The True Meaning of Marxism: From Communism to Capitalism

Hello Friends, today on ideology explained; we will go over an actual ideology and not just an economic system! I will tell you about Marxism. To sum it up shortly you could say Marxism is the school of thought started by Karl Marx. I don't like that answer because it's quite obvious and it doesn't tell us what Marxism is. So, what is Marxism?

Marxism True Meaning

Short History of Marxism

Marxism simply put it's a most scientific way to criticize capitalism. I often see people confuse or conflate it with socialism or communism, cough Jordan Peterson, cough but those are very different things. Please remember these three things:

Marxism tells you what's wrong with capitalism but doesn't tell you how to fix it.

Communism is a utopia in which the problems of capitalism don't exist anymore.

Socialism is the attempt to get as close to that as possible.

How does Marxism criticize capitalism?

Well, there are a lot of things to choose from, Marx spends his whole life refining his theories. Marxism is part of dialectics, this means that Marxists look at society in terms of contradictions. This means they have a look at our society and try to determine if there is a useful distinction to be made between the people. And they found these contradictions in multiple places. For example, property values, landlords like them high, tenants like them low Or pay, employees like it high, employers like it low.

So, Marxists look at these opposing desires and classify people accordingly those who own a factory or land against those who don't. Generally, you could say society consists of people who make money by owning and people who make money by working. Those who have the money or capital to afford to let others work for them were called capitalists, and the other people are called workers.

In our current society, those two groups are always fighting for dominance and depending, on who is winning the conditions change. For example, the workers would increase the minimum wage while the capitalists would reduce it; this is called the class struggle or class warfare. And if we look at this, we can see that the capitalists need employees to work in their factories while the employees do not need a capitalist to be able to work.

This is why Marx thought that the only way to resolve an overthrow of the capitalist class.

Problems of Capitalism According to Marxism

Alienation:

Capitalism puts a person into assembly-line jobs which prevents them from being proud of what they create or even being able to recognize something as the product of their labor.

Capital Accumulates:

This is also why the poor have been getting poorer and the rich have been getting richer for decades. And here I would explain the labor theory of value. Employers always steal value from employees.

Marx Thoughts about History

Marx thought that all history is a class struggle. This means that all significant historic developments were influenced or caused by a class struggle. Keep in mind that in the past the classes were different. For example, the rich private capitalists in France were unhappy with their king so they abolished feudalism and replaced it with capitalism; that was the French revolution.

Alternatively, the private landowners of the thirteen colonies were not happy with a feudal king above them. Because of issuing taxes and telling them what to do so they declared independence and enshrined capitalism in their constitution. That was the American war of independence.

Conclusion

There is also the theory that people's behaviors are caused by material conditions. This means Marx didn't think that rich people are evil for being rich but that being rich in capitalism puts you in positions in which you have to be evil. For example, cutting down the rainforest for profit.

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