What Is Marxism?
SOCIALISM + COMMUNISIM + SAUL ALINSKY = MARXISM
Marxism
is an economic and social system based upon the political and economic
theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
While it would take
veritably volumes to explain the full implications and ramifications of
the Marxist social and economic ideology, Marxism is summed up in the
Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a
central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.”
Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism which is defined by Encarta as
“an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of
production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free
competitive market and motivation by profit.” Marxism is the system of
socialism of which the dominant feature is public ownership of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange. 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.
An increasing immiseration of the proletariat occurs as the result of
economic recessions; these recessions result because the working class
is unable to buy the full product of their labors and the ruling
capitalists do not consume all of the surplus value.
A proletariat or
socialist revolution must occur, according to Marx, where the state
(the means by which the ruling class forcibly maintains rule over the
other classes) is a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Communism evolves
from socialism out of this progression: the socialist slogan is “From
each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” The
communist slogan varies thusly: “From each according to his ability, to
each according to his needs.”
What were the Marxist views of
religion? Because the worker under the capitalist regimes was miserable
and alienated, religious beliefs were sustained. Religion, according to
Marx was the response to the pain of being alive, the response to
earthly suffering. In Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
(1844), Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
circumstances.” Marx indicated in this writing that the working class,
the proletariat was a true revolutionary class, universal in character
and acquainted with universal suffering. This provided the need for
religion.
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