Hamdard Institute of Legal Studies and Research

MARXIST REGIME

From the mirror of modern realities.

Bushra Mohammad
12-25-2020
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 2

Understanding Marxism 3
From the mirror of Modern Realities 4
Conclusion 5

References 6
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INTRODUCTION
Marxism is a body of doctrine developed by Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent by Freidrich
Engels in the mid-19th century. It was originally comprised of the related ideas:

 A Philosophical Anthropology.
 A theory of History.
 An economic and political program.

Marxism has been understood and practiced by the various socialist movements,
particularly before 1914. Then there is soviet Marxism as proposed by Vladimir Ilich Lenin
and modified by Joseph Stalin, which under the name of Marxism-Leninism became the
doctrine of the communist parties set up after the Russian Revolution (1917). Ramifications
of this included Marxism as interpreted by the anti-Stalinist Leon Trotsky and his followers,
Mao Zedong’s Chinese variant of Marxism-Leninism, and various Marxims in the developing
worlds. There were also the post-World War II nondogmatic Marxisms that had modified
Marx’s with borrowings from modern philosophies, principally from those of Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger but also from Sigmund Freud and others.

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy which scrutinizes the effect of
capitalism on labour, productivity, and economic development and declares for a working-
class revolution to overturn the regime of capitalism in favour of communism. Marxism
presumes that the struggle between social classes, specifically between the bourgeoisie, or
capitalists and the proletariat, or workers, defines economic relations in a capitalist
economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism.

The attempts to refute Marxism have never stopped. They especially intensified after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and the entire socialist community. The situation of the
communist today, to put it mildly is unenviable. Their electorate, which has been
considerably thinned and significantly aged, does not encourage them to take part in the
campaign. The voice of the Communists is nearly inaudible in the domain of political
struggle in Europe, Asia, America and even Russia. Not only are they in ideological and
political defence, but more significant is that they are in theoretical defence. There is a
dogmatization and schematization of the socio-philosophical embodiments of Marxism.
With increasing critique of capitalism, the issue emerges as to which regime is to be adopted
after the collapse of capitalism. Marxism is the solution. We must begin to observe its
potential in the mirror of modern realities.

UNDERSTANDING MARXISM
Marxism is both a social and a political ideology that incorporates Marxist class struggle
theory and Marxist economics. Marxism was first publicly introduced in the 1848
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publication, The Communist Manifesto, by Marx And Engels, which outlines the philosophy
of class struggle and revolution. Marxists economy centres around the critique of capitalism
brought out by Karl Marx in his 1859 book, Das Kapital. Marx's class theory depicts
capitalism as a step in the historical evolution of economic institutions that adopt one
another in a natural sequence determined by the large individualistic forces of history that
play a part in the action and conflict between social groups.

According to Marx, every society is divided among a number of social classes whose
members have more in common than that of other social classes. In the capitalist system,
Marx noted that the society consisted of two classes, the bourgeoisie or the businesspeople
who owned the means of production, and the proletariat or laborers whose labour
converted raw materials into useful economic products. The ownership of the means of
production by the bourgeoisie gives them power over the proletariat, which enables them
to restrict the capacity of the workers to produce and to receive resources they require to
thrive.

Marx believed that capitalism was centred around goods that were bought and sold. In
Marx's view, labour is a form of commodity. However, since ordinary working people do not
own the means of production, such as plants, buildings, and resources, they have little
influence in the capitalist economy. Jobs can also quickly be displaced in times of economic
uncertainty, further devaluing their potential value.

In order to increase income, business owners have an urge to get the most work done by
their employees while paying them the minimum available incomes. They also own the
finished product, which is the product of the labour of the workers, and eventually profits
from its surplus value, which is the difference between the cost of making the commodity
and the price at which it is finally sold.

To preserve their position of power and privilege, the bourgeoisie utilize social institutions
as instruments and weapons against the proletariat. The government enforces the will of
the bourgeoisie by physical coercion to enforce the laws and private property rights to the
means of production. The media and intellectuals, or the intellectual elite, are cultivating
propaganda to weaken the consciousness of class relations between the proletariat and to
rationalize the capitalist system.

Organized religion seems to have a similar purpose to persuade the proletariat to embrace
and consent to one's own exploitation on the basis of imaginary divine sanction, which Marx
called "the opium of the people." The banking and financial model facilitates the
development of capitalist control over the means of production, entangles the workers in
predatory debt and creates frequent financial crises and recessions to ensure an abundant
supply of unemployed labour to suppress workers' bargaining power.

Marx believed that capitalism creates an unfair divide between the capitalists and the
workers whose labour they use for their own profit. This exploitation, in turn, causes
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employees to see their jobs as nothing more than a means of survival. Since the worker has
little personal interest in the process of production, Marx claimed that he would be
excluded from it and bitter of the business owner and his own humanity.

