Marxism

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Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."{{cite book |title=A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy |first=Karl |last=Marx |author-link=Karl Marx |date=1859 |chapter=Introduction}}

These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle.{{cite book |title=Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century |date=2003 |first1=Paul R. |last1=Gregory |first2=Robert C. |last2=Stuart |pages=62 |chapter=Marx's Theory of Change |publisher=South-Western College Publishing |isbn=0618261818}} Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat).{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/karl-marx-yesterday-and-today |title=Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today |first=Louis |last=Menand |author-link=Louis Menand |magazine=The New Yorker |date=3 October 2016 |access-date=20 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210704201500/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/karl-marx-yesterday-and-today |archive-date=4 July 2021 |url-status=live}} Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another,{{cite journal |title=Marx's Theory of Classes: Science and Ideology |first=Edward |last=Andrew |journal=Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique |volume=8 |number=3 |date=September 1975 |pages=454–466 |publisher=Canadian Political Science Association |doi=10.1017/S0008423900046084 |jstor=3231070 |s2cid=154040628}} a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution.{{cite journal |title=Historical Inevitability and Human Agency in Marxism [and Discussion] |first1=G. A. |last1=Cohen |author1-link=G. A. Cohen |first2=R. |last2=Veryard |first3=D. H. |last3=Mellor |author3-link=Hugh Mellor |first4=A. G. M. |last4=Last |first5=Randolph |last5=Quirk |author5-link=Randolph Quirk |first6=John |last6=Mason |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences |volume=07 |number=1832 |date=8 September 1986 |pages=65–87 |publisher=Royal Society |jstor=2397783}} In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership.{{cite journal |title=Karl Marx on the Individual and the Conditions for His Freedom and Development |last=Simirnov |first=G. |journal=The Marxist |volume=3 |number=3–4 |date=July–December 1985 |url=https://www.cpim.org/marxist/198504_marxist_marxism&indv_simirnov.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210210184046/https://www.cpim.org/marxist/198504_marxist_marxism&indv_simirnov.htm |archive-date=10 February 2021 |url-status=live}}{{cite book |chapter=Marx's Vision of Sustainable Human Development |first=Paul |last=Burkett |title=Karl Marx |editor1-first=Bertell |editor1-last=Ollman |editor2-first=Kevin B. |editor2-last=Anderson |edition=1st |date=2012 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=9781315251196}} A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use. Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment."

Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving the population's living standards due to its need to compensate for the falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory, socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity.{{cite book |title=The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte |first=Karl |last=Marx |author-link=Karl Marx |quote=Men make their own history. |date=1852}}

The term Marxism was popularised by Karl Kautsky, who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers.{{harvnb|Haupt|2010|p=18–19}}; {{harvnb|Kołakowski|2005|p=}}; {{harvnb|Lichtheim|2015|pp=233, 234–235}} Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term.{{sfn|Haupt|2010|p=18–19}}

Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views.{{sfn|Haupt|2010|p=12}} He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians.{{sfn|Haupt|2010|p=12}} In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist."{{sfn|Haupt|2010|p=12}}

{{main|Historical materialism}}

{{further|Marxist historiography|Marx's theory of history}}

{{see also|Historical determinism|Historicism|Historiography|People's history|Philosophy of history}}

{{quote box|quote=The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping the objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions.|source=— Russian Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, 1913{{sfn|Lenin|1967|p=15}}|align=right|width=246px|bgcolor=#c6dbf7}}

{{blockquote|text=Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.|sign=Karl Marx, {{lang|de|Grundrisse}}, 1858{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |orig-date=1858 |date=1993 |title=Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy |translator-first=M. |translator-last=Nicolaus |publisher=Penguin Classics |isbn=0140445757 |page=265}}}}

Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living.{{sfn|Evans|1975|p=53}}{{sfn|Johnston|2015|p=4}} Marx's account of the theory is in The German Ideology (1845){{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |date=1932 |orig-date=1845 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm |chapter=The German Ideology |title=Marx/Engels Collected Works |volume=5 |location=Moscow |publisher=Progress Publisher |access-date=11 July 2020 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=29 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200929180136/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm/ |url-status=live}} and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society (social classes, political pyramid and ideologies) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure.{{cite journal |first=Pawel |last=Zaleski |title=Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality |journal=Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte |publisher=Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH |volume=50 |date=2008 |pages=260–266 |jstor=24360940}}{{sfn|Johnston|2015|p=4}} The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, the "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base.{{cite encyclopedia |editor1-last=Chambre |editor1-first=Henri |editor2-last=McLellan |editor2-first=David T. |editor2-link=David McLellan (political scientist) |date=2020 |orig-date=1998 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism#ref35144 |title=Historical materialism |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=11 July 2020 |archive-date=6 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200706145958/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism#ref35144 |url-status=live}}

The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour, means of production and relations of production, i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness" that derive from the economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions, whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation.{{cite book |first=Friedrich |last=Engels |author-link=Friedrich Engels |orig-date=1877 |date=1947 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm |chapter=Introduction |title=Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science |location=Moscow |publisher=Progress Publishers |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=24 May 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130524035517/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm |url-status=live}}

This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organisation. Those newly formed social organisations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic, expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."{{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |orig-date=1847 |date=1888 |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61-images.html |chapter=Bourgeoisie and Proletariat |title=The Communist Manifesto |editor-last=Engels |editor-first=Friedrich |editor-link=Friedrich Engels |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=13 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220413062025/https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61-images.html |url-status=live}}

Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe. Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production:

1. Primitive communism: cooperative tribal societies.
2. Slave society: development of tribal to city-state in which aristocracy is born.
3. Feudalism: aristocrats are the ruling class, while merchants evolve into the bourgeoisie.
4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class who create and employ the proletariat.

While historical materialism has been referred to as a materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the {{lang|fr|marche générale}}, imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself."{{citation |last=Weber |first=Cameron |date=January 2023 |title=Did Karl Marx's "Turn" the Original Social Theory of Class Struggle? |url=https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/115897/1/MPRA_paper_115897.pdf |archive-url= |archive-date=}} In a letter to the editor of the Russian newspaper paper {{lang|ru-latn|Otechestvennyje Zapiski}} (1877),{{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |date=1968 |orig-date=1877 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm |chapter=Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky |title=Marx and Engels Correspondence |location=New York |publisher=International Publishers |access-date=11 July 2020 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=29 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200929180136/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm/ |url-status=live}} he explained that his ideas were based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.{{cite journal |last=Wittfogel |first=Karl A. |date=July 1960 |title=The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution |journal=World Politics |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=487–508 [493] |doi=10.2307/2009334 |jstor=2009334 |s2cid=155515389}}

{{further|Anti-capitalism|Criticism of capitalism}}

File:Pyramid of Capitalist System.jpg" cartoon made by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911 criticising capitalism and social stratification.]]

According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine."{{sfn|Lenin|1967|p=7}} Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting the concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital" was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment.{{sfn|Marx|1849}}

Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour—the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods.{{cite journal |last=Holmstrom |first=Nancy |date=June 1977 |title=Exploitation |journal=Canadian Journal of Philosophy |volume=7 |number=2 |pages=353–369 |doi=10.1080/00455091.1977.10717024 |jstor=40230696}}{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Capital, Volume I |publisher=Penguin |date=1976 |page=647}} Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing the social classes.{{sfn|Callinicos|2010|pp=98–99}}{{sfn|Johnston|2015|p=5}} The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes.{{sfn|Callinicos|2010|pp=100–103}} Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value—the difference between the value produced and the value received by a labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker.{{sfn|Callinicos|2010|pp=97–100}}

In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion. Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn the necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat the worker.{{cite book |author-link=Allen W. Wood |last=Wood |first=Allen W. |date=2004 |title=Karl Marx |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780415316989}} {{page needed|date=June 2024}}

Alienation ({{langx|de|Entfremdung}}) is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterisation of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition is not prerequisite."Alienation". A Dictionary of Sociology.{{Full citation needed|date=June 2024}}

In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements."

