What is Marxism?

Marxism is a system of thought that emerged in the 19th century. In 19th-century Europe, very strange changes were taking place. There were great changes both intellectually and materially. On the intellectual plane, the Enlightenment thought of the 18th century transformed the economy, politics, and representative democracy into much more accurate models in terms of the relationship between society and politics (1789 Declaration of Human Rights). There have been many changes in terms of political structure. Of course, it also happened in material terms. During the Industrial Revolution, technology was progressing, factories were being built, mechanization was starting to accelerate, and coal trains were emerging. In agriculture, the feudal system was slowly beginning to dissolve. Gradually, people migrated to cities. Job opportunities increased in the city. Türkiye experienced a similar situation in the 1950s. Industrial production was also developing in cities. So people were changing their location. This is one of the things that led to the dissolution of the feudal system in agriculture. Parallel to all this, when some people became factory owners, new modern classes were formed. There were also the Ottoman Balkan Wars. The idea of nationalization, and the collapse of empires all coincide with this period.

Karl Marx (Marxism) tried to understand and make sense of this change. Marxism is a system of thought that has followed in the footsteps of 3 basic schools of thought but has also criticized and shaped them. Marx was a system philosopher. He wanted to create a consistent system within himself. While creating his Marxism, he was influenced by 3 basic schools of thought. One is philosophy, socialism, economics, and politics - Marx did not do it alone. Hegel was also with him and was his supporter.

First of all, when we look at philosophy, he takes it from the German Classics. This is where he gets the infrastructure of the philosophy in his own system. Here, there is information about how history will progress. There are parts about the material living conditions of human beings and what kind of future we will face. He uses this for his philosophical infrastructure. The political economy part uses 19th-century British economic science as a basis for building the economics part. What British economic science tries to understand when it looks at what the basic people of economics think is this. What is a capitalist? What are the components of capitalist commodity production? He proceeds to build a set of economic-political theories. We call these the labor theory of value, the surplus value theory, and so on. Socialism begins to look for its origins in French revolutionary thought. Karl Marx says that there is an inequality created by capitalism that makes some people poor. And he seeks the remedy in the French revolutionary thought. Karl Marx produces models that claim to put an end to these phenomena. Marx thinks that a dialectical process called thesis-antithesis-synthesis is needed when developing ideas. Hegel calls the process of ideas or explanations challenging each other and thus finding a better idea dialectic. According to this, dialectic is realized through the triple movement of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. 

The thesis enables the formation of common values on a certain subject by putting forward an antithesis. In this sense, the first idea is the thesis. The idea that contradicts it becomes the antithesis. The point at which they agree is the synthesis. Hegel thinks that this progression of ideas will continue until the end of history. There will be a new idea, another idea will come along and refute it, and a better idea will come along. Then there will be another idea that disproves that better idea. And at the end of that, there will be a second better idea. Then there will be another idea that disproves this second better idea. And from there, a third, better idea will emerge. Hegel emphasized that this will not go on forever, but will continue until the absolute best is found. And in this sense, every explanation, every theory that lacks the absolute, the best idea, has a problem. Therefore, another idea will arise that contradicts, negates every idea, every thesis.