CRITICALLY ANALYSIS THE MARXISM

(POLITICAL SCIENCE-I)

SUBMITTED TO: MS. REBECCA PRADHAN

ASST. PROF. OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
SUBMITTED BY: RAJJAK HOSSEN
BALLB (5 YRS);1ST SEMESTER
ROLL NO-55; SECTION-A
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher as well as our

principal who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the
topic “CRITICALLY ANALYSIS THE MARXISM, which also helped me in
doing a lot of research and I come to know about so many new things.

I am really thankful to them.

Secondly, I would also like to thank my senior brother and friends who helped me
a lot in finishing this project within the limited time.

RAJJAK HOSSEN

signature signature

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 CONTENTS

CHAPTER=1

1.1INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………..…4

1.2 ORIGINS………………………………………………………………...4

1.3 DIFFERENT TYPES OF POLITICAL THEORY…………………..…5

CHAPER=2

2.1 MARXIST…………………………………………………………….…9

2.2 HISTORY OF PRODUCTION AND NEEDS…………………………11

CHAPTER=3

3.1 THE REVOLUTION OF 1848……………….......................................11

3.2 NECCESITY OF REVOLUTION……………....................................12

3.3 CRITICISM..................................................................................…...12

CHAPTER=4

CONCLUSION…………….……………………………………………….13

REFERENCE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 CHAPTER=1

1.1IINTRODUCTION: Marx fits within a wider group of Western thinkers who,

beginning in the seventeenth century, offered new, secularized answers to the old
questions, What is the good life for human beings? and, How is that life to be
attained? In part, Marx was a laughing heir of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment—a thinker far more optimistic about human prospects than almost
all his predecessors. Yet there is also a basso profundo in his thinking, a sense of
the immensity of pain and suffering that will be needed before humans can hope to
become the free, autonomous, rational, loving, creative, communal beings that he
hoped would eventually make their way on the earth.

Among major predecessors of Marx's social theory are Thomas Hobbes (1588–
1679), John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and Adam
Smith (1723–1790). Marx was also influenced by conceptions of the self
associated with the German Romantic tradition. Many intellectual tendencies
found their way into his thinking through the philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), whose lectures (published shortly after his death)
and books sought to cover the entire range of human culture. Further, although
Marx's orientation was relentlessly secular, there are residues in his thinking of
some religious conceptions. He continued, in a secular and universalized form,
Christian conceptions of perfection. Further, as Warren Breckman has shown, his
notion of humanity emerged from a theological debate concerning the personality
of God.

Marx was born in Trier in the Rhineland region, which after the defeat of
Napoleon in 1815 was ruled by conservative Prussia. Marx's father was obliged to
convert from Judaism to Lutheranism in order to keep his position as a lawyer in
the local court system. In 1835 Karl went to university—first to Bonn, the next
year to Berlin. Although for career reasons his father wanted Marx to study law,
Karl quickly gravitated to philosophy. He found the law too limiting, and he also
believed for a time that, by pointing out inadequacies in existing institutions,
philosophy could help bring about progressive change in Germany.

 1.2 ORIGINS: The main theories that make up this analysis—the theory of
alienation, the labor theory of value, and the materialist conception of history—
must all be understood with this focus in mind. Even Marx's vision of socialism
emerges from his study of capitalism, for socialism is the unrealized potential
inherent in capitalism itself (something our great material wealth and advanced
forms of organization makes possible) for a more just and democratic society in
which everyone can develop his/her distinctively human qualities.
Some socialist ideas can be traced as far back as the Bible, but Marxism has its
main intellectual origins in German philosophy, English political economy, and
French utopian socialism. It is from the German philosopher, Hegel, that Marx
learned a way of thinking about the world, in all its fluid complexity, that is called
"dialectics." The British political economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo,
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provided Marx with a first approximation of his labor theory of value. From the
French utopians, especially Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon, Marx
caught a glimpse of a happier future that lay beyond capitalism. Along with the
paradox of an Industrial Revolution which produced as much poverty as it did
wealth, these are the main ingredients that went into the formation of Marxism.

