The Pros and Cons of Marxism

The ideology of Marxism, established by German philosopher Karl Marx, is a collectively known set of assumptions of a political ideology, which focuses especially on analysis of materialist interpretation of historical development, or on class struggle within the society. The primarily approach of Marxism, nonetheless, was the critique of capitalism. The strength of his inquiry lies in belief of inevitable shift from capitalism and he aims to advocate the new form of ideology and economy, the socialism. The title of this essay is provocative as in today´s world, there exist many proponents who claim, the core of Marx conception of ideology is still relevant in the 21st globalised world. However, Marxism is relevant to the extent to which is it important to examine every political and economic conception, moreover if we are able to perceive its outcomes after the concepts has been practically applied. This paper is intended to assess key ideas of Marxism with observations of positives and negatives it brought and the reasons why the concepts failed.

The word “communism” is generally linked with “Marxism”. Since Marx along with Friedrich Engels published the cutting-edge thesis, The Communist Manifesto in the middle of the 19th century, it conceived the new dimension for both politics and economics. Before turning to the principles of the Manifesto, it is useful to present the brief historical background of the era, and understand why it affected the ideology. Predominantly the Industrial Revolution (IR) and the Great Revolution in France (FR) transformed the society as follows; creation of conditions for capitalism by destroying feudalism. Period between 1820 -1840 marks the beginning of the IR, which altered the whole meantime s...

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...h”, as it was envisaged and promised by all the communist leaders devoted to Marx thesis, was hardly to achieve - the countries were closed, without any personal liberty and economic competition within the countries and among countries as well. Considering the countries where these principles were implicated did not let to what Marx expected, but to the collapse. In reality it formed unsustainable situation - all Eastern Block was defeated. What other evidence would today´s admirers of Marx need?

Works Cited

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/sw/course/mscp.pdf. (n.d.).

http://www.workers.org/articles/2013/06/13/marxism-and-the-social-character-of-china/. (n.d.).

http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4214:marxism-and-the-french-revolution&Itemid=506.

Marsh, David, and Gerry Stoker. Theory and Methods in Political Science.