Post-Marxism first originated in the late 1970s, and several trends and events of that period influenced its development. The weakness of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc paradigm became evident after the so called "Secret speech" and the following invasion of Hungary, which split the radical left irreparably. Marxism from then on faced a crisis of credibility, resulting in various developments in Marxist theory, particularly neo-Marxism, which theorised against much of the Eastern Bloc. This happened concurrently with the occurrence internationally of the strikes and occupations of 1968, the rise of Maoist theory, and the proliferation of commercial television and later information technologies which covered in its broadcasts the Vietnam War.
Post-Marxism, although with its roots in this New Left and the consequent post-structural moment in France, has its real genesis in reaction to the hegemony of neoliberalism, and defeat of the Left in such events as the UK miners' strike. Ernesto Laclau argued that a Marxism for the neoliberal conjuncture required a fundamental reworking, to address the failures of both.Subsequently,
Laclau and Mouffe address the proliferation of "new subject positions"
by locating their analysis on a non-essentialist framework.
Simultaneously, revolutionaries in Italy, known as the Workerists or Operismo, and later autonomists, began to theorise against the conservative Italian Communist Party, focusing much more on labour, gender and the later works of Marx. In France, radicals such as Félix Guattari redefined old Lacanian models of desire and subjectivity, which had often been tied to the communist project, bringing Nietzsche into conversation with Marx. In the Eastern Bloc, the Budapest School began reinterpreting Marx, building on the work of the Praxis school before them.
Turning to the Atlantic, in the UK, Stuart Hall began to experiment with increasingly aggressive post-structuralist theorists in the build up to New Labour whilst working for Marxism Today, especially in relation to race and identity. John Holloway began to forge a new path between Althusserian structural Marxism and Trotskyist theorists of monopoly capitalism. In the US, Michael Hardt collaborated with Antonio Negri to produce Empire at the turn of the century, widely recognised as a consolidation and re-affirmation of post-Marxism. Harry Cleaver produced innovative readings of Capital.
Currently, figures in the US, UK, and Europe continue to produce work in the post-Marxist tradition, particularly Nancy Fraser, Alain Badiou, Jeremy Gilbert and Étienne Balibar. This theory is often very different from that produced by Laclau and Mouffe.
Despite being born in Latin America and the Eastern Bloc, post-Marxism is largely produced by theorists of the Global North, as the following criticisms reveal. Aside from perhaps Spivak, there are no notable theorists of the Global South who are within the post-Marxist tradition,nd the radical movements of the Global South largely remain within the Leninist tradition.everal reasons relating to political geography and level of
academisation are given as explanations. There is some debate however as
to whether Cedric Robinson was a post-Marxist.espite this, the Zapatistas have been a large source of inspiration for many post-Marxists.riticism
Post-Marxism has been criticised from both the left and the right.ick Thoburn has criticised Laclau's post-Marxism (and its relationship to Eurocommunism) as essentially a rightward shift to social democracy. Ernest Mandel and Sivananda also make this same point. Richard Wolff also claims that Laclau's formulation of post-Marxism is a step backwards. Oliver Eagleton (son of Terry Eagleton) claims that Mouffe's 'radical democracy' has an inherent conservative nature.
Other Marxist's have criticised Autonomist Marxism or post-operaismo of having a theoretically weak understanding of value in capitalist economies. It has also been by other Marxists for criticised for being anti-humanist / anti-Hegelian.
Post-Marxism of all stripes has also been criticised for downplaying or ignoring the role of race, neocolonialism, and Eurocentrism.
In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical materialism and historical materialism, though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their tenets have been challenged by some self-described Marxists.
Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production,
influences all other social phenomena, including broader social
relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems,
aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic
system form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx
wrote: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive
forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with
the property relations within the framework of which they have operated
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."
These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another, a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use. Friedrich Engels
explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the
product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is
replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon
the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct
social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of
production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of
subsistence and of enjoyment."
The term Marxism was popularised by Karl Kautsky, who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term.
Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians. In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist."
The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather,
the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain
of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical
theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological
motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping
the objective laws governing the development of the system of social
relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover
the activities of the masses of the population, whereas
historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with
scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and
the changes in these conditions.
— Russian Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, 1913
Society does not consist of
individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations
within which these individuals stand.
Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels
as the materialist conception of history and later better known as
historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal
development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in
which humans make their living. Marx's account of the theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society (social classes, political pyramid and ideologies) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure.
