History of marxism

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Basics and origin

In order to better understand the foundations of Marxism, Lenin suggests a classification of the most important theoretical discussions with thinkers that Marx and Engels conducted:

Marx and Engels

The first years of publication of the writings of Marx and Engels are considered the time of origin of Marxism. From 1841 Marx worked in the Rheinische Zeitung , which he later headed and which was finally banned in 1843 because of its radical opposition. The pamphlet “ The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer & Consorten ”he published in 1845 together with Engels; In 1847 Marx wrote The Misery of Philosophy as a critical response to Proudhon's “Philosophy of Misery”.

In February 1848 he and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto for the Communist League , to which they both belonged. This important Marxist work initially contains descriptions of the living conditions at the time, especially the differences between the working and ruling classes. Building on this, it calls for the abolition of capitalism and the creation of new, communist living conditions: the “overthrow of bourgeois rule ” should take place through inevitable class struggles. From 1872 to 1892 new editions appeared with new forewords, in which mostly additional remarks were made.

In the years 1848/49, Marx and Engels also worked as a journalist for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung .

In 1852 Marx published the work " The Eighteenth Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte " , in which he viewed the coup d'état Louis Napoleon in 1851 from a historical, but above all from a social analysis perspective. He explains the course of the bourgeois revolution through his theory of history and, on the occasion of the class struggle, also deals with his theory of the proletarian revolution. The "Eighteenth Brumaire" exerted influence on totalitarianism research . According to a Marxist-Leninist point of view, it is shown that a victorious proletarian revolution must break the bourgeois state apparatus.

In 1859 the work on the critique of political economy was published, which already contains all the main assumptions that Marx later expounded in his major work Das Kapital . In 1867 the first part of the nearly 3,000-page trilogy Das Kapital appeared . Volume 1: The production process of capital contains the definition of a "commodity" and the creation of the exchange value of this commodity as well as extensive theories on money and labor . Volume 2: The Circulation Process of Capital , as well as Volume 3: The Complete Process of Capitalist Production were only published by Engels after his death in 1885 and 1894. With the publication of these volumes, as well as his own popular scientific summaries, Engels gave decisive impulses for the formation of Marxist theories.

In 1878 Engels published Mr. Eugen Dühring's revolution in science , or in short, the " Anti-Dühring " . Originally written at the request of Wilhelm Liebknecht in order to reduce Dühring's influence, the polemical anti-Dühring developed alongside the short version " The development of socialism from utopia to science " to the most widely read works of the original Marxists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and not about Capital . The meaning of the “Anti-Dühring” does not lie in his confrontation with Dühring, but in the exposition of the “communist worldview” (preface to the 2nd edition). Not only are the fundamentals of Marxism presented, topics are also dealt with that have so far remained untouched.

In contrast to other endeavors, such as utopian socialism or anarchism , which also included the growing working class in their theories and considerations, Friedrich Engels coined the term scientific socialism for his and Marx's theories .

During Marx's lifetime, a group of socialists called themselves "Marxists" was formed, but already at the turn of the century, the content of the group was already deviating considerably.

Marxism in German and Austrian Social Democracy

1848 to 1933

In the course of the political liberalization of the bourgeois March Revolution of 1848/1849 in Germany , workers began to organize in union-like associations for the first time . This was followed by the formation of the first various workers' organizations , the forerunners of the trade unions and finally social democratic and socialist parties, such as the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) founded by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863 and the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) around Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel as a German section the first international .

ADAV and SDAP united in Gotha in 1875 under the name Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP) on the basis of the Gotha program , which was criticized by Marx for its compromising adaptation to the reform-oriented ADAV ( criticism of the Gotha program ). Oppression, legal persecution and temporary bans as well as the socialist laws between 1878 and 1890 under Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck could hardly stop the growth in membership of Marxist organizations during this period and so the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) emerged from the SAP in 1890 , which joined forces the Erfurt program worked out by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein was again oriented more closely to Marxism. At that time it was the largest ideologically influenced party by Marx and united supporters of various Marxist currents. In its beginnings, the party was influenced by a strong left / Marxist wing, partly gathered around the person of Rosa Luxemburg . At the turn of the century there was a very controversial discussion about the political objectives within the SPD. a. through the essay Social Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg was decided in favor of the Marxists and the "revolution". However, the practical political course of the party, even after the essay The Requirements of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy (1899) by Eduard Bernstein, ran in the direction of bourgeois social democracy ( democratic socialism , reformism or revisionism ).