1.3 DIFFERENT POLITICAL THEORIES:

 LIBERALISM :
Liberalism is about individual liberty. It is the term of many meanings after
carrying a high emotional content, referring to a cluster of social, political and
economic doctrines which have changed radically since the word was apparently
first used in Spain in 1811 to refer to the group drawing up the liberal constitution
of 1912. Truly speaking, “Liberalism is the theory and practice of individual
State.”It was a reaction against the authority of the feudal barons, the government
by aristocrats and the power of the clergy. It was an attempt to give back to man
his personality and individuality. Capitalist and Socialist both want to impose their
view of utopia on everybody else. Capitalists base their view on money. Socialists
want to use the economic power of the state to enforce equality. Both these views
are founded on economic relations-Liberalism is founded on power relation.
Liberalism is the opposite of authoritarianism it can safely be said that the
liberalism may be regarded as an attitude rather than a doctrine which lays stress
on man’s goodness and rationality and desire for reforms to be introduced in every
walk of life for a bright future and which contain those principles which go a long
way in making the contents of democracy today. It is a faith in the value of human
personality.
New meaning of liberalism or modern liberalism, ‘The term liberalism’ in the
twentieth century had assumed two form in the narrow sense and in the general
sense. In the narrow sense, it has come to mean a positive midway between
conservatism and socialism and one that a favourable to reform but opposed to
radicalism. In a wider or general sense, it has come to be equated with democracy
as opposed to totalitarianism, both of the communists and the Fascists. In this
sense, it implies the preservation of popular institution of government, like the
suffrage, representative assemblies, executive responsible to the legislative, etc. So
modern liberalism is the outcome of the drive of liberal and socialist ancestors for
a world free of tyranny and exploitation.

 MARXISM :
A social, political and economic philosophy that examines the effect of capitalism
on labour, productivity and economic development. Marxism posits that the
struggle between social classes, specifically between the bourgeoisie (capitalist)
and proletariat (workers), defines the development of the state, and that the
bourgeoisie seek to gain control of the factors of production from the “masses”
only by eliminating the control of the economy continue to grow.
Historical materialism or the materialist concept of history is the direct application
of principles of dialectical materialism to the development of society.

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The theory of the materialistic conception of history starts with the belief that
economic activities are the basis of political legal, culture and religious institution
and belief. Various forms of state or varieties of legal system cannot be taken as
results of development of human mind, but have their origin in the material
condition of human life. The theory starts with the simple truth that man must eat
to live and in order to eat he must produce. Thus, his survival depends upon the
success with which can produce what he wants from nature. Production is the
most important of all human activities. Society is the result of these necessities of
man. Marx grouped the efforts of man in the past to secure that necessity of life
into main stages:
 The primitive or Asiatic stage in which the forms of production are slight
and owned,
 The ancient,
 The feudal, and
 The capitalist.
In all these three stages, the class which controls the means of production controls
the rest. It is this fact of domination which creates a perpetual State of tension and
conflict. In all stages quote Marx “All the social , political and intellectual relation,
all religious and legal systems, all the theoretical outlooks, which emerge in the
course of history, are derived from the material condition of life. “Again, “Upon
the several forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, a whole
superstructure is reared and conception of life. The whole class produces and
shapes these out of its material foundation and out of the corresponding social
condition.”
 SOCIALISM :
An economic and political system based on public or collective ownership of the
means of production. Socialism emphasizes equality rather than achievement, and
values workers by the amount of time they produce. It also makes individuals
dependent on the state for everything from food to health care. China, Vietnam and
Cuba are examples of socialist government. It is a political term applied to an
economic system in which property is held in common and not individual, and
relationships are governed by a political hierarchy- common ownership does not
mean decision are made collectively, however . Instead, individual in position of
authority make decision in the name of the collective group. Regardless of the
picture painted of socialism by its proponents, it ultimately removes groups’
decision making in favour of the choices of one all-important individual. Socialism
originally involved the replacement of private property with a market exchange,
but history has proven this ineffective. Socialism cannot prevent people from
competing for what is scare. Socialism as we know it today, most commonly refers
to” market socialism”, which involve individual market exchanges organised by
collective planning. People often confuse “socialism” with the concept of
“communism”. While the two ideologies share much in common- in, In fact
communism encompasses socialism- the primary difference between the two is
that “socialism” applies to economic and political systems. Another difference
between socialism and communists is that communists directly oppose the concept
of capitalism, an economic system in which production is controlled by private

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interests. Socialists, on the other hand, believe socialism can exist within a
capitalist society.

