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125-571: The Autogestión Liberadora Buenos Aires (ALBA) is a left-wing political party in Argentina . It contested the 2005 legislative elections for Buenos Aires Province and Buenos Aires City deputies in alliance with the Encuentro Amplio [1] . The alliance performed badly in the election, gaining less than 1% in the capital and losing all its legislators at a national level. This article about an Argentine political party
250-451: A mixed economy with an empowered public sector and a thriving private sector . Centre-left policies tend to favour limited state intervention in matters pertaining to the public interest . In several countries, the terms far-left and radical left have been associated with many varieties of anarchism , autonomism and communism . They have been used to describe groups that advocate anti-capitalism and eco-terrorism . In France,
375-522: A socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought , all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialisation of production
500-519: A Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution . In a socialist society, private property —as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use . Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which
625-479: A backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states, such as Poland . However, it remains prominent in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states, such as in China . Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with
750-478: A belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished through radical means that change the nature of the society they are implemented in. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated." Within
875-639: A capitalist bourgeois ideology. Marxists were responsible for organizing the first International Working Women's Day events. The women's liberation movement is closely connected to the New Left and other new social movements which openly challenged the orthodoxies of the Old Left. Socialist feminism as exemplified by the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women and Marxist feminism , spearheaded by Selma James , saw themselves as
1000-606: A central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution, nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for civic nationalism and argued that the nation is a "daily plebiscite" formed by the subjective "will to live together". Related to revanchism , the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine , nationalism
1125-526: A certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution ." These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at
1250-551: A concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting
1375-574: A desire for greater economic equality and workers rights with demands for environmental protection. Democratic socialist Bolivian president Evo Morales has traced environmental degradation to capitalist consumerism , stating that "[t]he Earth does not have enough for the North to live better and better, but it does have enough for all of us to live well". James Hansen , Noam Chomsky , Raj Patel , Naomi Klein , The Yes Men and Dennis Kucinich hold similar views. In climate change mitigation ,
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#17327833119361500-737: A distinction is made between the centre-left and the left represented by the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party and the far-left as represented by anarcho-communists , Maoists and Trotskyists . The United States Department of Homeland Security defines "left-wing extremism" as groups that "seek to bring about change through violent revolution, rather than through established political processes". Similar to far-right politics , extremist far-left politics have motivated political violence , radicalization , genocide , terrorism , sabotage and damage to property,
1625-535: A firing squad, and children were deprived of any religious education outside of the home. Today in the Western world , those on the Left generally support secularization and the separation of church and state. However, religious beliefs have also been associated with many left-wing movements such as the progressive movement , the Social Gospel movement, the civil rights movement , the anti-war movement ,
1750-423: A force within left-wing politics. The influential Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , published amidst the wave of revolutions of 1848 across Europe, asserted that all of human history is defined by class struggle . They predicted that a proletarian revolution would eventually overthrow bourgeois capitalism and create a stateless , moneyless and classless communist society . It
1875-413: A labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker. In pre-capitalist economies , exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion . Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn
2000-549: A left-wing response to The Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulating that capitalist technologies were the key cause responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to human population pressures. Environmental degradation can be seen as a class or equity issue, as environmental destruction disproportionately affects poorer communities and countries. Several left-wing or socialist groupings have an overt environmental concern and several green parties contain
2125-501: A materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale , imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself." In a letter to the editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otechestvennyje Zapiski (1877), he explained that his ideas were based upon
2250-721: A part of the Left by their contemporaries. Feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft was influenced by Thomas Paine . Many notable leftists have been strong supporters of gender equality such as Marxist philosophers and activists Rosa Luxemburg , Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai , anarchist philosophers and activists such as Virginia Bolten , Emma Goldman and Lucía Sánchez Saornil and democratic socialist philosophers and activists such as Helen Keller and Annie Besant . However, Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Alexandra Kollontai, who are supporters of radical social equality for women and have rejected and opposed liberal feminism because they considered it to be
2375-482: A part of the Left that challenges male-dominated and sexist structures within the Left. The connection between left-wing ideologies and the struggle for LGBTQ rights also has an important history. Prominent socialists who were involved in early struggles for LGBTQ rights include Edward Carpenter , Oscar Wilde , Harry Hay , Bayard Rustin and Daniel Guérin , among others. The New Left is also strongly supportive of LGBTQ rights and liberation, having been instrumental in
