Marxism is a way of understanding society that focuses on how people organize to meet their basic needs and how this actually shapes everything else, from politics to culture to ideas.
It starts by looking at the mode of production, which means how goods and services are created and who controls the necessary resources, called the means of production.
People in society are divided into classes, mainly the bourgeoisie, who own the resources, and the proletariat, who sell their work to survive.
Marxism uses historical materialism, the idea that the changes in the way people produce things drive all the other major social changes through class struggle: the conflict between those who have and those who have not.
According to Marxism, capitalism (where private ownership and profit rule) is inherently unfair. That is because owners profit from workers’ labor, which leads to exploitation (owners earning more than what they pay workers) and alienation (workers becoming disconnected from the fruit of their labor).
It also predicts that as the forces of production (such as technology) develop, old ways of organizing work will cause growing problems and struggles, which eventually lead to a proletarian revolution.
The goal is to replace capitalism with socialism, where resources are owned cooperatively, production is based on people’s needs instead of profit, and the state, once used to protect the rich, eventually disappears in a transition to a classless, communist society.
Marxism’s ideas have evolved into different schools of thought. It has also greatly influenced fields like sociology, history, education, and even art and literature, as well as major political movements and revolutions around the world.
Online Resources
- Marxism / Wikipedia
Please Note: This is my personal summary of the topic, shared both for my own records and in the hope it may be helpful to you. AI was used in parts to assist with the process.