Marxism and Contemporary American Society

Marxism and Contemporary American Society

Introduction

Marxism is considered to provide two sets of ideas. On one hand, Marx has provides us a social theory, which explains about the society that how it works and why the histories have unfolded and particularly on account of capitalistic nature. All these explanations are valuable to describe what is happening in the whole world and to understand the directions and problems of out contemporary society. On the other hand, he considered the capitalism as a highly unsatisfactory and he was concerned extremely about how to get rid of capitalism through violation and revolutions together with development of communism in the society. Therefore, it is considered that Marxism is about political objectives and actions. In this paper we will study that whether the Marxism has any significance for contemporary American society and if it has or it does not have any significance then what are the reasons behind it (Pašukanis, 2001).

Discussion

First to answer the question we will have to understand the set of ideas proposed by Marxism. People in American easily accept the first thought of Marxism without accepting the second one. It is obvious because, majority of people in west consider Capitalism as more desirable and they do not wish to devastate the capitalism through idea of communist society or revolutions.  The following discussion is intended to reveal the first idea f Marxism for contemporary American society: In America, people can accept the concepts of Marx as being very effective for comprehending the objectives of society devoid of the acceptance of his condemnation of capitalistic society, his values for politics and suggestions for political actions. In other words it can be said that if we do not accept the social ideals of Marxism and implications for actions, they do not let it intervene with their assessment of Marxism regarding how their society works. It has been argued by Marxism that economic situations that develop the productive system is one of the significant determinants of all other perspectives of the society like social institutes and ideas including system of law, education and morality. These are the factors within the superstructure of the society. Therefore, Marxism is considered to be a materialistic approach. Furthermore, Marxism has rebelled against the philosophy of Hegel in which Hegel took the ideas to find out the significant determinants of history (Stout, et al., 2004).

 As per the arguments of Marx, the dominant ideas are resulted from the economic and material conditions, thus he was not supported against reformers who considered that mere changes in this idea can bring in change in the society. The major kinds of society distinguished by Marxism were slave, primitive, capitalist and feudal. In the capitalism, capitalists have the control and ownership of productive resources, however working class has the ownership of their work and labor for capitalists, who own the product and sell it for profits (Pašukanis, 2001).

 The main thing in comprehending a society at any instance in history is to concentrate primarily in ...