{{main|Marxian class theory}}

{{see also|Class conflict|Classless society|Social class|Three-component theory of stratification}}

Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups:

• Proletariat: "[T]he class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live."{{cite book |last1=Engels |first1=Friedrich |author1-link=Friedrich Engels |title=Manifesto of the Communist Party |date=1888 |location=London |page=Footnote |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#a1 |publisher=Progress Publishers |access-date=15 March 2015 |archive-date=27 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180127164331/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#a1 |url-status=live |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |publisher=Progress Publishers |year=1887 |location=Moscow |title=Capital: A Critique of Political Economy |volume=1 |chapter=The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power |author-link=Karl Marx |access-date=10 February 2013 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat as the worker's labour generates a surplus value greater than the worker's wage.{{cite book |last1=Screpanti |first1=Ernesto |author1-link=Ernesto Screpanti |date=2019 |chapter=Measures of Exploitation |title=Labour and Value: Rethinking Marx's Theory of Exploitation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dDa1DwAAQBAJ |publication-place=Cambridge |publisher=Open Book Publishers |page=75 |doi=10.11647/OBP.0182 |isbn=9781783747825 |access-date=24 July 2023 |quote=Marx's value theory is a complex doctrine in which three different kinds of speculation coalesce: a philosophy aimed at proving that value is created by a labour substance; an explanation of the social relations of production in capitalism; and a method for measuring exploitation. |doi-access=free}}⁠
• Lumpenproletariat: the outcasts of society, such as the criminals, vagabonds, beggars, or prostitutes, without any political or class consciousness.{{cite book |last1=Holt |first1=Justin P. |title=The Social Thought of Karl Marx |date=2014 |publisher=SAGE |isbn=9781412997843 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=oc45DQAAQBAJ&dq=dangerous+class&pg=PT117 105] |chapter=Class}} Having no interest in national, let alone international, economic affairs, Marx claimed that this specific sub-division of the proletariat would play no part in the eventual social revolution.
• Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat. They subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Siegrist |first=Hannes |date=2001 |title=Bourgeoisie and Middle Classes, History of |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |editor-link=James D. Wright |encyclopedia=International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences |volume=2 |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |publisher=Elsevier |pages=784–789 |isbn=9780080430768 |doi=10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.62013-5}}
• Petite bourgeoisie: those who work and can afford to buy little labour power (i.e. small business owners, peasants, landlords and trade workers). Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of the means of production eventually would destroy the petite bourgeoisie, degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
• Landlords: a historically significant social class that retains some wealth and power.
• Peasantry and farmers: a scattered class incapable of organising and effecting socioeconomic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat while some would become landlords.{{cite book |last=Wolf |first=Eric R. |author-link=Eric Wolf |date=1999 |title=Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |chapter=Conclusion |page=294}}

Class consciousness denotes the awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally in its best interests.{{Cite book |last=Parenti |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Parenti |title=Power and the Powerless |chapter=Class Consciousness and Individualized Consciousness |pages=94–113 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |date=1978 |isbn=0-312-63373-4}}{{cite encyclopedia |title=Class consciousness - Social Stratification, Marxism {{&}} Class Conflict |first=André |last=Munro |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/class-consciousness |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}} Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat.{{Cite book |title=Sociological Theory in the Classical Era |first1=Laura Desfor |last1=Edles |first2=Scott |last2=Appelrouth |publisher=SAGE Publications |year=2020 |isbn=978-1506347820 |page=48}}

Without defining ideology,{{cite book |last=McCarney |first=Joseph |date=2005 |chapter-url=http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm |chapter=Ideology and False Consciousness |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130509062317/http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm |archive-date=9 May 2013 |title=Marx Myths and Legends |editor1-first=R. |editor1-last=Lucas |editor2-first=A. |editor2-last=Blunden}} Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces."{{cite book |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |author-link=Friedrich Engels |orig-date=14 July 1893 |date=1968 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm |chapter=Letter to Franz Mehring |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121222215623/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm |archive-date=22 December 2012 |title=Marx and Engels Correspondence |translator-link=Dona Torr |translator-first=D. |translator-last=Torr |location=London |publisher=International Publishers}}

Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas) is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology, Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force."{{cite book |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm |title=The German Ideology |first=Karl |last=Marx |author-link=Karl Marx |date=1845 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=2 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150102205347/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm |url-status=live}} The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity.{{cite book |chapter=Introduction |title=Political Economy: A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R |date=1957 |publisher=Lawrence & Wishart |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/index.htm#INTRODUCTION |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}

{{quote box

| quote = Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything.

| source = — Cuban revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009{{sfn|Castro|2009|p=100}}

| align = right

| width = 246px

| bgcolor = #c6dbf7

}}

This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries, land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of the society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism.{{cite book |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |author-link=Friedrich Engels |date=Spring 1880 |chapter=III [Historical Materialism] |title=Socialism: Utopian and Scientific |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm |via=Marxist Internet Archive}}{{cite book |last=Goldman |first=Emma |author-link=Emma Goldman |date=1932 |chapter=1 |title=There Is No Communism in Russia |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia |access-date=29 January 2024 |via=The Anarchist Library |language=en}} Through working class revolution, the state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another){{cite book |last=Lukács |first=György |author-link=György Lukács |date=1924 |chapter=The State as Weapon |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/1924/lenin/ch05.htm |title=Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{cite news |last=Mitchinson |first=Phil |date=21 July 2010 |title=Marxism and the state |url=https://socialist.net/marxism-and-the-state/ |work=Socialist Appeal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230606102252/https://socialist.net/marxism-and-the-state/ |archive-date=6 June 2023}} is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy.{{cite web |first=Søren |last=Mau |date=18 July 2023 |title=Communism is Freedom |url=https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom |website=Verso Books Blog |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240603044105/https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom |archive-date=3 June 2024}} An economy based on cooperation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be the end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history. Marx saw the fundamental nature of capitalist society as little different from that of a slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger group.{{cite magazine |last1=Foster |first1=John Bellamy |author1-link=John Bellamy Foster |first2=Hannah |last2=Holleman |first3=Brett |last3=Clark |date=1 July 2020 |title=Marx and Slavery |magazine=Monthly Review |url=https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/marx-and-slavery/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240108225402/https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/marx-and-slavery/ |archive-date=8 January 2024}}

Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared.{{cite book |first=Friedrich |last=Engels |author-link=Friedrich Engels |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm |title=Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State |chapter=IX. Barbarism and Civilization |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=26 December 2012 |archive-date=22 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022225930/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm |url-status=live}}{{cite book |first1=Jianmin |last1=Zhao |first2=Bruce J. |last2=Dickson |title=Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society, and Security |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Mm2BEf4iiwC&pg=PA2 |access-date=26 December 2012 |year=2001 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0415255837 |page=2 |archive-date=6 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606012544/http://books.google.com/books?id=5Mm2BEf4iiwC&pg=PA2 |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}{{cite encyclopedia |last=Kurian |first=George Thomas |author-link=George Kurian |date=2011 |title=Withering Away of the State |page=1776 |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Political Science |location=Washington, DC |publisher=CQ Press |doi=10.4135/9781608712434.n1646 |isbn=9781933116440 |s2cid=221178956}}

File:Madrid may day375.jpg protester in Spain, 2006, waving a red flag with a raised fist, both symbols of socialism]]

According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death."{{cite book |editor1-last=Hudis |editor1-first=Peter |editor2-last=Vidal |editor2-first=Matt |editor3-last=Smith |editor3-first=Tony |editor4-last=Rotta |editor4-first=Tomás |editor5-last=Prew |editor5-first=Paul |date=September 2018 – June 2019 |url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545-e-50 |chapter=Marx's Concept of Socialism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220401001417/https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545-e-50 |archive-date=1 April 2022 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0190695545 |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001}} (Also: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220105234655/https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545 |date=5 January 2022}})

According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by a socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought, all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialisation of production is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour."{{sfn|Lenin|1967|pp=35–36}} The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, along with the failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I, led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism.{{cite journal |last=Kuruma |first=Samezo |date=1929 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kuruma/crisis-intro.htm |title=An Introduction to the Theory of Crisis |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200331084713/https://www.marxists.org/archive/kuruma/crisis-intro.htm |archive-date=31 March 2020 |translator-first=M. |translator-last=Schauerte |journal=Journal of the Ohara Institute for Social Research |volume=4 |number=1}}

File:Lev Trotsky 1906-3.3 V1.jpg in the centre. The Soviets were an early example of a workers council.]]

Karl Marx criticised liberal democracy as not democratic enough due to the unequal socio-economic situation of the workers during the Industrial Revolution which undermines the democratic agency of citizens.{{cite journal |url=https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2010.07.002 |doi=10.1016/j.soscij.2010.07.002 |title=Karl Marx's sociological theory of democracy: Civil society and political rights |date=2011 |last1=Niemi |first1=William L. |journal=The Social Science Journal |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=39–51}} Marxists differ in their positions towards democracy.{{cite book |last=Miliband |first=Ralph |author-link=Ralph Miliband |title=Marxism and politics |publisher=Aakar Books |date=2011 |pages= |isbn=}}{{pn|date=June 2024}}{{cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/191498 |jstor=191498 |title=Karl Marx on Democracy, Participation, Voting, and Equality |last1=Springborg |first1=Patricia |journal=Political Theory |date=1984 |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=537–556 |doi=10.1177/0090591784012004005}} Types of democracy in Marxism include Soviet democracy, New Democracy, Whole-process people's democracy and can include voting on how surplus labour is to be organised.{{cite journal |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/08935690009358994 |doi=10.1080/08935690009358994 |title=Marxism and democracy |date=2000 |last1=Wolff |first1=Richard |author-link=Richard D. Wolff |journal=Rethinking Marxism |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=112–122}} According to democratic centralism political decisions reached by voting in the party are binding for all members of the party.Lenin, Vladimir (1906). [https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/index.htm "Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P."] [https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm "VIII. The Congress Summed Up"]. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 14 February 2020.

