Group 3-RADICAL MARXISM THEORY_final

RADICAL MARXIST THEORY
Reported by:
 Angeleen A. Taran
 Myla Soria
 Jonas Layoso
Subject: Theory and Practice of Public Administration
Who is KARL MARX?

 Born: May 5, 1818
 Died: March 14, 1883
 Karl Marx was a prominent thinker who wrote on topics related to
economics, political economy, and society.
 Born in Germany, Marx spent much of his time in London, where he wrote many famous
works, including The Communist Manifesto and Capital (Das Kapital).
 Marx often collaborated with long-time friend and social theorist Friedrich Engels.
 Marx is known for his revolutionary writings favoring socialism and a communist revolution.
 While Marxism and Marxian economics have been largely rejected by the mainstream today,
many of Marx's critiques of capitalism remain relevant today.
Philosopher, Social Theorist, and Economist

 Published the “The Communist Manifesto” with Friedrich Engels (1848)
 Believed in the labor theory of value to explain the relative difference in market prices
 Presented a great challenge to laissez-faire economics in “Das Kapital” (1867)
 Developed theory of historical materialism
The Communist Manifesto (Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels)

 In 1848 it was published for the Communist League.
 The text outlines the relationship between the means of production, relations
of production, forces of production, and the mode of production, and posits
those changes in society's economic base effect changes in its
superstructure.
 When writing The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explained how
they thought capitalism was unsustainable and how the capitalist society that
existed at the time of the writing would eventually be replaced by a socialist
one.
DAS KAPITAL
 Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867.

 Das Kapital was a full and comprehensive three-volume critique of
capitalism
 Marx expounded his theory of the capitalist system, its dynamism, and its
tendencies toward self-destruction.
What is MARXISM?
 Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after the 19th-century, German
philosopher and economist Karl Marx.
 Marx collaborated with FRIEDRICH ENGELS - Both were German but lived and wrote in
England, especially in the industrial city of Birmingham.
 Marx chose the term “communist” since it sounded radical: it implied the abolition of private
property & the reorg. of society based on a workers’ revolution.
 Marx thought history was cyclical and that the time for communism had arrived – he advocates
achieving communism in a violent revolution where the workers (PROLETARIAT) would
overthrow the capitalist/owners (BOURGEOISIE).
 His books, Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, formed the basis of Marxism.
The PROLETARIAT refers to the laboring class, particularly industrial workers who lack their own means
of production and therefore sell their labor to survive. It can also denote the lowest social or economic
class within a community. In Marxist theory, the proletariat plays a central role in the
struggle for social change and revolution. For example, the Bolsheviks believed that
Russia’s discontented proletariat made the nation ripe for revolution. The term has its origins in
Latin, specifically from the word “proletarius” meaning “producing offspring”.
BOURGEOISIE – the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic
values or conventional attitudes. (in Marxist contexts) the capitalist class who own most
of society's wealth and means of production.
WHAT IS COMMUNISM?
 Marx and Engels studied the history of the world’s economies.

 This means the way that power, industry and finance are controlled.
 They saw the way countries developed in stages.
Karl Marx's 5 stages of communism

1. PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM
 Stone Ages- humans live primitively w/ no social classes, private property.
2. FEUDALISM
 Society controlled by land-owning aristocracy, who exercise power over peasants.
 The people are kept uneducated and told that GOD chose the King to rule. The church helps the
King this way.
 He gives land and privileges to ‘nobles’ who rule the people for him.
3. CAPITALISM
 Bourgeoisie rule over proletariat because they own the means of production, distribution and
exchange whilst proletariat sell themselves as labour. Marx saw this as exploitation.
 The business owners or capitalist get richer while the workers do all the hard work.
 The capitalist gets more power to serve their own interests.
 Capitalism creates a huge working-class of people who soon get angry at the way they are treated.
They organize in unions and demand changes.
4. SOCIALISM
 Workers' organizations form dictatorship of the proletariat to rule on their behalf. Food, goods,
services distributed according to need.
5. COMMUNISM
 Government withers away- no need. Classless and stateless society with co-operation replacing
competition. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'.
Karl Marx believed that the proletariat would overthrow capitalism in a violent revolution.
 Both communism and socialism oppose capitalism, an economic system characterized by private
ownership and a system of laws that protect the right to own or transfer private property.
 In a capitalist economy, private individuals or the companies they create own the means of
production and the right to profit from them.
 Communism and socialism aim to right the wrongs of capitalism’s free-market system. These
include worker exploitation, inequities between classes, and outright poverty.
The Labor Theory of Value

 an early attempt by economists to explain why goods were exchanged for certain relative
prices on the market.
 suggested that the value of a commodity was determined by and could be measured objectively
by the average number of labor hours necessary to produce it.
 the amount of labor that goes into producing an economic good is the source of that good's value.
 In the labor theory of value, relative prices between goods are explained by and expected to tend
toward a "natural price," which reflects the relative amount of labor that goes into producing them.
 In economics, the labor theory of value became dominant over the subjective theory of value
during the 18th to 19th centuries but was then replaced by it during the Subjectivist Revolution.
Exploitation and Surplus Value

 While many equate Karl Marx with socialism, his work on understanding capitalism as a social
and economic system remains a valid critique in the modern era. In Das Kapital (Capital in
English), Marx argues that society is composed of two main classes: Capitalists are the business
owners who organize the process of production and who own the means of production such as
factories, tools, and raw materials, and who are also entitled to any and all profits.
 This exploitation is the reason, according to Marx, that employers can generate profits: they
extract a full day's worth of effort and production from workers but only pay them a smaller
fraction of this value as wages. Marx termed this surplus value and argued that it was nefarious.
Class Conflict and the Demise of Capitalism

 Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in a historical progression of economic
systems that follow one another in a natural sequence. They are driven, he posited, by vast
impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict among social classes.
According to Marx, every society is divided into social classes, whose members have more in
common with one another than with members of other social classes.
Philosophy of Marxism
 Karl Marx thought there should be a direct connection between one’s work and one’s
pay
 Karl Marx believed that communism was necessary as an intermediate state in the
transition from capitalism to socialism.
 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that capitalism would inevitably lead to poverty
and a worker’s revolution.
Importance of Marxism
Marxism is one of the most important theories in history. It has shaped our understanding of
capitalism, socialism, and communism. Marxism has been used to justify revolutions and
uprisings around the world. It has also been used to create some of the most oppressive regimes
in history.
Relevance of MARXISM
 Marxism is still relevant today because it offers a tool to understand history and economics, and it
offers an explanation for the global capitalist crisis that no other theory probably offers.
 Marxism is the world’s most influential body of thought and has changed the course of human
history.
 While Marx’s theories have been falsified and predictions invalid, his ideas about class struggle
and conflict being a motivator for change are still relevant in contemporary society.

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RADICAL MARXIST THEORY

Subject: Theory and Practice of Public Administration

Who is KARL MARX?

Philosopher, Social Theorist, and Economist

The Communist Manifesto (Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels)

 Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867.

 Marx and Engels studied the history of the world’s economies.

Karl Marx's 5 stages of communism

The Labor Theory of Value

Exploitation and Surplus Value

Class Conflict and the Demise of Capitalism

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