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85-802: The Workers School was a model for local CPUSA training centers in the area (e.g., the Jewish Workers University , founded in New York City in 1926) and in other American cities (e.g., the Chicago Workers School). It also provided the direct inspiration for the New Workers School , established by the breakaway Communist Party (Majority Group) headed by Jay Lovestone and Benjamin Gitlow (supported by Bertram D. Wolfe and Ben Davidson ) after they left

170-522: 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

255-519: 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

340-479: 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

425-526: 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

510-551: 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

595-413: 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

680-610: A large body of new members in the American Communist movement presented a challenge for the group of core cadres, as the understanding of party ideology by many of these new members was seen as defective. With the Rand School firmly in the grasp of the WPA's hated rivals, the need for a new party training school was seen as a pressing order of the day. By October 1923 a new Communist Party training school had been readied —

765-501: 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

850-403: 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

935-634: A public organization known as the Workers Party of America (WPA). This effort was met with success, as a majority of the Finnish Socialist Federation , the Workers Council group, and others previously opposed to underground political activity flocked to the new organization. Membership soared from barely over 4,000 in the old underground CPA in 1922 to more than 15,000 in the legal WPA in 1923. The presence of such

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1020-531: 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 ,

1105-558: A week in exchange for a weekly salary of $ 12 — an amount which was insufficient to cover the costs of life in New York City. Pressure was placed upon instructors to maintain enrollment in the school by conducting classes in a lively style as for both political and economic reasons high enrollment levels by the Workers School's administration. Admission to the New York Workers School was not limited to members of

1190-692: 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

1275-408: 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)

1360-453: 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

1445-516: Is an accepted version of this page Marxism 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

1530-401: 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

1615-403: 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

1700-402: 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

1785-449: 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

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1870-448: 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

1955-476: 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

2040-465: 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

2125-561: 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

2210-766: 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 ,

2295-730: The Foley Square trial that she took "educational courses" on communism at the Jefferson School of Social Service and the New York Workers School. In the 1950s, the Workers School remained part of discussion of Communist infiltration in America. For example, in 1959, Frank Meyer , then anti-communist editor at National Review magazine, formerly a communist educator, testified to three phases of Communist training operations: 1) public agitation and propaganda, 2) molding of hard-core Communists, and 3) inner party training schools,

2380-464: 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

2465-666: 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

2550-648: The Communist Party and its youth section, the Young Communist League , but also included non-party students. Indeed, the Workers School was envisioned not only as a training center but as a means of recruiting talented and sympathetic individuals into the Communist Party. Students at the school were mostly of working-class origin and were often immigrants to the United States. Workers in shoe, garment, and jewelry manufacturing as well as

2635-547: The Communist Party in 1929. The Workers School was dissolved through merger in 1944, becoming part of the CPUSA's Jefferson School of Social Science . Over the course of the spring and summer of 1919, the Socialist Party of America divided into competing Socialist and Communist wings. In the aftermath of this bitter split, the electorally-oriented Socialists retained control of a number of key public institutions of

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2720-560: 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

2805-518: The New York Workers School. The facility was first located at 48–50 East 13th Street. It moved to Communist headquarters at 28 East 14th Street on Union Square . In January 1934, the New Masses magazine advertised its address as 35 East 12th Street. The facility moved yet again to a permanent home located at 35 East 12th Street — a building said by one FBI informant to be so "dingy, makeshift, and old" that it "should have been condemned". As with

2890-614: The U.S. Government. But, despite the rhetoric of direct action , and student-staff willingness to apply communist doctrines on the streets, on picket lines, or in union struggles, there is no evidence that would suggest that the Workers School, or any other party educational enterprise, was some U.S. equivalent of the Smolny Institute , the academy from which the Russian Bolsheviks made their successful armed seizure of state power in 1917." The New York Workers School

2975-421: The Workers School every weekday evening although most met only once or twice per week, with Tuesday being the night of the lightest course offerings. By 1927 the number of courses offered by the school had tripled, including courses on "Citizenship and Naturalization", labor journalism, and the creation and operation of shop newspapers, among others. The school's "core course", entitled "Fundamentals of Communism",

3060-567: 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

3145-514: 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

3230-414: 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

3315-890: The behest of the Lusk Committee and the Justice Department . With the country in the throes of the First Red Scare , the various organizations of the Communist movement eked out a furtive underground existence. At the end of 1921 a decision was made by key party leaders, approved and driven ahead by the Communist International , for the Communist Party of America (CPA) to emerge from its underground existence of secret meetings and pseudonyms and to attempt to re-establish itself as

3400-538: The benefit of the Communist movement's largely immigrant membership, as well as courses on "speech improvement" (the elimination of accents) and " platform speaking ". Courses were conducted at night so that workers could remain on the job without interruption of their lives and financial loss. Workers School class announcements from the 1930s indicate that two successive class blocks ran each night, one running from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm, followed by another group of classes meeting from 8:40 pm to 10:10 pm. Classes were offered at

3485-508: The building trades were particularly well represented, as were students having jobs in restaurants and retail shops. Participation topped the 1,000 student mark in the fall of 1926. Annual attendance at the peak of the CPUSA's educational effort was approximately 5,000 students. Eventually the Workers School would open up satellite schools in the Bronx , Harlem , Brooklyn , and in several New Jersey industrial towns across from New York City on

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3570-417: 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