When the war broke out in 1914, the SPD disregarded the pre-war resolutions of the Second International and supported the war by agreeing to the war credits, initially without a dissenting vote. From September 1914 the left-wing opposition began to rally and on December 2, 1914, Karl Liebknecht was the only member to vote against the approval of war credits, disregarding the SPD's parliamentary group. The left-wing opponents of the war, including Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others, initially formed the “Internationale” group, which held a conference on January 1, 1916 in Berlin. Since her “Political Letters” were signed with “Spartakus” from this conference on, she was given the name “Spartacus Group”. In September 1916 the illegal organ “Spartacus” took the place of the “Political Letters”.

In April 1917 the leaders of the “ Social Democratic Working Group ”, which had been excluded from the SPD, founded the “ Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany ” (USPD), which the “Spartakusgruppe” joined under the reservation of political and ideological independence and which appeared at its founding party with its own revolutionary program . At their illegal Reich Conference on October 7, 1918 in Berlin, the “Spartacus Group” decided on a program that demanded the immediate end of the war, the revolutionary achievement of democratic rights and freedoms and the overthrow of imperialism and militarism as a prerequisite for the socialist revolution. During the November Revolution of 1918, the leadership of the SPD and USPD opposed an initiative to transform the German Empire into a socialist state, whereupon from December 30, 1918 to January 1, 1919, the constituent congress of the " Communist Party of Germany " was held in the ballroom of the Prussian House of Representatives ( KPD) took place. The labor movement finally split into reformists (social democrats) and revolutionaries (communists).

1933 until today

In 1956 the Federal Constitutional Court banned the KPD as "unconstitutional". ( KPD ban ) In 1959 the SPD finally laid down its Marxist worldview as a theoretical basis with the Godesberg program , but continued to commit itself to socialism .

The Austro-Marxism was a flow in the context of Marxism, especially in the social democracy in Austria was common of the 20th century in the first third. Under the umbrella term “Austromarxism” there are quite a number of different views. In this respect, the term tends to be more of a description of origin in the sense of an Austrian school of Marxism than the clear basis of a common denominator. Various intellectuals can be counted as Austromarxism, including Max Adler , Rudolf Hilferding , Otto Bauer , Karl Renner and Gustav Eckstein .

A common denominator of Austromarxism is the SDAP party program of 1926, the so-called “ Linz Program” . In this program, which was mainly written by Otto Bauer, the general basic principles of Austromarxism were set out. This Austromarxist program sees itself as a middle way between social democratic reformism and the revolutionary orientation at that time mainly represented by the Comintern parties .

see also: social democracy , socialist party , workers 'movement , workers' movement in Germany

Marxism in the Soviet Union

Although one of the most powerful countries in the world, tsarist Russia was still predominantly agricultural until the end of the 19th century . In many places, pre-capitalist feudal structures ( feudalism ) still prevailed . Increased industrialization began especially since the government of Tsar Nicholas II (from 1894). The rapidly growing proletariat suffered from miserable social conditions. Left opposition to tsarism in Russia in the 19th century was more strongly influenced by social revolutionary and anarchist currents than in most other European countries, whereas organized Marxist social democracy was still in its infancy at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1898 the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Russia (RSDLP) was founded as a federation of three Marxist organizations, but it was quickly banned again. In 1903 the party split in exile into the Bolsheviks (“majority”), under the leadership of Lenin , and the Mensheviks (“minority”), after Lenin by “... the purely coincidental fact that we were at the 1903 party congress in Brussels-London had the majority ”. After the February Revolution of 1917 under the leadership of the Social Democratic Mensheviks did not lead to Russia's withdrawal from the First World War , Lenin was brought to St. Petersburg with the help of the German Reich via Finland to initiate another revolution and to negotiate a ceasefire.