2500-563: A position within the political mainstream that accepts capitalism and a market economy. The terms far-left and ultra-left are used for positions that are more radical , more strongly rejecting capitalism and mainstream representative democracy , instead advocating for a socialist society based on economic democracy and direct democracy , representing economic, political and social democracy. The centre-left includes social democrats , social liberals , progressives and greens . Centre-left supporters accept market allocation of resources in
2625-403: A post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by
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#17327833119362750-531: A result, there is no single, definitive " Marxist theory ". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts. In addition to the various schools of thought , which emphasise or modify elements of classical Marxism , several Marxian concepts have been incorporated into an array of social theories . This has led to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy ,
2875-461: A ruling elite of individuals) while it prepares a population for capitalist exploitation. Within anarchism, this subject has been extensively discussed by Rudolf Rocker in his book titled Nationalism and Culture and by the works of Fredy Perlman such as Against His-Story, Against Leviathan and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism . The failure of revolutions in Germany and Hungary in
3000-684: A strong socialist presence. The Green Party of England and Wales features an eco-socialist group, the Green Left , which was founded in June 2005. Its members held several influential positions within the party, including both the former Principal Speakers Siân Berry and Derek Wall , himself an eco-socialist and Marxist academic. In Europe, several green left political parties such as the European United Left–Nordic Green Left combine traditional social-democratic values such as
3125-404: A temporary state between the capitalist state of affairs and a communist society . Marx defined the proletariat as salaried workers, in contrast to the lumpenproletariat , who he defined as the outcasts of society such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes. The political relevance of farmers has divided the left. In Das Kapital , Marx scarcely mentioned
3250-692: A word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe . Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production: While historical materialism has been referred to as
3375-614: Is bourgeois nationalism . Some Marxists, together with others on the left, view nationalism , racism (including antisemitism) and religion as divide and conquer tactics used by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting against them in solidarity with one another. Left-wing movements have often taken up anti-imperialist positions. Anarchism has developed a critique of nationalism that focuses on nationalism's role in justifying and consolidating state power and domination. Through its unifying goal, nationalism strives for centralisation (both in specific territories and in
3500-465: Is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to analyse class relations, social conflict , and social transformation . Marxism originates with the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , and as
3625-447: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism , often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as
3750-408: Is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces." Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas)
3875-453: Is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilising its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren , especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analysed
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4000-401: Is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution , along with
4125-403: Is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist." The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping
4250-402: Is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology , Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in
4375-449: Is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything. — Cuban revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009 This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries , land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of
4500-448: Is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to
4625-476: Is necessary to understand his later works properly. Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser , Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism . Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science , Marxist humanism reaffirms
4750-465: Is not prerequisite. In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements." Marx posited that the remaining feudalist societies in the world and forms of socialism that did not conform with his writings would be replaced by communism in
4875-561: Is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats . Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France ; emphasising the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism , libertarian Marxism
5000-766: Is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism . Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism , council communism , De Leonism , Lettrism , parts of the New Left , Situationism , Freudo-Marxism (a form of psychoanalysis ), Socialisme ou Barbarie and workerism . Libertarian Marxism has often strongly influenced both post-left and social anarchists . Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton , Cornelius Castoriadis , Guy Debord , Raya Dunayevskaya , Daniel Guérin , C. L. R. James , Rosa Luxemburg , Antonio Negri , Anton Pannekoek , Fredy Perlman , Ernesto Screpanti , E. P. Thompson , Raoul Vaneigem , and Yanis Varoufakis ,
5125-421: Is sometimes used to justify hostility towards supranational organizations. Left-wing nationalism can also refer to any form of nationalism which emphasizes a leftist working-class populist agenda that seeks to overcome exploitation or oppression by other nations. Many Third World anti-colonialist movements have adopted leftist and socialist ideas. Third-Worldism is a tendency within leftist thought that regards
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5250-656: Is used for social and cultural politics. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn such as the Campaign Group and those involved in the London Labour Briefing newspaper as well as Trotskyist groups such as Militant and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty . In the same period, the term soft left was applied to supporters of
5375-589: The Bible . In the late 19th century, the Protestant Social Gospel movement arose in the United States which integrated progressive and socialist thought with Christianity through faith-based social activism. Other left-wing religious movements include Buddhist socialism, Jewish socialism and Islamic socialism. There have been alliances between the left and anti-war Muslims , such as