3655-415: 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

3740-399: 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

3825-843: 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

3910-493: 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

3995-425: 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

4080-408: 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

4165-405: 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

4250-643: The fall of 1929 the Communist Party operated a "Bronx Branch of the Workers' School", located at 2700 Bronx Park East. A total of 60 students began the fall term at that location. In the late 1920s, the Workers School advocated for issues including the Sacco and Vanzetti trials, "Hands-Off-China" (for Shanghai Massacre ), and "Passaic Relief" (for the Passaic Textile Strike ). In 1949, FBI undercover agent/informer Angela Calomiris testified during

4335-496: 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

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4420-482: 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

4505-405: 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

4590-552: 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

4675-450: The international schools that have been run over the years under various names by the international Communist movement. In the estimation of one historian, for all its advocacy of political militance by the staff of the New York Workers School, the actual outcome was mild: Anticommunist ideologues entertained lurid fantasies of party cadres stepping right out from a classroom discussion of one of Lenin's pamphlets and violently assaulting

4760-411: The last of which, as he explains was: ... for the purpose of putting a final hardness, understanding from the party's point of view, toughness, on the Communist who is already approaching top leadership positions ... The third type of training consists of a network of schools, full-time party schools, from the local level — section schools — through district schools, to national schools, and finally to

4845-550: 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

4930-426: 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,

5015-570: 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

5100-407: 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

5185-511: 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

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5270-590: The other side of the Hudson River . The school launched its own magazine, The Student-Worker , in February 1927, with members of the Student Council serving as the editorial staff of the publication. Content of the magazine's first issue included a contribution by Bertram D. Wolfe, Director of the Workers School, as well as material produced by students on the aims of the school, teaching methods, and

5355-628: The party, including the Rand School of Social Science , a trade union and party training facility located in New York City. (Historian Marvin E. Gettleman makes clear that the Workers School was seen by the Communists as the "historic successor" of the Socialists' Rand School.) The revolutionary socialist Communist wing, on the other hand, was rapidly driven underground by successive raids throughout late 1919 and early 1920 conducted at

5440-530: 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

5525-556: The payment of modest salaries to the part-time teaching staff. The cost of a 12-week course meeting once a week at the time of the Workers School's launch in 1923 was $ 3.50. This fee was raised to $ 4 in 1927, with twice-weekly classes in English-language instruction priced at $ 6 for the 12 week term. Reduced fees were available to trade unions and various other fraternal organizations seeking to sponsor students on scholarship. A core teaching staff taught between 10 and 15 classes

5610-434: 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

5695-500: 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

5780-432: The rival Rand School of Social Science, the Workers School attempted to train trade union activists as well as key party cadres as part of what Gettleman has called "a systematic effort to mobilize learning to support the workers' side in the class struggle ". The teaching staff took pains to stress a close connection between learning and action, with a view to a hastening of the overthrow of capitalism . The Workers School

5865-486: The selection of course topics. In the fall of 1929 participation was estimated at "over 1200", of whom about 20 percent were enrolled in basic English classes and the rest taking courses in history, politics, or other party training courses. This represented a new record enrollment for the institution. It was noted in October 1929 that the New York Workers School also maintained a Ruthenberg Library and reading room, which

5950-706: The shadow of his celebrated brother, Liam , the author of The Informer and The Assassin . He drank heavily, and I have sometimes seen him lying, stiff and foul, in front of the Workers Center on Union Square. New Workers School Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 217076318 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:56:43 GMT Marxism This

6035-415: 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

6120-603: 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

6205-474: 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

6290-412: 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

6375-613: 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,

6460-537: The time of its 15th anniversary in 1938, the Workers School had developed its own pedagogic method, forsaking the traditional academic format of lecture and recitation for a variation of the Socratic method in which short lectures were made with a view to posing of key questions for joint discussion by students. This teaching method, borrowed from a small set of elite liberal arts colleges in the New England region,

6545-484: 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

6630-432: 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

6715-530: Was absorbed by the Jefferson School of Social Science in 1944 — a parallel Communist Party adult educational institution. Each term at the school began with publication of an "Announcement of Classes". The school launched in the fall of 1923 with a total of 12 courses as part of its curriculum, including Marxism , the history of international workers' movement, tactics of the Communist International , as well as " Biologic and Social Evolution ." In addition, courses in elementary and advanced English were offered for

6800-404: Was emulated by the Communist Party on a smaller scale in other key American industrial cities during the period of its greatest strength, the late 1930s and early 1940s. Former Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers mentioned the Workers School (which he called the "Workers Center") in his memoirs: Behind Comrade Angelica sat Comrade Tom O'Flaherty . He was a big, unhappy Irishman, who lived sadly in

6885-462: 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

6970-424: Was intended to shift the responsibility for learning to the students themselves. Joseph R. Brodsky had an as-yet-undefined affiliation with the school. Members of the advisory council included: Many prominent leftists taught there, including: In the estimation of the leading academic expert on the New York Workers School, the institution was largely self-supporting, with student tuition providing funds for

7055-568: Was open nightly from 6:30 until 9:30 pm. A campus newspaper was also launched at that date, Workers' School Journal, which was to be run under student management and to publish contributions made by students at the school. Branches opened in the New York City area: the Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn, and towns in New Jersey. Although the bulk of the New York Workers School's operations were conducted at its main facility, small branch campuses were periodically added in order to improve accessibility. In

7140-693: 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

7225-426: Was taught in six different classes, including a day course for workers on the night shift. By the middle 1930s, as many as 50 sections in this key course were offered at the Workers School and in satellite classrooms around New York City. The school occasionally published its own cheap editions of Marxist "classics" or issued its own textbooks, including one by leading Yiddish-language Communist Moissaye Olgin . By

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