18.1 Introduction
For over 200 years, liberalism has been the most dominant strand in political philosophy. Classical liberalism — advocating individual liberty and laissez-faire economics — became the economic philosophy of capitalism, protecting and promoting the interests of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it led to the concentration of capital and the alienation and exploitation of the proletariat.
The most virulent and systematic attack on classical liberalism came from Karl Marx, who argued that the working class could be redeemed only by the revolutionary overthrow of the whole capitalist order. Marxian ideas acquired the character of a powerful anti-liberal political ideology — socialism or communism. For about the last 150 years, liberalism and Marxism have emerged as the two major contending ideologies.
Original Marxian formulations were enriched, adapted, and modified by post-Marx Marxists. The most seminal contributions came from V.I. Lenin and Mao Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong). While Marx laid the theoretical foundations, Lenin and Mao successfully modelled their respective societies — the erstwhile Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China — by adapting Marxist principles to their prevailing conditions.
18.2 Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Born at Trier, Germany (May 5, 1818). Studied law at the University of Bonn and later at the University of Berlin, where he was attracted to the Young Hegelian movement — critical of both the Prussian Government and Christianity. Career options in university or government were closed due to his anti-government associations. He became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (1842), writing radical articles on economic issues; the paper was ordered closed by the Prussian rulers.
Marx migrated to France (1843), where he contacted French socialists, organised migrant German workers, and wrote his first major work — Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (EPM, written 1844, published 1932) — whose central concern is alienation. He also met Friedrich Engels in Paris, who became his lifelong friend and benefactor. Expelled from France in 1844, he moved (with Engels) to Belgium, where a serious study of history led him to propound historical materialism — contained in the joint work The German Ideology (not published during Marx’s lifetime).
Marx joined the Communist League. At its London conference (1847), he and Engels were assigned to write the Communist Manifesto (published 1848) — whose publication led to a wave of workers’ revolutions in Europe, particularly France. Marx’s analysis of these revolutions is in The Class Struggle in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Marx moved to England in 1849 and stayed at London until his death in 1883. During 34 years there:
- He moved gradually but decisively from philosophy to economics — from alienation to exploitation.
- He wrote Grundrisse (Outline, 1857; came to light 1939), a massive manuscript on the labour theory of value and surplus value.
- He published Capital (3 volumes — Vol. I in 1867; Vols. II and III published by Engels after Marx’s death).
- He set up the First International Working Men’s Association (1864) — remained active until 1876; its brightest hour was in 1871 when the Paris Commune captured the city and ruled it for nearly two months.
- He wrote Civil War in France (1871) — an elaboration of the aims and working of the Paris Commune.
- He wrote Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) — criticising communist supporters of Lassalle’s state socialism.
18.2.1 Alienation
In his early years, Marx was attracted to Hegelian idealism but under Feuerbach’s influence embraced communism of the humanist variety, articulated in his EPM. He criticised capitalism because it leads to the alienation of labour.
Alienation (also equated with estrangement, objectification, reification) = de-humanisation or the loss of self. In a capitalist order:
- The worker works in a mechanical manner and derives no pleasure from his work.
- His labour becomes a commodity he must sell to survive — he is alienated from his work.
- He is alienated from the product of his labour — it does not belong to him but to the capitalist.
- He is alienated from his fellow workers — due to the competitive nature of capitalism.
- He is alienated from his species being — his creative potentialities that are characteristic of being human.
Marx argued that in a communist society, man will return to his real self as a free creative agent and work will no longer be monotonous. Private property is the product and consequence of alienated labour — its abolition will lead to the redemption of man from his alienated state.
18.2.2 Historical Materialism
Three main interpretations of historical development:
- Spiritualist: all developments are due to divine dispensation/God’s will.
- Idealist (associated with Hegel): it is the development of ideas that drives human history — mind is primary, matter secondary.
- Materialist (Marx): all developments are due to changes in the material conditions of life — matter is primary, mind secondary. This inverted the Hegelian position.
Historical materialism is the core of Marxian writings — the main theme of The German Ideology. It explains all historical events in terms of changes occurring in the mode of production.
Mode of Production consists of:
- Forces/means of production: labour, capital, machine tools, factories, etc.
- Relations of production: slave-master, serf-lord, proletariat-capitalist, etc.
The economic structure (constituted by relations of production) is the real foundation (base) of society. On this base rises the legal, political and ideological superstructure corresponding to definite forms of social consciousness. This was the opposite of Hegel’s assertion that consciousness determines existence.
Changes from primitive communism → slavery → feudalism → capitalism → socialism → communism are all explained in terms of changes in the material conditions of society.
