POL 315
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MARXISM
Marx and Engels based socialism on a scientific understanding of the
laws of development in society and of the class struggle and they
showed how socialism could be won, by arming the working class of its
historical mission. The blue print of the socialist revolution is the
communist manifesto (1848). This book- communist manifesto which
was hurriedly put together by Marx and his close associate Fredrick
Engels contains the tenets of Marxism. Marx saw history as the history
of class struggles of the haves against the have-nots (oppressors against
oppressed).
Marx saw history as whole social movement of class struggles. Marx
saw contending classes as products of economic development of society.
Politics, religion, law, morals etc., are nothing but reflection of the
relations built in the economic substructure of the society. The whole
history man right from the inception of settled life -past epochs is the
history of class struggles, based on material interest upon which all
contradictions between the classes were resolved. This is sometimes
referred to as economic determinism or materialist interpretation of
history. Men enter into relations with their fellow men in the course of
material pursuit and general quest for subsistence.
For Marx, in production, men not only act on nature but also on one
another (production has a social character) but appropriation is private.
In understanding the laws of historical development Marx and Engels
showed that socialism was not a utopian dream but a necessary outcome
of capitalist development and emphasized the necessity of working class
as having a historical mission to battle the capitalists and win the war on
behalf of all the oppressed classes in capitalism. Supporting Marxism's
historical premises are its economic theories. Of central importance are
the labor theory of value and the idea of surplus value. Marxism
supposes that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of
labor required for its manufacture. The value of the commodities
purchasable by the worker's wages is less than the value of the
commodities he produces; the difference, called surplus value,
represents the profit of the capitalist. Thus the bourgeois class has
flourished through exploitation of the proletariat.
The capitalist system and the bourgeoisie were seen as marked with
weaknesses and contradictions, which would become increasingly
severe as industrialisation progresses and would manifest themselves in
increasingly severe economic crises leading to highly industrialised
nations, where the crises of capitalism and the consciousness of the
workers would contradict, that the proletarian overthrow of bourgeois
society would succeed. Although this process was inevitable,
communists were to speed it up by bringing about the international
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