Plenty of people have opinions on Marxism, and the label is thrown around an awful lot. Unfortunately, most of the people talking about Marxism have never actually studied it or even read Marx, they are just going off of what they are told by their preferred media mouthpieces. Those media mouthpieces themselves have likely never read Marx, they just throw his name and ideology around and slap it onto anything they want people to oppose. Red baiting never went away with McCarthyism, it just became more widespread.
So, what is Marxism?
Marxism is a socio-political philosophy that maintains the idea that society is effectively divided into multiple classes, the primary two being the laborer and the capitalist they labor for. In Marxism, the wealthy capitalist class exploits the labor of the labor class by limiting the laborer's share of their own labor to maximize the wealthy capitalist's profits. There are two main theories that form the foundation of Marxism: The Theory of Distribution and the Labor Theory of Value.
The Theory of Distribution:
The Theory of Distribution exists in multiple ideologies, including socialism and capitalism. In Marxism, the Theory of Distribution is as follows:
-
Critique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx, 1875
free link
Now, this has most commonly been misinterpreted (either through ignorance or maliciousness on the part of Marx's detractors) to mean that those who labor will have the product of their labor taken from them to give to those in need. But that's not actually how Marx explains it in his
Critique of the Gotha Program. What this theory of distribution actually means is essentially that all laborers in a given society labor for the good of the community, and from that community production they receive the exact amount they contributed. Before the laborer's portion is allocated, deductions are made for community services such as hospitals, schools, and a social welfare system for those unable to work. Marx explains it in the
Critique such:
Labor Theory of Value:
Now, on to the Labor Theory of Value (LTV). The LTV is a theory that argues goods and services are valued based on the labor it took to produce them. To Marx, this meant that a laborer should be compensated for their labor based on the value of their production. To use a simple example not intended to be representative of actual implementation based on current economics, say you have a cobbler making a pair of shoes for, I don't know, Nike. Nike pays their cobbler minimum wage, which would be $7.25 an hour. The shoes the cobbler produces sell for $100, however. The cobbler would have to work approximately 14 hours on that one pair of shoes in order to receive the full value of his labor. If the cobbler finishes the pair of shoes in five hours and they are still a well-designed pair of shoes that sell for $100, the cobbler is only receiving $14.50 out of the value of their labor, which is 14.5% of the value. To Marx, this indicates the laborer is being exploited by the wealthy capitalist class, because the cobbler produced the value but only received 14.5% of that value, while the bosses performed almost no labor and received 85.5%.
Conclusion:
Whether or not you agree with Marx is your choice, and there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with his theories. I disagree with some of the things he proposed. We must strive to ground our opposition in reality, however, and at least try to stay informed about the issues we support or oppose. I can't promise you won't become a Communist by reading Marx (
), but I can promise it will not cause you any harm