Marx also applied Hegel’s dialectical method to the material world — while Hegel applied it in the domain of ideas (thesis → antithesis → synthesis), Marx applied it to explain the material world. Hence:
- Hegel’s position = dialectical idealism
- Marx’s position = dialectical materialism
18.2.3 Class War
At a certain stage, the forces of production outgrow the relations of production — getting out of tune with them. This contradiction between forces and relations of production leads to a class war — a war between the class which owns the means of production and the class which owns only labour power.
Communist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles: freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed.”
When class war reaches its high water mark and contradictions become intense, it is resolved through a social revolution which ensures newer and higher relations of production. This process goes on. “No antagonism, no progress” — Marx.
The state in a capitalist society is a vehicle of class rule. If classes are abolished and a classless society comes about, the state will become redundant and gradually wither away.
18.2.4 Surplus Value
The theory of surplus value explains the whole phenomenon of exploitation in capitalist society. In simple terms, surplus value = profit.
The worker produces social objects sold by the capitalist for more than the worker receives as wages. The worker is not paid for the whole of his labour power. Some part of his labour is appropriated (stolen) by the capitalist. This is rooted in the labour theory of value — the value of a commodity depends on the amount of labour spent in producing it.
Surplus value exists only in class-based societies where the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat:
- Bourgeoisie: owns the means of production (land, capital, factories).
- Proletariat: owns nothing but their labour power, which they must sell to survive.
As surplus value increases, the worker gets paid less and less — leading to a sharp contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, resolved finally in a proletarian revolution and the demise of capitalism.
After capture of state power by the working class, Marx visualised a brief period of dictatorship of the proletariat — during which society would usher in:
- Socialism: “from each according to capacity, to each according to work”
- Communism: “from each according to capacity, to each according to need”
Communism = a classless society of associated producers; no exploitation, no alienation. The capitalist state is a “managing committee of the bourgeoisie” — in a classless society, it will become redundant and wither away.
18.3 V.I. Lenin (1870–1924)
Born at Simbirsk (April 22, 1870). His elder brother Alexander was executed for conspiring to kill the Tsar. Lenin joined Kazan University, was expelled for student agitation, and became leader of the Marxist group at St. Petersburg. Arrested in 1895 and exiled to Siberia, where he wrote Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). Migrated to Geneva (1900), joined Plekhanov’s revolutionary group, and edited Iskra (an anti-Tsarist paper).
Key works:
- What is to be Done? (1902) — party organisation.
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) — analysis of imperialism.
- State and Revolution — the post-revolutionary socialist state.
In October 1917, Lenin assumed power in Russia — the first successful Marxist revolution, in a capitalistically less-developed country where feudalism was deeply entrenched.
18.3.1 Party as Vanguard of the Proletariat
In Development of Capitalism in Russia, Lenin argued that the wage-labour class was not fully conscious of its exploitation. Only the industrial proletariat (factory workers) was capable of articulating the grievances of the whole class in a revolutionary direction — by transcending local economic grievances and narrow trade unionism.
In What is to be Done?, Lenin argued that conditions in Russia required a Communist Party that could act as the Vanguard of the Proletariat — consisting of or led by whole-time professional revolutionaries. (Stalin later elaborated: “A working class without a Communist Party was like an army without the General Staff.”)
This was a departure from the original Marxian position — the task Marx had assigned to the proletariat class got transferred to the Communist Party as the vanguard of that class.
Critique — Rosa Luxemburg (Polish Marxist): the vanguard thesis would place the working class in tutelage of the party; workers would lose all initiative and become mere tools in the hands of the party; it would kill or blunt the self-emancipatory efforts of the working class.
18.3.2 Democratic Centralism
Lenin advocated a specific organisational structure for the Communist Party — democratic centralism — consisting of two elements:
- Democracy: each higher organ of the party should be elected by the lower organ; all party matters should initially be discussed freely at all levels (from lowest to highest).
- Centralism: once a decision has been taken by the highest organ, it must be imposed strictly on all lower organs; all must abide by it without question.
In actual practice, the party became less democratic and more centralised. This was also criticised by his contemporaries.
18.3.3 Imperialism
Marx’s prediction that development of capitalism in Europe would lead to proletarian socialist revolutions had not come true. Lenin explained this in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916).
Capitalism in Western countries had grown so much that raw material and domestic markets were insufficient for further growth. Capitalist countries were therefore compelled to find raw materials and new markets for investment in Asia, Africa, and South America — capitalism was exported from Europe. It had acquired a monopolistic and parasitic position through colonisation.
Capitalism had thus reached its highest stage (imperialism) and had exhausted its historical mission of creating conditions for proletarian revolution in individual capitalist countries. However, capitalism in its imperialist manifestation had created conditions for a socialist revolution at the global stage.
