3.3 What Is Marxism?
Marxism is a political, economic, and social theory based on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
At its core, Marxism argues that society is shaped by the way people produce and distribute the things they need to survive. Food, housing, tools, factories, land, technology, wages, and labor are not just economic details. For Marxists, they are central to understanding power.
Marxism does not only ask, “Who governs?” It also asks, “Who owns?” “Who works?” “Who profits?” and “Who has power because of the economic system?”
This makes Marxism a structural theory of power. It does not focus only on individual leaders, elections, laws, or personal choices. Instead, it looks at the deeper structures underneath society, especially class, ownership, labor, production, and economic control.
Two of the most important works associated with Marxism are The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in 1848, was a short and forceful political pamphlet calling for revolutionary change. Das Kapital, Marx’s later and much longer economic work, analyzed capitalism in greater detail, including labor, commodities, profit, exploitation, and the organization of production.
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For Marx, the most important division in capitalist society was between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie are the capitalist class who own the means of production, such as factories, land, machines, businesses, and capital. The proletariat are the working class who do not own the means of production and must sell their labor in order to survive.
Marx believed this relationship created exploitation. Workers produce goods and services, but owners receive the profit. Marx argued that profit comes from the difference between what workers are paid and the total value their labor creates. He called this difference surplus value.
This is one reason Marxism is so critical of capitalism. Marx did not simply think capitalism was unfair because some people were richer than others. He believed capitalism was built on a power imbalance between those who owned productive property and those who had to work for wages.
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Marx also believed that this economic power shaped politics. Marxists often argue that the state is not neutral. In this view, government, law, police, courts, and other institutions often protect the property rights and economic interests of the ruling class. This does not mean every government action is personally controlled by wealthy individuals, but it does mean Marxists see the state as part of a larger structure that tends to preserve existing class power.
This connects to an important Marxist idea sometimes described through the base and superstructure metaphor.
The base refers to the economic foundation of society: labor, production, property, class relations, and ownership. The superstructure refers to the institutions and ideas built on top of that foundation, including law, politics, religion, education, media, culture, and government.
Marxists argue that the economic base strongly shapes the superstructure. In simpler terms, the way a society organizes work, wealth, and ownership influences the way that society organizes law, politics, culture, and ideas. Later Marxists have debated how direct or flexible this relationship is, but the basic point remains important: for Marxism, economics is never just economics. It shapes the rest of social life.
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Marx also believed that history is shaped by class struggle. In his view, different historical periods are defined by conflicts between groups with different economic interests. In ancient societies, there were masters and slaves. In feudal societies, there were lords and serfs. In capitalist societies, there are capitalists and workers.
This does not mean Marx thought every single event in history was only about economics. But he believed economic relationships formed the foundation of society and strongly shaped politics, law, culture, and conflict.
Marxism also argues that capitalism creates alienation. Workers may feel disconnected from the products they make, from the process of work, from other people, and even from their own sense of purpose. Instead of work feeling meaningful and creative, it can become repetitive, exhausting, and controlled by someone else’s profit motive.
Because of these problems, Marx believed capitalism would eventually face deep internal conflicts. He thought workers would become more aware of their shared situation, organize against the capitalist class, and push for a new economic system.
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This is where socialism and communism enter Marxist thought.
In basic terms, socialism refers to an economic system where the means of production are socially or collectively owned rather than privately controlled by capitalists. Marx saw socialism as a transitional stage, sometimes connected to the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” where the working class would hold political power and reorganize society.
Communism, in Marx’s ultimate vision, was a future classless society where exploitation would disappear, productive resources would be held in common, and the state would eventually “wither away” because class divisions no longer existed.
However, this is where Marxism becomes especially controversial.
Marx’s ideas inspired labor movements, socialist parties, anti-capitalist theories, and campaigns for worker rights. But they also inspired revolutionary movements and communist governments that created one-party states, political repression, censorship, forced labor, mass violence, and economic disaster. Critics often blame twentieth-century communist regimes for tens of millions of deaths, with some estimates reaching around 100 million.
For that reason, Marxism must be studied carefully. It should not be romanticized as merely a theory of justice, and it should not be dismissed without understanding why it became so influential. Marx identified real problems in capitalism, including inequality, exploitation, alienation, and the concentration of economic power. But many governments that claimed Marxist inspiration created severe oppression of their own.
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So, what is Marxism?
Marxism is a theory that argues that economic structures shape political and social life, that class conflict drives history, and that capitalism is built on a conflict between owners and workers.
While Marxism includes many ideas, four of its most important foundations are:
- Historical materialism — the idea that material and economic conditions shape history.
- Dialectical materialism — the idea that history develops through conflict, contradiction, and change.
- Surplus value — the idea that capitalist profit comes from workers producing more value than they receive in wages.
- Class struggle — the idea that conflict between economic classes drives major social and political change.
Whether one agrees with Marxism or not, it remains one of the most important theories for understanding modern politics because it asks a question that never stopped mattering:
Who controls the economy, and how does that control shape society?
In section 3.4, we will look more closely at one of the most important building blocks of Marxist theory: the mode of production. To understand Marx’s view of history, class struggle, capitalism, socialism, and communism, we first need to understand what he believed every society is built on: the way people produce what they need to survive.