Useful Notes / Marxism

Marxism is an umbrella term for several different political philosophies, almost all of which are characterized by the pursuit of a moneyless, classless, and stateless society.

Marxism was invented by (surprise) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the book The Communist Manifesto.

Schools of Marxism include:

• Classical Marxism: The grand-daddy of them all. Marxism as Karl Marx and Frederich Engels conceptualized it. According to it, the economic base^note  how people produce the goods they need to survive controls human society while the superstructure^note  culture, religion, government, etc. merely justifies the current arrangement. As technology revolutionizes the economy and workers' lives, the superstructure is discarded when it outlives its usefulness and is replaced with one suited to the new base. Due to its rapid technological growth and ruthless exploitation of workers, capitalism will make itself obsolete when the working masses seize the factories and run them for the good of humanity. Classical Marxism is also called Orthodox Marxism when contrasted with Marxism-Leninism.
• Analytical Marxism: An Adaptation of Marxism with modern political science applied to it, pioneered by G.A. Cohen and others.
• Instrumental Marxism: The idea that Government tends to be ruled by people of a certain class background, and thus, the Government only seeks to benefit people of the same background.
• Marxism-Leninism: Named after Vladimir Lenin, but coined by Joseph Stalin later on. Lenin disagreed with Marx that socialism needed advanced industrialization and advocated the socialists seizing power in agrarian Russia. A revolutionary vanguard holding a "Dictatorship of the proletariat" would industrialize the nation by themselves. Said Vanguard would themselves govern and vote on issues, while people not in the party would not have Democracy. Due to the Soviet Union's political and economic power, most 20th century Communist nations adopted Marxism-Leninism for themselves. Concepts that derive from this are Stalinism and Maoism.
• Libertarian Marxism: A type of Libertarian Socialism. Not at all to be confused with Right-Libertarianism. Emerged in opposition to Marxist-Leninism. Libertarian Marxism emphasizes the anti-state elements of Marx's ideas and generally rejects the importance of the revolutionary party.
• Trotskyism: Named after Leon Trotsky. Strongly opposes Stalinism and sees itself as the true inheritor of Lenin's ideas instead of Marxism-Leninism. Supports Trotsky's ideas such as his theory of permanent revolution, which argued that the proletariat could come to power in a backward country first, and his analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state where the isolation of the revolution had led worker's democracy to be eliminated and usurped by a bureaucratic caste.
• Situationist International: An international organization and movement started during the late 1950s, which derived it's central philosophical and socio-political tenets from anti-authoritarian Marxism and other leftist movements such as Dada and Surrealism. Concepts associated with this movements include Détournement and the spectacle, which is essentially a unified critique of advanced capitalism.
• Frankfurt School: Easily the most controversial school of Marxism. The Frankfurt School was a school of social theory made up of Western Marxist dissidents.^{note Prominent members of the Frankfurt School were Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and, later, Jürgen Habermas; associated with it, but more on the fringe, were figures such as the literary critic Walter Benjamin and the philosopher Ernst Bloch.} With the success of Marxism-Leninism in Russia and Maoism in China, underdeveloped agrarian societies seemed to be successful with Marxist advancement, while the exploitative industrialized powers that Marx had in mind with his writings continued with capitalism. Capitalist superstructure had once again adapted, rather than be overturned. These dissidents (who were inspired by thinkers as diverse as Immanuel Kant, Max Weber, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, and of course, Karl Marx) wished to synthesize the ideas of these disparate thinkers by way of critical theory, which opted for a more idiosyncratic examination of society via critiquing the underpinnings and uncovering the assumptions made by society itself. It picks apart the Bread and Circuses sold by those in power to be bought by the masses, as this false truth is viewed uncritically which creates complacency. This complacency in turn ruins any chance for true revolution. The Frankfurt School is often associated by people on the far-right (especially in America) with Postmodernism, or rather with a particularly easygoing, cheerfully nihilistic form of Postmodernism, due to a shared heavy use of Deconstruction but with radically different motives and goals.