be a Marxist. So to start off, I want to talk a bit about some basic ideas of Marxist theory. But that, says Hegel, is how change happens--by the continual struggle between thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

In addition to being a kind of philosophy, Marxism is also a way to understand history. Get Access. Decent Essays. Evaluation Of Sociological Theory Words 3 Pages. Evaluation Of Sociological Theory. Read More. Good Essays. The Crucible Feminist Theory Essay Words 5 Pages. The Crucible Feminist Theory Essay. Marxism Is A Theory Words 5 Pages. Marxism Is A Theory. An End To The Negro Woman Analysis Words 7 Pages. An End To The Negro Woman Analysis. Better Essays. Fahrenheit : A Marxist Criticism Words 10 Pages.

Fahrenheit : A Marxist Criticism. Karl Marx Essay Words 7 Pages 12 Works Cited. Karl Marx Essay. Essay about A Bugs Life Related to Marxism Words 3 Pages. Essay about A Bugs Life Related to Marxism. Marx's Theory of History Essay Words 4 Pages. Marx's Theory of History Essay. Compare and Contrast Two Sociological theories Words 8 Pages. Compare and Contrast Two Sociological theories. Marxism Sociology Words 9 Pages. Marxism Sociology. Health and Social Care Issues: Social Model vs Medical Model Essay Words 19 Pages. Health and Social Care Issues: Social Model vs Medical Model Essay. Marxism On The Other Wes Moore Words 6 Pages.

Marxism On The Other Wes Moore. Essay about Reasoning of Human Nature Words 7 Pages 3 Works Cited. Essay about Reasoning of Human Nature. Related Topics. Alter Dialectical Idealist Theorists Social change Main ideas.

edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. To browse Academia. edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser. Peter P Petkov. Марксизъм допълнителни материали за курсова работа по "Икономически учения". Peter Critchley. Fabio Frosini. Discussion and research on Gramsci have for a long time been a predominantly Italian issue, or rather a question intrinsic or mainly referring to the history of the Italian Communist Party PCI. It has seemed obvious then, for a whole generation of studies on Gramsci, to link his legacy to the history of the party that he had helped to found.

Choolayil, A. The Political Theory of Communism and the Possibility of an Ideal Society. Anoop C Choolayil. Marxian ideal of classless society is often upheld by many political giants as an alternative to the existing social order. This paper attempts to make an analysis of the Marxian ideology from a philosophical perspective to asses the feasibility of Marxism as a political ideology. Part one of the study places the Marxian theory in its historical context. Part two deals with the fundamentals of his political theory. Part three makes a critical study of communism in praxis in global scenario. The fourth and the final part is a critique of Marxism. Murzban Jal. phillip nyirongo. Дмитрий Капытков. Yiorgos Moraitis.

This paper addresses three main issues in its critique of traditional Marxist perspectives on the organisation of class struggle: how traditional Marxism understands capital; its philosophy of history; and how it fetishes political power. By employing an analysis that has its origins in the tradition of autonomist Open Marxism, the critique will analyse the Report of the Central Committee of the KKE for the Party's 19th Congress alongside Georg Lukacs' version of Marxism, which as a traditional Marxist analysis provides a logic that underpins the KKE's position, despite the Party's claims to the contrary.

It is argued that, despite its criticism of modern capitalism, traditional Marxism ultimately follows a liberal logic that shackles mainstream communist parties to fetish-forms imposed by the logic of capital and thus limits the scope of Marxian dialectics to the analysis of the fetish-forms themselves. This paper claims that Marx makes a distinction between "mundane-reified time" and "radical time", the first said to be "neurotic time" akin to the neurotic's compulsion to repeat , whilst the second is said to be the "time for revolutions" or simply "humanist time". Werner Bonefeld.

