What is Marxism?

By Alan Woods, Rob Sewell and Karl Marx

In this epoch of instability, crisis, war and ever‑growing inequality, Marxism is becoming an increasingly attractive proposition to millions of workers and young people around the world. The old mole of revolution, to use Karl Marx's own phrase, is burrowing deep into the foundations of society.

Marxism — or scientific socialism — is the name given to the body of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In their totality, these ideas provide a fully worked-out theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to attain a higher form of human society — socialism.

This book is aimed specifically at newcomers to Marxism. A bestseller now in its third edition, it features introductory pieces on the three component parts of Marxist theory: dialectical materialism, historical materialism and Marxist economics. Complementing these introductions are key extracts written by Marxism's most outstanding revolutionaries — Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wellred
• Release date: Oct 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781900007719

Alan Woods

Alan Woods was born in Swansea, South Wales, in 1944 into a working-class family with strong communist traditions. At the age of 16, he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist. He studied Russian at Sussex University and later in Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Moscow State University (MGU). He has a wide experience of the international labour movement and played an active role in building the Marxist tendency in Spain, where he participated in the struggle against the Franco dictatorship. He was later active in Pakistan, Mexico and other countries, including Venezuela, where he developed a close relationship with the late Hugo Chavez, and founded the international campaign, Hands off Venezuela. Alan Woods is the author of many works covering a wide spectrum of issues, including politics, economics, history, philosophy, art, music and science. He is also the political editor of the popular website In Defence of Marxism (marxist.com) and a leading member of the International Marxist Tendency. Highlights of the books he has authored are: Lenin and Trotsky: What they Really Stood For and Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, both in conjunction with the late Ted Grant; Marxism and the United States; Reformism or Revolution; The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective, The Ideas of Karl Marx and Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution. He also edited and completed Trotsky's last unfinished work, the biography of Stalin, which had remained incomplete for seventy years. His books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Urdu, Danish, Portuguese, Russian and Bahasa Indonesian.

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Alan Woods

Rob Sewell

Alan Woods and Rob Sewell were brought up in South Wales in a Communist household. As young teenagers, they became committed Marxists and are now leading members of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI). They have both recently authored the two-volume In Defence of Lenin.

Alan Woods is the political editor of the RCI’s flagship In Defence of Marxism website (marxist.com) and has written many books covering a wide spectrum of topics. These include Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For and Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science – both in conjunction with the late Ted Grant; Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution; The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective; Spain’s Revolution Against Franco: The Great Betrayal; Marxism and the USA; Class Struggle in the Roman Republic; Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution; The Ideas of Karl Marx; The First World War: A Marxist Analysis of the Great Slaughter; and The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective.

Rob Sewell is the political editor of The Communist (communist.red) – the organ of the British section of the RCI – and has written extensively on revolutionary theory and history. He is the author of Socialism or Barbarism: Germany 1918-1933; Chartist Revolution; In the Cause of Labour: A History of British Trade Unionism; and Understanding Marx’s Capital: A Reader’s Guide with Adam Booth.

Wellred

What is Marxism?

Alan Woods & Rob Sewell

Featuring extracts from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky

Third edition, 2025

First published 2007

Copyright © Wellred Books Ltd

All rights reserved

wellred-books.com

Wellred Books Ltd, 4 th Floor, 18 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UN, [e-mail]

Extracts taken from the public domain and Marxists Internet Archive

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EU distribution: 

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Cover design by Jesse Murray-Dean

Ebook produced by Martin Swayne, September 2025

Contents

Preface to the first edition

The Ideas of Karl Marx

Dialectical Materialism

What Is Dialectical Materialism?

The ABC of Materialist Dialectics

Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (Extract)

The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (Extract)

Extracts From Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks

Questions and Suggested Reading

Historical Materialism

What Is Historical Materialism?

Letter to J Bloch, London, 21 September 1890

Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (Extract)

Preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’

Questions and Suggested Reading

Marxist Economics

What Is Marxist Economics?