The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social
relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence.
According to Marx, the "sum total of the forces of production
accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a
society's economic base.
The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour, means of production and relations of production,
i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and
distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and
political "forms of social consciousness" that derive from the economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions, whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation.
This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization.
Those newly formed social organizations can then act again upon both
parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static,
the relationship is dialectic,
expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified:
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin
of the contending classes."
Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe. Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production:
While historical materialism has been referred to as a materialist
theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to
history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an
historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale,
imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances
in which it finds itself." In a letter to the editor of the Russian
newspaper paper Otechestvennyje Zapiski (1877), he explained that his ideas were based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.
According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie
and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the
interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same."
He believed that they did this by purporting the concept that "the
fastest possible growth of productive capital" was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment.
Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour—the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing the social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value—the difference between the value produced and the value received by a labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker.
In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion.
Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means
of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work
relationship with a capitalist to earn the necessities of life. The
worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose
which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve.
Thus exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker
participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not
circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat the worker.
Alienation (German: Entfremdung)
is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic
result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong
to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate
alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective
characterization of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her
self-awareness of this condition is not prerequisite.
In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the
results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations
together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements."
Marx posited that the remaining feudalist societies in the world
and forms of socialism that did not conform with his writings would be
replaced by communism in the future in a similar manner as with
capitalism.
Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups:
Proletariat: "[T]he class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live." The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat as the worker's labour generates a surplus value greater than the worker's wage.
Lumpenproletariat: the outcasts of society, such as the criminals, vagabonds, beggars, or prostitutes, without any political or class consciousness. Having no interest in national, let alone international,
economic affairs, Marx claimed that this specific sub-division of the
proletariat would play no part in the eventual social revolution.
Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour
power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat. They
subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie.
Petite bourgeoisie: those who work and can afford to buy little labour power (i.e. small business owners, peasants, landlords
and trade workers). Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of
the means of production eventually would destroy the petite bourgeoisie,
degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
Landlords: a historically significant social class that retains some wealth and power.
Peasantry and farmers: a scattered class incapable of organizing and effecting socioeconomic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat while some would become landlords.
Class consciousness denotes the awareness—of itself and the social
world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally
in its best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social
class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Without defining ideology,
Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social
reality. According to Engels, "ideology is a process accomplished by the
so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false
consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to
him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he
imagines false or seeming motive forces."
Because the ruling class controls the society's means of
production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas)
is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology,
Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the
ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of
society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy
initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic
production in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is
the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how
that manifests as economic activity.
Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a
forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't
eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle,
or at least have a clear idea that society is divided between the rich
and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people,
you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything.
— Cuban revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009
This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries,
land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of the society)
would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under
capitalism. Through working class revolution, the state
(which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by
another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of
capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically
controlled workplace) create the society of communism
which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on cooperation
on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit
of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be the end of
class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all
hitherto existing history.
Marx saw work, the effort by humans to transform the environment for their needs, as a fundamental feature of humankind. Capitalism,
in which the product of the worker's labour is taken from them and sold
at the market rather than being part of the worker's life, is therefore
alienating to the worker. Additionally, the worker is compelled by
various means (some nicer than others) to work harder, faster, and
longer. While this is happening, the employer is constantly trying to
save on labour costs by paying the workers less and figuring out how to
use cheaper equipment. This allows the employer to extract the largest
amount of work and, therefore, potential wealth from their workers. The
fundamental nature of capitalist society is no different from that of a
slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger
group.
Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive
is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing is
introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property
of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and
appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of
retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic
privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared.
Communism, revolution and socialism
Left-wing protester wielding a red flag with a raised fist, both symbols of revolutionary socialism
According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many
terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism,
socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of
producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The
notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages
is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his
death."
According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by a socialist revolution
in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an
eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many
different Marxist schools of thought, all Marxists believe socialism is a
necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialization of production
is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the
property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an
immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working
hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale,
primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, along with the failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I, led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism.
Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde—both
of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of
"revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying the value of reformist
struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their
politics represented Marxism, 'ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')."
American Marxist scholar Hal Draper
responded: "There are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has
been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike."
Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist
humanists contend that there is continuity between the early
philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital. They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations is necessary to understand his later works properly.
Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenmenthumanism. Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science,
Marxist humanism reaffirms the doctrine that "man is the measure of all
things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory.