In Marx's view, economic factors and connections between the social classes are intricately
linked. The underlying differences and exploitative economic relations between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie will inevitably contribute to a revolution in which capitalism
will be dismantled. While workers are focused on basic survival, capitalist business owners
are concerned with gaining more and more wealth. According to Marx, this economic
polarisation produces social problems that will ultimately be resolved by the social and
economic revolution.

Thus, he thought that the capitalist system inevitably contained the seeds of its own
collapse, because the exploitation and oppression of the proletariat, which are central to
global capitalism, will eventually lead the working class to revolt against the bourgeoisie and
claim ownership of the means of production. This revolution would be led by enlightened
revolutionaries, known as the frontline of the proletariat, who would understand the social
structure of the society and who would unite the working class by raising awareness and
class consciousness. As a result of the revolution, Marx assumed that, under communism or
socialism, private ownership of the means of production would be replaced by collective
ownership.

FROM THE MIRROR OF MODERN REALITIES

Marxism is not the overactive imagination of its author, however the ideal reflection of
material reality. An examination of contemporary bourgeois social relations, based on the
highest achievements of human thought in explaining the path of human reform in the
person of classical German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism, has
enabled Marx to draw a fundamental conclusion on the historical transitional existence of
capitalism. Moreover, the inconsistency between the productive forces and the relations of
production as the driving force of social change in any socio-economic formation, with its
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inevitability and necessity, would, in his view, entail the transformation of capitalism into
communism.

The essence of the matter is that, under capitalism, the rising social capital represented in
capitalism is gradually opposed by the producers of that capital – the working class as a
foreign, enslaving power. Expressing the growing socialization of production, social capital is
in tension with the control of private owners – capitalists. This paradox can only be
overcome from the point of view of Marxism by the progressive transformation of the
conditions of production into universal, collective, own conditions of production. And this
transition, which is of fundamental importance,

"... is determined by the development of productive forces under

capitalist production and the way this development is accomplished”
(Marx: 1987)

Since the founders of Marxism have lived and worked, capitalism has undergone such
bizarre transformations that it appears impractical as a means of replicating social bonds.
However, it is not only the main way of social existence in the modern world, but it remains
intact in its essence: the increasing social wealth represented in the capitalist, as in ancient
times, is opposed to those who produce it. A main indicator for this is primarily the growing
economic and financial class division of the population of the world: for instance, 1% of the
wealthiest in the nation owns 56% of the world's wealth, in the USA, 1% belongs to 38% of
the state's wealth, in Germany – 32%, in Canada – 26%. 1% of the wealthiest people in the
15 years of the 20th and 21st centuries on a global scale have matched the well-being of the
majority of the population of the World.

This leads to a strong conclusion – Marxism accurately represents the features of capitalism
and is thus in fact valid as a social theory. The position of Marxism is unwavering in this
regard.

CONCLUSION
The social theory of Marxism is based on an idea that the social and private capitalist way of
seizing labour results is the conflict between the social structure of production and that
involves the communism's rejection of capitalists. In other words, the neoliberal socio-
economic formation has successive inconsistencies. It also results in pseudo-solutions being
other ways to address this conflict as they do not eradicate the key thing: man-to-man
exploitation (Rigauer: 2000)
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But, in such a dependence upon the maturity (moral, theoretical, political, strong-willed) of
performers as the introduction of the Marxist social project will succeed that we do not
expect a return to the tradition of communism in the near future. The first explanation is
the fact that, in our view, the most significant characteristics of a modern civilization are as
follows:

Material values do not only overpower spiritual values; adorations of them have become a
sense of people's existence; they are a consumer society of social creation, i.e., an almost
entirely new and unique socialisation framework.

Mao Zedong writes that the growth of society is not only sequential but also synergistic. It
can be required as a universal need by the logic of the global scale, so it is at least
impractical in a single country. Though Marx was successful in predicting the future he was
not accurate, as capitalism having its downfalls also has its advantages, one of them being
the vast market and a chance for everyone to come forth and start production. But at the
same time, one cannot simply ignore the rising tension between the working class and the
business owners. What the future holds is unknown to us, so the question remains as to
whether capitalism will be overturned by the workers or not? One thing to note is that all
the signs are pointing towards the downfall of capitalism. Capitalism is not all bad, but it
does have its disadvantages that should be fixed. Starting from the implementation of some
of the teachings of Karl Marx. Marxism in no stretch of our imagination is the complete
solution to our problems but adopting some of the principle of it would help solve some
disputes in our modern society.

REFERENCES
Gauba, O. (2009). Introduction to Political Theory . India: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.

Marx, K. (1848). The Communist Manifesto . United Kingdom : Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels.

Marx, K. (1867). Das Kapital. Germany.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/04/the-return-of-marxism
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/4/18/15094788/karl-marx-socialism-capitalism-
communism-europe-neoliberalism