The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx (Extract)

The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (Extract)

Questions and Suggested Reading

Bibliography

Cover

Bibliography

Copyright page

Foreword

Table of Contents

Title page

Text

Preface

Preface to the first edition

… socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is, that it be studied.

– Friedrich Engels[1]

We are repeatedly told, like some old gramophone record stuck in a groove, that Marxism is either irrelevant, out-dated, or even dead. Yet, if that were true, why are so many books and articles churned out year-on-year attacking Marxism? Clearly th­­e powers that be are rattled or indeed frightened by these ‘dead’ ideas. This is because Marxism is far from dead. Marxism is, in fact, becoming more attractive in this epoch of instability, crisis, war and the ever-widening gulf between the classes. The old mole of revolution, to use Marx’s phrase, is burrowing deep into the foundations of society.

In typical fashion, a recent critic, Niall Ferguson, Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford, vents his spleen on Marxism by attacking Marx as a washout and a class traitor, for siding with the working class instead of the bourgeoisie. Our learned Professor goes on to brand Marx as the advocate of a socialist utopia [which] turned out to be a corrupt tyranny, presumably a reference to Stalinism, which had nothing in common with Marx or his teachings. Consumed with spite, he then goes on to criticise Marx’s Capital as long, verbose, abstruse and ranking as one of the most unreadable books of all time.[2]

Another bourgeois critic, Dominic Lawson, recently peddled the old myth (yet again) that:

Karl Marx’s view was that we are all mere creatures of economic determinism. What we do and what we think have nothing to do with personal autonomy. We are simply cogs in a class-war machine.

Such cheap misrepresentations and distortions are pumped out on a daily basis in an attempt to discredit Marxism. However, Marx was never a vulgar economic determinist, where every action is reduced to simple economics. This is a complete distortion. As Engels explained:

According to the materialist view of history, the determining factor in history is, in the final analysis, the production and reproduction of actual life. More than that was never maintained either by Marx or myself. Now if someone distorts this by declaring the economic moment to be the only determining factor, he changes that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, ridiculous piece of jargon.[3]

Take note Mr. Lawson! Engels went on:

The economic situation is the basis, but the various factors of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, namely constitutions set up by the ruling class after a victorious battle, etc., forms of law and, the reflections of all these real struggles in the minds of the participants, i.e. political, philosophical and legal theories, religious views and the expansion of the same into dogmatic systems – all these factors also have a bearing on the course of the historical struggles of which, in many cases, they largely determine the form. It is in the interaction of all these factors and amidst an unending multitude of fortuities (i.e. of things and events whose intrinsic interconnections are so remote or so incapable of proof that we can regard them as non-existent and ignore them) that the economic trend ultimately asserts itself as something inevitable.[4]

Trotsky also answers this nonsense:

On the question as to how the economic ‘base’ determines the political, juridical, philosophical, artistic and so on ‘superstructure’ there is a rich Marxist literature. The opinion that economics presumably determines directly and immediately the creativeness of a composer or even the verdict of a judge, represents a hoary caricature of Marxism which the bourgeois professordom of all countries has circulated time out of end to mask their intellectual impotence.[5]

However, despite all the distortions and lies of our enemies, even these critics cannot help blurting out the truth once in a while. Professor Ferguson writes:

Even so, Marx’s insights into capitalism can still illuminate. […] Marx got one thing right. [!] Behind the bubbles and busts of the capitalist system there is a class struggle; and that class struggle is the key to modern politics.[6]

This is a bold admission from such a biased source. Normally, such ideas are strenuously denied by all bourgeois apologists. Nevertheless, we should not get carried away, after all, one swallow does not make a summer.

