...M Antonio Gramsci One of the most influential figures in the neo-Marxist reassessment of religion is the Italian, Antonio Gramsci. He rejected the traditional Marxist view that the cultural superstructure merely reflected society’s economic base. In his view, the superstructure is more autonomous and independent than Marx acknowledged, and beliefs are no less real or important than economic forces. For Gramsci, if the communist age were to come, it would require working-class action. But this action must be guided by theoretical ideas. And, just as intellectuals of the Roman Catholic Church had shaped the minds of its followers over centuries, so must the industrial working class produce its own intellectuals who can articulate working-class experience and help shape working-class consciousness. Gramsci was well aware of the control over consciousness, which the Catholic Church had traditionally exercised over its members. This control he referred to as hegemony. He was highly critical of what he regarded as the Church’s characteristic subservience to the state and ruling-class interests. Nevertheless, he did not assume that religion must inevitably play such a role. He argued that, at different historical times, popular forms of religion had emerged which expressed and supported the interests of oppressed classes. Thus, he accepted the possibility that religious beliefs and practices could develop and be popularised, particularly by working-class intellectuals, to challenge...
Words: 780 - Pages: 4
...Karl Marx’s Good Intentions In Marx’s eyes, Capitalism has always been and will continue being an obstruction to the concept of human freedom and choice. His political views which are considered to be modern,deal with the on going class struggles within Capitalism. Marx suggests that Capitalism leads to the centralization of monopolies and the distribution of more power to the capitalist or wealthy. The success of Capitalism is directly connected to capital and wage labor. Capitalism’s goal is to increase profits and is a form of life that doesn’t do justice to human abilities frankly all it is is a division from basic powers to humans and the exploitations of human workers. Workers are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists and they exploit labor to gain capital. To achieve one’s wants and needs one must labor with other people and with nature. Laborers do not realize that they are the ones who are in complete control of the products that they produce.They very much have the power to create and recreate the world in which they live in. In a Capitalist society everyone is located in a class, either the class of the capitalist or the working class. More important than any skill, the class position is the essential factor that determines one’s life as a human being. To be capitalist is to own many properties,and for the working class to have no property and to live by the rules of the capitalist. The laborer is absolutely dependent upon the wage labor and has no...
Words: 628 - Pages: 3
...Assess the usefulness of Marxism and other conflict theories of our understanding of society. Marxism is a useful conflict theory in helping us to understand why there was obedience, particularly in the past in society. Marx was seen as an economic determinist, as he believed that the functioning and running of society was based upon the economy. Because of this, Marx says that is why there was a divide between the proletariat (working class who have only their skills to sell) and the bourgeoisie (the ruling class who own the means of production). The bourgeoisie cannot operate without the proletariat, as they cannot produce products, and similarly the proletariat cannot operate without the bourgeoisie, as they need them so they can be paid a wage and feed their families. Therefore, even though the Bourgeoisie were exploiting the proletariat and the proletariat could have walked away to stop being exploited, they never walked away as they needed the money. On the other hand, this can be viewed from a different perspective. The reason why these people may have not left their jobs is because they could have been in a state of false consciousness, whereby they were unaware of their exploitation by the bourgeoisie. This helps us to understand society as the Marxism theory provides reasoning on how the bourgeoisie were able to exploit the proletariat, which in turn fuelled capitalism and allowed the ruling elite to maintain their profits. It is also relevant to today’s society,...
Words: 2098 - Pages: 9
...What is Marxism? Marxism is an economic and social system based upon the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. While it would take veritably volumes to explain the full implications and ramifications of the Marxist social and economic ideology, Marxism is summed up in the Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.” Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism which is defined by Encarta as “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit.” Marxism is the system of socialism of which the dominant feature is public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or “the people,” own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved...