18.3.4 Weakest Link of the Chain
The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in capitalistically under-developed Russia raised two problems for Lenin:
First problem: reconciling this revolution with Marxian theory. Lenin’s answer: the “weakest link of the chain” argument. Tsarist Russia, where capitalism was not yet fully developed, constituted the weakest link of the imperialist chain — it is strategically appropriate to break a chain at its weakest point rather than its strongest. The capitalistically advanced countries of Europe constituted the strongest point; Tsarist Russia constituted the weakest link.
(Also implicit in Marx: the bourgeoisie cannot grow strong without simultaneous growth of the proletariat — so where the bourgeoisie is weak, the proletariat is also weak.)
Second problem: since the revolution had occurred where capitalism was still unripe, how to build a socialist state. In State and Revolution, Lenin argued:
- The bureaucratic-military capitalist state had to be replaced by soviets modelled on the Paris Commune.
- He did not fully subscribe to the Marxist notion of immediate withering away of the state.
- During the transitional phase, communists could use the state apparatus to achieve their political and economic goals.
- It may be necessary to live with a mixed economy (private and public sectors co-existing) until the public sector is strong enough to take over socialist reconstruction. Only then would withering away of the state become possible.
18.3.5 Spontaneity Gives Way to Selectivity of Time and Place
Marx had expressed considerable faith in the revolutionary potential of the working class — an element of spontaneity. Lenin was critical of the Menshevik view that revolutionaries should wait for spontaneous revolutionary action of the masses.
Lenin argued that without strong leadership from outside its ranks, the working class could never rise beyond trade unionism — which he considered reformist rather than revolutionary. The Communist Party leadership would decide where and when the revolution is to be attempted — selectivity of time and place rather than Marx’s spontaneity.
Rosa Luxemburg’s critique: since the decision about time, place, and strategy of revolution was to be decided by the Communist Party, the spontaneity element inherent in Marx would give way to selectivity — this would blunt the self-emancipatory efforts of the working class.
18.4 Mao Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong) (1893–1976)
Born at Shaoshan in Hunan province, China (December 26, 1893). Mao is the second Marxist revolutionary (Lenin being the first) to bring about a successful revolution in a backward country — and he did so primarily with the help of the peasantry, a class Marx thought had no revolutionary potential and Lenin had not much faith in either.
He joined the KMT (Kuomintang) army during the 1911 revolution led by Sun Yat Sen. He came under the influence of the radical Marxist leader Li Dazhao (who arranged him a job in Peking university library). He returned to Changsha and became active in the Communist Party of China (CPC), organising mine workers between 1921–25.
Tension developed between the KMT and CPC over agrarian reforms — the KMT, many of whose members were landlords, could not accept such reforms. By 1927, relations became bitter and the KMT decided to hit at the communists. Mao was asked to organise a rebellion of Hunan peasants, during which he wrote his first major work — Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society — identifying various strata of Chinese peasantry and their revolutionary potential.
After the Harvest Uprising (1928) was crushed, Mao fled to Chingkangshan (Jingangshan) mountains — originating guerrilla warfare within the Marxian revolutionary framework. The CPC captured various parts of south-east China, setting up peasant Soviets. This was contrary to the Communist International’s policy that revolution must begin from urban centres — which Mao rejected as bound to fail in China given its very small proletariat.
The KMT eventually drove the revolutionaries out — they escaped in what became famous as the Long March, which made Mao the undisputed leader of the CPC.
Mao’s stay in Yan’an Province was most fruitful. He wrote “On Practice” and “On Contradiction” (both published after the Chinese revolution success); proposed New Democracy (1945). During 1942–43, he consolidated his position through a rectification campaign and developed his theory of mass mobilisation (Mass-Line).
In 1949, Mao became head of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He launched the “Let Hundred Flowers Bloom” campaign (early 1950s), allowing different viewpoints. Later he attempted collectivisation of agriculture and the Great Leap Forward (quick transition to communism) — these did not fully succeed. He called for a Cultural Revolution in 1966 — an attempt to recharge the revolutionary zeal of CPC cadres. He remained wedded to this idea until his death (September 9, 1976).
18.4.1 Peasant Revolution
Marx treated the peasantry with contempt — conservative, reactionary, “a bag of potatoes unable to make a revolution.” Even Lenin relied mainly on the urban proletariat.
Mao’s fundamental contribution was to bring about a successful revolution in China primarily with the help of the peasantry. This revolutionary model became relevant for several Afro-Asian peasant societies. Mao also identified various strata of Chinese peasantry — small, marginal, middle, and big peasants — and the revolutionary potential of each, as well as the contradiction between the peasantry and the feudal lords.