The October Revolution of 1917 was led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky , and Lenin remained the undisputed leader of the party until his death on January 21, 1924.

He created a party concept according to which it should be a tightly “organized troop” and “instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat ”. (See also What to do ? , Democratic Centralism and Leninism )

The revolution had a strong impact on the international labor movement: from 1918 communist parties were founded all over Europe, membership rose rapidly and there was soon an open conflict with the bourgeoisie . In Germany ( Weimar Republic ) and Italy in particular, conditions sometimes resembled civil wars. When Benito Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922 and Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933, any workers' organizations were smashed or forced into resistance.

Josef Stalin , who gained power since the beginning of the revolution, defined Leninism in 1924 as “Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution ... the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. ”(“ On the Basics of Leninism ”). Trotsky, on the other hand, developed his own ideas in response to Stalinism, which at first were pejoratively called Trotskyism . The term was later adopted by its followers. He was essentially based on two theories: on the one hand, the theory of “permanent revolution” , according to which socialism as a society in transition to communism can only function on an international level, which is why the whole world must be liberated from capitalism through a revolution. On the other hand, the analysis of the Soviet Union as a “degenerate workers state”, in which a bureaucracy had usurped power.

After Lenin's death, a power struggle broke out within the CPSU between Stalin and Trotsky, who led the Left Opposition . Stalin decided this dispute for himself through manipulations that he passed on to posterity and soon concentrated enough power in himself to exclude Trotsky from the CPSU in 1927. Later Trotsky was stripped of his Soviet citizenship. He fled via detours to Mexico, where, after countless anti-Stalinist publications, he was murdered by an agent of Stalin in 1940. From 1929 to 1953 Stalin was practically the sole ruler of the Soviet empire, during this time he enforced his political ideas with brute force and paranoid fear of conspiracies from within ( Stalinism ). Stalinism was based on the theory of “ socialism in one country ”, the intensification of class struggles and uncompromising leadership both internally and externally. The class struggles should bring about the development of society towards communism as quickly as possible and thus liberate the proletariat. In practice, this principle was the legitimation for increased waves of purges and concentration camps ( Gulag ).

In 1941, in spite of a friendship and non-aggression pact, Adolf Hitler's army attacked the Soviet Union ( World War II ) and occupied the western parts of the country, but after great efforts the USSR was able to repel the German armed forces and finally occupy Berlin in May 1945 . Stalin remained leader of the USSR for eight years. After Stalin's death in 1953, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the beginning of de-Stalinization (see also XXth Party Congress of the CPSU , 1956) and the so-called thaw period , although in the further course of the history of the Soviet Union a partial rehabilitation of Stalin began again. The last powerful head of the Politburo, Mikhail Gorbachev , initiated the final abandonment of the personality cult around Stalin, as well as profound reforms ( perestroika and glasnost ), which was followed by the loss of the satellite states and thus the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 .

see further: Marxism-Leninism , Communist Party , Legal Marxists , Labor Movement , Real Socialism

  • Leon Trotsky (1900) was a leader of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, a Soviet politician, and a Marxist theorist

  • Lenin was one of the leading figures of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, a politician, author of theoretical and philosophical writings on Marxism

  • Josef Stalin , revolutionary and dictator of the USSR

  • Nikita Khrushchev (right), Soviet politician and founder of de-Stalinization

Marxism in the "Third World"

In the middle of the 20th century, anti-colonial liberation movements in the Third World often took up Marxist approaches in the course of decolonization , whereby a liberation theology based on Marxist approaches emerged, especially in South America .

In 1949 Mao Zedong gained power in China with the Communist Party . Mao, whose most important ally was the USSR until 1965 , ruled on the basis of Maoism until 1976. Maoism was a totalitarian further development of Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism, in which progress played a central role. The people should submit to Mao and the party and not use socialism for relief. In contrast to the “ Association of Free Producers ” according to Marx, the workers under Mao Zedong were subjected to severe constraints. Mao Zedong, who had lost political trust within the party through the " Great Leap Forward ", a campaign that was supposed to strengthen the economic power of the People's Republic of China and resulted in a devastating famine, tried his ideas of a Maoist state through 1966 To put the cultural revolution called to life into practice. This “revolution” determined political events in China until Mao Zedong's death and led to excessive murders, mistreatment, the destruction of cultural goods and restrictions on the people. After Mao's death, China opened up again more and more to Western capital and thus to capitalism.