FACT ABOUT SOCIALISM :

a. In theory, citizens have equal access to the products and resources and are
compensated based on the amount of work performed.

b. Under the ideals of socialism, there is no motivation for worker for workers
to excel at their jobs because there is no benefit to the worker.

c. Friedrich Engels, a French social theorist, developed modern socialistic

theory in the late 18th century when he advocated the elimination of
production method based on capitalism.

d. Karl Marx described socialism as a lower form of communism and held the
opinion that socialism was an intermediary step in moving from capitalism
to communism.

e. Many movements across Europe embraced the Marxist view of socialism

and uprising of the working class, including the labour unions.

f. The two largest “socialistic” systems are the former Soviet Union and
Mainland China. Each of these began with the ideal of socialism, but ended
in becoming totalitarian in nature.

 GANDHISM :
Gandhism may be defined as a corpus of concepts and techniques evolved by
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , the father of Indian nation, though he said :
There is no such thing as Gandhism, He was not a political philosopher in the
usual sense. He was a religious minded man who entered politics because of the
great concern for the masses of the people.
The philosophy ideas of Mahatma Gandhi are mainly based on some of the
dominant precepts of his own Faith, Hinduism especially of the Vaishnava
persuasion. His ideas were also deeply influenced by the writings of Tolstoy and
John Ruskin. Thus Gandhi’s political ideas have come to be based on certain
philosophy, mystical, and ethical values- namely the spiritual nature of man,
existence of God, unity of religions, and ones of the human race. He considered
that these values are not only valid in personal and private life but in the proper
ordering of social relations as well.
According to Gandhi, politics should be based on principles. In politics, as in
personal and social life, ends cannot justify the means. Wrong means cannot lead
to the right end. To undo the wrongs in a political and social system the right
means should be adopted and that means, says Gandhi, is the that the people have

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the right to resist the ruler who oppresses and fails to do justice. But they should
not adopt violent means, but non violent means which he calls ’Satyagraha’.

a. The good of the individual is contained in the good of all;

b. A lawyer’s work has the same value as that of the barber inasmuch as both
have the right of earning their livelihood from their work;
c. A life of labour, i.e. the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman,
is the life worth living.

 BEHAVIORALISM:
Behaviourism is primarily concerned with observable and measureable aspects of
human behaviour. In defining behaviour, behaviourist learning theories emphasize
changes in behaviour that result from stimulus-response associations made by the
learner. Behaviour is directed by stimuli, An individual select one response instead
of another because of existing at the moment of the action. It asserts that the only
behaviours worthy of study are those that can be directly observed, thus it is
actions, rather than thoughts or emotions, which are the legitimate object of study.
Behaviourist theory does not explain abnormal behaviour in terms of the brain or
its inner workings. Rather, it posits that all behaviour is learned habits, and
attempts to account for how these habits are formed. In assuming that human
behaviour is learned, behaviourists also hold that all behaviours can also be
unlearned, and replaced by new behaviours that is, when a behaviour becomes
unacceptable, it can be replaced by an acceptable one. A key element to this theory
of learning is the rewarded response. The desired response must be rewarded in
order for learning to take place.
Psychology should be seen as a science. Theories need to be supported by
empirical data obtained through careful and controlled observation and
measurement of behaviour Watson (1913) stated that “psychology as a
behaviourist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science.
Its theoretical goal is prediction and control”
In education, advocate of behaviourism have effectively adopted this system of
rewards and punishment in their classroom by rewarding desired behaviours and
punishing inappropriate ones. Reward vary, but must be important to the learner in
some way. For example, if a teacher wishes to teach the behaviour of remaining
seated during the class period the successful student reward might be checking the
teacher mailbox, running an errand, or being allowed to go to the library to do
homework at the end of the class period. As with all teaching method, Success
depends on each student’s stimulus and response, and on associations made by
each learner. This chapter introduce behaviourism’s principle advocate and their
distinct approaches to the theory. Some implications for classroom management
are also presented, along with method for maintaining and eliminating behaviours.
This paper presents information useful to instructional designer media developers,
And especially classroom teachers.
Behaviourism developed as a reaction to dualism, and begins by denying
everything that the dualist holds dear: there are no minds. But there are people. So
each person is the very same thing as his/her body, and exists only so long as the

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body continues to function. No live body, no person. There are simply denials of
dualist doctrine. They relieve the Behaviourist of the no interaction problem, since
there no souls to interact with. But these denials do not amount to a theory of
mind. The guts behaviourism lies in its claim that certain patterns of bodily motion
are definitive of mental states. Bodies can think- mental states and processes are
patterns of stimuli and response.
The problem of other minds vanishes since, according to behaviourism, we can
literally see other think. To see why the latter is so and to appreciate the positive
portion of behaviourism , let us look at the last part. Behaviorism is a form of
materialism about mental processes, every mental process is some physical process
or other. Our mental processes are certain physical processes that take place in our
body. But that’s not all that behaviourism says. It says something much specific
about how to say which physical processes are mental processes.

