Dilangalen, Kennedy Jr A. Oct,3.

2019

MARXISM

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx, which 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. Equality can be
linked to achieving perpetual peace that caused different philosopers to quest for answers to address this
conflict. This equality can be linked to Marxism. We have learned that class struggle has been with us for
a long time, it is defined by the means of production and the production itself. If we overcome this class
struggle we might have an ideal world to live in if we satisfy to use the Marxist way of reaching equality.
These class struggle is made by humans and it does not cease to exist.

Marxism shares with other progressive social movements an uncompromising hostility to all forms
of domination — sexism, racism, and so on, but what marks Marxism out from other progressive
movements is that Marxists struggle always to overcome the manifold forms of domination and
exploitation in and through the self-emancipation of the working class. Thus Marxism is
Revolutionary Socialism. While Marxism stands for the destruction of the capitalist state, and has as its
aim the withering away of the state and all forms of institutionalised violence, Marxists not only support
the right of the working class to exercise a domination over the bourgeoisie, they actively fight for that,
since the dictatorship of the proletariat is the possible way to destroy bourgeois rule and open the way to
the disappearance of all classes, including the class of wage-slaves. Marxism has its origins in the struggle
for this perspective, in opposition to anarchism which seeks to undermine all forms of authority and seeks
destruction of the capitalist state without promoting and preparing the working class for the seizure and
holding of public political power.

Social power and relations of domination are transmitted in many different forms, aside from the state,
nevertheless “concentrated force is required to overthrow concentrated force”, so Marxists always
struggle to develop the organised strength of the workers movement. Freedom is always limited by the
opportunities that the community provides for the development of a personality. Freedom is not
enhanced simply by the removal of limitations on the autonomy of individuals. Marxists aim to enhance
the freedom of working class people chiefly by expanding the scope of collective action and the
possibilities for individual growth and creativity within that. Marxism is a tendency within the workers
movement and it is concerned with both theoretical and practical critique. By “practical critique” is
meant political action which undermines and “exposes” the object and mobilises opposition to it. In the
history of the movement, these two sides — the theoretical and the practical — have from time to time
become separated from one another; one the one side “academic Marxism” working on theoretical
questions in relative isolation from the workers’ movement, on the other genuine communists doing
battle for the working class, but isolated from the creative development of revolutionary Marxist ideas.

Furthermore, although Marxism is a movement rather than simply a tendency, within the workers
movement, and a movement which at certain point in its history has been organised in a single world-
wide organisation (The First [Working Men’s] International in 1864, the Second [Socialist] International in
1889 and the Third [Communist] International in 1919), this is not the case today; Marxism is a movement
which is fragmented into many parts and tendencies, none of which completely embody the history and
achievements of the Marxist movement, but all of which in one way or another are connected in the 150-
year history of the movement since it was founded in 1848 with the publication of the Communist
Manifesto. There is no set of principles and beliefs which can be set out once and for all and stamped with
the name of “Marxism”. Marxism is a movement, and as such can only be understood through a critical
examination of its history. While this movement bears the name of its founder, Karl Marx, Marxism is not
a movement of followers, but it is nevertheless a movement which is integrally concerned with an
interconnected body of theoretical and political writing which traces its origins back to Marx