Answer:
What Is Marxism?
Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism. Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes—specifically between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers—defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx, which focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.
Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.
He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.
Understanding Marxism
Marxism is both a social and political theory, which encompasses Marxist class conflict theory and Marxian economics. Marxism was first publicly formulated in the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which lays out the theory of class struggle and revolution. Marxian economics focuses on the criticisms of capitalism, which Karl Marx wrote about in his 1867 book, Das Kapital.1
Class conflict and the demise of capitalism
Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in the historical progression of economic systems that follow one another in a natural sequence. They are driven, he posited, by vast impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict among social classes. According to Marx, every society is divided among a number of social classes, whose members have more in common with one another than with members of other social classes.
The following are elements of Marx's theories on how class conflict would play out in a capitalist system.
