Marxism - newworldencyclopedia.org

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Marxism, in a narrow sense, refers to the thoughts and theories of Karl Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels. It also refers to, in a broad sense, diverse thoughts, theories, and practices based upon the principal ideas of Marx and Engels.

Various, and often mutually incompatible, thoughts, theories, and movements of Marxism have emerged since late nineteenth century. 

Those variants appeared mainly for three reasons. 

First, Marx developed his thoughts over the years and changed his perspective on what the focal points of his thoughts should be. Thus, one's understanding of Marxism changes depending upon what one takes as the central idea of his thoughts. 

Second, Marx's thoughts contain ambiguities that allow a broad range of interpretations. 

Third, the social, economic conditions within which Marx formulated his thought radically changed throughout the century. Marx developed his theories based upon the critique and analysis of capitalism as it existed in Europe during the first half of nineteenth century. Capitalism, however, radically changed its form over the century. Furthermore, social conditions found in Europe do not necessarily reflect conditions found in other parts of the world. 

Marxists therefore had to modify Marxism to meet both historical and regional conditions. 

Fourth, the first Marxist state established by Lenin became a totalitarian state under Stalin; consequently, Western pro-Marxist intellectuals became doubtful of Lenin's interpretation of Marxism. Western Marxists developed different interpretations of Marxism by incorporating diverse methodologies of psychoanalysis, existentialism, and literary theory. Third World Theory, Maoism, Juche Ideology, and other regional variations also emerged.

Classical Marxism

The concept of Classical Marxism is, strictly speaking, a debatable notion. Due to inherent ambiguity and changes of Marx's perspectives over the years, what should be identified as the core of Marx's own theories is debatable. The notion of classical Marxism, nevertheless, is broadly defined in contract to later developments by other Marxists after Marx and Engels.

Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, then part of Prussian Rhineland—March 14, 1883, London) was an immensely influential German philosopher, political economist, and socialist revolutionary. Marx addressed a wide variety of issues, including alienation and exploitation of the worker, the capitalist mode of production, and historical materialism. He is most famous, however, for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, as summed up in the opening line of the introduction to the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." The influence of his ideas, already popular during his life, was greatly broadened by the victory of the Russian Bolsheviks in the October Revolution of 1917. Indeed, there are few parts of the world that were not significantly affected by Marxist ideas in the course of the twentieth century.

Friedrich Engels (November 28, 1820, Wuppertal–August 5, 1895, London) was a nineteenth century German political philosopher who developed communist theory alongside Marx.

The two first met in person in September 1844. They discovered that they had similar views on philosophy and on capitalism and decided to work together, producing a number of works including Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After the French authorities deported Marx from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx decided to move to Belgium, which then permitted greater freedom of ｅxpression than some other countries in Europe. Engels and Marx returned to Brussels in January 1846, where they set up the Communist Correspondence Committee.

In 1847, Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together, based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. They completed the 12,000-word pamphlet in six weeks, writing it in such a manner as to make communism understandable to a wide audience, and published it as The Communist Manifesto in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled both Engels and Marx. They moved to Cologne, where they began to publish a radical newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. By 1849, both Engels and Marx had to leave Germany and moved to London. The Prussian authorities applied pressure on the British government to expel the two men, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused. With only the money that Engels could raise, the Marx family lived in extreme poverty.

After Marx's death in 1883, Engels devoted much of the rest of his life to editing and translating Marx's writings. However, he also contributed significantly to feminist theory, conceiving, for instance, the concept that monogamous marriage arose because of the domination of men over women. In this sense, he ties communist theory to the family, arguing that men have dominated women just as the capitalist class has dominated workers. Engels died in London in 1895.

