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106-665: Communism in Poland can trace its origins to the late 19th century: the Marxist First Proletariat party was founded in 1882. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania ( Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy , SDKPiL) party and the publicist Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) were important early Polish Marxists. During the interwar period in

212-522: 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

318-459: A Marxist perspective. Other developments include: The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era. On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences ( Russian : «О культе личности и его последствиях» , romanized :  “O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh” ), popularly known as

424-519: 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

530-479: 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

636-526: 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

742-712: A communist organization under Soviet control. As Germany was being defeated , the Polish communist minority collaborated with the Soviet Union, in opposition to the legitimate Polish government-in-exile , to establish a Polish socialist state , albeit subordinate to the Soviet Union. This led to the creation of the Polish People's Republic . The Polish Workers' Party merged with the Polish Socialist Party ( Polska Partia Socjalistyczna , PPS), to form

848-515: A compromise was hammered out, re-legalizing Solidarity, creating a new free senate, and opening 35% of the seats in the Sejm to outside parties. On the day of the elections on June 4, Solidarity won almost every single senate seat available. Realizing how much power this new opposition had, another compromise was formed where the PPR would provide a president, General Jaruzelski , and Solidarity would provide

954-551: 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

1060-519: A formal end on 24 February 1956, when word was spread to delegates to return to the Great Hall of the Kremlin for an additional "closed session" to which journalists, guests and delegates from "fraternal parties" from outside the Soviet Union were not invited. Special passes were issued to those eligible to participate, with an additional 100 former party members, who had been recently released from

1166-413: 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

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1272-407: A maniac, personally to blame for all the nation's defeats and misfortunes. As to how, and in what social conditions, a bloodthirsty paranoiac could for twenty-five years exercise unlimited despotic power over a country of two hundred million inhabitants, which throughout that period had been blessed with the [allegedly] most progressive and democratic system of government in human history—to this enigma

1378-501: 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

1484-403: 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

1590-576: 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

1696-692: 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

1802-408: 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)

1908-453: 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

2014-401: 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

2120-403: 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

2226-402: 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

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2332-449: 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

2438-448: 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

2544-476: 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

2650-465: 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

2756-561: 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

2862-766: 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 ,

2968-576: The Eastern Bloc . But they were stifled by the regime's unwillingness to risk stepping too far in the reformist direction. On 2 June 1979, then Pope John Paul II began his pilgrimage to his native country of Poland seeking to reinvigorate faith in the country after decades of encouraged atheism by the Soviet government. Beginning in Warsaw, John Paul II made frequent connections to Polish identity and

3074-530: The Polish United Workers' Party ( Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza , PZPR), which ruled Poland until 1989. In post-World War II Poland, the communists initially enjoyed popular support due to the land reform , a mass scale rebuilding program, and progressive social policies. The popular support eventually eroded because of repressions, economic difficulties, and lack of freedoms, however the PZPR

3180-770: The Pospelov Commission , arranged at the session of the Presidium of the Party Central Committee on 31 January 1955. The direct goal of the commission was to investigate the repressions of the delegates of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1934. The 17th Congress was selected for investigations because it was known as "the Congress of Victors" in the country of "victorious socialism" and so

3286-668: The Second Polish Republic , some socialists formed the Communist Party of Poland ( Komunistyczna Partia Polski , KPP). Most of the KPP's leaders and activists perished in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge in the 1930s, and the party was abolished by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1938. In 1939, World War II began and Poland was conquered by Nazi Germany and

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3392-599: The Secret Speech ( Russian : секретный доклад Хрущёва , romanized :  sekretnïy doklad Khrushcheva ), was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev , First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin , particularly with respect to

3498-599: The dissolution of the USSR and Gorbachev's resignation in 1991. In post-1989 democratic Poland , declared communists have had a minimal impact on the political and economical life of the country and are ostracized. However, former communists , including members of the Politburo of the PZPR, remained active on the political scene after the transition to liberal democracy . Some were democratically elected to top national leadership positions (e.g. Aleksander Kwaśniewski , who

3604-709: The purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism . The speech was leaked to the West by the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet , which received it from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski. The speech was shocking in its day. There are reports that some of those present suffered heart attacks and that

3710-464: 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

3816-666: 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

3922-536: The CIA chief, Allen Dulles , who quickly informed US President Dwight D. Eisenhower . After determining that the speech was authentic, the CIA leaked the speech to The New York Times in early June. "...the speech, never published in the U.S.S.R., was of great importance for the Free World . Eventually the text was found – but many miles from Moscow, where it had been delivered. ... I have always viewed this as one of

