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Marxism: Karl Marx
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Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the [P]raxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels may be called Marxism; this includes different forms of politics and thought such as those of Communist Parties and Communist states, as well as academic research across many fields. And while there are many theoretical and practical differences among the various forms of Marxism, most forms of Marxism share:
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The one undoubted benefit arising from the economically determinist nature of this systematization was a political one; namely, the fusing within social-democratic thought of Marxism's revolutionary ideas with an acceptance of so-called bourgeois democracy. (Nothing could prevent the replacement of capitalism by socialism so there was no need to challenge the fundamental rules of the democratic system.) The person most often credited with this accomplishment was the SPD's leader Karl Kautsky. Almost as soon as Kautsky's ‘orthodox Marxism’ became the dominant current within his party, it was challenged from both the right (by Eduard Bernstein's revisionism), and the left (by Rosa Luxemburg's spontaneism). Bernstein criticized the retention of Marxism's revolutionism, whilst Luxemburg was opposed to the acceptance of parliamentarianism. Luxemburg's ideas briefly challenged the dominance of those of the orthodoxy, during the course of the ill-fated Spartacist Uprising of 1918, which took place in Berlin. But Bernstein's ideas eventually triumphed over the orthodoxy at the SPD's 1959 Bad Godesburg conference.
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Marxism, which provides remarkable evidence of the power of dominant key ideas to inspire and direct man, is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges to traditional religious belief. Based on the socio-economic philosophical thought of the 19th-century thinker Karl Marx, Marxism can be said to be a quasi-religion on two counts.
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There is no set of principles and beliefs which can be set out once and for all and stamped with the name of “Marxism”. Marxism is a movement, and as such can only be understood through a critical examination of its history. While this movement bears the name of its founder, Karl Marx, Marxism is not a movement of followers, but it is ... a movement which is integrally concerned with an interconnected body of theoretical and political writing which traces its origins back to Marx.
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Karl Marx