Early influences

Classical Marxism was influenced by a number of different thinkers. These thinkers can be divided roughly into 3 groups:

• German Philosophers including: Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach
• English and Scottish Political Economists including: Adam Smith & David Ricardo
• French Social Theorists including: Charles Fourier; Henri de Saint-Simon; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Other influences include:

• Antique materialism, for example, Epicurus, Lucretius

Main ideas

The main ideas to come out of Marx and Engels' collective works include:

• Means of production: The means of production are a combination of the means of labor and the subject of labor used by workers to make products. The means of labor include machines, tools, equipment, infrastructure, and "all those things with the aid of which man acts upon the subject of labor, and transforms it".^[1] The subject of labor includes raw materials and materials directly taken from nature. Means of production by themselves produce nothing—labor power is needed for production to take place.
• Mode of production: The mode of production is a specific combination of productive forces (including the means of production and labour power) and social and technical relations of production (including the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets, often codified in law; cooperative work relations and forms of association; relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes).
• Base and superstructure: Marx and Engels use the “base-structure” metaphor to explain the idea that the totality of relations among people with regard to “the social production of their existence” forms the economic basis, on which arises a superstructure of political and legal institutions. To the base corresponds the social consciousness which includes religious, philosophical, and other main ideas. The base conditions both, the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production causes social revolutions, and the resulting change in the economic basis will sooner or later lead to the transformation of the superstructure.^[2] For Marx, though, this relationship is not a one way process—it is reflexive; the base determines the superstructure in the first instance and remains the foundation of a form of social organisation which then can act again upon both parts of the base-structure metaphor. The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a distinction between actual entities "in the world."
• Class consciousness: Class consciousness refers to the awareness, both of itself and of the social world around them, that a social class possesses, and its capacity to act in its own rational interests based on said awareness.
• Ideology: Without offering a general definition for ideology^[3], Marx on several instances has used the term to designate 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.”^[4] Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, as well as its ruling ideas, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. As Marx said famously in The German Ideology, “the 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.”^[5] Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can create false consciousness such as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital ~ a degradation of human life).
• Historical materialism: Historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies).
• Political economy: The term "political economy" originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the new-born capitalist system. Political economy, then, studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material, and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital, and how this manifests itself in economic activity.
• Exploitation: Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives; in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labour, in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit.
• Alienation: Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" (Gattungswesen, usually translated as "species-essence" or "species-being"). Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism—it is not necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated. He believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.

Class

Marx believed that the identity of a social class is derived from its relationship to the means of production (as opposed to the notion that class is determined by wealth alone, that is, lower class, middle class, upper class).

Marx describes several social classes in capitalist societies, including primarily:

• The proletariat: "Those individuals who sell their labour power, (and therefore add value to the products), and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production." According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat due to the fact that the worker's labour power generates an added value greater than the worker's salary.
• The bourgeoisie: Those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, who are recompensed by a salary, thus exploiting the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie may be further subdivided into the very wealthy bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie. The petit bourgeoisie are those who employ labour, but may also work themselves. These may be small proprietors, land-holding peasants, or trade workers. Marx predicted that the petit bourgeoisie would eventually be destroyed by the constant reinvention of the means of production and the result of this would be the forced movement of the vast majority of the petit bourgeoisie to the proletariat.

Marx also identified various other classes such as the

• The lumpenproletariat: Criminals, vagabonds, beggars, and so on. People that have no stake in the economic system and will sell themselves to the highest bidder.
• The Landlords: As a class of people that were historically important, of which several still retain some of their wealth and power.
• The Peasantry and Farmers: This class he saw as disorganized and incapable of carrying out change. He also believed that this class would disappear, with most becoming proletariat but some becoming landowners.

Marx's theory of history

The Marxist theory of historical materialism understands society as fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time - this means the relationships which people enter into with one another in order to fulfill their basic needs, for instance to feed and clothe themselves and their families.^[6] In general Marx and Engels identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.^[7]

The First Stage may be called Primitive Communism, and refers in general to the hunter-gatherer societies in which there are many individual possessions but no private property in the Marxist sense of the term. Many things, such as land, living quarters, food and other means of existence, may be shared (commonly owned) in various ways.

The primitive communism stage begins with the dawn of humanity and ends with the development of private property, such as cattle and slaves, and the rising of city-states.