{{main|Marxist schools of thought}}

{{see also|List of communist ideologies}}

{{main|Classical Marxism}}

Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.{{cite journal |url=http://isj.org.uk/classical-marxism-and-the-question-of-reformism/ |title=Classical Marxism and the question of reformism |last=Gluckstein |first=Donny |author-link=Donny Gluckstein |date=26 June 2014 |journal=International Socialism |number=143 |access-date=19 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210813092715/http://isj.org.uk/classical-marxism-and-the-question-of-reformism/ |archive-date=13 August 2021 |url-status=live}} As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical."{{cite book |last=Mandel |first=Ernest |author-link=Ernest Mandel |date=1994 |title=Revolutionary Marxism and Social Reality in the 20th Century |publisher=Humanities Press International |isbn=0-391-03800-1 |page=50}} Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde—both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying the value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, '{{lang|fr|ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste}}' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')."{{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Guesde |first2=Jules |author2-link=Jules Guesde |date=1880 |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm |title=The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier |access-date=11 July 2020 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=1 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200701023827/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm |url-status=live}}{{cite book |last1=Hall |first1=Stuart |first2=Dave |last2=Morely |first3=Kuan-Hsing |last3=Chen |title=Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies |date=1996 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-0415088039 |page=418 |access-date=4 March 2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA418 |quote=I have no hesitation in saying that this represents a gigantic crudification and simplification of Marx's work—the kind of simplification and reductionism which once led him, in despair, to say "if that is marxism, then I am not a marxist. |archive-date=19 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319081927/https://books.google.com/books?id=EPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA418 |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}

{{main|List of communist ideologies#Libertarian Marxism}}

{{See also|Libertarian socialism#Marxist}}

Libertarian Marxism emphasises the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, such as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism.{{cite journal |last=Memos |first=Christos |date=2012 |title=Anarchism and Council Communism on the Russian Revolution |journal=Anarchist Studies |volume=20 |number=2 |issn=0967-3393 |pages=22–47 [30]}}{{cite book |title=Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils |date=2007 |publisher=Red and Black Publishers |isbn=978-0979181368 |location=St. Petersburg, Florida |first1=Hermann |last1=Gorter |author1-link=Herman Gorter |first2=Antonie |last2=Pannekoek |author2-link=Antonie Pannekoek |first3=Sylvia |last3=Pankhurst |author3-link=Sylvia Pankhurst |first4=Otto |last4=Rühle |author4-link=Otto Rühle}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

Libertarian Marxism is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats.{{cite magazine |url=http://libcom.org/library/social-democracy-1-aufheben-8 |title=The Retreat of Social Democracy ... Re-imposition of Work in Britain and the 'Social Europe' |magazine=Aufheben |issue=8 |date=1999 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=5 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220405120630/https://libcom.org/library/social-democracy-1-aufheben-8 |url-status=live}} Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the {{lang|de|Grundrisse}} and The Civil War in France;{{cite book |first=Ernesto |last=Screpanti |author-link=Ernesto Screpanti |title=Libertarian communism: Marx Engels and the Political Economy of Freedom |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=London |date=2007 |isbn=978-0230018969}} emphasising the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation.{{cite journal |first=Hal |last=Draper |author-link=Hal Draper |title=The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels |journal=The Socialist Register |volume=8 |issue=8 |pages=81–104 |url=http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5333 |date=1971 |access-date=25 April 2015 |archive-date=5 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305121403/http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5333 |url-status=live}} Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.{{citation |last=Chomsky |first=Noam |author-link=Noam Chomsky |url=http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3 |title=Government In The Future |publisher=Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116194522/http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3 |archive-date=16 January 2013 |type=Lecture}}

Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism, council communism, De Leonism, Lettrism, parts of the New Left, Situationism, Freudo-Marxism (a form of psychoanalysis),{{cite book |title=Orgone Addicts: Wilhelm Reich Versus The Situationists. |url=http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/ReichVersusTheSituationists/ReichVersusTheSituationists.htm |first=Jim |last=Martin |quote=I will also discuss other left-libertarians who wrote about Reich, as they bear on the general discussion of Reich's ideas...In 1944, Paul Goodman, author of Growing Up Absurd, The Empire City, and co-author of Gestalt Therapy, began to discover the work of Wilhelm Reich for his American audience in the tiny libertarian socialist and anarchist milieu. |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=8 March 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100308103733/http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/ReichVersusTheSituationists/ReichVersusTheSituationists.htm |url-status=live}} Socialisme ou Barbarie{{cite journal |last=Howard |first=Dick |title=Introduction to Castoriadis |journal=Telos |year=1975 |issue=23 |page=118}} and workerism.{{cite web |url=http://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map |title=A libertarian Marxist tendency map |publisher=Libcom.org |access-date=11 October 2013 |archive-date=10 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211110232041/http://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map |url-status=live}} Libertarian Marxism has often strongly influenced both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Raya Dunayevskaya, Daniel Guérin, C. L. R. James, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Negri, Anton Pannekoek, Fredy Perlman, Ernesto Screpanti, E. P. Thompson, Raoul Vaneigem, and Yanis Varoufakis,{{cite news |url=https://www.ted.com/speakers/yanis_varoufakis |title=Yanis Varoufakis thinks we need a radically new way of thinking about the economy, finance and capitalism |last=Varoufakis |first=Yanis |author-link=Yanis Varoufakis |publisher=TED |access-date=14 April 2019 |quote=Yanis Varoufakis describes himself as a "libertarian Marxist |archive-date=2 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200402234100/https://www.ted.com/speakers/yanis_varoufakis |url-status=live}} the latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist.{{cite web |url=https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/yanis-varoufakis-we-leftists-are-not-necessarily-pro-public-sector-marx-was-anti-state-1-7861928 |title=Yanis Varoufakis: We leftists are not necessarily pro public sector – Marx was anti state |last=Lowry |first=Ben |work=The NewsLetter |date=11 March 2017 |access-date=14 April 2019 |archive-date=2 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200402234059/https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/yanis-varoufakis-we-leftists-are-not-necessarily-pro-public-sector-marx-was-anti-state-1-7861928 |url-status=live}}

{{main|Marxist humanism}}

Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital.{{sfnm |1a1=Fromm |1y=1966 |1pp=69–79 |2a1=Petrović |2y=1967 |2pp=35–51}} They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations is necessary to understand his later works properly.{{sfn|Marcuse|1972|pp=1–48}}

Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism.{{Cite web |last=Spencer |first=Robert |date=17 February 2017 |title=Why We Need Marxist-Humanism Now |url=https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/marxist-humanism-now/ |location=London |publisher=Pluto Press |access-date=17 September 2019 |archive-date=28 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200428104950/https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/marxist-humanism-now/ |url-status=live}} Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science, Marxist humanism reaffirms the doctrine that "man is the measure of all things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory.{{sfn|Edgley|1991|p=420}}

{{see also|Marxist ethics|Marxist film theory|Marxist geography|Marxist philosophy}}

File:Gordon Childe.jpg, an Australian archaeologist and one of the 20th century's most prominent Marxist academics]]

According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists.{{cite book |last1=Gross |first1=Neil |author1-link=Neil Gross |last2=Simmons |first2=Solon |chapter=The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors |pages=19–50 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D1vCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA19 |editor1-last=Gross |editor1-first=Neil |editor2-last=Simmons |editor2-first=Solon |title=Professors and Their Politics |date=2014 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=978-1421413358 |doi=10.1353/book.31449 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407113153/https://books.google.com/books?id=D1vCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA19 |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}

{{main|Marxist archaeology}}

The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under the administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin, a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=326–340}}

These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe, who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society.{{sfn|Green|1981|p=79}}

{{main|Marxist criminology|Marxist sociology}}

Marxist sociology, as the study of sociology from a Marxist perspective,{{cite book |last=Johnson |first=Allan G. |author-link=Allan G. Johnson |date=2000 |title=The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=0-631-21681-2 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=V1kiW7x6J1MC&pg=PA183 183–184]}} is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive (empirical) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilisation of a revolutionary working class."{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.bookrags.com/research/marxist-sociology-eos-03/ |title=Marxist Sociology |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Sociology |publisher=Macmillan Reference |date=2006 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=4 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190904193835/http://www.bookrags.com/research/marxist-sociology-eos-03/ |url-status=live}} The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain the complex dynamics of modern society."{{cite web |url=http://www2.asanet.org/sectionmarxist/about.html |title=About the Section on Marxist Sociology |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109001255/http://www2.asanet.org/sectionmarxist/about.html |archive-date=9 January 2009}}

Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology. The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism, of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During the 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory. The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination.{{cite book |doi=10.1017/CBO9781139196598.007 |last=Fuchs |first=Christian |author-link=Christian Fuchs |chapter=What is Critical Theory? |title=Foundations of Critical Theory |publisher=Routledge |date=2021 |pages=17–51}} Due to its former state-supported position, there has been a backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states, such as Poland. However, it remains prominent in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states, such as in China. {{cite journal |last=Xiaogang |first=Wu |url=http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/intl_0509.html |title=Between Public and Professional: Chinese Sociology and the Construction of a Harmonious Society |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402111425/http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/intl_0509.html |archive-date=2 April 2015 |journal=ASA Footnotes |date=May–June 2009 |volume=37 |number=5}}

