Marxism is a revolutionary theory and a guide to action for the working-class struggle against capitalism.
There are three parts to Marxism:
Karl Marx was a revolutionary, socialist, scientist and economist. Marx examined society from many different angles. He studied the world, nature and history, and began to discover the laws that govern societal and economic evolution. Just as Charles Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, Marx discovered the law of development of human history. Marx showed that the way people organize production and the social relations arising from it form the material foundation of society. On this foundation develops what Marxists call the superstructure — the political and legal institutions and forms of thought through which social life is organized and class rule is maintained. Marx devoted his greatest attention to studying capitalism. His principal work, “Capital,” examines how that system works.
Having recognized that the way society organizes production and the social relations arising from it form the foundation on which the legal, political and ideological superstructure develops, Marx devoted his greatest attention to studying capitalism. Marx’s principal work, “Capital,” is his study of that system.
Marx was more than a thinker or an academic. He was a revolutionary organizer and, with Frederick Engels, co-author of the “Communist Manifesto.” He took part directly in the class struggle, helping to organize the Communist League and later the International Working Men’s Association. The Communist Manifesto concludes “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” — which the Communist International at the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1920 expanded to “Workers of the world and oppressed peoples, unite!” to reflect the development of monopoly capitalism and imperialism and the growing importance of the struggles of oppressed peoples.
Materialism and dialectics
We are taught that greed and selfishness are simply human nature. Marxism shows otherwise. Human beings have lived under many different forms of society, and their behavior has changed with the way they produced and shared the means of life. Capitalism rewards competition and private gain, then calls the results natural and eternal.
Dialectical and historical materialism give us a scientific way to understand how society develops and changes. They show that social relations are made by people under definite material conditions — and that people can change them. [read more]
Marxist economics
Capitalism surrounds us with wages, prices, profits, money and markets. Marx looked beneath these everyday forms to uncover the social relations that make them possible. Marxist economics explains how workers create value, where capitalist profit comes from, why capital must continually expand and why the system repeatedly produces exploitation, inequality, crisis and war. [read more]
Capitalism and the environment
Marxism does not treat nature as an unlimited storehouse for human use. Human beings are part of nature and depend on it for life. But capitalism organizes production for profit and endless accumulation, turning land, water, forests, minerals and fossil fuels into sources of private wealth while leaving society to bear the damage — from poisoned communities to climate change. [read more]
Class struggle
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” “Workers of the world and oppressed peoples, unite!” [read more]
Racism and oppressed nations
In an open colonial relationship, it is easy to recognize an oppressed nation. Imperialism has made national oppression more complex by uprooting and dispersing peoples, redrawing borders and suppressing languages and cultures. [read more]
Class solidarity
One of the greatest weapons that workers and oppressed people possess against the bosses and capitalists is our unity. [read more]
Women’s oppression
The oppression of women in the 21st century takes many forms and reaches into every part of social life. [read more]
For much of modern history, lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people were forced into invisibility. [read more]
Self-determination
All workers, regardless of national background, have the same class interests. They all need to eliminate capitalist exploitation and replace the rule of the bosses with the rule of the workers — socialism. It is clear that this tremendous task can’t be achieved without the closest possible unity and trust among all workers. But when one or several sections of the working class are oppressed over and above the class as a whole, when they are part of a people that constitutes an oppressed nation, then the problems of unity are complicated. [read more]
Culture
Culture reaches into every part of social life. It is part of the superstructure. Our thoughts, ideas, language, arts and forms of human expression are shaped by and connected to society’s culture. [read more]
How the state arose
When Marxists speak of the state, they do not mean New York, Ohio or California. They mean the machinery through which one class rules another, including the government, courts, police, prisons and armed forces. [read more]
The state today
The U.S. has developed one of the most expensive state machines in human history. The federal military budget alone has passed $1 trillion, not counting the classified budgets of paramilitary organizations like the CIA. [read more]
Reform and revolution
Workers fight for reforms because higher wages, civil rights, housing, healthcare and protection from racist oppression matter now. But reforms do not end capitalist class rule. Marxists fight for every gain while organizing for the transfer of political power from the capitalist class to the working class. [read more]
Socialism and socialist revolution
Socialism is not capitalism with better benefits or a few industries run by the government. It begins when the working class takes political power from the capitalists, brings the great means of production into social ownership and begins reorganizing society around human need instead of private profit. [read more]
Soviet socialism
The capitalists say the destruction of the Soviet Union proved that socialism cannot work. But the Soviet Union was a workers’ state born in a backward, war-ravaged country and surrounded by imperialism from the start. How did the Soviet people build socialism under those conditions — and how did the growth of bureaucracy open the way for capitalist elements to capture the party and state and restore capitalism? [read more]