Q.4 What do you understand by Marxism? Elaborate.
Marxism, a body of doctrine
developed by Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent, by Friedrich Engels in the
mid-19th century. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a
philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and political
program. There is also Marxism as it has been understood and practiced by the
various socialist movements, particularly before 1914.
Marxism, Then there is
Soviet Marxism as worked out by Vladimir Ilich Lenin and modified by Joseph
Stalin, which under the name of Marxism-Leninism (see Leninism) became the
doctrine of the communist parties set up after the Russian Revolution (1917). Marxism,
Offshoots of this included Marxism as interpreted by the anti-Stalinist Leon
Trotsky and his followers, Mao Zedong’s Chinese variant of Marxism-Leninism,
and various Marxisms in the developing world.
Marxism, There were also the
post-World War II nondogmatic Marxisms that have modified Marx’s thought with
borrowings from modern philosophies, principally from those of Edmund Husserl
and Martin Heidegger but also from Sigmund Freud and others. The written work
of Marx cannot be reduced to a philosophy, much less to a philosophical system.
Marxism, The whole of his
work is a radical critique of philosophy, especially of G.W.F. Hegel’s idealist
system and of the philosophies of the left and right post-Hegelians. It is not,
however, a mere denial of those philosophies. Marx declared that philosophy
must become reality. One could no longer be content with interpreting the
world; one must be concerned with transforming it, which meant transforming
both the world itself and human consciousness of it.