5500-890: The Democratic and Republican parties, or as synonyms for liberalism and conservatism , respectively. Since the Right was populist, both in the Western and the Eastern Bloc , anything viewed as avant-garde art was called leftist across Europe, thus the identification of Picasso's Guernica as "leftist" in Europe and the condemnation of the Russian composer Shostakovich 's opera ( The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District ) in Pravda as follows: "Here we have 'leftist' confusion instead of natural, human music". The spectrum of left-wing politics ranges from centre-left to far-left or ultra-left . The term centre-left describes
5625-599: The Republicans and Eugène Etienne , the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right. The Marxist social class theory of proletarian internationalism asserts that members of
5750-674: The Respect Party and the Stop the War Coalition in Britain. In France, the left has been divided over moves to ban the hijab from schools, with some leftists supporting a ban based on the separation of church and state in accordance with the principle of laïcité and other leftists opposing the prohibition based on personal and religious freedom. Social progressivism is another common feature of modern leftism, particularly in
5875-762: The Roman Catholic Church and supporting atheism and the separation of church and state , ushering in a policy known as laïcité . Karl Marx asserted that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people ". In Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin originally embraced an ideological principle which professed that all religion would eventually atrophy and resolved to eradicate organized Christianity and other religious institutions. In 1918, 10 Russian Orthodox hierarchs were summarily executed by
6000-563: The Saint-Imier International and later the International Workers' Association (IWA–AIT) . The Second International (1888–1916) became divided over the issue of World War I . Those who opposed the war, among them Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg , saw themselves as further to the left. In the United States, leftists such as social liberals , progressives and trade unionists were influenced by
6125-638: The Second Republic was an attempt by the Left to re-assert itself after the 1848 Revolution , but only a small portion of the population supported this. In the mid-19th century, nationalism , socialism , democracy and anti-clericalism became key features of the French Left. After Napoleon III 's 1851 coup and the subsequent establishment of the Second Empire , Marxism began to rival radical republicanism and utopian socialism as
6250-530: The Third Estate ) generally sat to the left of the presiding member's chair in parliament while the ones in favour of the royal veto privilege sat on its right. That habit began in the original French National Assembly . Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right was between supporters of the French republic and those of the monarchy 's privileges. The June Days uprising during
6375-490: The Western world include strong opposition to the death penalty , torture , mass surveillance , and the war on drugs , and support for abortion rights, cognitive liberty , LGBTQ rights including legal recognition of same-sex marriage , same-sex adoption of children, the right to change one's legal gender , distribution of contraceptives , and public funding of embryonic stem-cell research . The desire for an expansion of social and civil liberties often overlaps that of
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#17327833119366500-526: The centre-left , especially social democrats who adopted the Third Way . Left-wing politics are typically associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. Other leftists believe in Marxian economics , named after the economic theories of Karl Marx . Some distinguish Marx's economic theories from his political philosophy, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding
6625-639: The displacement of Keynesianism and post-war social democracy . One of the first actions of Ed Miliband , the Labour Party leader who succeeded Blair and Brown, was the rejection of the New Labour label and a promise to abandon the Third Way and turn back to the left. However, Labour's voting record in the House of Commons from 2010 to 2015 indicated that the Labour Party under Miliband had maintained
6750-674: The left–right political spectrum , Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution , referring to the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly . Those who sat on the left generally opposed the ancien régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the Revolution, the creation of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of
6875-413: The libertarian movement. Public education was a subject of great interest to groundbreaking social progressives such as Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey , who believed that a democratic society and system of government was practically impossible without a universal and comprehensive nationwide system of education. Various counterculture and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with
7000-475: The welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning , to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council-based and self-managed anarchist communism . During the Industrial Revolution , leftists supported trade unions . At the beginning of the 20th century, many leftists advocated strong government intervention in
7125-476: The working class should act in solidarity with working people in other countries in pursuit of a common class interest , rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan: " Workers of the world, unite! ", the last line of The Communist Manifesto . Union members had learned that more members meant more bargaining power. Taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers should act in solidarity with
7250-701: The " proletariat can and must build the socialist society in one country". In April 1925, Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on the issue in his brochure titled Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat? , whose position was adopted as state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article titled On the Issues of Leninism (К вопросам ленинизма)
7375-464: The "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base. The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour , means of production and relations of production , i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness " that derive from
7500-399: The 1918–1920 years ended Bolshevik hopes for an imminent world revolution and led to the promotion of the doctrine of socialism in one country by Joseph Stalin . In the first edition of his book titled Osnovy Leninizma ( Foundations of Leninism , 1924), Stalin argued that revolution in one country is insufficient. By the end of that year in the second edition of the book, he argued that