Private property in the terminology of Marx's time, for Marx himself, and for Marxists today, does not mean the simple possessions of a person, but the ownership of productive property or property which produces a profit for the owner, such as corporate ownership, share ownership, land ownership, and, in the case of slave society, slave ownership, since the slaves worked the land, mines and other means of producing the material means of existence.

The Second Stage may be called Slave Society, considered to be the beginning of "class society" where private property appears.

The slave-owning class "own" the land and slaves, which are the main means of producing wealth, whilst the vast majority have very little or nothing. Those with no property were the slave class, slaves who work for no money, and in most cases women, who were also dispossessed during this period. Slave society collapsed when it exhausted itself. The need to keep conquering more slaves created huge problems, such as maintaining the vast empire that resulted. The Roman Empire, for example, was eventually overrun by what it called "barbarians."

The Third Stage may be called Feudalism, where there are many classes such as kings, lords, and serfs, some little more than slaves. A merchant class develops. Out of the merchants' riches a capitalist class emerges within this feudal society. However, the old feudal kings and lords cannot accept the new technological changes the capitalists want. The capitalists are driven by the profit motive but are prevented from developing further profits by the nature of feudal society where, for instance, the serfs are tied to the land and cannot become industrial workers and wage earners. Marx says, Then begins an epoch of social revolution (The French Revolution of 1789, Cromwell in Britain, etc) since the social and political organization of feudal society (or the property relations of feudalism) is preventing the development of the capitalists' productive forces. ^[8]

Marx paid special attention to the next stage. The bulk of his work is devoted to exploring the mechanisms of capitalism, which in western society classically arose "red in tooth and claw" from feudal society in a revolutionary movement.

Capitalism

Capitalism may be considered the Fourth Stage in this schema. It appears after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrow the feudal system. Capitalism is categorized by the following:

• Free Market economy: In capitalism the entire economy is guided by market forces. Supporters of Laissez-faire economics argue that there should be little or no intervention from the government under capitalism. Marxists, however, such as Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argue that the capitalist government is a powerful instrument for the furtherance of capitalism and the capitalist nation-state, particularly in the conquest of markets abroad.
• Private property: The means of production are no longer in the hands of the monarchy and its nobles, but rather they are controlled by the capitalists. The capitalists control the means of production through commercial enterprises (such as corporations) that aim to maximize profit.
• Parliamentary democracy: the capitalists tend to govern through an elected centralized parliament or congress, rather than under an autocracy. Capitalist (bourgeois) democracy, although it may be extended to the whole population, does not necessarily lead to universal suffrage. Historically it has excluded (by force, segregation, legislation or other means) sections of the population such as women, slaves, ex-slaves, people of color or those on low income. The government acts on behalf of, and is controlled by, the capitalists through various methods.
• Wages: In capitalism, workers are rewarded according to their contract with their employer. However their hours or rate of work are often subject to increase outside their immediate control, and their wage is, in any case, but a fraction of the true value produced by their labor. The unpaid labor of the working class is the essential component of the profit for the capitalist, because the worker is not paid the true value of his labor: he is exploited
• Warfare: Capitalism spreads from the wealthiest countries to the poorest as capitalists seek to expand their influence and raise their profits. This is done directly through war, the threat of war, or the export of capital. The capitalist's control over the state can thus play an essential part in the development of capitalism, to the extent the state directs the warfare or other foreign intervention.
• Monopolistic tendencies: The natural, unrestrained market forces will create monopolies from the most successful and/or vicious commercial entities.

In capitalism, the profit motive rules and people, freed from serfdom, work for the capitalists for wages. The capitalist class are free to spread their laissez-faire practices around the world. In the capitalist-controlled parliament laws are made to protect wealth and the wealthy.

But, according to Marx, capitalism, like slave society and feudalism, also has critical failings—inner contradictions that will lead to its downfall. The working class, to which the capitalist class gave birth in order to produce commodities and profits, is the "grave digger" of capitalism. The worker is not paid the full value of what he or she produces. The rest is surplus value—the capitalist's profit, which Marx calls the "unpaid labour of the working class." The capitalists are forced by competition to attempt to drive down the wages of the working class to increase their profits, and this creates conflict between the classes, and gives rise to the development of class consciousness in the working class. The working class, through trade union and other struggles, becomes conscious of itself as an exploited class.

