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Marxism, Pros vs Cons - Coggle Diagram
Marxism
Social analysis
Class analysis
Marxism divides all people within industrial society into two classes based on their relation to the means of production: the bourgeois and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie being the owner of the means of production, and the proletariat being the employees of the bourgeois and the operator of the means of production. In marxian class analysis it is prescripted that the bourgeois steal the surplus labour value from the proletariat through wages.
Historical analysis
Marxism utilizes a method of historical analysis called historical materialism, which theorizes that the historical development of societies and their actions are the result of class conflict and the dialectic that ensues between classes. This is political as how a political society conceptualizes the events of the past effect how they will respond to those events in the future greatly.
Religious analysis
Marxists generally reject the concept of religiosity. Seeing it as a means of control by the bourgeois. As Marx himself described "Religion is the opium of the people". Marxists believe religion is used to control the populace through turning themselves against each other and through complacency.
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The state
Marxism calls for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" to be established and for the proletariat to wield the state to establish socialism. Marx theorized that eventually the state by itself would wither away after achieving socialism.
Revolution vs reform
Many people try to claim that Marx was ardently pro revolution and anti reform, but he had a much more nuanced view on revolution and reformism than this. According to the international socialsit review "In his March 1850 'Address to the Communist League,' Marx recommended that in the future course of the revolution, the workers’ party ‘march with the petty-bourgeois democrats against the faction which it aims at overthrowing,' but that it oppose 'them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests'". Marx was not necessarily anti reform, but he was also very pro revolutionary simultaneously.
Pros vs Cons
Cons
Dictatorship of the proletariat can devolve into a "degenerated state" or a bureaucratic state capitalist government.
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Class analysis may be reductive of outside factors such as race, gender etc.
Pros
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The most utilitarian branch of socialist thought due to the usage of the state to its advantage rather than disempowering it
Leaving the specific goals up to interpretation helps its worldwide utilization and adaption to a country's specific material condition