Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Marxism - Coggle Diagram
Marxism
Capitalism
The proletariat are largely free but do not own any means of production so have to sell their labour power in return for wages. However, they are only paid enough to meet their very basic needs.
Competition between capitalists mean the ownership of the means of production becomes concentrated, it also forces capitalists to pay their lowest wages possible causing immiseration.
-
Capitalism continually expands the forces of production in pursuit of profit, producing class polarisation, society divides into a minority capitalist class and a majority working class.
Historical materialism
Marx argues that the means of productions are controlled by the bourgeoisies, they therefore needed the proletariat to work for them to supply them with manpower to produce goods.
The proletariat were exploited and paid low wages. As the bourgeoisies had control over the means of production, the proletariat could not produce goods for themselves. The only way the proletariat could afford goods was to resell their labour.
-
-
Since Marx's death in 1883, the absence of revolutions in the west has led to many Marxists rejecting the economic determinism of the base-superstructures model. There is two main alternative approach's: Humanistic and Scientific Marxism's.
Humanistic: Antonio Gramsci, Marxism is a political critique of capitalism, humans have free will and socialism will come about when people become conscious of the need to overthrow capitalism.
Scientific: Louis Althusser, Marxism as a science, individuals are passive victims of ideology, socialism will come about only when the contradictions of capitalism bring about the systems inevitable collapse.
Alienation
Where people feel separated from the results of their work and therefore separated from their true nature.
Class Consciousness
By polarising the classes, brining the proletariat together and reducing their wages, capitalism creates the conditions for the working class to develop a consciousness of their own interests. Consequently, the proletariat moves from being a class in itself to being a class for itself.
Ideology
Mental production is the production of ideas. The institutions that produce and spread ideas, all serve the dominant class by producing ideologies. Ideology fosters a false consciousness in the subordinate class and sustains class inequality.
The state, revolution and communism
Marx defines the state as 'armed bodies of men', the state exists to protect the interests of the class of owners who control it. Marx strongly believed that their would be a revolution against the ruling bourgeoisies ending in an ultimate victory of the proletariat. (Hypothesis)
Criticisms of Marx
Marx has a simplistic, one-dimensional view of inequality, he sees class as the only important division. Weber argues that status and power difference can also be important sources of inequality, independent from class. Marx's two-class model is also simplistic and class polarisation has not occurred (neither has a revolution). Marx's base-superstructure model is also criticised for economic determinism as it states that economic factors are the sole cause of everything in society.