How to think like a Marxist

So the first thing that I want to say about socialism, and specifically Marxism since most socialist theory is based on his work, is that socialism isn't a prescription for how to run the world. It is a theory of change that is rooted in a scientific analysis of capitalism, economics, history, and society.

Using this framework, the strategies and organizing principles you employ are going to be different based on the time, place, culture, education, economic development, and other factors of where you are applying this theory to.

There is no single checklist of things you have to do or things you have to be in order for something to be Marxist, because these vary as material conditions vary.

That being said, one of the foundational tools of the Marxist analysis of capitalism is class analysis. We can see that capitalism increasingly divides society up into two broad and fundamentally opposed camps. Those camps being the capitalists, who own society's means of production and employs the masses of society to throw the machinery of society in motion in pursuit of their own interests, and the other camp being the masses of working class people who have nothing for sale but their own labor, and are forced into a choice between selling their labor according to terms set by a member of the capitalist class, a capitalist who gets to withhold your means of subsistence as leverage, or you can choose to starve on the street.

These conditions may be bearable while there is much competition between the members of this capitalist class, all competing with one another for the best labor. But competitions eventually have winners, and therefore free market competition invariably concentrates wealth into a smaller and smaller group of hands, who in turn have more and more leverage over the worker as a result of that concentrated wealth, and who uses that leverage to drive your wages down further and further, accumulating more and more wealth by pocketing more of the value you produce instead of paying it to you in wages.

As this process goes on, more and more people are thrown into these intolerable conditions, their existence only justified if they can create profits for one of these capitalists and even then only just barely getting by on poverty wages.

This domination of the masses of society by a small minority of exploiters is tenuous and grows more fragile with every step forward capitalism takes. It is only possible for this tiny minority, which keeps growing smaller as wealth continues to concentrate, to retain their power if the vast majority are divided against one another.

Marxism uses this analytical framework to identify our common class interests, and uses that analysis as a basis for unity and solidarity among all of the exploited against the exploiter.

This analytical framework is used to develop strategies and tactics for changing the world. It informs our organizational principles, it helps us identify what we need to do in order to succeed in the struggle for liberation, but it doesn't necessarily provide end goals.

Sure, Marxism theorizes what society may eventually look like after the triumphant victory of the masses in the class struggle against the exploiters. This is where the idea of a classless, moneyless, stateless society comes from.

But it doesn't prescribe an end goal. Marx himself didn't think a classless, moneyless, stateless society was necessarily a realistic end goal, and if it could be achieved it wouldn't be for many, many generations. But what we do know is that the kinds of society, culture, art, relationships, and so on will be completely transformed as we throw off the shackles of capitalism and empower the masses to shape society in their interests. The goals of revolutionary organization come from the people themselves. Marxism is just the set of tools used to liberate the masses so that they can begin to build a society organized around their own interests, rather than organizing all of society around satisfying the profit motive of a small group of capitalists.

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." - Karl Marx