V. Gordon Childe, an Australian archaeologist and one of the 20th century's most prominent Marxist academics
According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists.
The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas
published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture";
within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood
was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist
and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union
under the administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin, a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country.
These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by
archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist
bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe, who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society.
Marxist sociology, as the study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive (empirical) science of capitalistsociety as part of the mobilization of a revolutionary working class." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain the complex dynamics of modern society."
Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As well as Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology. The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism, of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During the 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been a backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states (see sociology in Poland). However, it remains dominant in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states (see sociology in China).
Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution. Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox,
ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to
mainstream understanding of the global economy. Certain concepts of
Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle, such as creative destruction, have been fitted for use in capitalist systems.
Education
Marxist
education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he
influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of
Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America
is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to
the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilizing its
contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren,
especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed
Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical
pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analyzed the forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S., and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesized Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while others like John Holt analyze adult education from a Marxist perspective.
Other developments include:
the educational aesthetics of Marxist education
Marxist analyses of the role of fixed capital in capitalist education
the educational psychology of capital
the educational theory of Lenin
the pedagogical function of the Communist Party
The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era.
Marxist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by Marxism, the chief tenets of which are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historiography has contributed to the history of the working class, oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below. Friedrich Engels' most important historical contribution was Der deutsche Bauernkrieg about the German Peasants' War which analysed social warfare in early Protestant Germany regarding emerging capitalist classes. The German Peasants' War indicates the Marxist interest in history from below with class analysis and attempts a dialectical analysis.
Marx addressed the alienation and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist mode of production
and historical materialism. He is famous for analysing history in terms
of class struggle, summarised in the initial line introducing The Communist Manifesto (1848): "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
Together with Marx, Engels co-developed communist theory. Marx
and Engels first met in September 1844. Discovering that they had
similar views of philosophy and socialism, they collaborated and wrote
works such as Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After Marx was deported from France in January 1845, they moved to Belgium, which permitted greater freedom of expression than other European countries. In January 1846, they returned to Brussels to establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.
In 1847, they began writing The Communist Manifesto (1848), based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. Six weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them, and they moved to Cologne, where they published the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a politically radical
newspaper. By 1849, they had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian
authorities pressured the British government to expel Marx and Engels,
but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused.
With the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks took power from the Russian Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks established the first socialist state based on the ideas of soviet democracy and Leninism. Their newly formed federal state promised to end Russian involvement in World War I and establish a revolutionary worker's state. Following the October Revolution, the Soviet government struggled with the White Movement and several independence movements in the Russian Civil War.
This period is marked by the establishment of many socialist policies
and the development of new socialist ideas, mainly in the form of Marxism–Leninism.
In 1919, the nascent Soviet Government established the Communist Academy and the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute
for doctrinal Marxist study and to publish official ideological and
research documents for the Russian Communist Party. With Lenin's death
in 1924, there was an internal struggle in the Soviet Communist
movement, mainly between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, in the form of the Right Opposition and Left Opposition,
respectively. These struggles were based on both sides' different
interpretations of Marxist and Leninist theory based on the situation of
the Soviet Union at the time.[
The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally
applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to
action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases
but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is
not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and
revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in
examining and solving problems.
At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and, more widely, World War II, the Chinese Communist Revolution occurred within the context of the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921, conflicted with the Kuomintang over the country's future. Throughout the Civil War, Mao Zedong
developed a theory of Marxism for the Chinese historical context. Mao
found a large base of support in the peasantry as opposed to the Russian
Revolution, which found its primary support in the urban centres of the
Russian Empire. Some significant ideas contributed by Mao were the
ideas of New Democracy, mass line and people's war. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was declared in 1949. The new socialist state was to be founded on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
From Stalin's death until the late 1960s, there was increased conflict between China and the Soviet Union. De-Stalinization, which first began under Nikita Khrushchev, and the policy of detente, were seen as revisionist
and insufficiently Marxist. This ideological confrontation spilt into a
broader global crisis centred around which nation was to lead the
international socialist movement.
Following Mao's death and the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping,
Maoism and official Marxism in China were reworked. This new model was a
newer dynamic form of Marxism–Leninism and Maoism in China. Commonly
referred to as socialism with Chinese Characteristics, this new path was
centred around Deng's Four Cardinal Principles, which sought to uphold the central role of the Chinese Communist Party and uphold the principle that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that it was still working to build a communist society based on Marxist principles.