The Việt Minh under the leadership of Hồ Chí Minh fought in Vietnam during the Second World War (like the CPC in China) against the Japanese occupation forces and against the French colonial system in Vietnam . After the August Revolution in 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on September 2, 1945 . France then entered the Indochina War , which resulted in the 1954 Indochina Conference dividing Vietnam into North Vietnam under the leadership of Hồ Chí Minhs, and South Vietnam . The Second Indochina War against the USA ended on May 1, 1975 with a victory for the communists and a reunification of Vietnam, the "Socialist Republic of Vietnam" still exists today.

After the revolution was successful in Cuba in 1959, it was not until 1961 that Fidel Castro declared his revolt to be a “socialist revolution”. When the Socialist Republic was proclaimed on December 2, 1961 , Cuba was defined as a Marxist-Leninist state. During the Cold War , political and economic relations were limited to socialist states such as the USSR or China, although during the Cuban Missile Crisis there was almost an open conflict between the world powers. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a severe economic crisis and then an opening towards corporations and tourists. After Castro's resignation in 2008, however, a cautious reform of the existing system is emerging under his successor, his brother Raúl Castro .

Internationally, Castro's former companion Ernesto Che Guevara also pursued the socialist revolution in other developing countries, especially in Africa and South America, and thus weakening the USA, which was perceived as imperialist, or suppressing its influence, especially in Latin America. His death in Bolivia in 1967 in the name of a revolutionary movement made him a martyr of leftist independence and liberation movements around the world.

From 1948 to 1994, Kim Il-sung led a dictatorship in North Korea on the basis of real existing socialism with orientation towards Maoism. The official state ideology is the so-called Chuch'e idea . North Korea was and is economically supported by China, for example during the Korean War (1950–1953). After Kim Il-sung's death, his son Kim Jong-il took over all power and continues to run the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the style of his father.

In Chile too , with Salvador Allende's election victory in 1970, an attempt at democratic socialism was undertaken. He was overthrown in a US- backed military coup in 1973 and died in the course of it.

Most recently, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez , who was in office between 1999 and 2013, has tried a similar policy with the Bolivarianism he developed , relying on the writings of the German social scientist Heinz Dieterich , who fundamentally defines Marxism with his concept of socialism in the 21st century want to reform.

“Western Marxism” / neo-Marxist currents

" Neo-Marxism " refers to Marx anknüpfende schools of thought, which since the late 1910s by an orthodox differ examination of Marx's theory from a " dogmatisierenden distinguish" interpretation of Marxism and especially contrary to the Marxist-Leninist tradition of thought and its real reactions are situate . Nevertheless, the theories of Lenin, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg are important for the neo-Marxist discourse. Karl Korsch, Georg Lukács, Ernst Bloch and Antonio Gramsci are among the most important early theorists of neo-Marxism:

With his work Marxism and Philosophy, Karl Korsch was the first to overcome the “dogmatic” discourse on Marxist theory by applying the Marxist theory of history critically to the development of Marxism itself.

Core concepts of Marxist theory, which Georg Lukács subjected to an analysis, are alienation , reification and class consciousness . Lukács assumes, among other things, that as the capitalization of a society continues, more and more subsystems have the same capitalist structures (educational institutions become educational establishments that have to operate like companies; the state should be run like a company, etc.). That means: the reification process determines all social relations. His most important work is history and class consciousness .

Ernst Bloch tried to make Marxism sensitive to a flow of heat , since people could not only be reached with rational (cold) arguments, but had to be addressed on a deeper level due to non- simultaneous developments. He referred to unfinished battles in history and the foreshadowing of a world free of domination, which would become visible in concrete utopias . In the mid-1950s, shortly after completing his main work, The Principle of Hope , he left the GDR because he was imprisoning students.