So, what is this set of ideas that frightens the ruling class and its apologists so much? Put simply, Marxism, or Scientific Socialism, is the name given to the body of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) more than 150 years ago. In essence, Marxism is a synthesis of the most advanced ideas at the time: English classical economics, German Hegelian philosophy and French socialism. In their totality, these ideas provide a fully worked-out theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to attain a higher form of human society – socialism.

The component parts of Marxism fall under three main headings, corresponding broadly to philosophy, social history and economics – dialectical materialism, historical materialism and Marxist economics. These are the famous The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism of which Lenin wrote.

The present book comprises the ‘Education for Socialists’ series and other material which was launched a few years ago to promote the study of Marxism. They were originally intended to assist the student of Marxism by providing a basic introduction to the subject matter, with suitable Marxist texts, that we hoped would whet the appetite for further reading and study. This material, aimed at the first-time reader, is suitable for individual study or as the basis of Marxist discussion groups.

While these introductory articles are illuminating and provide a good start to the subject, there is no substitute for proceeding from there to tackle the classic works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov and others. The newer reader should not be put off by the sometimes difficult and abstract ideas expressed in these writings. Whatever the initial difficulty, a certain perseverance will pay just rewards. Marxism is a science with its own terminology, and therefore makes heavy demands upon the beginner. However, every serious person knows that nothing is worthwhile if attained without a degree of struggle and sacrifice, and that applies to Marxism as well.

The theories of Marxism provide the thinking worker and student with a comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live. It is the duty of those who wish to learn to conquer for themselves the main theories of Marx and Engels, as an essential prerequisite for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society.

We recognise that there are real obstacles in the path of ordinary workers in their struggle to understand theory. Yet it was for the working class that Marx and Engels wrote, and not for ‘clever’ academics. As Engels explained:

If only these gentry knew how Marx used to regard even his best stuff as not nearly good enough for the workers, how he thought it a crime to offer the workers anything less than the very best![7]

‘Every beginning is difficult’ no matter what science we are talking about. To the class-conscious worker and the student who is prepared to persevere, one promise can be made: once the initial effort is made to come to grips with unfamiliar and new ideas, the theories of Marxism will be found to be basically straight-forward and simple. It will open your eyes to a new world, where the irrational workings of class society become clear. Once the basic concepts of Marxism are conquered, it introduces us to a whole new outlook on politics, the class struggle, and, in fact, every aspect of life.

Above all, Marxism is a guide to action. It prepares theoretically us for the struggle for a new society. These ideas will become the property of millions as the scientific programme of socialism connects with the revolutionary movement of the masses. In the famous words of Marx: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."[8]

Rob Sewell,

September 2007

* * *

Preface to the third edition

As the entire capitalist system plunges ever-deeper into crisis, the ideas of Marxism are being sought after by increasingly wider layers of the population. However, no body of ideas has faced such relentless slander and distortion, both by its enemies and even many of its alleged proponents. The purpose of this book is to uncover and explain the real ideas of Marxism.

Since it was first published in 2007, What is Marxism? has consistently been one of our most popular books. While it is aimed primarily at newcomers, it has proven to be well received by those who have encountered Marxist theory before, often in a mangled form.

For this new edition, we have added a new ‘What is Dialectical Materialism’ article, and further developed ‘What is Historical Materialism’. We have also updated the questions at the end of each section, and revised the suggested reading lists.

Wellred Books,

London,

August 2025

Notes

[1] Engels, ‘Supplement to the Preface of 1870 for The Peasant War in Germany’, Marx and Engels Collected Works (hereafter referred to as MECW), Vol. 23, p. 631.

[2] Ferguson, Niall, ‘Full Marx’, Financial Times, 16 August 2002.

[3] Engels, ‘To Joseph Bloch’, 21-22 September 1890, MECW, Vol. 49, p. 34, emphasis in original.

[4] Ibid., pp. 34-5.

[5] Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, pp. 156-7.

[6] Ferguson, Niall, ‘Full Marx’, Financial Times, 16 August 2002.

