Marxism and World Politics

Marxism and World Politics

Introduction

Marxism refers to the social and political theory that asserts that the social change results from the economic class struggles. In this regard, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels came up with the Marxist theory in the course of the 19th century (Van den Berg, 2018). The theory is known to have formed the philosophical foundation for the uptake of communism by a number of nations during early 20th century. One aspect that the theory dealt with regards the views on the rich and poor nations, as well as the democratic and non-democratic states as predictors of the world politics. As such, this paper has been written in agreement with the Marxists belief the difference between poor and rich nations is increasingly pertinent to the comprehension of the world politics compared to the difference between the democratic and non-democratic stated tends to hold some truth.

Discussion

According to Marxism, economics remain to be amongst the dominant aspects that leads to changes in the world politics. As such, this observation remains to be a vital difference between Marxism and other theories on world politics and international relations, including theories like liberal internationalism and realism that lay emphasis on the supremacy of politics in relation to economics.

Even though the initial Marxism theory place a lot of focus on the individual societies’ internal dynamics as opposed to the world politics, V.I. Lenin, who has been acknowledged as one of Russia’s Communist revolution architects, brought the theory Marxism to the international politics during the early years of the 20th century. Marxism offers relevant views on factors pertaining to world politics (Van den Berg, 2018).

According to Baylis Smith and Owens (2017), in the theory of Marxism, the continuous struggle to gain control of the various production forces tends to be the dynamic force that underlie the human development. Thus, the economic system is tasked with the determination of the other societal features, including the society’s political structure. In this regard, Karl Marx observed that the society’s economic structure of was the actual basis on which the political, legal and moral, superstructures arose, as well as to which the various definite social consciousness types corresponded. As such, it can be noted that to the Marxist, certain political systems tends to be grounded on and emerge from specific economic systems. As such, the Marxist perceive the socialist economy as laying the basis for the genuine democracy even as it also maintains that the capitalistic nations tend to have forms of democracy that are impure (Pêcheux, 2015). The target of the Marxist politics is not the genuine democracy given the observation that the Marxists perceive democracy as being little more than that the necessary evil. Thus, according to V.I. Lenin, democracy can be described as a nation that acknowledges the increased subordination of the minority groups by the majority groups. A good example might be the organization for methodical utilization of force by a given class (oppressor class) against the other class (the oppressed class) (Johnston, 2015). V.I. Lenin’s description of a democratic state is in consistency with the emphasis placed by the Marxist on the class struggles.

Further, the other notable reasons why Marxist find its relevant that the rich and poor nations are pertinent to the understanding of the world politics compared to the democratic and non-democratic nations stems from the view that class struggle remains the social change impetus and, therefore, play a key role in global politics. Thus, the Marxist theory asserts that history may be effectively perceived as a sequence of class struggles where by a given social class tends to oppress the other, particularly the one below it (Pêcheux, 2015). However, as a result of the class struggle, a given social class is likely to overthrow its oppressing class and this leads to the emergence of a novel social class structure, with novel oppressor class and a novel oppressed class.in this regard, Marx presented the argument that, normally the worker or proletarian class was the oppressed classed even as the capitalist were the oppressors given that they gained value from the work carried out by the workers in form of earnings for themselves and left the workers with little from such profits.

In this regard, the Marxism theory forecasted that the worker class was likely to revolt in the end thereby overthrowing the capitalistic oppressors, and as a result putting in place a society that is classless and founded of the principles of socialism. This can be observed in the various philosophical foundation that the 20^th century communist regimes and movements including North Korea, China and the Soviet Union, as well as other Latin American countries took on, and was mostly founded on the theory of Marxism (Johnston, 2015). Nevertheless, it is vital that one take into account the observation that even as Marxism is seen to prop up some kind of socialism, not every type of socialism is naturally Marxist.

The other reason for supporting the Marxist views that the difference between rich and poor nations are more relevant in the predication of the world politics compared to the difference between democratic and non-democratic states lies on the observation that the Marxists have theorized that poverty and inequality are the key functional elements of the mode of production in the capitalist stated (Van den Berg, 2018). Thus, capitalisms essentially generates the various inegalitarian social structures. As a result, poverty and inequality gets transferred from a generation to the next via the services’ environment and the opportunities surrounding every person (Pêcheux, 2015). A state’s social geography is comprised of the community environments’ hierarchy that is known to reproduce the existing hierarchical class structures. Any alteration to such system is prone to bring about changes in the demand for labor. As such, the continued poverty in a number of nations and the prosperity of other nations can be observed as being the outcomes of the on-going need for the system to generate and regenerate the industrial reserve armies. This, therefore, makes it increasingly challenging for the poverty and inequality to be eliminated devoid of making essential changes to the nation’s production mode.

Conclusion

In summary, it can be noted that, with regards to Marxist politics, the world is perceived as the struggle that exist between the capitalist and the workers, and the economies form the basis where the building of the society occurs. Marxism perceives the state as the venue where the struggle between the haves and the have-nots occur. As a result, the Marxists perceive democratic states, particularly those in the capitalist economic systems, as being detrimental. Thus, Engels maintains that the modern state, regardless of its form, is fundamentally the capitalist machine, and that the machine is a state that is unacceptable given that it evidently focuses on the exploitation of the citizens.

 

References

Baylis, J., Smith, S., & Owens, P. (Eds.). (2017). The globalization of world politics: an     introduction to international relations. Oxford University Press.

Johnston, L. (2015). Marxism, Class Analysis and Socialist Pluralism (RLE Marxism): A    Theoretical and Political Critique of Marxist Conceptions of Politics. Routledge.

Pêcheux, M. (2015). Dare to think and dare to rebel! Ideology, Marxism, resistance, class struggle. Décalages, 1(4), 12.

Van den Berg, A. (2018). The immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the state to the state of            Marxism. Routledge.