Term Paper on "Marxism History and Ideology. An Ideology Indicates"

Term Paper 12 pages (4668 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Marxism History and Ideology.

An Ideology indicates a structure of ideas that try to elucidate reality. Ideologies are devices since the reality is sometimes very intricate to be comprehended. In almost all the cases they represent a preconception and cater to the objectives of a specific group. Ideologies are seen to be relatively as a contemporary occurrence, in relation to the political and economic circumstances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Marxism is considered to be a very intricate economic ideology, devised on the basis of an historical analysis underlying the concept of class struggle. (Adams, Ideology)

Marxism is the political experience and social theory framed upon the works of Karl Marx, a renowned German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary of 19th century and a close associate of Friedrich Engels. Marx was widely influenced by the Philosophy of George Hegel, the Political Economy of Adam Smith, and Economics of David Ricardo along with the French socialism of 19th century and devised a critique of society that he claimed was both scientific and revolutionary. The critique attained its most systematic expression in his masterpiece entitled "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy." (Marxism: Wikipedia Encyclopedia)

As per Marxist theory, the most significant characteristics of a society are its economic classes and their linkage to each other in the means of production of each historical epoch. History is the history of class struggle among the classes existing in the society. The contemporary progressive classes emerge that are associated with new mode of production process and are in conflict with the existing one. New structure of society emerges which are suitable to the new type of production process when the new class succeed in capturing the economic power. This dogma is known as historical materialism. Most of the struggles in history are hovering around class struggles irrespective of the fact that the groups involved pursue other objectives. To illustrate, the Protestants representing the emerging capitalist class is one such case. (Marxism: (www-formal.stanford.edu)

Marxism depicts that in any historical age, there exists an overriding class along with subjugated class and a struggle between the two. The state is the device by which one class overrides the other. Economic status constantly varies, the overriding class loses its command, and its status is deposed and is replaced by the state of a new overriding class. The new economic conditions also generate a new oppressed class and the conflict goes on. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat classes are those acknowledged by Marx in the mid-19th century. The Capitalist system, as per Marx, makes it possible the capitalist to appropriate the worth of labor. It also isolates the value of labor from its human origins and indicates it more particularly in monetary considerations. However, the capitalist system also produces unparalleled material wealth that if distributed justly, will liberate the mankind from its materialist bonds. (Adams, Ideology)

The Capitalism generates the proletariat those have nothing to sell but their labor by ruining the artisan classes and the petty bourgeoisie and leading them to be the Proletariat. The Capitalism allows the capitalists to have the possession of factors of production, the Proletariat to possess their ability to perform the work. Landlords administer the land, and the farmers are less important than workers and are trapped in the absurdity of rural life. In the capitalistic system, the workers 'tend' to have their wages equivalent to the amount necessitated for them to safeguard their families to reproduce. This is due to growing rivalry for jobs from the reserve army of labor, i.e. The unemployed. The capitalist markets the produces of the labor exerted by workers at a cost proportional to its value, that is socially essential labor necessitated to generate it. (Marxism: (www-formal.stanford.edu)

The disparity between what products are sold for and what the workers are paid is excess value and is being appropriated by the capitalist. Since the workers cannot purchase the full product of their labor and the capitalist do not use all the surplus value, there becomes growing recession. The persistent increment in labor saving machinery generates unemployment and forces down the wages. This signifies the tendency for economic recessions. The tendency to pay the workers bare survival wages give rise to the growing immiseration of the proletariat. The other classes, for example, artisans and petty bourgeoisie, to illustrate petty shopkeepers, degenerate and are thrown to the proletariat class. Even the smaller capitalists go degenerated. (Marxism: (www-formal.stanford.edu) the capitalist will employ a cruel competitive struggle with each other and will degenerate themselves and thereby there will be a scope for the workers to bring down the bourgeois state and substitute it with a socialist state. (Adams, Ideology)

The proletariat gains authority by a proletarian revolution. As per Marx and Lenin, this revolution is essentially aggressive, since the bourgeoisie won't give up power by electoral means. Much before the overthrow of the capitalism the proletariat is required to devise its own class awareness. Other classes have their own forms of class consciousness. (Marxism: (www-formal.stanford.edu) Under the socialist state, which Marx refers to as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class system will be ended through a just distribution of wealth. It is then probable to recover the real value of labor as an expression of human creativity, and the objective that he describes as 'communism' will be attained. (Adams, Ideology)

Marx narrates that in a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, there follows the antithesis between mental and physical labor. Marx indicated that in a higher stratum of the communist society, after the enchained subjugation of the individual to the division of labor, and the antithesis between the mental and physical labor, have vanished; labor becomes not only a means of life but the prime desire of the life. This happens after the productive forces have also enhanced the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of the co-operative wealth flow more plentifully. Only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be surpassed in its entirety and society inscribe upon its goals: 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs'. (Marxism: (www-formal.stanford.edu)

This is an ideology that although it involves a careful historical analysis, becomes finally a utopian vision. It has the influence of a collective sense of realism with an impossible dream. That was a strong mixture that has appealed, through several different interpretations, to millions of people in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the highly developed industrial nations of Western Europe, Marxist ideologies were assimilated by intellectuals and by the leaders of working class parties, some of whom believed their objectives could be attained by working within the structure of the existing states where some of the wealth was piercing down to the working class. Moreover, in nations with liberal Constitutional governments, the leadership of the working class was expected to exert some political influence. In less industrialized nations, there was a little scope of working with prevailing governments, and Marxist parties became identified with struggles to overthrow the government. Thus the Marxist ideology was applied in different modes in consonance with the real political environments in various nations. (Adams, Ideology)

Since Marxism is necessarily critical of capitalism as the great cause of injustice in the world, those who realized in ideological jargon became aware that the Soviet state is dedicated to the degeneration of the capitalist states. The Ideology in the Soviet Union became slightly more than a frontage sustained to convince people that the regime was acknowledged with a noble cause. Marxism as a result of its triumphant prediction that the working class would bring down the capitalist state and entail justice to the workers had an appeal to downtrodden, less advantaged people irrespective of class. While Marxism is known by intellectuals and political leaders in less developed areas of the world, where industrialization was in its initial stages and the vast mass of people were farmers, not workers, the ideology was further re-interpreted. It became an ideology indicating class struggle by peasants against the landlord class. This has been predicted by the identification of Lenin with the peasant cause at the moment of Russian Revolution. The prime illustration of this interpretation of Marxism was put forth by Mao Ze Dhong in China. (Adams, Ideology)

B- Short Biography of Famous Marxists:

1- Karl Marx

Karl Marx - the philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary was regarded as the most prominent social thinker appeared in the 19th century. Karl Heinrich Marx took his birth on May 5, 1818 in a middle-class home in Trier on the river Moselle in Germany. Marx was admitted into the Faculty of Law in the University of Bonn, at the age of seventeen. Pursuing the university career terminated by the Prussian administration, Marx was motivated towards journalism and in October 1842, became editor, in Cologne, of the influential Rheinishce Zeitung, a liberal newspaper supported by industrialists. Marx later immigrated to France. Reaching Paris… READ MORE

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