Oupa Motlogelwa. Vasilis Grollios. Fabien Tarrit. Christopher Brooke. stanley igwe. Luigi Benedetti. olatunde adegbola. Werner Bonefeld , Richard Gunn. Katherine A Gordy. Majid Ali. European Scientific Journal ESJ. Mnata Resani. Bob Jessop. Chad Kautzer. Marcin Bogusławski , Helder Mendes Baiao , Krzysztof Świrek , Krzysztof Brzechczyn. Vesa Oittinen. thikan srinara. Critical Analysis on Marxist Orthodoxies: A Contribution of Social History of Political Theory. Berkay Koçak. Jana Rosker. Lara Monticelli. FCI BG NARWANA. Anders Burman , Anders Bartonek.

Sami Chaabane. The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought Volume II. Maxim A Pensky. Arran Gare. Dick Howard. Diana-Abasi Ibanga, PhD. African Journal of Political Science and International Relations. CHUKWUDI PATRICK. Murray Smith. Vidyabharati International Interdisciplinary Research Journal. GARRET RAJA. Frank Furedi. Grant Banfield. Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free DOCX. Download Free PDF. Essay On Marxism. Stanley I Obika. Read Article Download. Related Papers. Download Free PDF View PDF. Hobsbawm E. Reflections on Marx and Marxism. Social Transformation and Dialectics in Traditional Marxism: A Critique of the Report of the Central Committee of the KKE.

Umweg or the Detour: On Marx's Idea of Radical Time. It is a fusion of German philosophy, mainly the dialectics of Hegel, French socialism, and British political economy. This combination makes Marxism unique among other philosophies in history. The fusion itself did not happen quickly out in a thin air. It is revolutionary because it is dialectic, and was born out of his involvement of the class struggles happening at that time in Europe. Karl Marx was born in May 5th, , into a middle class Jewish family in Trier, Germany.

His father, a respectable lawyer, later converted to Christianity for security reasons. At 17, Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn to study law. There he met his future wife Jenny Von Westphalen, whose father had interested him in romantic literature and in the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon. The next year, his father sent him to the University of Berlin. He abandoned his pursuit on romantic poetry and began focusing on the philosophy of G. Hegel, the most influential thinker in Berlin at that time. Marx became involved with the intellectuals who called themselves the Young Hegelians. The Hegelians were not a unified group but composed of two competing tendencies, the Left and Right Hegelians.

As a process of two contradictory elements in a union, the dialectics is, also viewed as the unity of the opposites. Hegel suggested that history is a contradictory progression of ideas passing through different stages, which would finally arrive at the truth, or the Absolute Idea. The Absolute Idea is his other word for God. To put the dialectics back on its feet, Marx argued that to understand the real driving force of history, one has to look critically at society, the world, nature, and the universe. By using the scientific method, critical analysis will lead to better understanding of the world. According to Marx, humans, in their drive for survival have to meet their basic needs first before everything else, before they could practice religion, politics, culture, and etc…To meet their material needs is to produce.

Thus, production is the driving force of history.

Marxism Essay,Related topic

WebJan 22,  · Contribution of Marxism and Imperialism in Shaping the Modern International Political System. Therefore, the postulated concepts of class struggles, materialism, WebMarxism is the Arrangement of Communism Words: Pages: 2 Karl Max is a German philosopher and socialist. He work has everlastingly affected the field of human WebNov 22,  · Marxism is a worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and societal conflict. Marxist sociologists believe that economics are what WebAug 10,  · Marxism Marxism started in its early years as an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry centered upon a WebThis essay will discuss Karl Marx () and his theory Marxism. This essay will discuss the history of Marxism, how it was created and the positive and negative ... read more

Read Article Download. Marx asserts that the ruling class uses power to exploit the working class and this argument forms the principle of Marxism. His father was a successful lawyer, devoted to the struggle for a Prussian constitution. His Jewish background exposed him to prejudice and discrimination that may have led to a longing for social change. Marxism states that the power in society lies with the people who have more money or….

Read More. Reference IvyPanda, marxism essay. It was related marxism essay structuralism, psychoanalytic theories and even reconstruction in such way creating new approaches and the whole system. It is revolutionary because it is dialectic, and was born out of his involvement of the class struggles happening at that time in Europe. Radical Philosophy 36 Spring,pp. yes get a UNIQUE paper. In addition to being a kind of philosophy, Marxism is also a way to understand history.