{{main|Marxian economics}}

Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution. Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox, ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of the global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle, such as creative destruction, have been fitted for use in capitalist systems.{{cite journal |last1=Loesche |first1=Frank |last2=Torre |first2=Ilaria |title=Creative Destruction |journal=Encyclopedia of Creativity |edition=Third |date=2020 |pages=226–231 |doi=10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.23696-1|isbn=9780128156155 |s2cid=242692186}}{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Theories of Surplus-Value: "Volume IV" of Capital |publisher=Lawrence & Wishart |location=London |volume=2 |pages=495–96 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sU23AAAAIAAJ |access-date=10 November 2010 |year=1969 |isbn=9780853151944 |orig-year=1863}}{{cite book |last1=Aghion |first1=Philippe |last2=Howitt |first2=Peter |title= Endogenous growth theory |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262528467/endogenous-growth-theory/ |access-date=29 December 2023 |year=1998 |publisher=MIT Press |location=Cambridge, MA. |isbn=9780262011662}}

Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky{{cite web |last=Malott |first=Curry |date=16 July 2021 |title=Vygotsky's revolutionary educational psychology |url=https://mronline.org/2021/07/16/vygotskys-revolutionary-educational-psychology/ |access-date=29 July 2021 |website=Monthly Review Online |archive-date=29 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210729130303/https://mronline.org/2021/07/16/vygotskys-revolutionary-educational-psychology/ |url-status=live}} and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilising its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren, especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy,{{cite book |last1=McLaren |first1=Peter |author1-link=Peter McLaren |last2=Pruyn |first2=Marc |last3=Huerta-Charles |first3=Luis |title=This fist called my heart |date=2016 |isbn=978-1-68123-454-0 |oclc=945552771}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}} as has the work of Glenn Rikowski,{{cite journal |last1=Rikowski |first1=Glenn |title=Scorched Earth: prelude to rebuilding Marxist educational theory |journal=British Journal of Sociology of Education |date=December 1997 |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=551–574 |doi=10.1080/0142569970180405}} Dave Hill,{{cite book |last1=Rasinski |first1=Lotar |last2=Hill |first2=Dave |author2-link=Dave Hill (politician) |last3=Skordoulis |first3=Kostas |title=Marxism and education: international perspectives on theory and action |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |date=2019 |isbn=978-0-367-89169-5 |oclc=1129932782}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}} and Paula Allman.{{cite book |last=Allman |first=Paula |title=On Marx: an introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx |date=2007 |publisher=Sense |isbn=978-90-8790-192-9 |oclc=191900765}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}} Other Marxists have analysed the forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis,{{cite journal |last=Lewis |first=Tyson E. |title=Mapping the Constellation of Educational Marxism(s) |journal=Educational Philosophy and Theory |date=January 2012 |volume=44 |issue=sup1 |pages=98–114 |doi=10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00563.x |s2cid=144595936}} Noah De Lissovoy,{{cite journal |last=De Lissovoy |first=Noah |title=Pedagogy in Common: Democratic education in the global era |journal=Educational Philosophy and Theory |date=January 2011 |volume=43 |issue=10 |pages=1119–1134 |doi=10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00630.x |s2cid=219539909}} Gregory Bourassa,{{cite journal |last=Bourassa |first=Gregory N. |title=An Autonomist Biopolitics of Education: Reproduction, Resistance, and the Specter of Constituent Bíos |journal=Educational Theory |date=June 2019 |volume=69 |issue=3 |pages=305–325 |doi=10.1111/edth.12370 |s2cid=212828309}} and Derek R. Ford.{{cite book |last1=Ford |first1=Derek |title=Communist study: education for the commons |date=2016 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-1-4985-3245-7 |oclc=957740361}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}}{{cite book |last=Ford |first=Derek R. |title=Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle |publisher=Iskra Publishers |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-0880-7169-4}} Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S.,{{cite book |last1=Malott |first1=Curry |title=History of education for the many: from colonisation and slavery to the decline of U.S. imperialism |date=2020 |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-350-08571-8 |oclc=1100627401}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}} and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education.{{cite journal |last1=Gettleman |first1=Marvin |author1-link=Marvin Gettleman |title=Explorations in the History of Left Education in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe |journal=Paedagogica Historica |date=January 1999 |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=11–14 |doi=10.1080/0030923990350101}} Sandy Grande has synthesised Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy,{{cite book |last=Grande |first=Sandy |title=Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought |date=2004 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |isbn=978-0-7425-1828-5 |oclc=54424848}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}} while others like John Holt analyse adult education from a Marxist perspective.{{cite book |last=Holst |first=John D |title=Social movements, civil society, and radical adult education |date=2002 |publisher=Bergin & Garvey |isbn=978-0-89789-811-9 |oclc=47142191}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}}

Other developments include:

• the educational aesthetics of Marxist education{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek R. |last2=Lewis |first2=Tyson E. |title=On the Freedom to Be Opaque Monsters |journal=Cultural Politics |date=1 March 2018 |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=95–108 |doi=10.1215/17432197-4312940 |s2cid=155093850}}
• Marxist analyses of the role of fixed capital in capitalist education{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek R. |title=Spatializing Marxist Educational Theory: School, the Built Environment, Fixed Capital and (Relational) Space |journal=Policy Futures in Education |date=August 2014 |volume=12 |issue=6 |pages=784–793 |doi=10.2304/pfie.2014.12.6.784 |s2cid=147636876 |doi-access=free}}
• the educational psychology of capital{{Cite book |title=New Understanding of Capital in the Twenty-First Century |last=Rikowski |first=Glenn |publisher=Institute for Political Studies |year=2020 |isbn=978-8674193303 |location=Belgrade |pages=9–31 |editor-last=Pejnović |editor-first=Vesna Stanković |chapter=The Psychology of Capital |editor-last2=Matić |editor-first2=Ivan}}
• the educational theory of Lenin{{Cite journal |last1=FitzSimmons |first1=Robert |last2=Suoranta |first2=Juha |author2-link=Juha Suoranta |date=2020 |title=Lenin on Learning and the Development of Revolutionary Consciousness |url=http://www.jceps.com/archives/8208 |journal=Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=34–62 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407083016/http://www.jceps.com/archives/8208 |url-status=live}}{{cite journal |last1=Malott |first1=Curry |title=Right-to-Work and Lenin's Communist Pedagogy: An Introduction |journal=Texas Education Review |volume=3 |issue=2 |date=2017 |doi=10.15781/T2ZW18X7W |doi-access=free |hdl=2152/45917 |hdl-access=free}}
• the pedagogical function of the Communist Party{{cite journal |last1=Boughton |first1=Bob |title=Popular education and the 'party line' |journal=Globalisation, Societies and Education |date=June 2013 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=239–257 |doi=10.1080/14767724.2013.782189 |s2cid=143914501}}{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek R. |title=Studying like a communist: Affect, the Party, and the educational limits to capitalism |journal=Educational Philosophy and Theory |date=16 April 2017 |volume=49 |issue=5 |pages=452–461 |doi=10.1080/00131857.2016.1237347 |s2cid=151616793|url=https://scholarship.depauw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=educ_facpubs}}

The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era.{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek R. |last2=Jandrić |first2=Petar |title=Postdigital Marxism and education |journal=Educational Philosophy and Theory |date=19 May 2021 |volume=56 |issue=1 |pages=1–7 |doi=10.1080/00131857.2021.1930530 |s2cid=236356457 |doi-access=free}}{{cite journal |last1=Carmichael |first1=Patrick |title=Postdigital Possibilities: Operaismo, Co-research, and Educational Inquiry |journal=Postdigital Science and Education |date=April 2020 |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=380–396 |doi=10.1007/s42438-019-00089-0 |s2cid=214035791 |doi-access=free |hdl=10547/623793 |hdl-access=free}}{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Derek R. |title=Pedagogically Reclaiming Marx's Politics in the Postdigital Age: Social Formations and Althuserrian Pedagogical Gestures |journal=Postdigital Science and Education |date=October 2021 |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=851–869 |doi=10.1007/s42438-021-00238-4 |s2cid=237850324}}

{{main|Marxist historiography}}

Marxist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by Marxism, the chief tenets of which are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historiography has contributed to the history of the working class, oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below. Friedrich Engels' most important historical contribution was {{lang|de|Der deutsche Bauernkrieg}} about the German Peasants' War which analysed social warfare in early Protestant Germany regarding emerging capitalist classes.{{cite journal |last=Wolf |first=Eric R. |date=Spring 1987 |title=The Peasant War in Germany: Friedrich Engels as Social Historian |journal=Science & Society |publisher=Guilford Press |volume=51 |number=1 |pages=82–92 |jstor=40402763}} The German Peasants' War indicates the Marxist interest in history from below with class analysis and attempts a dialectical analysis.{{cite book |title=The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics |first1=Ben |last1=Fine |author1-link=Ben Fine |first2=Alfredo |last2=Saad-Filho |first3=Marco |last3=Boffo |date=January 2012 |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing |page=212 |isbn=9781781001226 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xe0VQArHt8sC&q=determinism&pg=PA212}}{{cite book |title=The Problem of Freedom in Marxist Thought |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A2WSBgAAQBAJ&q=marxist+history+deterministic&pg=PA5 |page=5 |first=J. J. |last=O'Rourke |date=6 December 2012 |publisher=Springer Science+Business Media |isbn=9789401021203}}{{cite book |title=Fifty Key Works of History and Historiography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9pem7Ip_WUgC&pg=PA247 |first=Kenneth |last=Stunkel |date=23 May 2012 |page=247 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781136723667}}

