Marxism

  1. Early Marxism (up to 1848)

  2. Marxist Theory: Economic, Social and Political  

Issues for Discussion
  1. What were Marx’s views on the following:

  • human nature

  • the economy and society

  • class

  • historical development

  • revolution

  • communism?

  1.  How did Marx seek to actively promote his views in a practical way?

 

Reading:

Secondary -

Albert Lindemann, A History of European Socialism, pp87-99, 109-120

Lenin, Biography of Marx

Information sheet on the First International

A very basic guide to Marx's ideas on history and class

A diagram of the Base-Superstructure model of historical materialism

Primary -

Friedrich Engels,  Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) [There is also a hard copy on reserve in the Library]

Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders (eds), Socialist Thought. A Documentary History

  • Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”, pp292-294

  • Karl Marx, Letter to J Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852, p295

  • Karl Marx, “A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy”, pp296-298 or online here

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

Friedrich Engels, Eulogy on the Death of Marx (1883)

Internet Links -

Encyclopaedia of Marxism

 

Questions on your reading:

You must all read Friedrich Engels,  Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.  Scholars argue that Engels provided a vulgarised version of Marx's thought but it is valuable to us as a relatively straightforward introduction to Marx's principal ideas and because it was the major means by which Marx's ideas were popularised and understood at the time.  Answer the following questions methodically:

  1. What does Engels see as the major contribution of the Enlightenment to the subsequent development of socialism?   And its major shortcoming?

  2. What does Engels see as the limitations of Utopian Socialist thinking and how does he explain them?

  3. What does Dialectics mean?

  4. What was Hegel’s contribution to philosophical understanding, according to Engels?

  5. And what was the great weakness of Hegel’s approach?

  6. What historical circumstances challenged Hegel’s approach?

According to Engels, Marx made two great contributions to socialist theory and, in so doing, created "Scientific Socialism" - historical materialism and the theory of surplus value.  Read both Engels and Marx's Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy to answer the following question:

  1. What did Marx mean by the materialist conception of history?

  2. What did Marx mean by surplus value?

  3. Marx argues that capitalism will collapse inevitably as a result of its internal contradictions.  What are these according to Engels?

  4. How, according to Engels are these contradictions solved?

  5. How does the role of the state alter and diminish after the proletarian revolution, according to Engels?

  6. What does Engels mean when he states that socialism “ is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”.

Friedrich Engels, Eulogy on the Death of Marx

  1. Why was Marx's theory (or the popular understanding of it) so appealing to many socialists? 

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