Is Marxism different from Communism? What is it?

Question

I always hear it being associated with communism but is it the same thing?

Answer 1

Marxism is a collection of social and economic theories. It deals with the idea of value and the evolution of economic systems through time. As such, it predicts that certain political and economic changes should almost inevitably occur. It in itself is not really a political system.

The socio-economic system that Marx predicted would arise after capitalism is called socialism. In each previous revolution an obstacle to the workers' realizing the profits of their own labours was removed. The pronounced one remaining in capitalism is capital - the expensive tools needed to perform work efficiently. In a socialist system, instead of being privately owned, all the capital would be collectively owned by the workers or society at large. We already see manifestations of this in national disaster insurance, government police and fire services, and so on.

Marx also throught that once a more advanced system manifested it would make all the older systems obsolete and tend to destroy them. There aren't really too many authentic feudal or slave states any more, after all... where capitalism penetrates these older systems are washed away. So the few countries that tried to speed this evolution along, adopt a socialist system, and set the world on fire with an economic revolution were a bit upset when the revolution never really happened. At least not on such a short scale. The (at the time) new Soviet Union declared that they must have reached a heretofore unforseen transitional state which they called communism.

As an attempt to realize a kind of socialism, in communism the state takes charge of all resources, industry, and pretty much everything else in the name of the people. Because they were revolution-minded and didn't really see their systems as inevitable, pretty much every communist system very quickly slid into fascism and tyranny with constant, violent, and secret actions against the very people they were supposedly serving. A marxist would probably observe that the tendancy of these communist states to falter and give in to more and more capitalist ways demonstrates more than anything else that they were not really the transition they claimed and perhaps originally tried to be.

Answer 2

I would certainly put both under the same category. Marxism is political philosophy based on ideas of Karl Marx. Communism is a political system based on the ideologies of Marxism and it's implementation.

Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Religion etc. The way China and Russia implemented communist ideas varies considerably. While Stalin took a technological route, Mao believed in agricultural revolution.

Of course time proved any communist/Marxist ideology obsolete. Even China incorporating Capitalism and therefore rapidly growing economy.

EDIT:

Absurd the idea that apparently Capitalism has any direct tendencies with Communism or at least at a level that matter. The list in the third answer is absurd, all you have to do is post that list in the economic section - and it'll be completely destroyed.

No one gives up there freedom willingly, so somebody is suppose to do a job which requires more work but less pay. Communist ideas ares simply impractical most certainly in their purist forms.

The way socialism is incorporated and interpreted in Western Democratic countries is completely different from the ideologies of Marxism. None of the other answers have given any good insight as to how they can be implemented.

Many many books have been written, discussed to death, many different communist systems - ultimately each resulting in the collapse of Marxist ideologies.

For a society to succeed progress, advance -  Competition is necessity. What is required are barriers to protect few taking advantage over majority. That is where approaches differ.

Communism collapsed, China is Hybrid regime, without a doubt proving Communist ideologies have no practicality or necessity what so ever. At the end USSR had a one of the best armed military but a third world country.

Answer 3

Marx might say no, since the Russians and the Chinese and the Cubans, etc. did not create the "just" effects he hoped his system would create.

But read the "10 Planks" of Marxism and tell me that force is not necessary to implement them. http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Man...

In the sense that any form of government that is not laissez faire capitalism (including the U.S.) requires (some) government force to make it work, all forms that are not laissez faire are "collectivist."

This means Marxism, Communism, Socialism, and America's "mixed economy," are all collectivist, all the same in that they require some amount of force.

Answer 4

Sort of. Communism is a vast umbrella term that has existed for years, and Marxism is specifically the philosophy of the one who penned the Manifesto for Communism, Karl Marx.

Communism had existed for centuries, it was wrote about in Thomas Moore's Utopia. Mercantilism, the economic structure of the Old Regime, could be considered a form of socialism, as it is a system of central planning. It has its roots in Christian communitarianism which has its roots in St. Augustine, whose works admonished an ownership society and advocated community values and praise of God.

Karl Marx put a name and a face on it. He called it Communism. Unlike the earlier Christian Communitarians, his philosophy was not based on theology, but instead on the philosophies of G.W Hegel and Immanual Kant. And although Communism has its roots in Christianity, Marx adapted it to a Hegelian Atheism. God does not exist, but then neither does objective reality, thus faith in God is replaced in faith in "The people" which when regarding Socialism was a euphemism for "The State"

The central tenet of Marxism is the class war: that the workers are being made subservient by the capital-earning class, and that a divide between the two would grow to such prodigidous size that the workers would overthrow the Capital earning class and establish a classless society, called Socialism, which would itself experience another violent revolution, where the people would overthrow the state and establish a stateless, classless society, called Communism.

This belief is not necessarily true of all communists. Social Democrats, for example, do not believe a violent revolution was necessary and that the transition to Socialism can be peacefully transitioned through democracy. So while Marxism is a central aspect of Communism, it is not the only one.