Marxism

This year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin The Origin of Species but also of the publication of Marx’s first economic writings after his more detailed study of the workings of capitalism, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The Preface to this work contains a summary of Marx and Engels’...
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Engels bought a copy of Darwin’s The Origin of Species as soon as it was published. Two books of importance were published in 1859, one in June and the other in November. Each one stands at the opposite pole of popularity at the time they were published. And this contrast has persisted up to the...
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From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard Marx is again enjoying something of a revival. After his views on the globalising tendencies of capitalism, it is now his theory of crises that is attracting interest and being discussed in the media. Unfortunately not always accurately. For instance, in an article headlined “BANKING CRISIS...
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Our subject this evening is “Socialism – Utopian and Scientific.” Most relevant in the examination of this subject is history. Not the...
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Down through the ages there have been various interpretations of history. For example, there are the theories which see in history the working out and realization of some sort of divine plan – like Hegel’s philosophy of history, which sees the whole historical development of society as the realization stage by stage of the...
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The theory of World Socialist Movement is Marxist in the sense that certain of our key ideas about society, economics and politics are derived from Karl Marx. Although our case rests entirely on its own merits and not on what Marx may or may not have said, we have always been ready to defend...
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Is the “world of abundance” traditionally advocated by socialists feasible? Not according to Claude Bitot, known as the author of a book on the future of the movement for communism (see Socialist Standard, December 1995), in his recent book Quel autre monde possible?  (“What other world is possible”?). Echoing the ideas of some Greens...
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Zimbabwe inflation has reached an estimated 2.2 million percent per year. Shown here is a Z$500 million note. If our rulers are to be believed, high wages cause inflation. If this was true, it would make sense that Zimbabwe’s working class is the most affluent in the world. Instead the poverty rate is over 80%. Wages...
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In his latest book, Coral, A Pessimist in Paradise, the biologist and popular science writer Steve Jones attributes to Marx the statement that “we see mighty coral reefs rising from the depth of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and contemptible”. Marx was something of a...
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  The calculation of labor-hour cost of producing treated drinking water In proposals for a rudimentary method for calculation labor costs associated with a socialist economy, we operate under the assumption that the labor-hour will be adopted as the unit of choice. This has the strongest tradition in socialist literature, however in the 21st century...
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