MARX
With his views of societies, social change, and critique of capitalism, Karl Marx established new theories about quality of life and man's role in the political and social agenda. Because his writings bared new and plausible conclusions, many modern thinkers, humanists, and moralists quickly embraced his theories (commonly called classical Marxism). Others also offered revisions of these theories in an attempt to adapt them to their relative country's situation. Two such revisionists are Lenin and Gramsci. Both reformers, although having very different views about the Marxist theory of politics, adapt revised Marxist theories to their respective countries in an attempt to both help bring about a proletariat revolution and reply to those who believed that the persistence and growth of Capitalism had rendered Marxism useless. Lenin, a Russian leader of the Bolshevik revolution, argues that change could only come about through complete revolution. His primary problematic was very different from that of Karl Marx's. While Marx was concerned with capitalism and transcending it, Lenin was concerned with developing an effective political mechanism for overthrowing the czarist form if power. More generally, Lenin wanted a st
Lenin was well aware of the fact that in Marx's theory of revolution, the proletariat class was the mechanism for promoting socialism. Lenin's second revision again came as a result of Russia's then current situation. Gramsci's ultimate goal for is for the workers to gain "good sense" (which is equivalent to Marx's concept of class-consciousness). This is very different from Marx because Gramsci believed that in order to bring about class consciousness/good sense, the organizers have to do work based on those divisions. First, they must discover the interests or cultural categories that are important to the working class. His major revision is thus the inclusion of those institutions of domination that were formerly believed to be neutral. To Marx, the only agent that could embody this revolution was the proletariat (worker). Lenin did not believe that this policy would last, it would merely postpone the collapse of capitalism, but ultimately capitalism would be annihilated. Marx did not provide this type of theory in his analysis. Because of the large amount of profit that was being made in these other countries (third world usually), capitalists were able to grant concessions to the working class that worked domestically (advanced countries) by giving them higher wages. At that time, there were no political freedoms or rights for people, therefore, out of necessity, the vanguard party had to adopt strategies and forms of organizations that were secretive. Gramsci believes these issues are more salient because these are the issues that affect people in their everyday lives. This meant that there would be more goods and this would drive prices down because if you have the same amount of money with greater numbers of goods then prices have to reduce. Writing in 1920s and 1930s Italy, Gramsci is also concerned with bringing about a subjective (conscience) change in the proletariat population. Due to this, Lenin argues that profits were enormous.
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