In 1959, the Cuban Revolution led to the victory of Fidel Castro and his July 26 Movement.
Although the revolution was not explicitly socialist, upon victory,
Castro ascended to the position of prime minister and adopted the Leninist model of socialist development, allying with the Soviet Union. One of the leaders of the revolution, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, subsequently went on to aid revolutionary socialist movements in Congo-Kinshasa and Bolivia, eventually being killed by the Bolivian government, possibly on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), although the CIA agent sent to search for Guevara, Felix
Rodriguez, expressed a desire to keep him alive as a possible bargaining
tool with the Cuban government. He posthumously went on to become an
internationally recognised icon.
In the People's Republic of China, the Maoist government undertook the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 to purge Chinese society of capitalist elements and achieve socialism. Upon Mao Zedong's death, his rivals seized political power, and under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, many of Mao's Cultural Revolution era policies were revised or abandoned, and much of the state sector was privatised.
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the collapse of most of those socialist states that had professed a Marxist–Leninist ideology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emergence of the New Right and neoliberal capitalism as the dominant ideological trends in Western politics championed by United States president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher led the West to take a more aggressive stance towards the Soviet Union and its Leninist allies. Meanwhile, the reformist Mikhael Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985 and sought to abandon Leninist development models toward social democracy. Ultimately, Gorbachev's reforms, coupled with rising levels of popular ethnic nationalism, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in late 1991 into a series of constituent nations, all of which
abandoned Marxist–Leninist models for socialism, with most converting to
capitalist economies.
At the turn of the 21st century, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and
Vietnam remained the only officially Marxist–Leninist states remaining,
although a Maoist government led by Prachanda was elected into power in Nepal in 2008 following a long guerrilla struggle.
The early 21st century also saw the election of socialist
governments in several Latin American nations, in what has come to be
known as the "pink tide"; dominated by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez; this trend also saw the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Forging political and economic alliances through international organisations like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas,
these socialist governments allied themselves with Marxist–Leninist
Cuba. Although none espoused a Stalinist path directly, most admitted to
being significantly influenced by Marxist theory. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself a Trotskyist during the swearing-in of his cabinet two days before his inauguration on 10 January 2007. Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist, while others consider him an honest revolutionary leader who made significant mistakes due to him lacking a Marxist analysis.
For Italian Marxist Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala in their 2011 book Hermeneutic Communism,
"this new weak communism differs substantially from its previous Soviet
(and current Chinese) realization, because the South American countries
follow democratic electoral procedures and also manage to decentralize
the state bureaucratic system through the Bolivarian missions.
In sum, if weakened communism is felt as a specter in the West, it is
not only because of media distortions but also for the alternative it
represents through the same democratic procedures that the West
constantly professes to cherish but is hesitant to apply."
Chinese Communist PartyGeneral SecretaryXi Jinping has announced a deepening commitment of the Chinese Communist Party
to the ideas of Marx. At an event celebrating the 200th anniversary of
Marx's birth, Xi said, "We must win the advantages, win the initiative,
and win the future. We must continuously improve the ability to use
Marxism to analyse and solve practical problems", adding that Marxism is
a "powerful ideological weapon for us to understand the world, grasp
the law, seek the truth, and change the world." Xi has further stressed
the importance of examining and continuing the tradition of the CPC and
embracing its revolutionary past.
The fidelity of those varied revolutionaries, leaders and parties to the work of Karl Marx is highly contested and has been rejected by many Marxists and other socialists alike. Socialists in general and socialist writers, including Dimitri Volkogonov, acknowledge that the actions of authoritarian socialist leaders have damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution."
Criticism of Marxism has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines.This includes general criticism about lack of internal consistency,
criticisms related to historical materialism, that it is a type of
historical determinism, the necessity of suppression of individual
rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues
such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced
incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are
frequently identified.
Some Marxists have criticised the academic institutionalisation of Marxism for being too shallow and detached from political action. Zimbabwean TrotskyistAlex Callinicos, himself a professional academic, stated: "Its practitioners remind one of Narcissus,
who in the Greek legend fell in love with his own reflection. ...
Sometimes it is necessary to devote time to clarifying and developing
the concepts that we use, but indeed for Western Marxists this has
become an end in itself. The result is a body of writings
incomprehensible to all but a tiny minority of highly qualified
scholars."