Words: 485 - Pages: 2
...Adrienne Korson Marxism: For and Against Marxism is essentially a critique of Capitalism. In order to understand Marxism, one needs to evaluate the history of Marxism. Heilbroner described Marxism as being “inescapable” (Heilbroner, 15). Marxism is credited with the contribution for uncovering an unsuspected level of reality beneath the surface of capitalism. His mode of inquiry for uncovering the hidden reality of capitalism is through his own invented process of socioanalysis. Because of Marx’s legacy of revealing the reality of capitalism, Heilbroner compares him to Freud and Plato, all whose works are inescapable for the truths they have unveiled. Freud and Plato both unveiled hidden realities. Marx shared a further similarity in the sense that his “combination of insight and method permanently altered the manner in which reality would thereafter be perceived” (Heilbroner, 17). Marx’s works in his book Capital is still more relevant today than Adam Smith’s renowned work Wealth of Nations. Marx‘s book placed importance on technology and crises and social tension, and more importantly, undertakes the task of critiquing the political economy. However, the problem of Marxism is within trying to define it. Heilbroner believes that there exists a set of premises that can assist in defining Marxist thought, “so that any analysis that contains these premises can be properly classified as Marxist” (Heilbroner, 20). There are four main premises as described by Heilbroner; the...
Words: 6370 - Pages: 26
...‘Marxism provides an accurate criticism of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism’. Discuss * ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class’ summarizes Marx his approach in the first line of the chapter one of the ‘Communist Manifesto’. * Karl Marx was a revolutionary socialist thinker and an analyst of capitalism, whose ideas played a significant role in the development of modern communism and socialism. * Marxism is an economic and socio-political worldview that contains in a political ideology for how to change and improve the society by implementing socialism. * It is based upon a materialist interpretation of history, taking upon the idea that social changes occur because of the struggle between the different classes within a society. * Marxist analysis leads to conclusion that capitalism leads to oppression of the proletariat, who not only make up the majority of the world’s populace but spend their endless lives working for the benefit of bourgeoisie or the capitalists who are the wealthy ruling class of a society. * According to Christopher Pierson, for Marx, Capitalism was a social and economic system in which the wealth of the capital-owing bourgeoisie was derived from the exploited labour power of a property less working class of proletariat. * A key reason why the Marxist theory of Liberal Democratic state was defined by a range of other writer’s was that in Marx’s and Engels lifetime there were few if genuine, full-developed...
Words: 1353 - Pages: 6
...MARXISM Over 150 years ago Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto. In The Communist Manifesto they were the first to give a thorough and scientific analysis of the laws and workings of capitalist society: why it results in the polarization of wealth and how it can be overthrown. In the last few years their ideas have been regaining popularity. At the end of 1999 Marx was voted the greatest thinker of the millennium in a BBC online poll. It is the economic crisis of capitalism internationally that has forced many to reassess their view of Marx. Capitalism is a cyclical system: crises can be caused by a number of factors, such as financial crashes or political unrest. Marx recognized that capitalism, despite all its abuses, played an important role in developing the productive forces and the world market. It was an advance from the feudal societies that preceded it. Today, capitalism has developed the world market and the wealth, science and technology have laid the foundations for a socialist society. Under capitalism, wealth and power have always been concentrated in the hands of the capitalists. And the development of technology is driven by the need for profit. The anarchy of the capitalist market always results in increasing wealth and power for a few but poverty for the many. Today the capitalists are a far wealthier and a far smaller class than they were in Marx's time. In the last 50 years the wealth gap between the richest 20% of humanity and...
Words: 1670 - Pages: 7
...Ishan Soni Mr. Marr English 12 May 25, 2015 Marxism are set of views acknowledged by many individuals and a lot of views presented in works of other authors are often compared to the ideas that of Karl Marx. Here, the idea presented by George Bernard Shaw in his play is compared to Marx’s ideas on Marxism and social hierarchy relationship. There exists a relationship between the viewpoints of Karl Marx and George Bernard Shaw in the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The interpretation of the social hierarchy by each author disagrees with one another. With these circumstances, Marxist theorists will admonish the idea portrayed in the play because of contradicting interpretation that resembles Marxism. Marxism is set of political and economic ideas that were created by communist Karl Marx. There is one idea in specific that is touched in Pygmalion. The idea where the relationship between the working class and the capitalists is explained. The following interpretation is taken from Wikipedia“Many Marxists believe that there will always be revolts and, with the right conditions, revolutions. In these revolutions, the workers will fight the capitalists and will (eventually) win.” The capitalists will continue to show dominance over the lower class but the lower class will revolt against the upper class someday apparently. If the lower class ever tries to bring about a change in hierarchy, the change will end in a revolt...
