Marxism

A political, social, and economic theory by German philosophers Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). They had theories on communism/socialism and wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848), based on ideas about class division and economics. Many of their ideas arose from seeing the poor working conditions and class differences during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. At the core of Marx’s ideas were the issues of class struggle and the economic system. He thought that a capitalist system would lead to conflict between the proletariat (workers who produced goods in factories) and the bourgeoisie (the wealthy who owned the factories). He said the bourgeoisie exploited the workers and that the only way to overcome this was with revolution. He thought that a workers’ revolution would lead to a socialist society where profits are not important and everybody works together equally.

There are many schools of Marxism, and some have been used in communist revolutions around the world, such as Maoism (used by Mao Zedong during the Chinese Revolution of the 1940s) and Marxist-Leninism (used by Vladimir Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution).

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