Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Marx's "base determines superstructure" axiom, however, requires qualification: the base is the whole of productive relationships, not only a given economic element, e.g. the working class; historically, the superstructure varies and develops unevenly in society's different activities; for example, art, politics, economics, etc.
Marxian economics concerns itself variously with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution.
Base and superstructure: Marx and Engels use the “base-structure” concept to explain the idea that the totality of relations among people with regard to “the social production of their existence” forms the economic basis, on which arises a superstructure of political and legal institutions. To the base corresponds the social ...
Marx himself argued that it was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the capitalist system with socialism, changing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future communist society in which: "..the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
The characteristics of orthodox Marxism are: A strong version of the theory that the economic base (material conditions) determines the cultural and political superstructure of society. In its most extensive form, this view is called economic determinism, economism and vulgar materialism.
In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: Produktionsweise, "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the: . Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tools, machinery, factory buildings, infrastructure, technical knowledge, raw materials, plants, animals, exploitable land).
Structural Marxism posits that the state functions to serve the long-term interests of the Bourgeosie. Building upon the works of Engels , structural Marxists posit that the state is a mechanism for regulating class conflict , the irreconcilable tension between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Vulgar Marxism refers to a particular "belief that one can directly access the real conditions of history" and is sometimes referred to as reflection theory. [1] In 1998, Robert M. Young defined "economism or vulgar Marxism" as "the most orthodox [position in Marxism which] provides one-to-one correlations between the socio-economic base and the intellectual superstructure".