Marxist communism

Marxist Communism

Marxism

Main article: Marxism

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Marxism, first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, has been the foremost ideology of the communist movement. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism; rather than model an "ideal society" based on intellectuals' design, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of society and history, through an analysis based in real life. Marxism does not see communism as a "state of affairs" to be established, but rather as the expression of a real movement, with parameters which are derived completely from real life and not based on any intelligent design.^[40] Marxism, therefore, does no blueprinting of a communist society; it only makes an analysis which concludes what will trigger its implementation, and discovers its fundamental characteristics based on the derivation of real life conditions.
At the root of Marxism is the materialist conception of history, known as historical materialism for short. It holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production, and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into a new mode of production: capitalism. Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments utilized in production. But because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless, and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor, working through making use of someone else's machinery, and therefore making someone else profit. Thus with capitalism, the world was divided between two major classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.^[41] These classes are directly antagonistic: the bourgeoisie has private ownership of the means of production and earns a profit off surplus value, which is generated by the proletariat, which has no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.
Historical materialism goes on and says: the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism, through the furtherance of its own material interests, captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privileges, and with this took out of existence the feudal ruling class. This was another of the keys behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, which is the final expression of class and property relations, and also has led into a massive expansion of production. It is, therefore, only in capitalism that bourgeois property in itself can be abolished.^[42] The proletariat, similarly, will capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the implementation of the community of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, and ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself, and ushering the world into a new mode of production: communism. In between capitalism and communism there is the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratic state characterized by the existence of organs of class rule, where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage;^[43] it is the defeat of the bourgeois state, but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production.
An important concept in Marxism is socialization vs. nationalization. Nationalization is merely state ownership of property, whereas socialization is actual control and management by society of property. Marxism considers socialization its goal, and considers nationalization a tactical issue, with state ownership still being in the realm of the capitalist mode of production. In the words of Engels: "the transformation [...] into State-ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. [...] State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution".^[44] This has led some Marxist currents to label states such as the Soviet Union, based on nationalization, as state capitalist.