Karl Marx, born on this day in 1818, was a foundational political theorist and journalist associated with the philosophy of Marxism.
Among Marx’s best-known texts are the “The Communist Manifesto” and the three-volume “Das Kapital”, in which he set out to define and explain the behavior of the capitalist mode of production.
Marx’s political and philosophical thought have had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history, and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
Marx’s critical theories about society, economics and politics - collectively understood as Marxism - hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production, and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labor power in return for wages.
Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx concluded that, like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as socialism.
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ah perfect thank you! In the biography I’m reading, the author talks disparagingly about how Lenin boasted about how much of a strict adherent to Marxism he was, but was constantly changing his positions on things if it suited him…And like yeah dude communist revolution had never been tried before, of course he’s gonna change course. The author is a known lib though but apparently gives a pretty accurate account of events. His editorializing is obnoxious though
Lenin criticized the german revolutionaries for doing revolution too early because the working class there hadn’t given up on electoralism yet.
A lot of radlibs like to use that to justify vooooting for the dems. Which lenin would have never advocated in the first place.
That’s a misrepresentation at best. He never wanted parliamentary seats as an end in themselves, nor was he a Democratic socialist. But he recognized that seats in parliament could be used for further agitation and to build up popular support for the Bolsheviks. When they recognized that popular support for the bolsheviks and mass mobilization was already reaching the strength necessary for revolution, they decided to boycott the Duma.
Think of how the PSL engaged in electoralism in 2024. They know that winning a presidential election is not going to happen, nor is it the correct way to bring about socialism, but it was a correct tactic for growing awareness and popular support for the PSL and socialism in general. But the PSL is at its core a Marxist Leninist organization and definitely not Democratic socialists
Yes that makes a lot of sense and is what I assumed the strategy would be. When I tried to look for background on this, though, I just came across pieces that Lenin wrote to the Mensheviks about denouncing electoralism and nothing about his prior strategy so I was just a bit confused.