Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction

What is Marxism

A social, political, and economic ideology bearing Karl Marx's name is known as Marxism. It looks at how capitalism affects labour, productivity, and economic growth and makes the case for a worker revolution to depose capitalism and replace it with communism.

According to the theory of Marxism, the conflict between social classes—more specifically, between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers—defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will unavoidably result in revolutionary communism.

 Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction

KEY TAKEAWAYS

·        Karl Marx developed Marxism, a social, political, and economic ideology that emphasizes the conflict between the capitalists and the working class.

·        Marx believed that because of the inherent exploitation of workers by capitalists, there will necessarily be class warfare.

·        The working class would eventually topple the capitalist class and seize control of the economy, in his opinion, as a result of this fight.

 

Understanding Marxism

Marxism is a social and political ideology that includes Marxian economics and the theory of class conflict. The Communist Manifesto, a booklet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that lays out the theory of class struggle and revolution, was the first work to openly formulate Marxism. Marxian economics is centred on the critiques of capitalism that Karl Marx made in his 1867 book Das Kapital.

Marxism generally contends that capitalism will inevitably fail because it is intrinsically unjust and faulty as a means of economic and social reproduction. Capitalism is described as a mode of production in which owners of businesses (capitalists) control all of the means of production, including the factory, equipment, raw materials, finished goods, and profits from their sales, while labourers are employed for wages and have no ownership rights to those items. Additionally, workers receive lower pay than the economic value that their labour generates for the capitalist. The fundamental class conflict between labour and capital is fueled by this surplus labour, which also provides profits for capitalists.

  Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction

Marxism: What Kind of Philosophy Is It?

Marxism is a school of thought that combines social, political, and economic theory. It was created in the latter half of the 19th century. It prioritises communism and socialism over capitalism and focuses on the conflict between the working class and the ownership class.

 

What Future Events Did Marx Predict?

Marx believed that capitalism would eventually self-destruct. A classless society would be established as a result of the alienated, oppressed workers overthrowing the owners and seizing control of the means of production themselves.

 

Was Marx Correct?

No, not yet. Some nations, including the former Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, have made an effort to establish a communist society, but they were unable to completely eradicate the concepts of private property, money, and class. Capitalism, in all of its guises, will still be the major economic system in 2021. Naturally, some of his criticisms of capitalism still hold true today, such as the fact that businesses will continue to merge and acquire one another in order to grow and become more consolidated, that unemployment and poverty will continue to exist, and that workers will continue to be paid less than they may be entitled to.

  Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction

Class Conflict and Capitalism's Supposed Demise

According to Marx's theory of classes, capitalism is just one of a number of economic systems that have developed historically and in a logical order. He asserted that they are motivated by huge, impersonal historical factors that manifest themselves in social class struggle and conduct. Every society, according to Marx, is split into social classes whose members are more similar to one another than they are to those of other social classes.

 

 Here are some essential components of Marx's theories on how the class conflict will manifest itself in a capitalist system.

1. In a capitalist society, there are two classes: the proletariat, or workers, who turn raw materials into valuable commercial goods through their labour, and the bourgeoisie, or company owners, who control the means of production.

2. The capitalist economic system gives few rights to common workers who do not own the means of production, such as factories, structures, and raw materials. In times of high unemployment, employees are also easily replaceable, thus diminishing their perceived value.

3. Business owners are motivated to get the most effort out of their employees while paying them the lowest wages feasible in order to increase profits. As a result, there is an unfair disparity between employers and employees, whose labour employers make use of for personal gain.

4. Marx argued that because workers have no personal investment in the manufacturing process, they will grow disenchanted with it and their own humanity and become hostile to corporate owners.

5. In order to maintain its position of privilege and power, the bourgeoisie also uses social institutions, like the government, media, academia, organised religion, and banking and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat.

6. Eventually, the working class will rise up against the bourgeoisie, seize control of the means of production, and overthrow capitalism as a result of the inherent disparities and exploitative economic relations between these two classes.

 

 Marx, therefore, believed that the capitalist system had the makings of its own demise. The working class would inevitably rise against the capitalists and seize control of the means of production as a result of the alienation and exploitation of the proletariat which are essential features of capitalist relations. The "vanguard of the proletariat," educated leaders who grasped society's class structure and who would unify the working class by fostering a sense of class consciousness, would lead this revolution.


 Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction Marxism | Meaning, Future prediction