In the view of classical Marxism, the struggles of the working class against the attacks of the capitalist class lead the working class to struggle to establish its own collective control over production - the basis of socialist society. Marx believed that capitalism always leads to monopolies and leads the people to poverty; yet the fewer the restrictions on the free market (for example, from the state and trade unions), the sooner it finds itself in crisis.

Socialism

After the working class gains class consciousness and mounts a revolution against the capitalists, Communism, which may be considered the Fifth Stage, will be attained, if the workers are successful.

Lenin divided the period following the overthrow of capitalism into two stages: First socialism, and then later, once the last vestiges of the old capitalist ways have withered away, communism. Lenin based his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, on a thorough study of the writings of Marx and Engels. Marx uses the terms the "first phase" of communism and the "higher phase" of communism, but Lenin points to later remarks of Engels which suggest that what people commonly think of as socialism equates to Marx's "first phase" of communism.

Socialism may be categorized by the following:

• Decentralized planned economy: Without the market, production will be directed by the workers themselves through communes or workers' elected councils.
• Common property: The means of production are taken from the hands of a few capitalists and put in the hands of the workers. This translates into the democratic communes controlling the means of production.
• Council democracy: Marx, basing himself on a thorough study of Paris Commune, believed that the workers would govern themselves though system of communes. He called this the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, overthrowing the dictatorship (governance) of capital, would democratically plan production and the resources of the planet.
• Labor vouchers: Marx explained that, since socialism emerges from capitalism, it would be "stamped with its birthmarks." Economically this translates into the individual worker being awarded according to the amount of labor he contributes to society. Each worker would be given a certificate verifiying his contribution which he could then exchange for goods.

Marx explains that socialist society, having risen from a self conscious movement of the vast majority, makes such a society one of the vast majority governing over their own lives:

The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.^[9]

Now the productive forces are truly free to develop, but in a democratically planned way, without the vast waste of anarchic capitalist society, its wars and destruction of the planet. one of the primary tasks of the workers in the socialist society, after placing the means of production into collective ownership, is to destroy the "old state machinery.” Hence the bourgeoisie's parliamentary democracy ceases to exist, and fiat and credit money are abolished. In Marx's view, instead of a dictatorship of capital, in which rulers are elected only once every few years at best, the state is ruled through the dictatorship of the proletariat with the democratically elected workers' commune to replace the parliament:

The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class…. The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves…. Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests…. The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence… they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable.^[10]

The commune, in Marx and Engels' view, modeled after the Paris Commune, has a completely different political character from the parliament. Marx explains that it holds legislative-executive power and is subservient only to the workers themselves:

The Commune, was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time… Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress [ver- and zertreten] the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business.^[10]

Marx explained that, since the first stage of socialism would be "in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges," each worker would naturally expect to be awarded according to the amount of labor he contributes, despite the fact that each worker's ability and family circumstances would differ, so that the results would still be unequal at this stage, although fully supported by social provision.

Fiat money and credit whose values were determined by anarchic market forces are abolished. Instead, in his Critique of the Gotha programme, Marx speculated schematically that from the "total social product" there would be deductions for the requirements of production and "the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc" which latter deduction "grows in proportion as the new society develops," and, of course, deductions "for those unable to work, etc." After these deductions the workers could divide up the wealth produced by their labor and everyone could be simply given a "certificate from society," which could then be exchanged for products. This schematically introduces a means of exchange ("the same principle" that is, money) in socialist society but with the speculative element removed.

In this way, each worker is paid according to the amount of labor contributed to society, in other words according to the agreed difficulty, length of time, and intensity of his labor. All goods (such, for instance, as housing) are priced in a greater degree according the amount of labor required to produce them, which the individual worker can buy with his labor voucher.

