Marxism: A Political Ideology and Its Impact on Society

Running head: MARXISM
MARXISM
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Introduction:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the political ideology of Marxism that had
originated after the first industrial revolution. The socialist theory based of Marxism has
guided the national leaders of the Soviet Union, China and some of the countries of southern
America but those have led to develop totalitarian regime. Some of these countries were
powerful in some point of time and some of them are dominating the business, economy and
technology of the world at present. This relevance of the present world politics the discussion
of Marxism is essential. This is an ideology that views the class relations and the social
conflict through the materialistic interpretation of the historical development. This ideology
as taken dialectical view of the social transformation. The ideology of Marxism has
originated from the works of the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This
paper will be discussing the history or reason of origin of this particular theory, its dominant
values, how it defines justice, how it envisage the relationships between the individual and
broader social groups and how the ideology help the communities of New England to ensure
their rights through social policies. This paper will be concluded with the comparison of this
ideology with two other ideologies of Classical liberalism and Neoliberalism.
Historical and contextual factors and issues:
Marxism has its origin from the struggles of the working class as a form of their self-
emancipation. The gradual changes in the society based on the economic changes after the
industrial revolution, led the theorists to find out the ways which cam mitigate the problem of
economic gap among the people of society. By the means of possessions, the society of
Europe was divided into two halves. One who had and another who did not. This led to
initiate struggle between these two classes and exploitation of the working proletariat. The
main theme of this ideology is the straggle between the two class and perfect distribution of

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property among people (Kotz, 2017). This ideology stands for the destruction of the
capitalist state by the organised working class who are constantly dominated by the
Bourgeoisie, their ideology and institutions. The ideology or philosophy of Marxism actually
faces all forms of reformism and gradualism and evolutionary socialism. This political and
social ideology shares an uncompromising hostility to all types and forms of domination like
racism, sexism with the other progressive social movements though it originated to capture
the class struggle only. The ideology originates from the struggle to overcome the manifold
forms of exploitation and domination and through self-emancipation of the working class.
The theorists Marx and Engels had given the idea of classless society on the basis of Marxism
which ultimately led to socialism and adopted by different countries.
The key thinkers:
The two thinkers of Marxism are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who were frustrated
with the lack of seriousness of any theories to mitigate the problem of alienation and
exploitation of the working class by the bourgeois. Karl Marx was a German political
economist, philosopher and a socialist revolutionary who directly opposed the ideology of the
capitalism and addressed the matters of exploitation of the working class. On the other hand
the other theorist Friedrich Engels was another German political philosopher. He was the co-
author of The Communist Manifesto, the bible of Marxists around the world (Fernandez,
2018). Both of these idealists had same views of socialism and philosophy. This is the reason
why they together developed the Marxism theory. Both these philosophers were not getting
the freedom of speech in France hence they moved to Belgium and established the
communist correspondence committee. In the year 1847, these duo started to write The
Communist Manifesto based on the Engels’ The Principles of Communism. This book later
became the reason of two most important revolution in the world like the Russian Revolution

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in the Soviet Union and the Chinese Revolution. However these all led to develop the
totalitarian regimes afterwards.
Dominant values of the ideology:
The ideology of Marxism is mainly based on the two factors namely dialectical
materialism and historical materialism. The dialectical materialism has summed up the
achievements of the Soviet Communities. This idea reveals that the historical and political
events actually result from the conflicts of the social forces as well as are interpretable as the
series of the contradictions and their solutions. The material needs are the main reason of the
conflict. According to the key thinkers materialism means that the material world is
perceptible to the sense. This is why materialism has objective reality independent of mind as
well as spirit. These thinker did not deny the spiritual process but affirmed the ideas can be
raised as the products as well as reflections of the material conditions. Idealism is opposite to
materialism therefore the view of the materialists and the idealists are irreconcilably opposed
through the historical development of philosophy.
The concept of dialect refers to the works of Hegel this conception, opposes
metaphysical mode of thoughts that views the things in the abstraction by itself as if they are
endowed with the fixed properties. On the contrary, the concept of dialect according to Marx
and Engels the change is the inherent thing in the nature of the human society and the
material world. To them all the types of knowledge have been derived from the senses
(Cottrell, 2019). These stress the expansion of the dialectical human knowledge through
socially assimilated course of practical activities. The persons therefore gain external
knowledge through practical connections with these things to frame the ideas correspondent
to the practices. The social practice to Marxism along gives the test of the correspondences of
the ideas with the reality of truth. This theory of marxist knowledge therefore is opposite to