[7] Engels, ‘To Conrad Schmidt’, 5 August 1890, MECW, Vol. 49, p. 9.

[8] Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, MECW, Vol. 5, p. 5, emphasis in original.

The Ideas of Karl Marx

Alan Woods, 2013

It is 130 years since the death of Karl Marx. But why should we commemorate a man who died in 1883? In the early 1960s, the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that we must not look for solutions in Highgate Cemetery. And who can disagree with that? In the aforementioned cemetery one can only find old bones and dust and a rather ugly stone monument.

However, when we speak of the relevance of Karl Marx today, we refer not to cemeteries but to ideas – ideas that have withstood the test of time and have now emerged triumphant, as even some of the enemies of Marxism have been forced reluctantly to accept. The economic collapse of 2008 showed who was outdated, and it was certainly not Karl Marx.

For decades, the economists never tired of repeating that Marx’s predictions of an economic downturn were totally outdated. They were supposed to be ideas of the nineteenth century, and those who defended them were dismissed as hopeless dogmatists. But it now turns out that it is the ideas of the defenders of capitalism that must be consigned to the rubbish bin of history, while Marx has been completely vindicated.

Not so long ago, Gordon Brown confidently proclaimed the end of boom and bust. After the crash of 2008 he was forced to eat his words. The crisis of the euro shows that the bourgeoisie has no idea how to solve the problems of Greece, Spain and Italy, which in turn threaten the future of the European common currency and even the EU itself. This can easily be the catalyst for a new collapse on a world scale, which will be even deeper than the crisis of 2008.

Even some bourgeois economists are being forced to accept what is becoming increasingly evident: that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction; that it is an anarchic and chaotic system characterised by periodic crises that throw people out of work and cause social and political instability.

The thing about the present crisis was that it was not supposed to happen. Until recently most of the bourgeois economists believed that the market, if left to itself, was capable of solving all the problems, magically balancing out supply and demand (the ‘efficient market hypothesis’) so that there could never be a repetition of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

Marx’s prediction of a crisis of overproduction had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Those who still adhered to Marx’s view that the capitalist system was riven with insoluble contradictions and contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction were looked upon as mere cranks. Had the fall of the Soviet Union not finally demonstrated the failure of communism? Had history not finally ended with the triumph of capitalism as the only possible socio-economic system?

But in the space of twenty years (not a long period in the annals of human society) the wheel of history has turned 180 degrees. Now the erstwhile critics of Marx and Marxism are singing a very different tune. All of a sudden, the economic theories of Karl Marx are being taken very seriously indeed. A growing number of economists are poring over the pages of Marx’s writings, hoping to find an explanation for what has gone wrong.

Second thoughts

In July 2009, after the start of the recession, The Economist held a seminar in London to discuss the question: ‘What is wrong with Economics?’ This revealed that for a growing number of economists mainstream theory has no relevance. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman made an astonishing admission. He said that the last thirty years development in macroeconomic theory had been spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst.[1] This judgement is a fitting epitaph for the theories of bourgeois economics.

Now that events have knocked just a little sense into the heads of at least some bourgeois thinkers, we are seeing all kinds of articles that grudgingly recognise that Marx was right after all. Even the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an article in 2009 praising Marx’s diagnosis of income inequality, which is quite an endorsement for the man who declared religion to be the opium of the people. Das Kapital is now a best seller in Germany. In Japan it has been published in a manga version.

George Magnus, a senior economic analyst at UBS bank, wrote an article with the intriguing title: ‘Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy’. Switzerland-based UBS is a pillar of the financial establishment, with offices in more than fifty countries and over $2 trillion in assets. Yet in an essay for Bloomberg View, Magnus wrote that today’s global economy bears some uncanny resemblances to the conditions he [Marx] foresaw.[2]

In his article, he starts by describing policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world and suggests that they would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist, Karl Marx:

Consider, for example, Marx’s prediction of how the inherent conflict between capital and labour would manifest itself. As he wrote in Das Kapital, companies’ pursuit of profits and productivity would naturally lead them to need fewer and fewer workers, creating an industrial reserve army of the poor and unemployed: Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery.

