Simply Marxism homepage

Some Forgotten Marxism

A 28 page booklet

[PDF]  [Web Page]  [epub]  [Kindle]

It is amazing how there are quite a few people who describe themselves as Marxist, and yet the primary political message of Marx has been buried and forgotten. This booklet will try to resurrect that message. It can be summed up quite simply in the following two points:

1. By developing the productive forces, transforming most people into proletarians rather than peasants and fracturing traditional culture, capitalism creates the necessary conditions for a more advanced classless society where we will all jointly own the means of production and the typical individual will thrive for the first time.

2. Given these conditions, it is then up to us to take advantage of this opportunity and make it happen by transforming ourselves and society.

This alerts us to the importance of capitalist development in those regions where economic and social backwardness still prevail. It also helps us understand the experience of the "communist" countries. Because of their backwardness, conditions for communism were not present and those who redefined socialism to mean state ownership with them in charge met limited resistance.