Engels' short treatise The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was salient in creating the socialist impetus in British politics. Marx's most important works on social and political history include The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, and those chapters of Capital dealing with the historical emergence of capitalists and proletarians from pre-industrial English society.{{cite journal |last=Krieger |first=Leonard |date=June 1953 |title=Marx and Engels as Historians |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=14 |number=3 |pages=381–403 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |doi=10.2307/2707808 |jstor=2707808}} Marxist historiography suffered in the Soviet Union as the government requested overdetermined historical writing. Notable histories include the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), published in the 1930s to justify the nature of Bolshevik party life under Joseph Stalin. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946.{{cite web |first=Eric |last=Hobsbawm |title=The Historians' Group of the Communist Party |author-link=Eric Hobsbawm |date=9 June 2023 |url=https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/the-historians-group-of-the-communist-party |website=Verso Books Blog |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230610104315/https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-historians-group-of-the-communist-party |archive-date=10 June 2023}}

While some members of the group, most notably Christopher Hill and E. P. Thompson, left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,{{cite book |title=The Crisis of Theory: E. P. Thompson, the New Left and Postwar British Politics |last=Hamilton |first=Scott |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2012 |location=Manchester |chapter=Yesterday the struggle: 'Outside the Whale' and the fight for the 1930s |page=52}} the common points of British Marxist historiography continued in their works. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is one of the works commonly associated with this group.{{cite journal |last=Steinberg |first=Marc W. |date=April 1991 |title=The Re-Making of the English Working Class? |journal=Theory and Society |volume=20 |number=2 |pages=173–197 |doi=10.1007/BF00160182 |jstor=657718 |hdl=2027.42/43644 |hdl-access=free}}{{cite journal |last=Howell |first=David |date=10 October 2014 |title=Creativities in Contexts: E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class |journal=Contemporary British History |volume=28 |number=4 |pages=517–533 |doi=10.1080/13619462.2014.962918}} Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits is another example of this group's work. C. L. R. James was also a great pioneer of the 'history from below' approach. Living in Britain when he wrote his most notable work, The Black Jacobins (1938), he was an anti-Stalinist Marxist and so outside of the CPGB. In India, B. N. Datta and D. D. Kosambi are the founding fathers of Marxist historiography. Today, the senior-most scholars of Marxist historiography are R. S. Sharma, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, D. N. Jha, and K. N. Panikkar, most of whom are now over 75 years old.{{cite book |editor-last=Bottomore |editor-first=Thomas |editor-link=Thomas Bottomore |date=1991 |title=A Dictionary of Marxist Thought |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |page=54 |isbn=978-0631180821}}

{{main|Marxist literary criticism}}

{{More citations needed|date=June 2024}}

Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories.{{cite book |first=Terry |last=Eagleton |author-link=Terry Eagleton |title=Marxism and Literary Criticism |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |date=1976}} Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate. According to Marxists, even literature is a social institution with a specific ideological function based on the background and ideology of the author. Marxist literary critics include Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Terry Eagleton, and Fredric Jameson.{{cite web |first=Daniel |last=Hartley |title=Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide |date=18 December 2023 |url=https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/marxist-literary-criticism-an-introductory-reading-guide/ |website=historicalmaterialism.org |archive-url= |archive-date=}}

{{main|Marxist aesthetics}}

{{More citations needed section|date=June 2024}}

Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on or derived from the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste, such as art and beauty, among others.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Carroll |first=Noël |date=2021 |title=Marxist aesthetics |encyclopedia=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9780415249126-M073-1|isbn=978-0-415-25069-6 }} Marxists believe that economic and social conditions, and especially the class relations that derive from them affect every aspect of an individual's life, from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks.{{cite book |last=Marcuse |first=Herbert |author-link=Herbert Marcuse |date=1978 |title=The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics |title-link=The Aesthetic Dimension |chapter=Preface |publisher=Beacon Press |isbn=0-8070-1518-0 |pages=ix–xiii}} Some notable Marxist aestheticians include Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Lifshitz, William Morris, Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, Ernst Fischer, Louis Althusser, Jacques Rancière, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Raymond Williams.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}}

{{main|Karl Marx|Friedrich Engels}}

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| footer = Marx (left) and Engels (right), the founders of Marxism

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Marx addressed the alienation and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist mode of production and historical materialism.{{sfn|Guo|2011|p=1495}}{{sfn|Krupavičius|2011|p=314}} He is famous for analysing history in terms of class struggle, summarised in the initial line introducing The Communist Manifesto (1848): "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."{{cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |chapter=Bourgeois and Proletarians |title=The Communist Manifesto |date=1848 |location=London |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007 |access-date=12 March 2019 |publisher=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=27 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180127164331/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007 |url-status=live}}

Together with Marx, Engels co-developed communist theory. Marx and Engels first met in September 1844. Discovering that they had similar views of philosophy and socialism, they collaborated and wrote works such as {{lang|de|Die heilige Familie}} (The Holy Family). After Marx was deported from France in January 1845, they moved to Belgium, which permitted greater freedom of expression than other European countries. In January 1846, they returned to Brussels to establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.{{cite journal |last=Beamish |first=Rob |date=18 March 1998 |title=The Making of the Manifesto |journal=Socialist Register |volume=34 |pages=218–239 |url=https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5708/2604}}

In 1847, they began writing The Communist Manifesto (1848), based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. Six weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them, and they moved to Cologne, where they published the {{lang|de|Neue Rheinische Zeitung}}, a politically radical newspaper. By 1849, they had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian authorities pressured the British government to expel Marx and Engels, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}}

After Marx died in 1883, Engels became the editor and translator of Marx's writings. With his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)—analysing monogamous marriage as guaranteeing male social domination of women, a concept analogous, in communist theory, to the capitalist class's economic domination of the working class—Engels made intellectually significant contributions to feminist theory and Marxist feminism.{{cite journal |last=Carver |first=Terrell |date=Winter 1985 |title=Engels's Feminism |journal=History of Political Thought |volume=6 |number=3 |pages=479–489 |jstor=26212414}}{{cite book |last1=Sayers |first1=Janet |last2=Evans |first2=Mary |last3=Redclift |first3=Nanneke |date=1987 |chapter=Introduction: Engels, socialism, and feminism |title=Engels Revisited |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780203857212}}

{{main|Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Leninism|Marxism–Leninism|October Revolution|Trotskyism}}

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| caption1 = Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union and the leader of the Bolshevik party

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| caption2 = Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army and a key figure in the October Revolution

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With the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks took power from the Russian Provisional Government.{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Rex A. |author-link=Rex A. Wade |date=2004 |chapter="All Power to The Soviets": The Bolsheviks Take Power |title=Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-203-33984-3 |page=211}} The Bolsheviks established the first socialist state based on the ideas of soviet democracy and Leninism.{{cite book |last=Acton |first=Edward |title=Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921 |editor1-first=Edward |editor1-last=Acton |editor2-first=Vladimir Iu. |editor2-last=Cherniaev |editor3-first=William G. |editor3-last=Rosenberg |year=1997 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn= |page=8}} Their newly formed federal state promised to end Russian involvement in World War I and establish a revolutionary worker's state. Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education, universal healthcare and equal rights for women.{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Katherine H. |last2=Keene |first2=Michael L. |title=After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-5647-5 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oyaxYvSG6gAC&dq=lenin+universal+literacy+after+the+vote+was+won&pg=PA109}}{{cite book |last=Ugri͡umov |first=Aleksandr Leontʹevich |title=Lenin's Plan for Building Socialism in the USSR, 1917–1925 |date=1976 |publisher=Novosti Press Agency Publishing House |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXknAQAAMAAJ&q=lenin+universal+literacy}} 50,000 workers had passed a resolution in favour of Bolshevik demand for transfer of power to the soviets.{{cite book |last=Head |first=Michael |title=Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal |date=12 September 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-30787-5 |pages=71–72 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PYGNAgAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PT83}}{{cite book |last=Shukman |first=Harold |title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ScabEAAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PA21 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |date=5 December 1994 |page=21 |isbn=978-0-631-19525-2}} Following the October Revolution, the Soviet government struggled with the White Movement and several independence movements in the Russian Civil War. This period is marked by the establishment of many socialist policies and the development of new socialist ideas, with Marxism–Leninism becoming the dominant ideological strain.{{cite book |editor1-last=Bullock |editor1-first=Alan |editor1-link=Alan Bullock |editor2-last=Trombley |editor2-first=Stephen |editor2-link=Stephen Trombley |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |edition=Third |publisher=HarperCollins |date=1999 |isbn=978-0006863830 |page=506}}{{cite magazine |last=Lisichkin |first=G. |date=1989 |script-title=ru:Мифы и реальность |title=Mify i real'nost' |language=ru |trans-title=Myths and reality |magazine=Novy Mir |volume=3 |pages=59}}

In 1919, the nascent Soviet Government established the Communist Academy and the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute for doctrinal Marxist study and to publish official ideological and research documents for the Russian Communist Party.{{cite book |last=David-Fox |first=Michael |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/9781501705397 |title=Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918–1929 |date=1 November 2016 |publisher=Cornell University Press |doi=10.7591/9781501705397 |isbn=978-1-5017-0539-7}}{{cite book |last=Barber |first=John |date=1981 |title=Soviet Historians in Crisis, 1928-1932 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-349-05239-4 |page=16}} With Lenin's death in 1924, there was an internal struggle in the Soviet Communist movement, mainly between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, in the form of the Right Opposition and Left Opposition, respectively. These struggles were based on both sides' different interpretations of Marxist and Leninist theory based on the situation of the Soviet Union at the time.{{cite book |last=McMeekin |first=Sean |date=2017 |title=The Russian Revolution: A New History |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465039906}}