In his cultural revolution phase, Mao warned (like Milovan Djilas) against the emergence of a new bourgeois class among the party’s top hierarchy — beneficiaries of the transitional period who could themselves become a new exploiting class.
18.4.2 Contradictions
In Marxist theory, contradiction is the main vehicle of all changes in society. Mao enriched this idea significantly.
Mao’s key distinction in “On Contradiction” (1937): he formulated the notions of antagonistic contradictions and non-antagonistic contradictions:
| Type | Nature | Resolution |
| Antagonistic | Cannot be resolved peacefully | Require revolution/violent resolution |
| Non-antagonistic | Can be resolved peacefully | Dialogue, reform, etc. |
Specific examples from Mao:
- Contradictions between peasantry and proletariat → non-antagonistic
- Contradictions between peasantry/proletariat/petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie → non-antagonistic
- Contradictions between communist parties → non-antagonistic
- Contradictions between Chinese people and the compradore bourgeoisie → antagonistic
- Contradictions between the socialist and capitalist camps → antagonistic
- Contradictions between colonial countries and imperialism → antagonistic
Mao also argued that at any one point of time, one contradiction becomes the principal contradiction while others are minor. Even a principal contradiction has a principal aspect and several minor aspects. Which contradiction is principal or antagonistic is contingent on relative historical and tactical considerations.
(Note: Marx used “contradiction” and “antagonism” almost interchangeably; Lenin began distinguishing the two; Mao developed this into a full theoretical framework.)
18.4.3 On Practice
In “On Practice” (1973), Mao expounded his epistemology (theory of knowledge). All knowledge of the real world comes through concrete investigation and empirical analysis — not mere book learning or intuitive theorising. Theory without continuous reference to empirical reality becomes mere dogma.
He visualised two stages in understanding empirical reality:
- Perceptual stage: impressions of reality through senses (e.g., seeing the empirical reality of rural China).
- Conceptual stage: compounding sense perception into conceptual knowledge — understanding the reality in terms of different strata of peasantry (landless, marginal, small, middle, big farmers).
18.4.4 United Front and New Democracy
Mao recognised that the Chinese peasantry alone was not strong enough to win the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism. Therefore, it was necessary to seek help from other classes.
United Front concept: an alliance between different classes sharing some common interest (e.g., opposition to imperialism). Its nature would depend on the historical situation; its object would be to pursue the resolution of the principal contradiction.
Mao’s United Front strategy: alliance of Chinese peasantry with the proletariat, petty bourgeoisie, and even the national bourgeoisie (as well as non-party intellectuals). It had to be a broad alliance of the Chinese people against Japanese imperialism and Western powers.
In 1940, Mao called for a new democratic republic of China — a state under the joint dictatorship of several classes. In 1945, he proposed a state system called New Democracy. While the United Front included an overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, the leading position had to be in the hands of the working class. The petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie would be partners, but only junior partners.
He called such a state the “People’s Democratic Dictatorship” — a combination of two aspects:
- Democracy for the people.
- Dictatorship over the “enemies of the people” or the “running dogs of imperialism.”
In concrete terms: the democratic state would incorporate peasantry, working class, petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie in the ruling alliance. This was a deviation from the classical Marxist notion of dictatorship of the proletariat — Mao combined Marxism and nationalism.
18.5 Summary (Key Takeaways)
Marx: Theory of alienation (loss of self in capitalist labour); historical materialism (matter is primary, the economic base determines the superstructure); dialectical materialism (contradictions between forces and relations of production drive historical change); class war (all history is a history of class struggles); surplus value (profit = unpaid labour, rooted in labour theory of value); proletarian revolution → dictatorship of the proletariat → socialism → communism (classless, stateless society).
Lenin: Party as vanguard of the proletariat (What is to be Done?) — a party of professional revolutionaries; democratic centralism — democracy in deliberation, strict centralism in execution; imperialism = highest stage of capitalism, explaining capitalism’s survival and creating conditions for global socialist revolution; weakest link of the chain — revolution appropriate in least-developed capitalist countries; selectivity of time and place replacing Marxist spontaneity.
Mao: Peasant revolution — brought about revolution primarily with the help of peasantry (Marx and Lenin had little faith in peasant revolutionary potential); contradictions — antagonistic (cannot be resolved peacefully) vs. non-antagonistic (can be resolved peacefully); principal contradiction vs. minor contradictions; On Practice — knowledge comes through concrete investigation (perceptual → conceptual stages); United Front — alliance of multiple classes against imperialism and feudalism; New Democracy/People’s Democratic Dictatorship — joint rule of several classes with working class leadership, combining Marxism and nationalism.
