A critical analysis of Marxism by Daniel Robinson

Marx (1818–1883) defended a theory of economic determinism grounded in a more general theory of dialectical materialism. The central thesis is that society does not create but is a creation of economic forces based on a given society’s forces and modes of production. The state arises simply to protect the interests of those who command the productive forces. In capitalism, a class structure evolves, in which workers create value by their labor, which is expropriated as profit by the owners of the means of production and accumulated as capital. The exploitation of the working class is necessary in the capitalist state, whose overthrow can be achieved only by revolutionary means. Ultimately, there follows from a classless state the dissolution of the state itself. The workers of the world have united! The Marxist critique of society is now more a subtext than a guiding bible of reform. What survives, apart from lingering ideological loyalties, is the promise of a bona fide social science capable of explaini