Marxism School of thought

1. Sharafat ali, MS-II

4.  Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy
named after the 19th-century German philosopher and
economist Karl Marx. His work examines the historical effects
of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic
development, and argues that a worker revolution is needed
to replace capitalism.
 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 lead inevitably to a communist
revolution.

5.  Marxism was first publicly formulated in 1848 in the
pamphlet The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, which lays out the theory of class
struggle and revolution.
 Marxian economics focuses on criticism of capitalism,
detailed by Marx in his book Das Kapital, published in 1867.

6.  Means of Production:
The resources and facilities used for producing goods and services,
including land, factories, machinery, and technology.
 Mode of Production:
The specific economic system and social relations through which
production is organized, such as feudalism, capitalism, or socialism.
 Bourgeoisie:
The capitalist class that owns and controls the means of production,
deriving profit from the labor of the working class.
 Proletariat:
The working class who sell their labor power to the bourgeoisie in
exchange for wages, lacking ownership of the means of production.

7.  Surplus Value:
The difference between the value produced by workers through their
labor and the wages paid to them.
 Class Struggle:
The conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat over control
of the means of production and distribution of wealth.
 Alienation:
The feeling of estrangement experienced by workers under
capitalism, resulting from their separation from the products of their
labor and the control over their own work.
 Commodity Fetishism:
The process by which commodities under capitalism are imbued with
social significance and perceived value beyond their material use,
masking the social relations of production.

8.  Historical Materialism:
Marx's methodological approach to understanding history and social
change, which emphasizes the role of economic factors and class
struggle in shaping societies over time.
 Dialectical Materialism:
The philosophical framework that combines Marx's historical
materialism with Hegelian dialectics, positing that history progresses
through the conflict and resolution of contradictions.
 Base and Superstructure:
The Marxist concept that society consists of an economic base
(relations of production, means of production) that determines the
superstructure (ideology, politics, culture).
 Revolution:
The overthrow of the capitalist system by the proletariat, leading to
the establishment of a socialist or communist society based on
collective ownership of the means of production.

9.  Generally, Marxism argues that capitalism as a form of economic
and social reproduction is inherently flawed and will ultimately
fail.
 Capitalism is defined as a mode of production in which business
owners (the capitalists) own all of the means of production (the
factory, the tools and machinery, the raw materials, the final
product, and the profits earned from their sale). Workers (labor)
are hired for wages and have no ownership stake and no share
in the profits.

10.  Moreover, the wages paid to workers are lower than the economic
value that their work creates for the capitalist. This is the source of
capitalists' profits and it is at the root of the inherent class struggle
between labor and capital.

11.  Like other classical economists, Karl Marx believed in a labor theory
of value (LTV) to explain relative differences in market prices. This
theory stated that the value of a product can be measured objectively
by the average number of hours of labor required to produce it. In
other words, if a table takes twice as long to make as a chair, then
the table should be considered twice as valuable. What Marx added
to this theory was the conclusion that this labor value represented
the exploitation of workers.
 Marx claimed that there are two major flaws in capitalism that lead to
the exploitation of workers by employers: the chaotic nature of free
market competition and the extraction of surplus labor.

12.  Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually destroy itself as
more people become relegated to working-class status, inequality
rises, and competition drives corporate profits to zero. This would
lead, he surmised, to a revolution after which production would be
turned over to the working class as a whole.

13.  Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in a 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 into social
classes, whose members have more in common with one another
than with members of other social classes.

14.  1. Capitalist society is made up of two classes: the bourgeoisie, or
business owners, who control the means of production, and
the proletariat, or workers, whose labor transforms
raw commodities into goods that have market value.
 2. Ordinary laborers, who do not own the means of production, such
as factories, buildings, and materials, have little power in the
capitalist economic system. Workers are also readily replaceable in
periods of high unemployment, further devaluing their perceived
worth.

15.  3. To maximize profits, business owners have to get the most
possible work out of their laborers while paying them the lowest
possible wages. This creates an imbalance between owners and
laborers, whose work is exploited by the owners for their own gain.
 4. Since workers have little personal stake in the process of
production, Marx believed they would become alienated from their
work, and even from their own humanity, and turn resentful toward
business owners.

16.  5. The bourgeoisie are able to leverage social institutions, including
government, media, academia, organized religion, and the banking
and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat
with the goal of maintaining their positions of power and privilege.
 6. Ultimately, the inherent inequalities and exploitative economic
relations between these two classes will lead to a revolution in which
the working class rebels against the bourgeoisie, takes control of the
means of production, and abolishes capitalism.

17.  Thus, Marx thought that the capitalist system contained the seeds of
its own destruction. The alienation and exploitation of the proletariat
that are fundamental to capitalist relations would inevitably drive the
working class to rebel against the bourgeoisie and seize control of
the means of production.

18.  Living in a capitalist society, however, the individual is not truly free.
He is an alienated being; he is not at home in his world. The idea
of alienation, which Marx takes from Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach,
plays a fundamental role in the whole of his written work, starting
with the writings of his youth and continuing through Das Kapital. In
the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts the alienation of labour is
seen to spring from the fact that the more the worker produces the
less he has to consume, and the more values he creates the more
he devalues himself, because his product and his labour are
estranged from him.

19.  The life of the worker depends on things that he has created but that
are not his, so that, instead of finding his rightful existence through
his labour, he loses it in this world of things that are external to him:
no work, no pay. Under these conditions, labour denies the fullness
of concrete humanity.
 According to Marxism, society progresses through the struggle
between opposing forces. It is this struggle between opposing
classes that result in social transformation. History progresses
through this class struggle. Class struggle originates out of the
exploitation of one class by another throughout history.

20.  During the feudal period the tension was between the feudal lords
and the peasants, and in the Industrial age the struggle was between
the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) and the industrial working class
(the proletariat). Classes have common interests. In a capitalist
system the proletariat is always in conflict with the capitalist class.
This confrontation, according to Marx, will finally result in replacing
the system by socialism

21.  Marxism provides a critical analysis of capitalism and predicts its
eventual downfall due to inherent contradictions and exploitation.
 It offers insights into understanding societal structures, class
dynamics, and the potential for revolutionary change.