CHAPTER=2
2.1 MARXIST :

Marx's study of capitalism was grounded in a philosophy that is both

dialectical and materialist. With dialectics, changes and interaction are brought
into focus and emphasized by being viewed as essential parts of whatever
institutions and processes are undergoing change and interaction. In this way, the
system of capitalism, the wider context, is never lost sight of when studying any
event within it, an election or an economic crisis for example; nor are its real past
and future possibilities, the historical context, ever neglected when dealing with
how something appears in the present. Whatever Marx's subject of the moment, his
dialectical approach to it insures that his fuller subject is always capitalist society
as it developed and is still developing. The actual changes that occur in history are
seen here as the outcome of opposing tendencies, or "contradictions", which
evolve in the ordinary functioning of society.

Unlike Hegel's dialectic, which operates solely on ideas, Marx's dialectic is

materialist. Marx was primarily concerned with capitalism as lived rather than as
thought about, but people's lives

also involve consciousness. Whereas Hegel examined ideas apart from the
people who held them, Marx's materialism puts ideas back into the heads of living
people and treats both as parts of a world that is forever being remade through
human activities, particularly in production. In this interaction, social conditions
and behavior are found to have a greater affect on the character and development
of people's ideas than these ideas do on social conditions and behavior.

Hegel.
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From 1837 onward Marx absorbed from Hegel's writings, as well as from the
generalized Newtonianism then dominant, a particular understanding of what a
properly rational, scientific knowledge of the world requires (Megill, chap. 1).
Such an understanding, Marx held, must be universal in form and must generate
necessary rather than merely probable knowledge. Further, Hegel regarded human
history as a rational process of intellectual and cultural advance, analogous to the
progress of knowledge that he saw in the history of philosophy, and Marx adopted
this view also. Hegel held that philosophy advances by means of rational debate
(called "dialectic" in Greek). Sharpening Hegel, Marx interpreted dialectic as
requiring critique of the existing order.

After finishing his doctoral dissertation, on ancient philosophy, in 1841, Marx

became an oppositional journalist. In October 1843 he moved to Paris, which was
the center of European radicalism and the largest city on the European continent.
Here he credited a critical journal that was to be smuggled into Germany. He also
intended to complete a critique of Hegel's political theory and to write a political
history of revolutionary France. Meanwhile, in the streets, bars, cafés, and meeting
rooms of Paris he discovered the revolutionary agent that he concluded would
overthrow the existing order—the working class or, as he called it, the proletariat.

Estrangement (alienation).
By July 1844 Marx had abandoned political theory and political history (although
he never abandoned political activism, to which he devoted intense time and
energy). Instead he turned to a critique of economics. In his "Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts" (May/June–August 1844; published 1932) and in
related manuscripts, Marx analyzed the claims of such economists as David
Ricardo (1772–1823) and James Mill (1773–1836). Notably, he criticized them for
ignoring the "estrangement" (or alienation) that he saw workers as subjected to in a
private-property-based economic system. Workers do not find either gratification
or the possibility of self-development in their work. The products of their labor
become a means for oppressing them. They become estranged from each other.

Marx borrowed the notion of estrangement from the critical theologian Ludwig
Feuerbach (1804–1872). In his Essence of Christianity (1841), Feuerbach had
argued that religion estranges human beings from their best qualities, which are
attributed to God, Christ, and so on. Religion therefore needs to be superseded by a
this-worldly humanism. Marx's innovation was to apply Feuerbach's critique of
religion to economic theory and economic life.

Marx also contended, although elliptically, that the system of private property and
exchange (buying and selling) is irrational: it is unplanned, it results in an
unpredictable rise and fall of prices, and it has no intelligible historical
progression.

