- Society is divided into two main competing classes: the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (workers).
- The bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat by appropriating the surplus value generated by workers and paying them only a subsistence wage.
- This unequal class-based system leads to conflict and contradiction that will inevitably cause revolution as workers gain class consciousness.
- The state is seen as a mechanism for one class to oppress other classes. A Marxist would seek to overthrow the capitalist state and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat as a transition to full communism.