Understanding Marxism Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in the historical progression of economic systems that follow one another in a natural sequence. They are driven, he posited, by vast impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict among social classes.

He argues that Marxism helps to understand the dynamic of a society in its entity; this means with all its different classes and members, because Marx looks at the development from an historical perspective and can therefore identify the movements and preferences of that society.

A class based analysis of global society is still relevant if you look at things globally. In Britain there are tens of thousands of people who call themselves Communists and who sympathise with Marxism and the wider anti-capitalist movement. …

A Marxist IR approach to migration shows the importance of historical materialism as an approach to IR. First, Marxists are critical of the fixed aspect of borders because they create relations of dependency and inequality between peoples by restricting and controlling their access to resources and labour.

Key concepts covered include: the dialectic, materialism, commodities, capital, capitalism, labour, surplus-value, the working class, alienation, means of communication, the general intellect, ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles.

Ideology itself represents the “production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness,” all that “men say, imagine, conceive,” and include such things as “politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc.” (47).

Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated from Karl Marx, focusing on the struggles between capitalists and the working class. Communism is based upon the ideas of common ownership and the absence of social classes, money and the state.

Marxism in Simple Terms. To define Marxism in simple terms, it’s a political and economic theory where a society has no classes. Every person within the society works for a common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone.

Marxist criticism is interested in the society created by the author in the piece of literature concerned. As a result, a Marxist critique would focus not only on those classes, but also what happens when they break down. After all, Huck and Jim form a bond that society would have forbidden.

Marxists believe that if the working class makes itself the ruling class, and destroys the basis for class society (private property, or what Marx called “Bourgeois Property”), there will be a “classless society.” In a Marxist society, no social classes are in conflict, and there is no government anymore.

Marx and Engels always regarded ‘equality’ as a political concept and value, and moreover as one suited to promote bourgeois class interests. In place of equality, and based on his historical materialism, Marx advocated the abolition of class society, as it presently exists in the form of capitalism.

Karl Marx believed that economic equality was the only system that was justifiable.

Marx’s views on equality were informed by his analysis of the development of the productive forces in society. Hence the “equality” in a communist society is not about total equality or equality of outcome, but about equal and free access to the articles of consumption.