4028-569: The CPSU Former Premier of the Soviet Union Domestic policy Khrushchev Thaw Foreign policy Catchphrases and incidents [REDACTED] The issue of mass repressions was known to Soviet leaders well before the speech. The speech itself was prepared based on the results of a special party commission (chairman Pyotr Pospelov , P. T. Komarov, Averky Aristov , and Nikolai Shvernik ), known as

4134-586: The Catholic faith which had been intertwined for essentially all of the country's history, reminding Poles that they were, at their core, a very spiritual people. The Solidarity protests at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk reflected this with religious imagery prevalent throughout, such as pictures of the pope on display. John Paul II's pilgrimage led to a revitalization of religious and nationalist fervor within

4240-568: The Cult of the Individual and Its Consequences", which served as the party's official and public pronouncement on the Stalin era. Written under the guidance of Mikhail Suslov , it did not mention Khrushchev's specific allegations. "Complaining that Western political circles were exploiting the revelation of Stalin's crimes, the resolution paid tribute to [Stalin's] services" and was relatively guarded in its criticisms of him. Khrushchev's speech

4346-560: 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

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4452-654: The Soviet Union . The government of the Polish Republic went into exile . In 1942, Polish communists backed by the Soviet Union in German-occupied Poland established a new Polish communist party, the Polish Workers' Party ( Polska Partia Robotnicza , PPR). Władysław Gomułka soon became its leader. In the Soviet Union, Stalin and Wanda Wasilewska created the Union of Polish Patriots as

4558-546: The Soviet prison camp network, added to the assembly to add moral effect. Premier Nikolai Bulganin , chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union and then an ally of Khrushchev, called the session to order and immediately yielded the floor to Khrushchev, who began his speech shortly after midnight on 25 February. For the next four hours, Khrushchev delivered "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" before stunned delegates. Several people became ill during

4664-704: The Twentieth Congress, arrangements were made to resolve the ills of Stalin's dictatorship. Thus, such criticism of Stalin at the Twentieth Congress was deliberate. Western historians also tended to take a somewhat critical view of the speech. J. Arch Getty commented in 1985 that "Khrushchev's revelations [...] are almost entirely self-serving. It is hard to avoid the impression that the revelations had political purposes in Khrushchev's struggle with Molotov , Malenkov , and Kaganovich ". The historian Geoffrey Roberts said Khrushchev's speech became "one of

4770-566: The West, the speech politically devastated organised communists; the Communist Party USA alone lost more than 30,000 members within weeks of its publication. The speech was cited as a major cause of the Sino-Soviet split by China (under Chairman Mao Zedong ) and Albania (under First Secretary Enver Hoxha ), who condemned Khrushchev as a revisionist . In response, they formed the anti-revisionist movement, criticizing

4876-567: 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

4982-514: 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

5088-414: 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

5194-417: 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

5300-569: The church and the newly acquired land in tandem with the Party, but asserted its autonomy when it held a Mass in 1945 attracting up to four million people. This independence also allowed the Church to establish its own institutions such as schools, but also enabled it to undermine the state by supporting anti-PPR organizations. After the 1947 Polish parliamentary election , the PPR felt secure enough to begin targeting its only major rival for control within

5406-415: 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

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5512-399: 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

5618-431: The country, imprisoning eighty-one priests in 1948 and seizing church properties two years later. Poland was one of the first Warsaw Pact countries to abandon the totalitarianism of Stalin's regime, in part due to the stronger nationalist ideas present within it. Krushchev emphasized the continued role of communism - but in a new, revitalized form - whereas Gomulka's government established their position as being one serving

5724-405: The country, two aspects which formed the backbone of Solidarity . On 7 August 1980 crane operator Anna Walentynowicz was fired for supporting trade unions which, aside from the party-approved ones, were illegal. Lech Wałęsa incited a strike amongst Walentynowicz's coworkers in response one week later, and presented their manifesto "Twenty-one Demands" on 17 August 1980. While mostly focusing on

5830-418: The crowd, they stormed the prison and seized its weapons as well as freeing many inmates before descending upon the radio station. The Politburo approved action by Marshal Rokossovsky to send 10,000 troops in to quell the revolt, resulting in 73 deaths as order was restored to the city. Unrest still lingered within a population desperate for reform, leading the PPR to elevate Gomułka as the new leader to assuage

