Marxism and Social Movements
Marxism is a body of theory that was developed from and crafted for social movements. Marxist theory in the twentieth century was linked to the development of oppositional political projects across the world. There were a range of revolutionary struggles against imperialist wars and capitalism.
The First World War divided the forces of socialism, with those who were to become social democrats supporting the mass slaughter of the War.
Marxism rested on a proposition and a wager. The proposition is that the core problem facing popular movements in the present time is the capitalist system. The wager is that the working class is capable of transforming itself through collective action and organization to the point where it can break capitalism apart and lay out foundations of a new cooperative world community. The proposition and wager provided Marxism with a standard that assessed the whole array of resistance of capitalist power.
In Marxist theory, the issue of ‘replacement power’ focuses on the necessity and not simply taking over the state but reorganizing it in ways that were unthinkable.
This book addressed broad theoretical questions while critiquing academic social movement theory and interrogating what a Marxist theory of social movements might involve. This book examined how movements actually work, explored the political questions that confront movement participants, and argued understanding of how movements developed. The last part of the book gathered together both comparative historical studies and focused on recent movements against neoliberalism. Big Three in Economics
Karl Marx is an Exodus. Marx argues that the pursuit of self-interest would lead to anarchy, crisis, and the dissolution of the private property-based system. Karl Marx broke the bonds of capitalism and tore apart the foundations of Adam Smith’s