Marxism

Marxism, foundation philosophy of modern communism, originating in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Three of its basic concepts are that productive labor is the fundamental attribute of human nature; that the structure of any society is determined by its economic means of production; and that societies evolve by a series of crises caused by internal contradictions, analyzable by dialectical materialism.

Marx held that 19th-century industrial capitalism, the latest stage of the historical process, had arisen from feudalism by class struggle between the aristocracy and the rising bourgeois capitalist class. Dialectical materialism predicted conflict between these capitalists and the working class, or proletariat, on which the new industrialism depended. The triumphant dictatorship of the proletariat, an idea further developed by Lenin, would give way to a classless, stateless communist society where all would be equal, contributing according to their abilities and receiving according to their needs.

A key concept of Marxist economics is the labor theory of value, that value is created by labor and profit is surplus value creamed off by the capitalist. The fact that the capitalist owns the means of production makes this exploitation possible. It also means that the worker cannot own the product of his labor and thus suffers alienation from part of his own humanity and the social system. Marx believed capitalism would be swept away by the last of a catastrophic series of crises.

Among numerous later Marxist theorists are Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. In The Accumulation of Capital (1913), Luxemburg argued that capitalism was able to adapt and survive by exploitation of its colonial empires. In the USSR Stalin proclaimed Marxist-Leninism an active philosophy of society in forced evolutionary conflict. In China Mao Zedong adapted Marxism to an agricultural peasant situation. Yugoslavia's Tito gave Marxism a nationalist bias, still more marked in the thinking of Fidel Castro of Cuba. Some western economists, sociologists, and historians have been widely influenced by Marxism.

See also: Marx, Karl.