7625-666: The 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory . The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been
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#17327833119367750-537: The 1970s onwards, environmentalism became an increasing concern of the left, with social movements and several unions campaigning on environmental issues and causes. In Australia, the left-wing Builders Labourers Federation , led by the communist Jack Mundy, united with environmentalists to place green bans on environmentally destructive development projects. Several segments of the socialist and Marxist left consciously merged environmentalism and anti-capitalism into an eco-socialist ideology. Barry Commoner articulated
7875-526: The 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, the term left-wing has also been applied to a broad range of culturally liberal social movements, including the civil rights movement , feminist movement , LGBT rights movement , abortion-rights movements , multiculturalism , anti-war movement and environmental movement as well as a wide range of political parties . The following positions are typically associated with left-wing politics. Left-leaning economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and
8000-478: The British Labour Party who were perceived to be more moderate and closer to the centre, accepting Keynesianism . Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown , the Labour Party adopted the Third Way and rebranded itself as New Labour in order to promote the notion that it was less left-wing than it had been in the past to accommodate the neoliberal trend arising since the 1970s with
8125-486: The Earth. This principle is reflected in much of the historical left-wing thought and literature that came afterwards, although there were disagreements about what this entailed. Both Karl Marx and the early socialist philosopher and scholar William Morris arguably had a concern for environmental matters. According to Marx, "[e]ven an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not
8250-560: The Industrial Revolution which undermines the democratic agency of citizens. Marxists differ in their positions towards democracy. Types of democracy in Marxism include Soviet democracy , New Democracy , Whole-process people's democracy and can include voting on how surplus labour is to be organised. According to democratic centralism political decisions reached by voting in the party are binding for all members of
8375-448: The Left is also divided over how to effectively and equitably reduce carbon emissions as the center-left often advocates a reliance on market measures such as emissions trading and a carbon tax while those further to the left support direct government regulation and intervention in the form of a Green New Deal , either alongside or instead of market mechanisms. The question of nationality , imperialism and nationalism has been
8500-485: The New Left. Unlike the earlier leftist focus on labour union activism and a proletarian revolution, the New Left instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism . The New Left in the United States is associated with the hippie movement , mass protest movements on school campuses and a broadening of focus from protesting class -based oppression to include issues such as gender , race and sexual orientation . The British New Left
8625-553: The United States, where social progressives played an important role in the abolition of slavery , the enshrinement of women's suffrage in the United States Constitution , and the protection of civil rights , LGBTQ rights , women's rights and multiculturalism . Progressives have both advocated for alcohol prohibition legislation and worked towards its repeal in the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s. Current positions associated with social progressivism in
8750-567: The administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin , a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country. These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe , who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society. Marxist sociology, as
8875-514: 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 . Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox , ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of
9000-457: The anti- capital punishment movement and Liberation Theology . Early utopian socialist thinkers such as Robert Owen , Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism , social justice , racial equality , human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive wealth can be found in
9125-414: The awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally in its best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat . Without defining ideology , Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology
9250-417: The capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity. Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society
9375-415: The complex dynamics of modern society." Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx , Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology . The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism , of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During
9500-399: The concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital " was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment. Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour —the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing
9625-843: The defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms " dialectical materialism " and "historical materialism", though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their tenets have been challenged by some self-described Marxists. As a school of thought, Marxism has had a profound effect on society and global academia. To date, it has influenced many fields, including anthropology , archaeology , art theory , criminology , cultural studies , economics , education , ethics , film theory , geography , historiography , literary criticism , media studies , philosophy , political science , political economy , psychoanalysis , science studies , sociology , urban planning , and theatre . Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing
9750-928: The developing world such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, the Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa and the Naxalites in India have argued that the First World and the Second World Left takes a racist and paternalistic attitude towards liberation movements in the Third World. The original French Left was firmly anti-clerical , strongly opposing the influence of
9875-489: The division between First World and Second World developed countries and Third World developing countries as being of high political importance. This tendency supports decolonization and national liberation movements against imperialism by capitalists. Third-Worldism is closely connected with African socialism , Latin American socialism , Maoism , pan-Africanism and pan-Arabism . Several left-wing groups in