{{main|Anti-revisionism|Chinese Communist Party|Chinese Communist Revolution|Maoism|Socialism with Chinese characteristics}}

{{quote box|quote=The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems.|source=— Mao Zedong, Little Red Book{{cite book |first=Tse Tung |last=Mao |author-link=Mao Zedong |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/quotes.htm |title=Quotes from Mao Tse Tung |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=19 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319081311/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/quotes.htm |url-status=live}}|right|width=246px|bgcolor=#c6dbf7}}

At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and, more widely, World War II, the Chinese Communist Revolution occurred within the context of the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921, conflicted with the Kuomintang over the country's future. Throughout the Civil War, Mao Zedong developed a theory of Marxism for the Chinese historical context. Mao found a large base of support in the peasantry as opposed to the Russian Revolution, which found its primary support in the urban centres of the Russian Empire. Some significant ideas contributed by Mao were the ideas of New Democracy, mass line and people's war. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was declared in 1949. The new socialist state was to be founded on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.{{cite book |last=Franke |first=Wolfgang |title=A Century of Chinese Revolution, 1851–1949 |publisher=Basil Blackwell |location=Oxford |date=1970}}{{cite book |editor-last=Ellison |editor-first=Herbert J. |title=The Sino-Soviet Conflict: A Global Perspective |date=1982 |url=https://www.questia.com/library/101611113/the-sino-soviet-conflict-a-global-perspective |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803181900/https://www.questia.com/library/101611113/the-sino-soviet-conflict-a-global-perspective |archive-date=3 August 2020}}

From Stalin's death until the late 1960s, there was increased conflict between China and the Soviet Union. De-Stalinisation, which first began under Nikita Khrushchev, and the policy of detente, were seen as revisionist and insufficiently Marxist. This ideological confrontation spilt into a broader global crisis centred around which nation was to lead the international socialist movement.{{cite book |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm |title=1964: On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World |last=Mao |first=Zedong |author-link=Mao Zedong |date=July 1964 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=30 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200530131843/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm |url-status=live}}

Following Mao's death and the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping, Maoism and official Marxism in China were reworked. Commonly referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics, this new path was initially centred around Deng Xiaoping Theory, which claims to uphold Marxism–Leninism and Maoism, while adapting them to Chinese conditions.{{cite news |title=The Years of Hardship and Danger |url=http://cpcchina.chinadaily.com.cn/people/2010-09/14/content_11301454_6.htm |access-date=24 October 2017 |work=China Daily |date=14 September 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171024153451/http://cpcchina.chinadaily.com.cn/people/2010-09/14/content_11301454_6.htm |archive-date=24 October 2017 |url-status=dead}}{{cite book |first=Wei-Wei |last=Zhang |title=Ideology and economic reform under Deng Xiaoping, 1978–1993 |publisher=Routledge |date=1996}} Deng Xiaoping Theory was based on Four Cardinal Principles, which sought to uphold the central role of the Chinese Communist Party and uphold the principle that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that it was still working to build a communist society based on Marxist principles.{{cite book |last1=Schram |first1=Stuart |year=1989 |title=The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521310628}}{{cite news |url=http://en.people.cn/dengxp/vol2/text/b1290.html |title=Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles |date=30 March 1979 |access-date=27 March 2020 |work=The People's Daily |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190827102126/http://en.people.cn/dengxp/vol2/text/b1290.html |archive-date=27 August 2019 |url-status=dead}}{{cite book |last1=Shambaugh |first1=David |title=The Modern Chinese State |year=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521776035 |page=184}}

{{Further|Cold War}}

File:Fidel Castro - UN General Assembly 1960.jpg at the United Nations General Assembly in 1960]]

In 1959, the Cuban Revolution led to the victory of Fidel Castro and his July 26 Movement. Although the revolution was not explicitly socialist, upon victory, Castro ascended to the position of prime minister and adopted the Leninist model of socialist development, allying with the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Bourne|1986}}{{sfn|Coltman|2003}} One of the leaders of the revolution, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, subsequently went on to aid revolutionary socialist movements in Congo-Kinshasa and Bolivia, eventually being killed by the Bolivian government, possibly on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although the CIA agent sent to search for Guevara, Felix Rodriguez, expressed a desire to keep him alive as a possible bargaining tool with the Cuban government. He posthumously went on to become an internationally recognised icon.{{cite news |title=Cuba pays tribute to Che Guevara |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7033880.stm |work=BBC News |access-date=14 June 2018 |date=9 October 2007 |language=en |archive-url= |archive-date=}}

In the People's Republic of China, the Maoist government undertook the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 to purge Chinese society of capitalist elements and achieve socialism. Upon Mao Zedong's death, his rivals seized political power, and under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, many of Mao's Cultural Revolution era policies were revised or abandoned, and a large increase in privatised industry was encouraged.{{cite news |date=22 October 2011 |title=Deng Xiaoping's legacy: The Great Stabiliser |newspaper=The Economist |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2011/10/22/the-great-stabiliser |url-status=live |access-date=14 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190506090043/https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2011/10/22/the-great-stabiliser |archive-date=6 May 2019}}{{bulleted list|

|{{cite news |url=http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515295500635.swf |title=Selected Works of Deng Xiaopeng Volume 1 (1938–1965) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080510060245/http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515295500635.swf |archive-date=10 May 2008 |url-status=dead}}

|{{cite news |url=http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515261400629.swf |title=Selected Works of Deng Xiaopeng Volume 2 (1975–1982) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080403035549/http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515261400629.swf |archive-date=3 April 2008 |url-status=dead}}

|{{cite news |url=http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515274900631.swf |title=Selected Works of Deng Xiaopeng Volume 3 (1982–1992) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080316192034/http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/mediafile/200607/05/F2006070515274900631.swf |archive-date=16 March 2008 |url-status=dead}}

}}

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the collapse of most of those socialist states that had professed a Marxist–Leninist ideology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emergence of the New Right and neoliberal capitalism as the dominant ideological trends in Western politics championed by United States president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher led the West to take a more aggressive stance towards the Soviet Union and its Leninist allies. Meanwhile, the reformist Mikhael Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985 and sought to abandon Leninist development models toward social democracy. Ultimately, Gorbachev's reforms, coupled with rising levels of popular ethnic nationalism, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991 into a series of constituent nations, all of which abandoned Marxist–Leninist models for socialism, with most converting to capitalist economies.{{cite web |url=https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5037?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=mssa:ms.0650&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=all |title=Collection: Cuban revolution collection | Archives at Yale |website=Archives.yale.edu |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=10 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220410194038/https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5037?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=mssa:ms.0650&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=all |url-status=live}}{{cite book |last=D'Encausse |first=Helene Carrere |date=1993 |title=The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations |translator-first=F. |translator-last=Philip |location=New York |publisher=The New Republic |isbn=978-0465098125 |page=16}}

File:Hugo-Chavéz Vota.jpg casting a vote in 2007]]

At the turn of the 21st century, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam remained the only officially Marxist–Leninist states remaining, although a Maoist government led by Prachanda was elected into power in Nepal in 2008 following a long guerrilla struggle.{{cite web |title=List Of Communist Countries Today |url=https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/list-of-communist-countries-today.html |access-date=2 May 2021 |website=WorldAtlas |date=30 November 2018 |language=en-US |archive-date=2 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210502194059/https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/list-of-communist-countries-today.html |url-status=live}}{{cite web |title=New Maoist-led government installed in Nepal |url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/09/nepa-s02.html |access-date=2 May 2021 |website=World Socialist Web Site |date=2 September 2008 |archive-date=2 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210502194101/https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/09/nepa-s02.html |url-status=live}}

The early 21st century also saw the election of socialist governments in several Latin American nations, in what has come to be known as the "pink tide"; dominated by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez; this trend also saw the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Forging political and economic alliances through international organisations like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, these socialist governments allied themselves with Marxist–Leninist Cuba. Although none espoused a Stalinist path directly, most admitted to being significantly influenced by Marxist theory. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself a Trotskyist during the swearing-in of his cabinet two days before his inauguration on 10 January 2007.{{cite news|first=Nathalie |last=Malinarich |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6246219.stm |publisher=BBC News |title=Chavez accelerates on path to socialism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912102355/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6246219.stm |archive-date=12 September 2017 |access-date=19 June 2007}} Venezuelan Trotskyist organisations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist,{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010152457/http://www.jir.org.ve/article.php3?id_article=211 |url=http://www.jir.org.ve/article.php3?id_article=211 |title=Declaración Polãtica de la JIR, como Fracción Pública del PRS, por una real independencia de clase (Extractos) – Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria |language=es |trans-title=Political Declaration of the JIR, as a Public Fraction of the PRS, for a real class independence (Excerpts) – Revolutionary Left Youth |archive-date=10 October 2007 |access-date=26 July 2013}} while others consider him an honest revolutionary leader who made significant mistakes due to him lacking a Marxist analysis.{{cite web |url=http://venezuela.elmilitante.org/content/view/6417/182/ |last=Sanabria |first=William |title=La Enmienda Constitucional, Orlando Chirino y la C-CURA |language=es |trans-title=The Constitutional Amendment, Orlando Chirino and the C-CURA |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091218105614/http://venezuela.elmilitante.org/content/view/6417/182/ |archive-date=18 December 2009}}

