Authors: Nohlen
Summary: In about 3300 words the entry identities Marxism as a collective term for a heterogeneous and contradicting plurality of all theoretical approaches and political positions which claim to be based on the writings of Karl Marx, and walks the reader chronologically through the vast literature. As essential Marxist is defined a view of reality that sees political, cultural, and social societal life determined by the underlying economic structures and conditions. For Marxists it is therefore essential to start any scientific inquiry with an analysis of the economic conditions, and it is, furthermore, characteristic that theory is always viewed as guidance to political praxis. The entry argues that what differentiates Marxists are differences in historical, national, and political experiences. Common, however, is to present scientific facts and causalities in a Hegelian dialectic form. The entry reflects on Karl Marx writings by distinguishing his early humanism from his theory of revolution and the critique of the political economy. From the end of the 19th century to the 1920s Marx students developed 5 general schools of thought: the economism school problematized the economic problems resulting from capitalism, the revisionists critiqued Marx lead to the separation of social democrats from socialists, the Bolshevism school focused more practically on revolutionizing the Zarian system in Russia, while the Austro-Marxists took a middle position between social democracy and Bolshevism and the Hegelian Marxists worked to develop philosophy of the proletariat. In the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, the entry distinguishes between five schools strongly influenced by the Soviet phenomenon of politics and economics, state and society melting together. Those are the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, Gramscis work, the Soviet style Marxism-Leninism, China's Maoism, and writings by reform-communist in non-Soviet Eastern and Western Europe. As new tendencies since the 1960s are identified the especially in Eastern Germany developed theory of State monopolized capitalism' (STAMOKAP) and the counter-attack by Western Marxists in the form of a political theory of Western Marxism and by authors in the Keynesian, social democratic tradition. The entry ends with a critique of all Marxist inspired positions because of the gap between theory and empirical analysis, and the tendency to view the complex reality of social and political activity as a mere reflex to the economic conditions.