Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and is the culmination of his intellectual efforts. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.
Reading Capital is a 1965 book about the philosopher Karl Marx's Das Kapital by the philosophers Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Jacques Rancière, the sociologist Roger Establet, and the critic Pierre Macherey. The book was first published in France by François Maspero. An abridged English translation was published in 1970, and an unabridged translation in 2015. The book was influential among intellectuals.
Simple commodity production, also known as petty commodity production, is a term coined by Friedrich Engels to describe productive activities under the conditions of what Karl Marx had called the "simple exchange" of commodities, where independent producers trade their own products. The use of the word simple does not refer to the nature of the producers or of their production, but rather to the relatively simple and straightforward exchange processes involved.
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as "historical materialism," to understand class relations and social conflict. It also uses a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Marxism originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, As a result, there is no single, definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has had a profound impact in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts.
Economic determinism is a socioeconomic theory that economic relationships are the foundation upon which all other societal and political arrangements in society are based. The theory stresses that societies are divided into competing economic classes whose relative political power is determined by the nature of the economic system.
Roman Osipovich Rosdolsky was a prominent Ukrainian Marxian scholar, historian and political theorist. Rodolsky's book The Making of Marx's Capital, became a foundational text in the rediscovery of Marx critique of political economy. As well as influenced later scholars such as Moishe Postone.
Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art, beauty, and so forth. Marxists believe that economic and social conditions, and especially the class relations that derive from them, affect every aspect of an individual's life, from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks. From one classic Marxist point of view, the role of art is not only to represent such conditions truthfully, but also to seek to improve them ; however, this is a contentious interpretation of the limited but significant writing by Marx and Engels on art and especially on aesthetics. For instance, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who greatly influenced the art of the early Soviet Union, followed the secular humanism of Ludwig Feuerbach more than he followed Marx.
"Wage Labour and Capital" was an 1847 lecture by the critic of political economy and philosopher Karl Marx, first published as articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. It is widely considered the precursor to Marx’s influential treatise Das Kapital. It is commonly paired with Marx's 1865 speech Value, Price and Profit. In 1883, a Russian translation was published as a book and included an excerpt from Capital volume 1 in the appendix, chapter 23 on Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation. In 1885, a pamphlet version was first published as an English translation. An 1885 pamphlet based on the newspaper articles was published in Hottingen-Zürich without Marx's knowledge and with a brief introduction by Friedrich Engels. The German edition was revised by Engels in 1891 and published by Vorwärts after the Anti-Socialist Laws had lapsed the previous year. In 1893, an updated English translation from the 1891 German edition was published in London.
Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole is the third volume of Capital: Critique of Political Economy. It was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1894.
Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume II: The Process of Circulation of Capital is the second of three volumes of Capital: Critique of Political Economy. It was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1885.
Neue Marx-Lektüre or NML is a revival and interpretation of Karl Marx's critique of political economy, which originated during the mid-1960s in both Western and Eastern Europe and opposed both Marxist–Leninist and social democratic interpretations of Marx. Neue Marx-Lektüre covers a loose group of authors primarily from German-speaking countries who reject certain historicizing and empiricist interpretations of Marx's analysis of economic forms, many of which are argued to spring from Friedrich Engels role in the early Marxist workers' movement.
Socialism is a political philosophy and economic system.
Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided societies that struggle against each other, and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historians follow the tenets of the development of class-divided societies, especially modern capitalist ones.
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, also known as Capital, is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy and critique of political economy written by Karl Marx, published as three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his life's work, the text contains Marx's analysis of capitalism, to which he sought to apply his theory of historical materialism "to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society", following from classical political economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The text's second and third volumes were completed from Marx's notes after his death and published by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.
Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian economists tend to accept the concept of the economy prima facie. Marxian economics comprises several different theories and includes multiple schools of thought, which are sometimes opposed to each other; in many cases Marxian analysis is used to complement, or to supplement, other economic approaches. Because one does not necessarily have to be politically Marxist to be economically Marxian, the two adjectives coexist in usage, rather than being synonymous: They share a semantic field, while also allowing both connotative and denotative differences.
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew from various sources, and the official philosophy in the Soviet Union, which enforced a rigid reading of Marx called dialectical materialism, in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied as aesthetics, ethics, ontology, epistemology, social philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought. The theory is also about the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie.
The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857–8. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until 1939.
Various Marxist authors have focused on Marx's method of analysis and presentation as key factors both in understanding the range and incisiveness of Karl Marx's writing in general, his critique of political economy, as well as Grundrisse andDas Kapital in particular. One of the clearest and most instructive examples of this is his discussion of the value-form, which acts as a primary guide or key to understanding the logical argument as it develops throughout the volumes of Das Kapital.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism:
Michael Heinrich is a German historian of philosophy, political scientist, and mathematician, specialising in the critical study of the development of Marx's thought. Heinrich's work, influenced by Elmar Altvater and the Neue Marx-Lektüre of Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt is characterised by its focus on the points of ambivalence and inconsistency in the work of Marx. Through this theme, Heinrich challenges both the closed system he identifies with "worldview Marxism", as well as teleological narratives of Marx's intellectual development throughout his life. He is best known for his 1991 study of the theoretical field of classical political economy The Science of Value, his introductory text to the critique of political economy An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, and his ongoing project to produce a multi-volume biography of Marx, of which the first volume of a projected four was published in 2020.
