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Marxism: World
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Marxism is not just politics and economics. Marxism is ... a world view, a way of looking at and explaining the world. As such, it encompasses philosophy and religion, while paradoxically and vigorously asserting its atheism and contempt for philosophy. The Encyclopedia Britannica points out this quasi-religious nature of Marxism:
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It is impossible to describe the development of bourgeois ideology after world war two without including Marxism as a component part, as its influence is everywhere. None of today’s philosophers of “post-modernism”, “post-structuralism”, “post-colonialism” and so on can be understood without the component of Marxism within their thinking... hostile they may be to communism and however remote from the workers movement.
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Despite a century of debate and criticism, Marxism as a mass ideological practice has remained an elusive topic. This book examines Marxist socialism as a mode of understanding and self-understanding treasured and transmitted by thousands of anonymous militants. It focuses upon the Parti Ouvrier Français, the ‘Guesdists’, an archetypal movement of Marxism’s ‘Golden Age’ before the First World War, the period when Marxist socialism evolved from sect to mass movement. Thousands of French socialists adopted Marxism due to the effectiveness of vulgar Guesdist polemic rather than Marx’s profound theoretical works, and entire communities were converted to an austere but messianic socialism which still affects French politics today. This book traces the doctrine’s birth through conflict with liberals, proto-fascists, and anarchists; its ‘making’ of a working class, and its attempted seduction of the middle class; and its confusion before the alternative social visions of the Catholic devout, racist nationalists, and feminists.
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Theoretically, Marxism is an adherence to at least some of the central ideas of Marx. These will typically include perceiving the social world in terms of categories of class as defined by relationships to economic and productive processes, belief in the development of society beyond the capitalist phase towards a revolution of the proletariat, in economics the labour theory of value, and above all rejection of the exploitation inherent in private control of productive processes. Practically, Marxism is a commitment to the exploited and oppressed classes, and to the revolution that should better their position.
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Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the intellectual basis for their politics and policies, which can be dramatically different and conflicting. One of the first major splits occurred between the advocates of social democracy, who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within a democratic framework, and communists, who argued that the transition to a socialist society required a revolution. Social democracy resulted in the formation of the British Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, while communism resulted in the formation of various communist parties.
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Changes in Marxist attitudes toward religion and the view taken of Marxism's own historical role have influenced Marxist theorizing as well as the quasi-religious uses made of Marxian doctrine. The topic of Marxism and religion can involve either an analysis of Marxian theories of religion or a study of Marxism as a functional equivalent of religion. The two are difficult to disentangle. Moreover, although Marxists have often distinguished between the oppressive role of established churches and the emancipatory possibilities of religious movements, they have historically linked their own worldview to both.
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