Marxism is an intellectual tradition based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that analyzes history, capitalism, and envisions a post-capitalist future. Marxism sees society as defined by class struggles over control of production. Marx argued capitalism would inevitably be replaced by socialism - where workers collectively control production - and eventually communism, with a stateless, classless, and moneyless society.

1. What Is Marxism?

2. What is Marxism? Marxism is the intellectual tradition that arose out of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It encompasses a whole range of ideas, including an approach towards history, an analysis of capitalism and a new vision of the future.

3. What Marxism Is Not Marxism is not an unchanging or dogmatic system. Marx's ideas constantly evolved throughout his life and in fact one of the main principles of Marxism is the fluidity of how we conceive things and each other, as he puts it, “nothing is established for all times, nothing is absolute or sacred.”

4. Marxism is not a roadmap to the future, it is a vision of what the future may hold in store for us based on an analysis of our current society.

5. Marxism is not a form of government nor does it believe in a state governing over every aspect of our lives.

6. What is Marxism? Marx discovered that throughout the history of human progress, society has taken many different forms and adjusted itself constantly; but he identified a certain defining aspect that governed how different societies were structured: class and its relation to the means of production. He found that the struggle between the classes occurred all throughout history. This approach is called historical materialism.

7. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." -Marx

8. What is Marxism? Marx realized through his interpretation of history that capitalism is but one form under which society has organized itself, and a relatively new one at that. Before capitalism there was feudalism, which had completely different social relations. Capitalism is generally seen to have emerged during the Industrial Revolution, though in some countries capitalism didn't emerge until well into the 20 th century.

9. What is Marxism? Because capitalism exists within a certain historical moment, one that we are still living in, implies just like slave and feudal society before it, that it comes to an end.

10. This end is brought about by the working class emancipating itself and bringing about socialism and then communism.

11. What is Socialism and Communism? Socialism and communism are two different stages of a post-capitalist society. Marx most often characterized this as the 'lower stage' of communism (socialism) and the 'higher stage' of communism (pure communism).

12. What is Socialism and Communism? The 'lower stage' of communism, or socialism, is characterized by the working class taking control of the means of production and putting it into common ownership to be run democratically by worker's unions or cooperatives. Aspects of capitalism may still exist because as the history of capitalism itself has shown us, there is no single definitive date between the end of the old society and the birth of the new one.

13. What is Socialism and Communism? The 'higher stage' of communism, that is, pure communism, comes after all aspects of the previous capitalist society have disappeared: Production is run democratically by workers, money is abolished and everything is accessible freely, there is no state and no classes. Contrary to popular conception, communism is not meant to be a perfect utopian society, it is merely a form of society under which men and women can more freely live amongst each other.

14. Who are the Proletariat? The proletariat is basically an all-encompassing term for the working class, or more specifically, anyone who under capitalism has to live by working for a wage. This includes the unemployed and retired.

15. Who are the Proletariat? The proletariat has not always existed. Prior to capitalism, there were serfs who worked to live on a noble's land. The proletariat rents out his/her labor for a certain amount of time each day for a wage.

16. What are the Means of Production? The means of production are the means by which commodities are produced. Everything that is sold or bought on the market is a commodity. The means of production (under capitalism) are the factories, machines and the resources and tools by which that commodity was produced.

17. What are the Means of Production? The form under which production has taken place (the mode of production) has varied throughout history, but under capitalism it is primarily of an industrial nature.

18. What is Private Property? Private property is the private ownership of the means of production. Because something like a factory has a primarily social character, it is different from a personal possession like a toothbrush. Personal possessions have no inherent social character and are the results of production, not the means.

19. Who Owns and Controls Private Property? The dominant and ruling social class under capitalism are the bourgeoisie. This class owns and controls the means of production and as a result of that, owns and controls a good majority of the economic wealth of society. A CEO or investor belong to this class.

20. Because the proletariat do not own or control the means of production, they have to rent out their labor for a wage.

21. The capitalist system Perhaps Marx's finest achievement was his socio-economic analysis of capitalism. He noted that certain antagonisms and contradictions arise out of the capitalist system These contradictions manifest themselves most clearly during periodic crisis in the economy.

22. Politics Throughout history, each mode of production has carried with it a political character. Simultaneous to the Industrial Revolution was a series of revolutions that overthrew the absolutist monarchy and established the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Such revolutions appeared in England 1688, America 1775 and France 1789, to name a few. These political revolutions paved way for the establishment of liberal democracy and capitalism.

23. What is Democracy? Democracy is historically a very loose term because it is a form of government (like monarchies or empires) that transcend historical modes of production. Direct democracy existed in the slave-society of Athens, just as representative democracy (or, a republic) existed in Rome prior to the Empire.

24. What is Democracy? Liberal democracy which arose out of the bourgeois revolutions was inspired by these past forms of democracy and has created a more just and fair society.

25. What is Democracy? But just as democracy had existed prior to capitalism, it will exist after it. Socialism and communism are further extensions of democracy. Bourgeois/liberal democracy creates limits because it is primarily based on the rule of the bourgeois class who are elected democratically as 'representatives' of the masses (that is, the proletariat).

26. Thus despite the democratic form of elections, the bourgeois maintain power above the proletariat because these representatives (politicians) come from and are influenced by the ruling class (as we can see today through lobbying). What is Democracy?

27. Worker's Democracy The 'lower phase' of communism, or socialism, is a form of democracy based off of the rule of the masses (the proletariat). Because the means of production will be owned and controlled by the public, there will be no ruling class that limits democracy through the influence of money.

28. Worker's Democracy The government will take the form of a democratic state run by elected (and re-callable) worker's councils or unions existing to represent not only different regions, but different trades and demographics.

29. Pure Communism Once there comes a point in which the forces of production have developed to which goods can be accessed freely and equally by all, classes begin to disappear and the state becomes redundant and withers away. Democracy takes the form of a means of stateless organization among freely associating individuals.