For Italian Marxist Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala in their 2011 book Hermeneutic Communism, "this new weak communism differs substantially from its previous Soviet (and current Chinese) realisation, because the South American countries follow democratic electoral procedures and also manage to decentralise the state bureaucratic system through the Bolivarian missions. In sum, if weakened communism is felt as a spectre in the West, it is not only because of media distortions but also for the alternative it represents through the same democratic procedures that the West constantly professes to cherish but is hesitant to apply."{{cite book |first1=Gianni |last1=Vattimo |first2=Santiago |last2=Zabala |title=Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx |publisher=Columbia University Press |date=2011 |page=122 |isbn=9780231528078}}

File:VISITA DE ESTADO - XI JINPING (30930224182).jpg, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012]]

Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has announced a deepening commitment of the Chinese Communist Party to the ideas of Marx. At an event celebrating the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, Xi said, "We must win the advantages, win the initiative, and win the future. We must continuously improve the ability to use Marxism to analyse and solve practical problems", adding that Marxism is a "powerful ideological weapon for us to understand the world, grasp the law, seek the truth, and change the world." Xi has further stressed the importance of examining and continuing the tradition of the CPC and embracing its revolutionary past.{{cite news |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-marx-china/no-regrets-xi-says-marxism-still-totally-correct-for-china-idUSKBN1I50ET |title=No regrets: Xi says Marxism still 'totally correct' for China |first=Christian |last=Shepherd |newspaper=Reuters |date=4 May 2018 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=20 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220420043317/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-marx-china/no-regrets-xi-says-marxism-still-totally-correct-for-china-idUSKBN1I50ET |url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/17/asia/xi-jinping-marxism-china-intl/index.html |title=At the height of his power, China's Xi Jinping moves to embrace Marxism |first=Steven |last=Jiang |website=CNN |date=18 May 2018 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407074735/https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/17/asia/xi-jinping-marxism-china-intl/index.html |url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=https://qz.com/1270109/chinas-communist-party-and-xi-jinping-are-celebrating-the-200th-birthday-of-karl-marx-with-a-vengeance/ |title=China's huge celebrations of Karl Marx are not really about Marxism |website=Qz.com |date=4 May 2018 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=10 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220410194139/https://qz.com/1270109/chinas-communist-party-and-xi-jinping-are-celebrating-the-200th-birthday-of-karl-marx-with-a-vengeance/ |url-status=live}}

The fidelity of those varied revolutionaries, leaders and parties to the work of Karl Marx is highly contested and has been rejected by many Marxists and other socialists alike.{{cite journal |last=Phillips |first=Ben |year=1981 |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/cpml-ussr.htm |title=USSR: Capitalist or Socialist? |journal=The Call |volume=10 |issue=8 |access-date=16 July 2020 |archive-date=29 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150629124947/https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/cpml-ussr.htm |url-status=live |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{cite news |last=Garner |first=Dwight |date=18 August 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/books/19garner.html |title=Fox Hunter, Party Animal, Leftist Warrior |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=31 August 2020 |archive-date=27 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727061411/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/books/19garner.html |url-status=live}} Socialists in general and socialist writers, including Dimitri Volkogonov, acknowledge that the actions of authoritarian socialist leaders have damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution."{{cite book |last=Volkogonov |first=Dimitri |date=1991 |title=Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy |translator-first=Harold |translator-last=Shukman |location=London |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |pages=173 |isbn=978-0297810803}}

{{main|Criticism of Marxism}}

{{see also|Criticism of communist party rule|Criticism of socialism}}

Criticism of Marxism has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines.{{cite book |last=Kirby |first=Mark |title=Sociology in Perspective |year=2000 |publisher=Heinemann |isbn=978-0435331603 |page=273}}{{cite book |last=Ollman |first=Bertell |title=Criticisms of Marxism 1880–1930 |year=1957 |publisher=University of Wisconsin–Madison |pages=1, 6}} This includes general criticism about lack of internal consistency, criticisms related to historical materialism, that it is a type of historical determinism, the necessity of suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified.{{cite book |first1=M. C. |last1=Howard |first2=J. E. |last2=King |date=1992 |title=A History of Marxian Economics |volume=II, 1929–1990 |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press}}{{cite book |last=Popper |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Popper |title=Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=978-0415285940 |page=49}}{{cite book |author-link=John Maynard Keynes |last=Keynes |first=John Maynard |date=1991 |title=Essays in Persuasion |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=300 |isbn=978-0393001907}}

Some Marxists have criticised the academic institutionalisation of Marxism for being too shallow and detached from political action.{{cite journal |last=Horton |first=John |title=A Contribution to the Critique of Academic Marxism: Or How the Intellectuals Liquidate Class Struggle |journal=Synthesis–Fall 1977 |date=1977 |volume=2 |number=1/2 |pages=78–104 |publisher=Social Justice/Global Options |jstor=43783343}} Zimbabwean Trotskyist Alex Callinicos, himself a professional academic, stated: "Its practitioners remind one of Narcissus, who in the Greek legend fell in love with his own reflection. ... Sometimes it is necessary to devote time to clarifying and developing the concepts that we use, but indeed for Western Marxists this has become an end in itself. The result is a body of writings incomprehensible to all but a tiny minority of highly qualified scholars."{{sfn|Callinicos|2010|p=12}}

Additionally, some intellectual critiques of Marxism contest certain assumptions prevalent in Marx's thought and Marxism after him without rejecting Marxist politics.{{cite book |last=Baudrillard |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Baudrillard |year=1975 |orig-date=1973 |title=The Mirror of Production |translator-first=Mark |translator-last=Poster |location=New York |publisher=Telos Press |isbn=978-0914386063}} Other contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are viable but that the corpus is incomplete or outdated regarding certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School is one example.{{cite book |last=Held |first=David |date=October 1980 |title=Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas |publisher=University of California Press |pages=16 |isbn=9780520041752}}{{cite book |last1=Jameson |first1=Fredric |chapter=The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin's Sociological Predecessor |pages=11–30 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XSL3gr4m_k8C&pg=PA11 |editor1-last=Nealon |editor1-first=Jeffrey T. |editor2-last=Irr |editor2-first=Caren |title=Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique |date=2002 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0791454923 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407083202/https://books.google.com/books?id=XSL3gr4m_k8C&pg=PA11 |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}

Philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski said that "Marx's theory is incomplete or ambiguous in many places, and could be 'applied' in many contradictory ways without manifestly infringing its principles." Specifically, he considers "the laws of dialectics" as fundamentally erroneous, stating that some are "truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means", and some just "nonsense"; he believes that some Marxist laws can be interpreted differently, but that these interpretations still in general fall into one of the two categories of error.{{sfn|Kołakowski|2005|pp=662, 909}}

Okishio's theorem shows that if capitalists use cost-cutting techniques and real wages do not increase, the rate of profit must rise, which casts doubt on Marx's view that the rate of profit would tend to fall.{{cite book |first1=M. C. |last1=Howard |first2=J. E. |last2=King |date=1992 |title=A History of Marxian Economics |volume=II, 1929–1990 |chapter=7 |at=§§II–IV |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press}}

The allegations of inconsistency have been a large part of Marxian economics and the debates around it since the 1970s.{{cite book |first1=M. C. |last1=Howard |first2=J. E. |last2=King |date=1992 |title=A History of Marxian Economics |volume=1929–1990 |chapter=7 |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press}} Andrew Kliman argues that this undermines Marx's critiques and the correction of the alleged inconsistencies because internally inconsistent theories cannot be correct by definition.{{harvnb|Kliman|2007|p=3|ps=: "Marx's value theory would be necessarily wrong if it were internally inconsistent. Internally inconsistent theories may be appealing, intuitively plausible and even obvious, and consistent with all available empirical evidence—but they cannot be right. It is necessary to reject them or correct them. Thus the alleged proofs of inconsistency trump all other considerations, disqualifying Marx's theory at the starting gate. By doing so, they provide the principal justification for the suppression of this theory as well as the suppression of, and the denial of resources needed to carry out, present-day research based upon it. This greatly inhibits its further development. So does the very charge of inconsistency. What person of intellectual integrity would want to join a research program founded on (what he believes to be) a theory that is internally inconsistent and therefore false?"}}, However, in his book, Kliman presents an interpretation where these inconsistencies can be eliminated. The connection between the inconsistency allegations and the lack of study of Marx's theories was argued further by {{cite magazine |last=Cassidy |first=John |author-link=John Cassidy (journalist) |title=The Return of Karl Marx |magazine=The New Yorker |date=20–27 October 1997 |page=252 |quote=His mathematical model of the economy, which depended on the idea that labor is the source of all value, was riven with internal inconsistencies and is rarely studied these days.}}