What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.^[11]

Only if this new socialist society manages to end the destructiveness of capitalism and leads to a higher quality of life for all will socialist society be successful. As socialism raises everyone's quality of life above the precarious existence they knew hitherto, providing decent health care, housing, child care, and other social provision for all without exception, the new socialist society begins to break down the old inevitably pecuniary habits, the need for a state apparatus will wither away, and the communist organization of society will begin to emerge. Socialism, in the view of Marxists, will succeed in raising the quality of life for all by ending the destructive contradictions which arise in capitalism through conflicts between competing capitalists and competing capitalist nations, and ending the need for imperialist conquest for the possession of commodities and markets.

Communism

Some time after socialism is established society leaps forward, and everyone has plenty of personal possessions, but no one can exploit another person for private gain through the ownership of vast monopolies, and so forth. Classes are thus abolished, and class society ended. Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments. Thus, communism is established, which has the following features:

• Statelessness: There is no government or nations any more.
• Classlessness: All social classes disappear, everyone works for everyone else.
• Moneylessness: There is no money, all goods are free to be consumed by anyone that needs them.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx describes communism as:

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.^[9]

Few applications of historical materialism, the philosophical system used by Marxism to explain the past progressions of human society and predict the nature of communism, account for a stage beyond communism, but Marx suggests that what has ended is only the "prehistory"^[8] of human society, for now, for the first time, humans will be no longer be at the mercy of productive forces (for example, the free market) which act independently of their control. Instead human beings can plan for the needs of society and the preservation of planet, inclusively, democratically, by the vast majority, who now own and control the means of production collectively. By implication, then, only now does the real history of human society begin.

Socialism

Main article: Socialism

Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary social movements and political parties around the world, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, very few countries have governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although socialistic parties are in power in some Western nations, they long ago distanced themselves from their direct link to Marx and his ideas.

As of 2005, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China—and to a certain extent Venezuela had governments in power which describe themselves as socialist in the Marxist sense. However, the private sector comprised more than 50 percent of the mainland Chinese economy by this time and the Vietnamese government had also partially liberalized its economy. The Laotian and Cuban states maintained strong control over the means of production.

Alexander Lukashenko president of Belarus, has been quoted as saying that his agrarian policy could be termed as Communist. He has also frequently referred to the economy as being "market socialism." Lukashenko is also an unapologetic admirer of the Soviet Union.

North Korea is another contemporary socialist state, though the official ideology of the Korean Workers' Party (originally led by Kim Il-sung and currently chaired by his son, Kim Jong-il), Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by the leadership of the Soviet Union.

Libya is often thought of as a socialist state; it maintained ties with the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc and Communist states during the Cold War. Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, describes the state's official ideology as Islamic socialism, and has labeled it a third way between capitalism and communism.

In the United Kingdom, the governing Labour Party describes itself as a socialist political party and is a member of the socialist organisation, Socialist International. The Party was set up by trade unionists, revolutionary and reformist socialists such as the Social Democratic Federation and the socialist Fabian Society.

Communism

A number of states have declared an allegiance to the principles of Marxism and have been ruled by self-described Communist Parties, either as a single-party state or a single list, which includes formally several parties, as was the case in the German Democratic Republic. Due to the dominance of the Communist Party in their governments, these states are often called "communist states" by Western political scientists. However, they have described themselves as "socialist," reserving the term "communism" for a future classless society, in which the state would no longer be necessary (on this understanding of communism, "communist state" would be an oxymoron) — for instance, the USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Many Marxists contend that, historically, there has never been any communist country.

Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident "authentic" communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism.

Maoism

For more details on this topic, see Maoism.

Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: 毛泽东思想, pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), is a variant of Marxism-Leninism derived from the teachings of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong (Wade-Giles transliteration: "Mao Tse-tung").