Words: 719 - Pages: 3
...Emma Wareus International Relations Theories 3/13/2016 Marxist theory: War on Terror Marxist theories of international politics are commonly dismissed out of hand as being outdated, preoccupied with economics rather than politics, and concerning itself more with domestic rather than international social relations. Viewed from the perspective of Marxism however, both liberalism and realism are profoundly limited, for each takes as its premise a world of pre-constituted social actors (whether self-interested individuals or security-seeking states). These theories are therefore unable to consider the social processes through which these kinds of actors have been historically constructed. Thus in analyzing the so-called war on terror, Marxism forces us to understand the development of the structures of global capitalism and the ideologies and agents situated within these structures. This essay therefore evaluates whether Marxist theories of international politics offer convincing explanations of the war on terror. I start with the Marxist understanding of capitalism as a historically particular way of organizing social life that entails political, cultural and economic aspects that need to be understood as a dynamic ensemble of social relations not necessarily contained within the territorial boundaries of nation states. I then apply this understanding to frame the war on terror through the context of economic security which has animated US policy-makers from the Second World...
Words: 2090 - Pages: 9
...Karl Marx’s ideas and later his books had great influence on Russia and eventually Soviet Union. There is no perfect political party or system, but Marxism appealed to Russian people more than any other system and eventually became a “guide” for the life after Tsars. To understand why Marxism played such a major role in Russian history, we will discuss historic events that led to the end of Tsarist Russia and discuss both sides of the argument – for and against Marxism. By the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, Russia was not a great Empire it used to be. Country was falling behind Europe in every aspect – economy, military and industrialization were not on par with the western world. Poverty and no glimpse of “brighter future” for lower class, or should we just say poor people, was working against Nicholas II and his reign. Throughout its history Russia was mostly an agricultural country, but with the need of industrialization and further development at the turn of the 20th century, the necessary for Marx’s ideas class was rising – proletariat, or working class. Working hours and conditions were unbearable across all industries and with work demand being way higher than available positions – pay was minimal, since there was the next guy who was willing to work for anything at all. Population was growing with anger and desire for change, but not necessarily overthrowing the Tsar. But since nothing was being done, and bourgeoisie was getting richer – landowners...
Words: 999 - Pages: 4
...Journal of Moral Education Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2005, pp. 391–398 EDITORIAL Marxism and moral education W. John Morgan* University of Nottingham, UK It is obviously necessary to begin with Karl Marx. According to Vorlander, ‘The ¨ moment anyone started to talk to Marx about morality, he would roar with laughter’ (Vorlander, 1904, p. 22; Lukes, 1985, p. 26). Yet the normative element is central to ¨ Marx’s thinking and the resolution of the paradox is to be found, according to Lukes, in the distinction between a bourgeois morality of law and a revolutionary morality of class emancipation. Marx is interested fundamentally in the moral education of the proletariat through the liberating process that accompanies revolution. It has been argued that in order to explain the motives of the socialist revolutionary, Marx needs such a theory of moral education that is, at the same time, his normative objective. In particular, it is said, ‘he needs an account of how vast numbers of working people acquire a commitment to make a revolution in their common interest’ (Miller, 1998, p. 377). Moreover, this must be powerful enough to break the economic, social and ideological grip of the capitalist system that he has analysed and exposed in such detail. The mode of production is the economic key, as it was for the emergence of capitalism. However, the development of capitalism itself creates a fresh social and psychological context, providing the proletariat with the opportunity...