Critics of Marxism claim that Marx's predictions have failed, with some pointing towards the GDP per capita generally increasing in capitalist economies compared to less market-oriented economics, the capitalist economies not suffering worsening economic crises leading to the overthrow of the capitalist system and communist revolutions not occurring in the most advanced capitalist nations, but instead in undeveloped regions.{{sfn|Kliman|2007|p=208}}{{cite web |url=http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG |title=GDP per capita growth (annual %) |date=2016 |publisher=World Bank |access-date=22 May 2016 |archive-date=15 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160515232458/http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG |url-status=live}} It has also been criticised for allegedly resulting in lower living standards in relation to capitalist countries, a claim that has been disputed.{{cite journal |last1=Cereseto |first1=S |last2=Waitzkin |first2=H |title=Economic development, political-economic system, and the physical quality of life. |journal=American Journal of Public Health |date=June 1986 |volume=76 |issue=6 |pages=661–666 |doi=10.2105/ajph.76.6.661 |pmid=3706593 |pmc=1646771}}

In his books, The Poverty of Historicism and Conjectures and Refutations, philosopher of science Karl Popper criticised the explanatory power and validity of historical materialism.{{cite web |url=http://www.stephenjaygould.org |title=Science as Falsification |last=Popper |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Popper |date=1963 |website=Stephenjaygould.org |access-date=22 November 2015 |archive-date=13 November 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041113084448/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ |url-status=live}} Popper believed that Marxism had been initially scientific in that Marx had postulated a genuinely predictive theory. When these predictions were not borne out, Popper argues that the theory avoided falsification by adding ad hoc hypotheses that made it compatible with the facts. Because of this, Popper asserted, a theory that was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma.{{cite book |last1=Popper |first1=Karl Raimund |author1-link=Karl Popper |title=Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge |date=2002 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0415285940 |page=449 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IENmxiVBaSoC&pg=PA449 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407083053/https://books.google.com/books?id=IENmxiVBaSoC&pg=PA449 |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}

{{main|Anarchism and Marxism|Libertarian socialism#Marxist}}

Anarchism has had a strained relationship with Marxism. Anarchists and many non-Marxist libertarian socialists reject the need for a transitory state phase, claiming that socialism can only be established through decentralised, non-coercive organisation.{{cite journal |first=Benjamin |last=Franks |date=2012 |title=Between Anarchism and Marxism: the beginnings and ends of the schism… |journal=Journal of Political Ideologies |volume=17 |number=2 |pages=207–227 |doi=10.1080/13569317.2012.676867}} Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticised Marx for his authoritarian bent.{{citation |last=Bakunin |first=Mikhail |author-link=Mikhail Bakunin |title=Letter to La Liberté, quoted in Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971 |date=5 October 1872 |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1872/la-liberte.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=19 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319081314/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1872/la-liberte.htm |url-status=live}} The phrases "barracks socialism" or "barracks communism" became shorthand for this critique, evoking the image of citizens' lives being as regimented as the lives of conscripts in barracks.{{cite book |last=Sperber |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Sperber |year=2013 |title=Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hBpSh9JYAKcC |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0871403544 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=26 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211026144010/https://books.google.com/books?id=hBpSh9JYAKcC |url-status=live |via=Google Books}}

Other critiques come from an economic standpoint. Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev writing in 1898,{{cite book |first=V. K. |last=Dmitriev |author-link=Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev |date=1974 |orig-date=1898 |title=Economic Essays on Value, Competition and Utility |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz writing in 1906–1907,{{bulleted list|

|{{cite journal |first=Ladislaus |last=von Bortkiewicz |author-link=Ladislaus Bortkiewicz |date=1952 |orig-date=1906–1907 |title=Value and Price in the Marxian System |journal=International Economic Papers |volume=2 |pages=5–60}}

|{{cite book |first=Ladislaus |last=von Bortkiewicz |author-link=Ladislaus Bortkiewicz |date=1984 |orig-date=1907 |chapter=On the Correction of Marx's Fundamental Theoretical Construction in the Third Volume of Capital |editor-first=Eugen von |editor-last=Böhm-Bawerk |editor-link=Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk |title=Karl Marx and the Close of his System |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Orion Editions}}

}} and subsequent critics have alleged that Marx's value theory and the 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 do not follow his theoretical premises. Once these alleged errors are corrected, his conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by and equal to the aggregate value and surplus value no longer holds. This result calls into question his theory that exploiting workers is the sole source of profit.{{cite book |first1=M. C. |last1=Howard |first2=J. E. |last2=King |date=1992 |title=A History of Marxian Economics |volume=II, 1929–1990 |chapter=12 |at=§III |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press}}

Marxism and socialism have received considerable critical analysis from multiple generations of Austrian economists regarding scientific methodology, economic theory and political implications.{{cite web |url=https://mises.org/library/what-we-can-know-about-world |title=What We Can Know About the World |date=1 December 2009 |website=Mises.org |access-date=4 August 2019 |publisher=Ludwig von Mises Institute |archive-date=13 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213094330/https://mises.org/library/what-we-can-know-about-world |url-status=live}}{{cite book |last1=von Mises |first1=Ludwig |author1-link=Ludwig von Mises |title=Omnipotent Government |date=2008 |publisher=Read Books |isbn=978-1443726467 |url=https://mises.org/library/omnipotent-government-rise-total-state-and-total-war |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=12 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220412085854/https://mises.org/library/omnipotent-government-rise-total-state-and-total-war |url-status=live}}{{page needed|date=July 2020}} During the marginal revolution, a theory of subjective value was developed by Carl Menger,{{citation |last1=Nenovsky |first1=Nikolay |last2=Karpouzanov |first2=Momtchil |date=2010 |title=Value, Prices and Money. Comparing Marx and Menger |url=https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/62040/2/MPRA_paper_62040.pdf |archive-url= |archive-date=}} with scholars viewing the development of marginalism more broadly as a response to Marxist economics.{{cite book |last1=Screpanti |first1=Ernesto |author1-link=Ernesto Screpanti |title=An Outline of the History of Economic Theory |last2=Zamagni |first2=Stefano |author2-link=Stefano Zamagni |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2005 |pages=170–173}} Second-generation Austrian economist Eugen Böhm von Bawerk used praxeological and subjectivist methodology to fundamentally attack the law of value. Gottfried Haberler has regarded his criticism as "definitive", arguing that Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx's economics was so "thorough and devastating" that he believes that as of the 1960s, no Marxian scholar had conclusively refuted it.{{cite book |last1=Haberler |first1=Gottfried |author1-link=Gottfried Haberler |editor1-last=Drachkovitch |editor1-first=Milorad M. |editor1-link=Milorad M. Drachkovitch |title=Marxist Ideology in the Contemporary World: Its Appeals and Paradoxes |date=1966 |publisher=Books for Libraries Press |isbn=978-0836981544 |url=https://archive.org/details/marxistideologyi00drac/page/124/mode/1up |page=124}} Third-generation Austrian Ludwig von Mises rekindled the debate about the economic calculation problem by arguing that without price signals in capital goods, in his opinion, all other aspects of the market economy are irrational. This led him to declare that "rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth."{{cite book |title=Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth |year=2014 |publisher=Ludwig von Mises Institute |isbn=978-1610164542 |url=https://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=23 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080923191714/https://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf |url-status=live}}{{page needed|date=July 2020}}{{BSN|reason=Advocacy source; a third-party RS would better establish WP:DUEWEIGHT|date=December 2024}}

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that Marx's economic theory was fundamentally flawed because it attempted to simplify the economy into a few general laws that ignored the impact of institutions on the economy.{{cite journal |last1=Acemoglu |first1=Daron |author1-link=Daron Acemoglu |last2=Robinson |first2=James A. |author2-link=James A. Robinson (economist) |title=The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |date=1 February 2015 |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=3–28 |doi=10.1257/jep.29.1.3 |url=https://www.nber.org/papers/w20766 |hdl=1721.1/113636 |s2cid=14001669 |hdl-access=free |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=17 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220417165543/https://www.nber.org/papers/w20766 |url-status=live}} These charges have been disputed by other influential economists, like John Roemer{{cite book |last=Roemer |first=John |title=A General Theory of Exploitation and Class |date=1982 |author-link=John Roemer |language=English |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=iv |isbn=978-0674344402}} and Nicholas Vrousalis.{{cite journal |last1=Vrousalis |first1=Nicholas |title=Review of Ernesto Screpanti's Labour and Value: Rethinking Marx's Theory of Exploitation. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019, 131 pp. |journal=Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics |date=27 May 2020 |volume=13 |issue=1 |doi=10.23941/ejpe.v13i1.472 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240501164010/https://www.ejpe.org/journal/article/view/472 |archive-date=1 May 2024 |url=https://www.ejpe.org/journal/article/view/472 |url-status=live}}

{{Portal|Communism}}

{{cols|colwidth=22em}}

• Communism
• Influences on Karl Marx
• Marx's theory of human nature
• Marxian class theory
• Marxist film theory
• Marxists Internet Archive
• Outline of Marxism
• Post-Marxism
• Marxian economics

{{colend}}

{{reflist}}

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{{refend}}

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{{sister project links|d=Q7264|wikt=Marxism|c=Category:Marxism|n=no|voy=no|m=no|mw=no|species=no|b=Marxism, Communism, and Socialism|s=Category:Marxism|v=no}}

{{Library resources box|by=no|onlinebooks=no|about=yes|wikititle=marxism}}

• {{Britannica|367344}}

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