The Marxist tradition of political theory: a critical discussion and its relevance

Introduction

The Marxist tradition is one of the four traditions of Unit III of the syllabus. It starts from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, includes their followers, and is called a living philosophy to which later thinkers continue to contribute. The question asks for a critical discussion and a view on its present relevance.

Marx's method: dialectical and historical materialism

Marxism is the body of ideas that centres on Karl Marx and includes Engels and their followers; Marx called his own socialism scientific because it explains the causes of exploitation through a method and offers a mechanism of change, in contrast to the utopian socialists (Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon) whose diagnosis was right but whose remedy was impracticable.

Dialectical materialism is the method. From Hegel Marx took dialectics, the movement of thought by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, in which contradictions drive development until they are resolved. But he turned Hegel the right way up: matter and not the idea is primary, and social existence determines consciousness. The economic base, made up of the forces of production, which change as technology develops, and the relations of production, forms the mode of production; society, polity, religion, morals and values are a superstructure shaped by it.

Historical materialism applies the method to history. As technology develops, forces of production outgrow the relations of production, and the contradiction is resolved by revolution. History therefore passes through primitive communism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. In each class society a property-owning class exploits a propertyless class, and the state is created to protect the interest of the former.

Class struggle and revolution

For Marx the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Except in primitive communism, every epoch has been marked by the antagonism between a dominant class that owns the means of production and a dependent class that carries out production but sees its product taken away, with just enough returned for survival: master and slave, feudal lord and peasant, bourgeoisie and proletariat. Because the interests of the contending classes are irreconcilable, the contradiction is resolved only by the annihilation of the exploiting class.

Class struggle is long and imperceptible; revolution is short, swift and violent, and it is what delivers each new social order. Each epoch-making change has been brought about by a revolution: the feudal revolution ended slavery, the bourgeois revolution ended feudalism, and the proletarian revolution will end capitalism. It occurs when the forces of production have matured and no longer fit the relations of production; no stage can be skipped.

Where the exploitation comes from: surplus value. Marx named the theory of surplus value among the basic principles of his system and used it to explain exploitation under capitalism. He accepted the labour theory of value of the classical economists, in which a commodity is worth the labour spent on producing it; labour is itself bought and sold, yet it is the factor that makes land, capital and organisation productive. A worker creates more value than the wage needed to keep him going, and the capitalist keeps the gap as profit; that gap is surplus value. Classical economists defended this profit as the source of capital for new investment, while Marxists treat it as exploitation that must end. As competition drives wages down towards bare subsistence, the condition of the workers worsens, class struggle sharpens and the way to revolution opens.

State, dictatorship of the proletariat and communism

The state, in Marx's view, is a class instrument and a coercive institution created by the dominant class to suppress the dependent one, and it protects the interests of its creator. After the proletarian revolution, the proletariat takes over the state apparatus and uses it against the bourgeoisie, who would try a counter-revolution; this dictatorship of the proletariat is the first state in history under the control of the majority. It is a transitional stage, which blossoms into communism: a classless, stateless, propertyless and exploitation-free society, with community ownership of the means of production, production for need and not profit, and the principle, which the unit credits to Louis Blanc, of from each according to capacity, to each according to need. The state does not have to be smashed, it withers away because no class remains to be suppressed. Evolutionary socialists also draw on Marx and Engels: they took up the idea of the withering away of the state and read it as a promise that a classless society can be reached gradually and peacefully. Their critics reply that only the socialist state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, withers away, while the capitalist state has to be overthrown by a violent revolution.

Marx's theory of freedom completes the picture: freedom lies in knowing the laws that govern production and making them work for human ends, and a socialist revolution lets humanity leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

Critical appraisal and relevance of Marxism

Criticisms. (1) Class division is oversimplified into two classes; a large middle class exists, has grown and has not merged with the proletariat, the capitalist base has broadened and capital has dispersed, and the condition of workers has not deteriorated as predicted. (2) Capitalism has not collapsed; it adapts and survives, while it is the socialist systems that have fallen. (3) Revolutions occurred in backward feudal societies (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba), not in mature capitalism, which led to the Menshevik-Bolshevik dispute and Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. (4) Economic determinism is too narrow: the superstructure also shapes the economy, as Gramsci accepted. (5) The state did not wither away; under Stalin and Mao it became all-powerful. (6) After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history and the triumph of capitalism.

Relevance. Against this, Marxism remains valuable in two ways: as a tool of social analysis and as the philosophy of the exploited and the oppressed. The systems that collapsed were Leninist-Stalinist variants, not classical Marxism. As long as exploitation persists, it will remain relevant, and it acts as a check on the excesses of liberalism and capitalism. Later Marxists (Lenin, Gramsci, Lukacs, Althusser and others) enriched it, and its influence on feminism and post-Marxism shows continuing life.

Conclusion

Marxism is both a theory of how societies change and a moral protest against exploitation. Its predictions failed in important ways, and the states that bore its name were harsh. Nonetheless, as a method of analysis and as a standing challenge to liberalism, it remains relevant while inequality and exploitation persist.