Antonio Gramsci , co-founder of the PCI , wrote one of the most important works of neo-Marxism with his prison notebooks. The main concept of his theoretical presentations is hegemony , understood as the “uniform development of a collective consciousness” and as “the spread of a homogeneous way of thinking and acting” (Book 1, § 43). With his works, Gramsci influenced not only Marxist thinkers, but also European theory formation in the social and political sciences . He also laid theoretical foundations for Eurocommunism.

The euro communism is one of the most important neo-Marxist dominated political currents. This campaigned for changes within the pluralistic democracies (of the West, including Japan). The conceptual differentiation from “real socialism”, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, became uncommon after the collapse of the USSR and is rare today. Significant Euro-Communist parties that can be described in a historical context ran for candidates in Italy , Spain and, for a short time, in France .

The Frankfurt School at the Institute for Social Research , founded by Max Horkheimer for the first time in the 1930s and existing until 1959, developed with its critical theory an ideology-critical social philosophy and theory that was influenced by the Western critique of reason and that dealt with the social and historical conditions of theory formation (ideology) in Societies, especially that of late capitalism . This criticism was also linked to the claim to change social conditions. Important representatives besides Horkheimer are Theodor W. Adorno , Walter Benjamin , Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse . The Frankfurt School exerted influence on the New Left , other neo-Marxist currents and social science debates.

The " Titoism " was a by Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia developed Marxist movement, which strongly at federalism , self-management and the nonalignment oriented.

Louis Althusser is considered one of the most influential European Marxist philosophers of the 1960s and 1970s. Althusser, who was influenced by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis , Antonio Gramsci's political theory, Spinoza's philosophy and Gaston Bachelard's epistemology , among others , subjected Karl Marx's work to a structural reading.

With the regulation theory , the Neogramscianismus or the cultural studies further scientifically recognized neo-Marxist theories can be found in the social science scientific community .

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see also: practice group , world system theory , critical legal studies , value criticism

literature

Scientific journals

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lenin: Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism . Works, Vol. 19, pp. 3–9.
  2. ↑ Marx; Engels, Communist Party Manifesto. 1848.
  3. ↑ Theo Stammen , Gisela Riescher , Wilhelm Hofmann (ed.): Major works of political theory (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 379). Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , pp. 320-323.
  4. ^ Marx, On the Critique of Political Economy. 1859.
  5. ^ Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1: The Production Process of Capital.
  6. ↑ Marx; Engels, Das Kapital, Volume 2: The Circulation Process of Capital.
  7. ↑ Marx; Engels, Das Kapital, Volume 3: The Overall Process of Capitalist Production.
  8. ↑ The parties (political associations) are an achievement of the bourgeois revolution and, in their character as electoral associations, meet the requirements of the bourgeoisie. Neither Marx nor Engels went so far in their criticism of bourgeois society as to question this bourgeois form of organization for the proletariat
  9. ↑ All data from “History of the German Workers' Youth Movement”, 1904–1945 Dortmund 1973, pages 122 f., 142 f., 176 f., 216
  10. ↑ Lenin “State and Revolution” (LW 25), page 468 f.
  11. ↑ Compare his brochure “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” in Lenin's Works (LW) 7
  12. ↑ For example in terms of content in his text State and Revolution (LW 25, page 416 f.)
  13. ↑ See Stalin Werke Volume 10, pp. 150–155
  14. ^ Theo Stammen, Gisela Riescher, Wilhelm Hofmann (eds.): Major works of political theory. Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , pp. 263-265.
  15. ^ Theo Stammen, Gisela Riescher, Wilhelm Hofmann (eds.): Major works of political theory. Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , pp. 291-294.
  16. ↑ Quotation from: Theo Stammen, Gisela Riescher, Wilhelm Hofmann (Ed.): Major works of political theory. Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , p. 162.
  17. ↑ Quotation from: Theo Stammen, Gisela Riescher, Wilhelm Hofmann (Ed.): Major works of political theory. Kröner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-520-37901-5 , pp. 161-163.