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Lecture notes: an introduction to Marxism
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An introduction to Marxism and how Marxism is believed in the international system and how it affects how people apply those beliefs.
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MarxismWhat is Marxism
At the end of the 20th century the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the
apparent triumph of liberal capitalism appeared to herald the end of Marxism.
But many Marxists argue the Soviet Union was never a communist state.
Furthermore, Marx’s social theory appeared intact.
His analysis of capitalism remains arguably more relevant than when it was originally
written in the 19th century.
The cyclical world-wide economic collapses he predicted, with their traumatic human
consequences, are an inescapable element of capitalism.
The inequalities he envisaged are now worse than he could have imagined.
However, Marx’s dream in Das Capital and The Communist Manifesto of the overthrow of
capitalism, as it had once replaced feudalism, has not happened.
Marx sought to expose a hidden truth in world relations - that world politics was played out
in the arena of global capitalism.
The aim of global capitalism was to ensure that the powerful and wealthy prosper at the
expense of the poor and powerless.
In short, the prosperity of the few depends on the poverty of the many.
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery,
agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality at the opposite pole.”
The world has to be viewed in totality. There is no arbitrary division in terms of history,
philosophy.
A materialist conception of history : the process of historical change are re ections of
economic change.
The central dynamic is the con ict between means of production and relations of
production that form the economic base of society.
Class is a crucial dynamic.
As Marx and Engels wrote in the communist manifesto: “the history of all hitherto societies
is the history of class struggles.”
A struggle between the proletariat (the workers) and the bourgeoisie (the owners of the
means of production).
Marx believed that analysts and theorists should practice what they preach and not be
neutral observers.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is
to change it.”
The rst major development of Marx’s theories came with Lenin, in his 1917 pamphlet
Imperialism, the Highest state of capitalism.
Lenin argued that capitalism had entered a new phase - monopoly capitalism.
The world economy was composed of two tiers: the developed, dominant core and the less-
developed periphery.
Lenin’s approach was developed by such as the Latin America “dependency school.”
Immanuel Wallerstein argued there is an additional economic zone - the semi-periphery-
which has characteristics of both the periphery and core.
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