12.2 The Marxist Solution

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Explain the dialectic method.
  • Contrast the Hegelian and Marxian concepts of dialectic.
  • Outline the stages of Marx’s proletariat revolution.
  • Describe how Maoism reframed Marxism as an anti-imperialist revolution.

Unlike Enlightenment social theory, Marxist theories did not try to solve specific social problems that arose from industrialization and urbanization. Rather, they advocated removing the economic system that they felt caused these problems—capitalism. When German philosophers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, they made a prediction: the workers would overthrow capitalism in the most advanced industrial nation, England. The natural forces of history, they argued, made this revolution inevitable. They derived their views of these historical forces from the work of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) on the dialectic method.

The content of this course has been taken from the free Philosophy textbook by Openstax