2.2 History of production and needs.

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In January 1845 Marx moved to Brussels. In collaboration with the young
businessman Engels, who had recently become his friend, he wrote The German
Ideology (1845–1846; published 1932). Part 1, mostly Marx's work, sketches out a
rational history of humankind, focused not on philosophy but on humans' actions
to wrest a living from the material world. Using their intelligence, human beings
develop their "productive forces," which improve over time. More advanced
productive forces continually come into conflict with the retrograde forms by
which society and production are organized (later, Marx and Engels would call
these forms "relations of production"). History up to now, Marx and Engels held,
has been dominated by class conflict: famously, they declared in their
revolutionary pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (1848) that "the history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." In their view, these
struggles are all ultimately rooted in conflict between forces and relations of
production.

Marx (and Engels) also asserted that history would culminate in a socialist society
that would function without a political state and without private property and
exchange. However, they offered only sketchy accounts as to how this society
would actually operate.

CHAPTER=3

3.1 The revolutions of 1848 and an analysis of capitalism.

The revolutions of 1848 disappointed Marx, for the established order proved
remarkably successful in thwarting political—let alone social—reform. Marx
responded to the disappointment by turning to a serious analysis of "the capitalist
mode of production." Now living in London, he began in 1851 to study the
economy systematically. After a massive effort of research, he published Capital
(Das Kapital), volume 1, in 1867. Although never finished, Capital is rightly
regarded as Marx's most important work. In it, he attempted to penetrate beneath
the arbitrary, merely surface phenomena of economic life to what he saw as
capitalism's deep structure.

Adding to his earlier claims about estrangement, Marx in Capital focused to a

greater degree than earlier on what he saw as the irrational and exploitative aspects
of capitalism. Under capitalism, he held, workers are necessarily exploited—that
is, they are deprived of the "surplus value" that their labor creates. Exploitation, he
contended, is unavoidable as long as the capitalist system (oriented to private
property and the market) exists.

Most subsequent economists rejected Marx's claim that labor is the sole creator of
value, as well as his related assumption that the value of a commodity somehow

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exists objectively in the commodity. However, two of Marx's general contentions
have not yet been proved false. First, he was persuaded that capitalism has a built-
in dynamism, a tendency to transform its own conditions of production. Indeed, in
The Communist Manifesto he and Engels were perhaps the first to sketch out the
process of worldwide capitalist expansion and transformation that we now call
"globalization." Second, he held that exploitation under capitalism does not arise
from the good or bad intentions of individuals, but is systemic. Position in the
system, not greater intelligence or harder work, is the most likely explanation for
why the coffee futures trader in New York makes vastly more money than the
small coffee producer in Central America.

3.2 Necessity of revolution:

The convinced, root-and-branch Marxist claims that capitalism must be destroyed

because it necessarily brings with it estrangement, exploitation, and a disorderly
irrationality (overproduction, under consumption, boom-and-bust economic
cycles). The root-and-branch Marxist holds that piecemeal reform of the system is
insufficient to solve these problems. He or she also holds that capitalism will be
destroyed—it is doomed to collapse.

Insistence that capitalism cannot be reformed and that the proletariat (the industrial
working class) is the revolutionary class that will destroy it were the two
touchstones of Marx's thinking from 1843–1844 onward. To be sure, in his later
years Marx suggested that in some countries revolution might occur by electoral
rather than by solely violent means, and Engels shared this view. But this was not
a rejection of revolution, which in Marx's lexicon equates not to violence, but to a
radical transformation of the dominant economic and social system however
achieved.

3.3 CRITICISM: Criticisms of Marxism have come from various political

ideologies and academic disciplines. These include general criticisms about lack of
internal consistency, criticisms related to historical materialism, that it is a type of
historical determinism, the necessity of suppression of individual rights, issues
with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion
or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and
epistemological problems are frequently identified

CHAPTER=4

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CONCLUSION: The utopia he envisioned was described by Marx as a new
society in which humanity would no longer be self-alienated and would thus be
free to live independent of the bondage of their former lives as laborers. The
political state would only be needed to ensure the continuance of the self-
alienation. Ideally, the concept sounds noble. Realistically, the classless society
meant that the status quo was the best for which anyone could hope. Opportunities
for self-improvement were non-existent, as people lost their individuality as they
blended into one mass of society.

Marx claimed that the best society was one in which those who were capable
would work to supply the needs of all.

REFERENCE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 Dr, Bangia R K,POLITICALSCIENCE

 http://totallyhistory.com/marxism/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism


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