Words: 3781 - Pages: 16
...Explain the Marxism theory (P1) Marxism is one of the theories that provide an understanding of how the organisation works and emphasises the structure of the society. The Marxism theory suggests how and why societies develop and change to become a stronger society as a whole. This perspective is a contradictory theory of the functionalist perspective the focuses on the conflict, class, division, power and ideology. This theory emphasises that individuals allow themselves to be exploited by their employers and is a scrutinizing system where ideas are based on the change of social changes in terms of economic factors. In order to further understand the theory of Marxism and how it explains society we can look at the theories and views of key theorists. Karl Marx is one of the key theorists and believed that society is in a ‘state of conflict between the rich and poor’. Marx presented the social classes that demonstrate the difference between the two extreme classes. He introduced the idea that society uses Capitalism which is a system to differentiate between the two classes by keeping the rich-rich and the poor-poor. Capitalism is an ‘economic system in which investment in an ownership of the means of productions, distribution and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations’. In simpler terms it is the economic system where the forces of productions such as factories are owned and ruled by a small minority group within the society...
Words: 921 - Pages: 4
...Marxist sociology is the study of sociology from a Marxist perspective. Marxism itself can be recognized as both a political and a sociological philosophy. Marxist sociology is a conflict theory associated with the objective of developing a positive science of capitalist society as part of the mobilization of a revolutionary working class. Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Marxist sociology emerged during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. As well as Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered key influences in early Marxist sociology. Marxist sociology generally explores the negative aspects of society such as poverty, homelessness and the class struggle, hence why it is called a ‘Conflict’. Fundamentally it categorises society into two groups; the many proletariats slaving away for the few Bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie own the means of production and therefore all the wealth in society and give a limited amount to the Proles in return for their labour in a process known as wage slavery. The means of production include but are not limited to: - Materials - Wealth or capital - Land - Technology - Power to employ - Access to skills and knowledge With these things, the bourgeoisie completely own society and everything belongs to them and thus there will never be any equality under this system as even the Bourgeoisie are sub-divided. In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: the functional capitalist, the...
Words: 424 - Pages: 2
...Introduction The concept of illness throughout our society can be closely associated with Marxism. According to a Marxist perspective, the social inequality that exists in society runs parallel with the various inequalities in the health system. With reference to the latter, exploitation of lower level assembly line workers or the proletariat working class can have a significant impact on workers’ health, particularly for the achievement of profit. Furthermore, in our contemporary society, medical professions have subjugated individuals illness’s within a capitalist society, disregarding health interests for the product of business. Additionally, Marxists analyses argue vigorously that class is a significant determinant of inequality with regard to illness and that the illness is implicated in a wider process of social oppression; determine by environmental factors, education and economic institutions into which one is born. All in all, from analysis of these topics there is no doubt that illness is very much a social phenomenon. Marxism and Workplace Illnesses The Marxist approach to health and illness relies heavily on the relationship they have with capitalism and class. Marx believed there were two essential classes in society; the capitalist class, who make up the minority of society, and the proletariat, also known as the working class who make up the majority. Vincent Navarro provides one of the most influential accounts of the centrality of social class and...
Words: 2323 - Pages: 10
...Marxism-Leninism is a political way to realize the ideology of Marxism. Leninism is a derivative of Marxism. Leninism follows the general principles of Marxism, but it show some differences between them when it comes to their ideologies. Moreover, Leninism was altered to better fit the Russia’s October Revolution and also suitable for the early 20th century. Marx only worked in theories, so it seems that the system was no real meaning since in his minds he already made perfect sense. According to Marxist analysis, as the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat, social unrest between the two antagonistic classes intensifies. Thence there will culminate in a social revolution to resolve this problem. Based upon a materialist interpretation of historical development, history moved on an inevitable path from hunter-gatherer to slavery, to feudalism to capitalism to imperialism to socialism and finally achieve communism. Marxism stated that each of these stages evolve into the next stage when they were fully mature and through a process which is class struggle. In Lenin opinion, Russia was imperialist and barely capitalist, Although it had only just shaken off feudalism, this stage could be telescoped or shortened to allow for a socialist revolution. Other major revision was that Marx claimed that the peasantry was always conservative and would support the existing regime. Lenin tried to put Marx's theories into practice. Leninism is a type of political system...
Words: 455 - Pages: 2