The term "Mao Zedong Thought" has always been the preferred term by the Communist Party of China, and the word "Maoism" has never been used in its English-language publications except pejoratively. Likewise, Maoist groups outside China have usually called themselves Marxist-Leninist rather than Maoist, a reflection of Mao's view that he did not change, but only developed, Marxism-Leninism. However, some Maoist groups, believing Mao's theories to have been sufficiently substantial additions to the basics of the Marxist canon, call themselves "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" (MLM) or simply "Maoist."

In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong Thought is part of the official doctrine of the Communist Party of China, but since the 1978 beginning of Deng Xiaoping's market economy-oriented reforms, the concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" has come to the forefront of Chinese politics, Chinese economic reform has taken hold, and the official definition and role of Mao's original ideology in the PRC has been radically altered and reduced (see History of China).

Unlike the earlier forms of Marxism-Leninism in which the urban proletariat was seen as the main source of revolution, and the countryside was largely ignored, Mao focused on the peasantry as the main revolutionary force which, he said, could be led by the proletariat and its vanguard, the Communist Party of China. The model for this was of course the Chinese communist rural Protracted People's War of the 1920s and 1930s, which eventually brought the Communist Party of China to power. Furthermore, unlike other forms of Marxism-Leninism in which large-scale industrial development was seen as a positive force, Maoism made all-round rural development the priority. Mao felt that this strategy made sense during the early stages of socialism in a country in which most of the people were peasants. Unlike most other political ideologies, including other socialist and Marxist ones, Maoism contains an integral military doctrine and explicitly connects its political ideology with military strategy. In Maoist thought, "political power comes from the barrel of the gun" (one of Mao's quotes), and the peasantry can be mobilized to undertake a "people's war" of armed struggle involving guerrilla warfare in three stages.

Juche ideology

For more details on this topic, see Juche.

The Juche Ideology (Juche Sasang 주체사상 in Korean; or Chuch'e; approximately "joo-chey") is the official state ideology of North Korea and the political system based on it. Kim Jong-il has explained that the doctrine is a component part of Kimilsungism, after its founder and his father, Kim Il-sung. The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the master of everything and decides everything." The official biography Kim Il Sung by Baik Bong had previously described this as saying that the masters of the North Korean revolution are the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the Korean people, who must remake themselves, under its leadership. Juche literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance."

Juche theory is a type of Marxism ideology, but it is built upon the deification and mystification of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994). Its religious or pseudo-religious characteristics distinguish Juche ideology from all other forms of Marxism including Marx-Leninism of the former Soviet Union, European Neo-Marxism, Maoism, and even Stalinism. Juche ideology characterizes Kim as the “eternal head of state,” a Messianic liberator of mankind, and describes North Korea as a chosen nation, and North Koreans as a chosen people who have a mission to liberate mankind. While fear and terror are used to externally dominate the masses in a totalitarian state, Juche Ideology is a tool for the internal domination of their minds

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Disputing these claims

Many academics dispute the claim that the above political movements are Marxist. Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms). While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism. Further, critics have often claimed that a Stalinist or Maoist system of government creates a new ruling class, usually called the nomenklatura.

However Marx defined "communism" as a classless, egalitarian and stateless society. Indeed, to Marx, the notion of a socialist state would have seemed oxymoronical, as he defined socialism as the phase reached when class society and the state had already been abolished. once socialism had been established, society would develop new socialist relations over the course of several generations, reaching the stage known as communism when bourgeois relations had been abandoned. Such a development has yet to occur in any historical self-claimed Socialist state. Often it results in the creation of two distinct classes: Those who are in government and therefore have power, and those who are not in government and do not have power—thus inspiring the term "State capitalism." These statist regimes have generally followed a command economy model without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage.

Criticisms

Criticisms of Marxism are many and varied. They concern both the theory itself, and its later interpretations and implementations.

Criticisms of Marxism have come from the political Left as well as the political Right. Democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Many Anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase and some anarchists even reject socialism entirely. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory, such as historical materialism and the labour theory of value, and gone on to criticize capitalism—and advocate socialism—using other arguments. Some contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are viable, but that the corpus also fails to deal effectively with certain aspects of economic, political or social theory.