10000-493: The doctrine that "man is the measure of all things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory. According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists. The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology
10125-425: The economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions , whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation . This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains
10250-422: The economy is independent of his advocacy of revolutionary socialism or his belief in the inevitability of a proletarian revolution . Marxian economics do not exclusively rely on Marx and draw from a range of Marxist and non-Marxist sources. The dictatorship of the proletariat and workers' state are terms used by some Marxists, particularly Leninists and Marxist–Leninists , to describe what they see as
10375-554: The economy, preferring social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation . The global justice movement , also known as the anti-globalisation movement and the alter-globalisation movement, protests against corporate economic globalisation due to its negative consequences for the poor, workers, the environment, and small businesses. Leftists generally believe in innovation in various technological and philosophical fields and disciplines to help causes they support. One of
10500-404: The economy. Leftists continue to criticize the perceived exploitative nature of globalization , the " race to the bottom " and unjust lay-offs and exploitation of workers. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the belief that the government (ruling in accordance with the interests of the people) ought to be directly involved in the day-to-day workings of an economy declined in popularity amongst
10625-408: The end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history. Marx saw the fundamental nature of capitalist society as little different from that of a slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger group. Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing
10750-405: The failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I , led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism . Karl Marx criticised liberal democracy as not democratic enough due to the unequal socio-economic situation of the workers during
10875-409: The first decade of Soviet rule, before Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology, purged environmentalists and promoted the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko during his rule up until his death in 1953. Similarly, Mao Zedong rejected environmentalism and believed that based on the laws of historical materialism, all of nature must be put into the service of revolution. From
11000-493: The foremost left-wing advocates was Thomas Paine, one of the first individuals since left and right became political terms to describe the collective human ownership of the world which he speaks of in Agrarian Justice. As such, most of left-wing thought and literature regarding environmentalism stems from this duty of ownership and the aforementioned form of cooperative ownership means that humanity must take care of
11125-408: The formation of militant organizations, political repression , conspiracism , xenophobia , and nationalism . In China, the term Chinese New Left denotes those who oppose the economic reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and 1990s, favour instead the restoration of Maoist policies and the immediate transition to a socialist economy. In the Western world , the term New Left
11250-496: The forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S., and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesised Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while others like John Holt analyse adult education from
11375-482: The foundation of a form of social organisation . Those newly formed social organisations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic , expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave , patrician and plebeian , lord and serf , guild -master and journeyman , in
11500-553: The founding of the LGBTQ rights movement in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Contemporary leftist activists and socialist countries such as Cuba are actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people and are involved in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and equality. In politics, the term Left derives from the French Revolution as the political groups opposed to the royal veto privilege ( Montagnard and Jacobin deputies from
11625-405: The future in a similar manner as with capitalism. Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups: Class consciousness denotes
11750-552: The global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle , such as creative destruction , have been fitted for use in capitalist systems. Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire , Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America
11875-422: The international proletariat in order to further increase the power of the working class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war and international conflicts, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the bourgeoisie as the ruling class . According to Marxist theory, the antonym of proletarian internationalism
12000-550: The latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation , and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital . They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations
12125-426: The level of class struggle . Under the capitalist mode of production , this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie ) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat ). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another,
12250-570: The material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production , influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure . As forces of production (i.e. technology ) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At
12375-407: The necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat
12500-511: The objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. — Russian Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin , 1913 Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses
12625-533: The owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations". Following the Russian Revolution, environmental scientists such as revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult organisation made efforts to incorporate environmentalism into Bolshevism and "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in
12750-530: The party. Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde —both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying
