Notes on Marxism

Lenin statue

Statue of Lenin in the Kremlin grounds, Moscow

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The socialist movement, in a manner of speaking, was a direct result of the Industrial Revolution that produced a working and a middle class. The socialists challenged the expansion of capitalism and the dominance of the middle class, often derogatorily referred to as the bourgeoisie. One of the most famous, and influential, critiques of capitalism appeared in a small pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, published in early 1848 by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). These two close collaborators made socialism a revolutionary force, and at the same time, they developed perhaps the most influential (maybe powerful) critique of contemporary capitalist society. Their work inspired legions of revolutionaries to try and overthrow the capitalist order.

The Manifesto was written as a revolutionary pamphlet designed to take advantage of the widespread revolutionary unrest in 1848 and inspire workers in Europe to unite and overthrow capitalism. So, when reading the Manifesto it is important to remember that above all it was revolutionary propaganda; it was meant to inspire radical, violent revolution. Marx and Engels would later expand on their theories and develop them in far more detail in other, more substantial works, like Das Kapital (1867).

Something to remember about Marxism in general is that Marx claimed that it was scientific because it was based on a study of economics, the economic organization of society, or the means of production. Marx also claimed that Marxism was materialistic because it was based on the scientific study of material (in economics)--it was not based on ideas. And so by studying the material, the economic basis of a society, Marx and Engels proposed their interpretation of history--that is in the Manifesto--that would lead to the future communist revolution and the establishment of the workers' society in the future. (Of course, Marx and Engels did not live to see that, nor were they able to exactly say what that future state was going to look like).

Communism, as described my Marx and Engels, differed from other socialist ideas of the early nineteenth-century, ideas that Marx and Engels contemptuously labeled as "Utopian" socialism. These ideas were developed by individuals such as Robert Owen (1771-1858) or Charles Fourier (2772-1837) who envisioned a future in which individuals lived together in some time of social community based on sharing. Most of you are not old enough to remember this, but the hippie communes of the 1960s were a rough approximation of the kind of socialist ideas espoused by these Utopian thinkers. Marx and Engels claimed that these mutual socialist communities were all ridiculous, and that the Marxist idea, because it was a scientific study of history and economics, promised the road to the future.

And, I would add, Marx and Engels used the term "communism" to distinguish from "socialism." The point was that the communists were radical, revolutionary, violent, because the revolution to overthrow capitalism had to be violent. The communists were not like peaceful socialists who sought to peacefully transform capitalism.

One other point about the communism seen in the Manifesto was that the theory of history there was based on the idea that history "progresses" to an end, i.e., history was progressive. Marx and Engels kind of borrowed this idea from the German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831) who also thought that history was progressing, but Hegel thought in terms of ideas, that ideas were improving towards an end. Marx and Engels claimed to have stood Hegel on his head, and that instead of ideas being the driving force of history, it was actually the material that explained how history progressed. Hegel--idealism; Marx and Engels--materialism.

Since we've studied the Enlightenment already, you should be able to see how the ideas of Marx and Engels are really grounded in the ideas of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.

There are many critiques of Marxism, and we don't have to get into them all here, but I would point out that it is not necessarily valid to say that communism won't work because it hasn't work. Marx and Engels would have a response to that. As you read the Manifesto and do some research on Marxism, you might think of some ways that other philosophers, economists, or even revolutionaries would criticize some of the ideas of Marx and Engels.

Marx and Engels were not the only individuals to develop critiques of capitalism in the nineteenth century, nor were they the only revolutionaries seeking to overthrow, or reform, "bourgeois" democracy. Charles Dickens, with Hard Times, offered a bitter criticism of industrialization, as did Emile Zola (1840-1902), the French novelist, in such works as Germinal. As opposed to Marx, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), the Russian revolutionary anarchist, devoted his life to inspiring a spontaneous peasant uprising against modern society.

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Some recommended online lectures and websites