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Marxism is an economic and socio-political worldview that contains within it a political ideology for how to change and improve society by implementing socialism. Originally developed in the early to mid nineteenth century by two German émigrés living in Britain, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marxism is based upon a materialist interpretation of history. Taking the idea that social change occurs because of the struggle between different classes within society who are constantly competing to improve their conditions, theMarxist analysis leads to the conclusion that capitalism, the currently dominant form of economic management, leads to the oppression of the proletariat, who not only make up the majority of the world's populace but who also spend their lives working for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, or the wealthy ruling class in society.
To correct this inequality between the bourgeoisie, who are the wealthy minority, and the proletariat, who are the poorer majority, Marxism advocates, and believes in the historical inevitability of, a proletarian revolution, when the proletariat take control of government, and then implement reforms to benefit their class, namely the confiscation ofprivate property which is then taken under state control and run for the benefit of the people rather than for the interests of private profit. Such a system is socialism, although Marxists believe that eventually a socialist society would develop into an entirely classless system, which is known as communism in Marxist thought.
A Marxist understanding of history and of society has been adopted by academics studying in a wide range of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology,[1] media studies,[2] political science, theater, history, sociological theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, andphilosophy.[3]
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Marxist governments have taken power in a variety of nations across the world, and implemented socialist reforms. The first, and most powerful Marxist-run nation state was the Soviet Union, founded in 1922 following the Russian revolution of 1917. Several of its leaders, most notably Vladimir Lenin,Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin were also important Marxist theoreticians, formulating the theoretical trends of Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism respectively. The other prominent Marxist power of the twentieth century was the People's Republic of China, instituted in 1949 following the Chinese Civil War, and its first leader, Mao Zedong, was also a noted theoretician, developing Maoism. Today, a number of nations continue to be run by Marxist leaders, including Cuba, North Korea, Nepal, large parts of India, and debatably Venezuela.
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