12875-427: The placement along the political spectrum in a given time and place. At the end of the 18th century, upon the founding of the first liberal democracies , the term Left was used to describe liberalism in the United States and republicanism in France, supporting a lesser degree of hierarchical decision-making than the right-wing politics of the traditional conservatives and monarchists . In modern politics,
13000-434: The population's living standards due to its need to compensate for the falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory , socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. The term Marxism
13125-500: The product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment." Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving
13250-404: The same distance from the left as it did under Blair. In contrast, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour Party leader was viewed by scholars and political commentators as Labour turning back toward its more classical socialist roots, rejecting neoliberalism and the Third Way whilst supporting a democratic socialist society and an end to austerity measures. Marxism Marxism
13375-415: The social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value —the difference between the value produced and the value received by
13500-603: The society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism. Through working class revolution, the state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on cooperation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be
13625-431: The source for a better kind of social revolution . This view has been criticized by several Marxists , especially Trotskyists , who characterized this approach as "substitutionism" which they described as a misguided and non-Marxist belief that other groups in society could "substitute" for and "replace" the revolutionary agency of the working class. Many early feminists and advocates of women's rights were considered
13750-474: The study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive ( empirical ) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilisation of a revolutionary working class ." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain
13875-462: The subject. Mikhail Bakunin thought the lumpenproletariat was a revolutionary class, while Mao Zedong believed that it would be rural peasants, not urban workers, who would bring about the proletarian revolution . Left-libertarians , anarchists and libertarian socialists believe in a decentralized economy run by trade unions , workers' councils , cooperatives , municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private control of
14000-412: The sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living. Marx's account of
14125-489: The term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism , supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere . Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left , while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism , including the labour movement , socialism , anarchism , communism , Marxism and syndicalism , each of which rose to prominence in
14250-613: The theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society ( social classes , political pyramid and ideologies ) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure . The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx,
14375-503: The theory of socialism in one country. European social democrats strongly support Europeanism and supranational integration within the European Union , although there is a minority of nationalists and Eurosceptics on the left. Several scholars have linked this form of left-wing nationalism to the pressure generated by economic integration with other countries, often encouraged by neoliberal free trade agreements. This view
14500-594: The traditional institutions of the Ancien Régime. Usage of the term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Independents . The word wing was first appended to Left and Right in the late 19th century, usually with disparaging intent, and left-wing was applied to those who were unorthodox in their religious or political views. Ideologies considered to be left-wing vary greatly depending on
14625-484: The value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, ' ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste ' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')." Libertarian Marxism emphasises the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, such as left communism , emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism . Libertarian Marxism
14750-432: The worker. Alienation ( German : Entfremdung ) is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterisation of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition
14875-597: The works of Thomas Paine , who introduced the concept of asset-based egalitarianism which theorises that social equality is possible by a redistribution of resources. After the Reconstruction era in the aftermath of the American Civil War , the phrase "the Left" was used to describe those who supported trade unions, the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement . More recently, left-wing and right-wing have often been used as synonyms for
15000-485: Was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of the Old Left . The New Left opposed prevailing authoritarian structures in society which it designated as " The Establishment " and became known as the "Anti-Establishment". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers en masse, but instead concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be
15125-462: Was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under
15250-474: Was in this period that the word wing was appended to both Left and Right. The International Workingmen's Association (1864–1876), sometimes called the First International, brought together delegates from many different countries, with many different views about how to reach a classless and stateless society. Following a split between supporters of Marx and Mikhail Bakunin , anarchists formed
15375-693: Was popularised by Karl Kautsky , who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term. Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians . In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing
15500-410: Was published. This idea was opposed by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who declared the need for an international " permanent revolution " and condemned Stalin for betraying the goals and ideals of the socialist revolution. Various Fourth Internationalist groups around the world who describe themselves as Trotskyist see themselves as standing in this tradition while Maoist China formally supported
15625-700: Was sometimes opposed to imperialism . In the 1880s, there was a debate between leftists such as the Radical Georges Clemenceau , the Socialist Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès , who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges ", in reference to Alsace-Lorraine; and the " colonial lobby " such as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans , Léon Gambetta of
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