Marxism

(Sam O, Matt F), Aviva Izmailov, Patrick Gatta **Marxism** Marxism is a set of theories, or a system of thought and analysis, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the nineteenth century in response to the Western industrial revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism as the predominant economic mode.

**Karl Heinrich Marx** **Friedrich Engels**

Comparison of Capitalism to Maxism: Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or “the people,” own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold.




 * Social Structure:**
 * Proletariat: “those individuals who sell their labor power, and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production“. The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions enabling the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because the workers’ labor generates a surplus value greater than the workers’ wages.
 * Bourgeoisie: those who “own the means of production” and buy labor power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat; they subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie.
 * Petit bourgeoisie are those who employ laborers, but who also work, i.e. small business owners, peasant landlords, trade workers et al. Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of the means of production eventually would destroy the petit bourgeoisie, degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
 * Lumpenproletariat: criminals, vagabonds, beggars, et al., who have no stake in the economy, and so sell their labor to the highest bidder.
 * Landlords: an historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
 * Peasantry and farmers: a disorganised class incapable of effecting socio-economic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat, and some become landlords.
 * In //The Communist Manifesto//, Karl Marx predicts that the proletariats will overthrow the bourgeoisie. Since the proletariats "do all the work", Marx and other socialists suggest that they should get an equal share of the wealth. A Marxist society would have no private property rights and goods produced in it would be distributed among the citizens--"from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Link To Communist Manifesto: []

Karl Marx (1818-1883) did not have a theory of morality; he had a theory of history. Thus, Marxism was not about right or wrong but about what //will// happen in history. Marx was contemptuous of people who judged things in moral terms. When diehards say that Marxism has actually never been "tried" (despite what Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho, and Daniel Ortega thought they were doing), they don't understand that Marxism was not a rule for behavior or a program for action; it was supposed to be the theory of a deterministic mechanism that will produce the future, a theory of actions that will arise spontaneously because of historical circumstances -- although we can infer what kinds of actions people, including ourselves, will be taking -- after all, Marx said that the purpose of his work was to change the world, not just understand it. It is the theory, however, the world //will// change //because// of the objective economic conditions, not because of some decisions we make. This was not a theory about "human nature" or "human psychology," but about how the //mode of economic production// (how goods and services are produced) determines all the other political, social, cultural, and moral structures of a society (though some Marxists are uncomfortable with this in an absolute sense). The needs of the "English petty bourgeois" are thus not "//false needs,//" however dismissive Marx sounds, but //true needs// in relation to a capitalistic mode of production -- needs which will change over time, in a historicist sense, as the mode of production changes. As a "science" of history, Marxism would succeed or fail to the extent that it could actually predict the evolution of production and its various effects. Marx's thesis of the fictional nature of capital is thus equivalent to his lack of imagination regarding what it would be possible for people to //do// with their capital. That entirely new products and industries could be conjured up, to be brought to life with capital investment, was a process that was simply off the radar of Marxist economics. Perhaps he thought that the unexploited workers would sit down one day and simply begin producing cell phones, with the conception perhaps spontaneously coughed up by the Hegelian dialectic. No. Since Marx was the kind of person who would never know what to do with capital, he did not believe there //was// anything to do with it. This is still about the level of economic understanding of much modern political discourse. It is worse with human capital. The tradition of many people, often ethnic minorties, in starting and running small businesses, which represents a profound body of knowledge, more easily learned at one's mother's knee, next to the cash register, than even in business school, elicits from the Marxist only suspicion, condemnation, and hatred. The people who typically run small businesses, we know, like the Jews, together with the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in Africa (or the neighborhood Seven Eleven), or Koreans in Harlem, are simply engaged in small scale capitalist exploitation -- they are the "petty bourgeoisie" who will be eaten up by growing monopolies. For the enlightened, the //bien pensants//, they merit only contempt. The idea that they are the source, not only of economic success for minorities or individuals, but of revolutions in production for the economy as a whole, where both the Ford Motor Company and Apple Computer started in someone's garage, is only met with dumb incomprehension and incredulity -- even from people whose own family, as with many Jews, contains just such a history of innovation and success from small roots. media type="youtube" key="EtXF6bJUzMQ" height="385" width="480"