by Kevin Morris

Created on: February 10, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

The Meaning of Marxism

Marxism is perhaps the most complex and misunderstood ideology of the 20th century, with the possible exception of fascism. The influence of the writings of Karl Marx, which spread from Europe to Asia and the Americans, and the bloody legacy of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all make the case for a closer and more mature understanding of the actual philosophy of Marxism, and calls into questions the nature of the ideology itself. But by examining Marxism's greatest thinkers, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Gramsci, we see that just as fascism and democracy evolved, so to has the proletarian worldview. Far from purely an excuse for dictatorship or intellectual indulgence of the left, Marxism has evolved from an abstract theory, to a practical guidebook, and finally, to a cultural and sociological matrix.

But to understand this process of ideological evolution, we must go back to the beginning. Karl Marx was born in 1818 to a Jewish-German family in Trier, Germany. During his enrollment at the University of Bonn, where he worked on his law degree, he became involved in the growing philosophical-political group known as the Young Hegelians. Influenced by the political works of G.W.F. Hegel, particularly Lectures on the Philosophy of History and Elements of the Philosophy of Right, the group's left wring (the so-called left Hegelians) would produce toe bulk of Marxism's early intellectual elite.
It is not difficult to see the influence that Hegel's writings had on the birth of Marxism. The Philosophy of Right was published only nine years after Marx's birth, and is the intellectual genesis of the leftist concept of "freedom to" rather than "freedom from". In Hegel's mind, the free will of man can only express itself within the context of a human society, namely one that contains personal and family relationships, contract rights, economic opportunities, and legal protections. But Hegel's theory of right was not entirely usurped by the left, as many laissez-faire advocates evoked Hegelian principles in their defense of traditional views on private property (these individuals would form the so-called right Hegelians). Furthermore, the historical determinism which Hegel pioneered in Lectures would form the axiomatic basis of Marx's theory of economic determinism.
It is out of this intellectual backdrop, a worldview based in the rejection of the Ricardian male and empowered tabula rasa, a belief beginning to spread through both sides of the ideological

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