5936-493: 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

6042-663: The document and sent them to Israel. By the afternoon of 13 April 1956, the Shin Bet in Israel had received the photographs. Israeli intelligence and United States intelligence had secretly agreed previously to co-operate on security matters. The photographs were delivered to James Jesus Angleton , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) head of counterintelligence, and in charge of the clandestine liaison with Israeli intelligence. On 17 April 1956, they reached

6148-425: 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

6254-408: 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

6360-464: The enormous number of "enemies" among the participants demanded explanation. The commission presented evidence that in 1937 and 1938 (the peak of the period known as the Great Purge ), over one-and-a-half million individuals, the majority being long-time CPSU members, were arrested for "anti-Soviet activities", of whom over 680,500 were executed. The public session of the 20th Congress had come to

6466-405: 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

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6572-496: 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

6678-482: 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

6784-405: 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

6890-552: 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

6996-612: The interests of Poland. With Krushchev now serving as leader of the USSR, having delivered his secret speech in 1956, anti-Stalinist ideas began to spread as resentment boiled over into the first of several protests in Poznań at the Stalin Factory (ZiSPO). Its workers and many residents of the city all marched towards the city center on June 28 in expression of their many grievances such as wage cuts, demanding to meet with party leaders - leaders who did not show up. Further incensing

7102-550: 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

7208-426: 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,

7314-727: The major coups of my tour of duty in intelligence." While Khrushchev was not hesitant to point out the flaws in Stalinist practice in regard to the purges of the army and party and the management of the Great Patriotic War , the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II , he was very careful to avoid any criticism of Stalin's industrialization policy or party ideology. Khrushchev was a staunch party man and lauded Leninism and communist ideology in his speech as often as he condemned Stalin's actions. Stalin, Khrushchev argued,

7420-570: 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

7526-407: 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

7632-573: The new General Secretary of the USSR in 1985 and introduced his reforms of glasnost and perestroika , encouraging reform within the Warsaw Pact, especially Poland. A new generation of young people who had not borne witness to the brutal crackdown on Solidarity was also coming of age but still held much anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the Freedom and Peace Movement (WiP): a pacifist movement born from student organizers in 1980 who opposed

7738-529: The nuclear arms race and championed human rights, independence and self-determination . It was students like these who helped revive Solidarity, and by 1988 the PPR was willing to compromise with its leadership with Wałęsa by entering discussions rather than utilizing the armed forces in order to stop the strikes. This would eventually result in the Round Table talks in February 1989, where after two months

7844-511: 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

7950-530: 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

8056-434: 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

8162-435: The population. During this period, some Polish academics and philosophers, including Leszek Kołakowski , Tadeusz Kotarbiński , Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz , and Stanisław Ossowski , tried to develop a form of "Polish Marxism", as part of the revisionist Marxist movement. These efforts to create a bridge between Poland's history and Marxist ideology were mildly successful, especially in comparison to similar attempts elsewhere in

8268-653: The post-Stalin leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for allegedly deviating from the path of Lenin and Stalin. In North Korea , factions of the Workers' Party of Korea attempted to remove Chairman Kim Il Sung , criticizing him for not "correcting" his leadership methods, developing a personality cult, distorting the "Leninist principle of collective leadership" and "distortions of socialist legality" (i.e. using arbitrary arrest and executions) and using other Khrushchev-era criticisms of Stalinism against Kim Il Sung's leadership. Former First Secretary of

8374-521: The prepared text of the Khrushchev speech, which was treated as a top secret state document. On 1 March, the text of the Khrushchev speech was distributed in printed form to senior Central Committee functionaries. That was followed, on 5 March, by a reduction of the document's secrecy classification from "Top Secret" to "Not for Publication". The Party Central Committee ordered that Khrushchev's Report be read at all gatherings of Communist and Komsomol local units, with non-party activists invited to attend

8480-461: The prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki , as an agreement which the Kremlin would agree to. By the next year when presidential elections were held however, Jaruzelski was soundly defeated by Wałęsa, establishing Poland's first non-communist government in roughly 45 years. This landmark event would lead to the subsequent removal of the regimes in the other Warsaw Pact countries, eventually culminating in

8586-437: The proceedings. Therefore, the "Secret Speech" was read publicly at thousands of meetings, making the colloquial name of the document something of a misnomer. The full text was officially published in the Soviet press in 1989. Shortly after the conclusion of the speech, reports of its delivery, and its general content, were conveyed to the West by Reuters journalist John Rettie , after a Soviet acquaintance briefed him about