Additionally, some intellectual critiques of Marxism contest
certain assumptions prevalent in Marx's thought and Marxism after him
without rejecting Marxist politics.
Other contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of
Marxist thought are viable but that the corpus is incomplete or outdated
regarding certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School is one example.
General
Philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski
pointed out that "Marx's theory is incomplete or ambiguous in many
places, and could be 'applied' in many contradictory ways without
manifestly infringing its principles." Specifically, he considers "the
laws of dialectics" as fundamentally erroneous, stating that some are
"truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas
that cannot be proved by scientific means", and some just "nonsense";
he believes that some Marxist laws can be interpreted differently, but
that these interpretations still in general fall into one of the two
categories of error.
Okishio's theorem
shows that if capitalists use cost-cutting techniques and real wages do
not increase, the rate of profit must rise, which casts doubt on Marx's
view that the rate of profit would tend to fall.
The allegations of inconsistency have been a large part of Marxian economics and the debates around it since the 1970s. Andrew Kliman
argues that this undermines Marx's critiques and the correction of the
alleged inconsistencies because internally inconsistent theories cannot
be correct by definition.
Epistemological and empirical
Critics
of Marxism claim that Marx's predictions have failed, with some
pointing towards the GDP per capita generally increasing in capitalist
economies compared to less market-oriented economics, the capitalist
economies not suffering worsening economic crises leading to the
overthrow of the capitalist system and communist revolutions not
occurring in the most advanced capitalist nations, but instead in
undeveloped regions.
It has also been criticized for allegedly resulting in lower living
standards in relation to capitalist countries, a claim that has been
disputed.
In his books, The Poverty of Historicism and Conjectures and Refutations, philosopher of science Karl Popper criticized the explanatory power and validity of historical materialism.
Popper believed that Marxism had been initially scientific in that Marx
had postulated a genuinely predictive theory. When these predictions
were not borne out, Popper argues that the theory avoided falsification
by adding ad hoc hypotheses that made it compatible with the facts.
Because of this, Popper asserted, a theory that was initially genuinely
scientific degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma.
Socialist
Democratic socialists and social democrats
reject the idea that socialism can be accomplished only through
extra-legal class conflict and a proletarian revolution. The
relationship between Marx and other socialist thinkers and
organizations—rooted in Marxism's "scientific" and anti-utopian
socialism, among other factors—has divided Marxists from other
socialists since Marx's life.
Anarchism has had a strained relationship with Marxism. Anarchists and many non-Marxist libertarian socialists reject the need for a transitory state phase, claiming that socialism can only be established through decentralized, non-coercive organization. Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticized Marx for his authoritarian bent. The phrases "barracks socialism" or "barracks communism" became shorthand for this critique, evoking the image of citizens' lives being as regimented as the lives of conscripts in barracks.
Economic
Other critiques come from an economic standpoint. Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev writing in 1898, Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz writing in 1906–1907, and subsequent critics have alleged that Marx's value theory and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that
Marx drew conclusions that do not follow his theoretical premises. Once
these alleged errors are corrected, his conclusion that aggregate price
and profit are determined by and equal to the aggregate value and
surplus value no longer holds. This result calls into question his
theory that exploiting workers is the sole source of profit.
Marxism and socialism have received considerable critical analysis from multiple generations of Austrian economists regarding scientific methodology, economic theory and political implications. During the marginal revolution, subjective value theory was rediscovered by Carl Menger, a development that fundamentally undermined the British cost theories of value. The restoration of subjectivism and praxeological methodology previously used by classical economists including Richard Cantillon, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Jean-Baptiste Say and Frédéric Bastiat led Menger to criticise historicist methodology in general. Second-generation Austrian economist Eugen Böhm von Bawerk used praxeological and subjectivist methodology to fundamentally attack the law of value. Gottfried Haberler
has regarded his criticism as "definitive", arguing that Böhm-Bawerk's
critique of Marx's economics was so "thorough and devastating" that he
believes that as of the 1960s, no Marxian scholar had conclusively
refuted it. Third-generation Austrian Ludwig von Mises rekindled the debate about the economic calculation problem
by arguing that without price signals in capital goods, in his opinion,
all other aspects of the market economy are irrational. This led him to
declare that "rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth."
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
argue that Marx's economic theory was fundamentally flawed because it
attempted to simplify the economy into a few general laws that ignored
the impact of institutions on the economy. These charges have been disputed by other influential economists, like John Roemer and Nicholas Vrousalis.
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