What Is a Marxist Form of Government
Marxists believe that all written human history has been divided along economic lines. An example is feudal society (a medieval society controlled by feudal lords and nobles). The ruling class derived its power and wealth from the work of the peasants (peasants). But as the peasants demanded more and more for themselves, small traders and traders appeared. Many of these people formed guilds and eventually began employing workers. These workers were able to acquire wealth in these workplaces. These historical events created capitalism. In general, Marxism holds that capitalism as a form of economic and social reproduction is inherently unjust and imperfect, and will therefore eventually fail. Capitalism is defined as a mode of production in which (capitalist) entrepreneurs own all the means of production – the factory, tools and machines, raw materials, the final product and the profits from their sale – while workers (labor) are hired for wages and have no right to these things. Moreover, the wages paid to workers are less than the economic value that their labor creates for the capitalist. This surplus labor is the source of the capitalists` profits and the root of the inherent class struggle between labor and capital. The ideology of Marxism and communism offers a lively discussion of the difference between theory and practice, between concepts and realities, and between what is said and done. The argument in communism is that a state without capitalists should be the best, because there would be no “exploitation” of people by people, because they would become their own masters.
But it turned out that a communist country would be a much stronger, more powerful and undemocratic state, exercising tight control over individuals. Visible control would be administered by the army and police, while invisible control would be handled by the “united front”, propaganda, media and threats. In a communist state, different opinions could be expressed but not disseminated, while acts of opposition would be suppressed. Instead of being its own master, a communist state was usually ruled by a minority of party members in conjunction with government officials, backed by an extensive intelligence network to capture any forms of opposition that could lead to potential threats. Violence against nonviolent civil rights activists sparked the Black Power movement in the 1960s. He advocated a political, economic and cultural awakening. A splinter group of this movement was the Black Panthers, formed in 1966 in Oakland, California. One tactic of the Black Panthers was to send members to police stations to observe them.
The Panthers came with law books and an open display of shotguns and rifles (legal at the time). This paramilitary movement gained momentum and the Panthers wore black berets and black leather jackets as they marched and chanted slogans. The FBI viewed the Panthers as a threat to homeland security; Shootings and arrests took place, and in the late 1970s the group`s decline began (Martin, 2003: 311 and 318). The counter-tradition was elaborated in the 1870s and 1880s by the younger generation of the German school of history, especially in the writings of Gustav von Schmoller. Schmoller rejected both the “classical tradition” of economics as autonomous and its laissez-faire political recipes (Schumpeter 1954). The German historical school, in turn, inspired both the first generation of academic economists in the United States (Ross 1991) and a group of English historical economists, including William Cunningham, J. W. Ashley and W. A.
S. Hewins, who revisited English economic history and found strong evidence that English economic development depended heavily on government policies (Koot 1987). In the first half of the twentieth century, further contributions to the counter-tradition were made by American institutionalists and English Fabians. In the 1930s, despite his orthodox intellectual ancestry, John Maynard Keynes joined this counter-tradition by breaking with free trade and advocating active state management of the economy. From the 1930s to the 1970s, this counter-tradition was enriched by a wide range of scholars, including Japanese economists little known in the West (Gao 1997), the Latin American group led by Raul Prebisch, who developed the idea of import-substituted industrialization (McMichael 1996), and others. A particularly important contribution was Gerschenkron`s (1962) study of late industrialized countries. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris. The determination of Puerto Rican nationalists to seek independence from the United States was exemplified in 1950 after an uprising that was quickly crushed by government forces.
On November 1, 1950, nationalists attempted to assassinate President Truman while he was at Blair House, across the street from the White House. A shooting broke out, a policeman was killed, Truman was not injured, and the independence movement attracted national attention. The next attack took place on March 1, 1954, also in Washington, D.C., when several nationalists fired on lawmakers during the session of Congress, wounding five people. In 1974, the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN) were founded. Their program for independence tended towards the extreme left. The FALN launch attack consisted of bombing five banks in New York. This was followed by more than 200 bombings targeting federal and local authorities, the military (especially in Puerto Rico) and businesses. The NLAF was also known to ambush and fire on US forces (Poland, 1988: 72-76).
The ideas of Marx and Engels laid the foundation for the theory and practice of communism, which advocates a classless system in which all property and wealth are held collectively (rather than privately).