8692-500: 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

8798-606: The rapidly growing anti-communist movement. The following year saw several thousand civilians arrested including Wałęsa himself as crackdowns seemed to push Solidarity further underground, but when John Paul II made another visit to Poland in 1983, whose presence fueled another wave of fervor for the distinctly Catholic union, martial law was lifted in July as Wałęsa earned the Nobel Peace Prize in October. Gorbachev became

8904-581: The rights of trade unions and their members, it also included demands for the recognition of the right to free speech and other reforms for liberalization, forming the roots for what would become the Solidarity movement. Though it signed the Gdansk Agreement with the PPR, legalizing its status as an independent trade union, and reached 10 million members by 1981, the government imposed martial law that same year on December 12 in an attempt to crush

9010-415: 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

9116-603: 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

9222-489: The speech a few hours before Rettie left for Stockholm on holiday. It was therefore reported in Western media in early March. Rettie came to believe the information came from Khrushchev himself, via the intermediary. The content of the speech reached the West through a circuitous route. A few copies of the speech were sent by order of the Soviet Politburo to leaders of the Eastern Bloc countries. Shortly after

9328-447: The speech and, as a journalist, was interested in reading it. Baranowska allowed him to take the document home to read. As it happened, Grajewski had made a recent trip to Israel to visit his sick father, and resolved to emigrate there. After he read the speech, he decided to take it to the Israeli embassy, and gave it to Yaakov Barmor, who had helped Grajewski undertake his trip. Barmor, a Shin Bet representative, took photographs of

9434-482: The speech even inspired suicides, due to the shock with all of Khrushchev's accusations and defamations against the government and the figure of Stalin. The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, raised on panegyrics and permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in Georgia , Stalin's homeland, where days of protests and rioting ended with a Soviet army crackdown on 9 March 1956. In

9540-545: The speech had been disseminated, a Polish-Jewish journalist, Wiktor Grajewski, visited his girlfriend, Łucja Baranowska, who worked as a junior secretary in the office of the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party , Edward Ochab . On her desk was a thick booklet with a red binding, with the words: "The 20th Party Congress, the speech of Comrade Khrushchev". Grajewski had heard rumours of

9646-440: The speech offered no clue whatever. All that was certain was that the Soviet system and the party itself remained impeccably pure and bore no responsibility for the tyrant's atrocities. Bangladeshi historian A. M. Amzad commented on the speech: It (the speech) was an undesirable, uncalled for and irresponsible act in terms of the ideology of the Soviet Union. It was designed to determine Khrushchev's political fate. Even before

9752-474: 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

9858-412: 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

9964-401: The tense report and had to be removed from the hall. Khrushchev read from a prepared report, and no stenographic record of the closed session was kept. No questions or debate followed Khrushchev's presentation and delegates left the hall in a state of acute disorientation. The same evening, the delegates of foreign communist parties were called to the Kremlin and given the opportunity to read

10070-613: 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,

10176-503: The time of the war's end in 1945 and the ascendancy of Władysław Gomułka to General-Secretary of the PPR, it had begun cementing its tenuous power by exuding an ethno-nationalist ethos to unite a homogenizing Poland against threats to the country, i.e. minorities such as Germans. This all came with the support of the Catholic Church. The then-Primate of Poland August Hlond actively worked to push Germans out of positions within

10282-484: 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

10388-538: 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 , 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

10494-432: 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

10600-428: 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 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

10706-790: Was a two-term president of the Polish Republic). Their center-left party, the Democratic Left Alliance ( Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej , SLD), was one of the major political parties in Poland and was represented in the Sejm (Polish national parliament) until 2015. Marxism 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

10812-401: 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

10918-600: Was followed by a period of liberalization, known as the Khrushchev Thaw , into the early 1960s. In 1961, the body of Stalin was removed from public view in Lenin's mausoleum and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis . Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski criticized Khrushchev in 1978 for failing to make any analysis of the system Stalin presided over, stating: Stalin had simply been a criminal and

11024-481: Was kept in power for four decades under Soviet influence. Near the end of World War 2 in 1944, the PPR under the command of the USSR started its program of Polonization with approval from the United States and UK due to changes in its borders; ceding territories in its east in exchange for formerly German lands in the west. Beginning with the expulsion of minorities to neighboring countries such as Belarus, by

11130-693: 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

11236-490: Was the primary victim of the deleterious effect of the cult of personality, which, through his existing flaws, had transformed him from a crucial part of the victories of Lenin into a paranoiac man who was easily influenced by the "rabid enemy of our party", Lavrentiy Beria . The basic structure of the speech was as follows: On 30 June 1956, the Central Committee of the party issued a resolution, "On Overcoming

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