He continues:

The process he [Marx] describes is visible throughout the developed world, particularly in the US Companies’ efforts to cut costs and avoid hiring have boosted US corporate profits as a share of total economic output to the highest level in more than six decades, while the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 per cent and real wages are stagnant.

US income inequality, meanwhile, is by some measures close to its highest level since the 1920s. Before 2008, the income disparity was obscured by factors such as easy credit, which allowed poor households to enjoy a more affluent lifestyle. Now the problem is coming home to roost.[3]

The Wall Street Journal carried an interview with the well-known economist Dr. Nouriel Roubini, known to his fellow economists as ‘Dr. Doom’ because of his prediction of the 2008 financial crisis. There is a video of this extraordinary interview, which deserves to be studied carefully because it shows the thinking of the most far-sighted strategists of capital.

Roubini argues that the chain of credit is broken, and that capitalism has entered into a vicious cycle where excess capacity (overproduction), falling consumer demand, high levels of debt all breed a lack of confidence in investors that in turn will be reflected in sharp falls on the stock exchange, falling asset prices, and a collapse in the real economy.

Like all the other economists, Roubini has no real solution to the present crisis, except more monetary injections from central banks to avoid another meltdown. But he frankly admitted that monetary policy alone will not be enough, and business and governments are not helping. Europe and the United States are implementing austerity programs to try to fix their debt-ridden economies, when they should be introducing more monetary stimulus, he said. His conclusions could not be more pessimistic: Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself, said Roubini. We thought markets worked. They’re not working.[4]

The phantom of Marxism is still haunting the bourgeoisie 130 years after Marx’s mortal remains were laid to rest. But what is Marxism? To deal properly with all aspects of Marxism in the space of one article is an impossible task. We therefore confine ourselves to a general, and therefore sketchy account in the hope that it will encourage the reader to study Marx’s writings themselves. After all, nobody has ever expounded Marx’s ideas better than Marx himself.

Broadly speaking, his ideas can be split into three distinct yet interconnected parts – what Lenin called the three sources and three component parts of Marxism. These generally go under the headings of Marxist economics, dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Each of these stands in a dialectical relation to each other and cannot be understood in isolation from one another. A good place to begin is the founding document of our movement which was written on the eve of the European revolutions of 1848. It is one of the greatest and most influential works in history.

‘The Communist Manifesto’

The immense majority of the books written one-and-a-half centuries ago are today merely of historical interest. But what is most striking about The Communist Manifesto is the way in which it anticipates the most fundamental phenomena which occupy our attention on a world scale at the present time. It is really extraordinary to think that a book written in 1847 can present a picture of the world of the twenty-first century so vividly and truthfully. In point of fact, the Manifesto is even truer today than when it first appeared in 1848.

Let us consider one example. At the time when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were writing, the world of the big multinational companies was still the music of a very distant future. Despite this, they explained how free enterprise and competition would inevitably lead to the concentration of capital and the monopolisation of the productive forces. It is frankly comical to read the statements made by the defenders of the market concerning Marx’s alleged mistake on this question, when in reality it was precisely one of his most brilliant and accurate predictions.

During the 1980s it became fashionable to claim that ‘small is beautiful’. This is not the place to enter into a discussion concerning the relative aesthetics of big, small or medium sizes, about which everyone is entitled to hold an opinion. But it is an absolutely indisputable fact that the process of concentration of capital foreseen by Marx has occurred, is occurring, and indeed has reached unprecedented levels in the course of the last ten years.

In the United States, where the process may be seen in a particularly clear form, the Fortune 500 corporations accounted for 73.5 per cent of total GDP output in 2010. If these 500 companies formed an independent country, it would be the world’s second largest economy, second only to