Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry based upon a materialist interpretation of historical development,

a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis of class-relations within society and their application in the analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. In the mid-to-late 19th century, the intellectual development of Marxism was pioneered by two German philosophers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism encompasses an economic theory, a sociological theory, Historical Materialism "Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand." Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1858[11] The historical materialist theory of history, also synonymous to "the economic interpretation of history" (a coinage by Eduard Bernstein),[12] looks for the causes of societal development and change in the collective ways humans use to make the means for living. The social features of a society (social classes, political structures, ideologies) derive from economic activity, an idea often conveyed with the metaphor of the base and superstructure. 1. Primitive Communism: as in co-operative tribal societies. These are tribal societies before the advent of civilization. Technology (forces of production) is so primitive that people produce barely enough for their survival. Everybody has to work; no surplus product to be appropriated by anybody exists; common property; there are no classes. 2. Slave Society: a development of tribal progression to city-state; aristocracy is born. As in ancient Greece and Rome. New technology leads to increased productivity. Slaves are able to produce more than they need for own survival; this surplus product is appropriated by slave masters; private ownership emerges; society splits into the class of exploiters and exploited; exploiters do not need to work; they may devote their time to arts, science and administration; emergence of state and law; exploiters become ruling class. This is an enormous progress against the primitive communism. But slaves have no incentive to use improved technology. The relations of production are in conflict with new progressive forces of production. Class war develops, revolution destroys the system. 3. Feudalism: aristocrats are the ruling class; merchants evolve into capitalists. As in European states in Middle Ages. New class configuration: feudal lords (exploiters - ruling class) vs. serfs (exploited class). Feudalism leads to technological progress because serfs have better incentives to work. Further development of arts and sciences. Feudalism is a higher stage then slavery but it has its own limits. New scientific and technological discoveries require free workers to be employed in large scale production. Bourgeois revolutions, like the French or American revolutions destroy feudalism. They liberate serfs from dependence on lords and thus prepare the ground for new class structure of the society. 4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the proletariat. In Marxist interpretation is just another stage of socio-economic development. It is the last class society. The essence of capitalism is exploitation of workers (proletariat) by capitalists (bourgeoisie) with resulting class struggle. The 'relations of production' are characterized by private ownership and the prevalence of 'commodity production' (market). The 'forces of production' are characterized by the fast growth of productivity due to the 'division of labor' (specialization) and mechanization. The industrial revolution resulted in mass production with intricate inter-industry relations. In the capitalist market economy goods are not produced by an individual producer for a small number of local consumers as in the past, but by the huge collectives of workers sometimes spread over the whole country or even over many countries - for thousands or millions of consumers. The 'forces of production' acquired the 'social character' but the 'relations of production' are still based on private ownership and 'anarchy' of the market. This is the main

contradiction of capitalism which - according to Marxist analysis - must lead to revolution, abolition of private property and capitalist relations of production. 5. Socialism: workers gain class consciousness, and via proletarian revolution depose the capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, replacing it in turn with dictatorship of the proletariat through which the socialization of the means of production can be realized. 6. Communism: a classless and stateless society. That emerges from revolutionary destruction of capitalism is again a classless society. It removes exploitation and unequal income distribution. It also unleashes the fetters by which the capitalist relations of production shackled the forces of production. The advanced technology would lead to such a high productivity, that everybody would be able to share equally in the economic output. There will be no need for private appropriation and exploitation. Public ownership and the rational central control (planning) of the economy would allow even faster growth of productivity than under capitalism. Communism would defeat capitalism not only by being more just in distribution of income, but also by being more productive, more technologically advanced. This was the prediction of Marx. Also communism was expected to have two phases: the first one called socialism would be still limited in its productivity and, therefore, the income distribution would have to be based on each persons contribution to the common output of the society. In the second stage the productivity would be so high that all the needs of each person could be fully satiated. Alienation Marxs concept of alienation is based on his analysis of alienated labor. Through political economy, he sees that the worker is degraded to the most miserable commodity, i.e., the misery of the workers increases with the power and size of their production. Marx depicts political economy as the following: The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more goods he creates. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things. Labor does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods (p. 95).

Base and superstructure: The base is the basic way a society organizes the production of goods. It includes employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labor, and property relations, which people enter into to produce the necessities and amenities of life. The superstructure of a society includes its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and norms. The base determines the superstructure, however the superstructure does often influence the base. World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective)[1] is a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change that stresses that the worldsystem (and not nation states) should be the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.[1][2] World-system refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries and the periphery countries.[2] Core countries focus on higher skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials.[3] This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries.[3] Nonetheless, the system is dynamic, in part as a result of revolutions in transport technology, and individual states can gain or lose the core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time.[3] For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout last few centuries during which time the world system has extended geographically and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and most recently, to the United States.

Immanuel Wallerstein has developed the best-known version of world-systems analysis, beginning in the 1970s.[4][5] Wallerstein traces the rise of the world system from the 15th century, when European feudaleconomy suffered a crisis and was transformed into a capitalist one.[5] Europe (the West) utilized its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy, presiding over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.[2][3][5] Wallerstein's project is frequently misunderstood as world-systems "theory," a term that he consistently rejects.[6] For Wallerstein, world-systems analysis is above all a mode of analysis that aims to transcend the structures of knowledge inherited from the 19th century. This includes, especially, the divisions within the social sciences, and between the social sciences and history. For Wallerstein, then, worldsystems analysis is a knowledge movement[7] that seeks to discern the totality of what has been paraded under the labels of the human sciences and indeed well beyond."[8] We must invent a new language, Wallerstein insists, to transcend the illusions of the three supposedly distinctive arenas of society/economy/politics.[9] This trinitarian structure of knowledge is grounded in another, even grander, modernist architecture the alienation of biophysical worlds (including those within bodies) from social ones. One question, therefore, is whether we will be able to justify something called social science in the twenty-first century as a separate sphere of knowledge.[10][11] Significant work by many other scholars has been done since then World-systems analysis builds upon, but also differs fundamentally from, the proposition of orthodox or Weberian current of dependency theory. While accepting world inequality, the world market, and imperialism as fundamental features of historical capitalism, Wallerstein broke with orthodox dependency theory's central proposition. For Wallerstein, core countries do not exploit poor countries for two basic reasons. First, core capitalists exploit workers in all zones of the capitalist world-economy (not just the periphery), and therefore the crucial redistribution between core and periphery is surplus value, not "wealth" or "resources" abstractly conceived. Second, core states do not exploit poor states as dependency theory proposesbecause capitalism is organized around an inter-regional and transnational division of labor rather than an international division of labor. During the Industrial Revolution, for example, English capitalists exploited slaves (unfree workers) in the cotton zones of the American South, a peripheral region within a semi-peripheral state (the United States).[15] Fernando Henrique Cardoso described the main tenets of (from his mostly Weberian point of view) dependency theory as follows:

there is a financial and technological penetration of the periphery and semi-periphery countries by the developed capitalist core countries this produces an unbalanced economic structure within the peripheral societies and among them and the centers this leads to limitations upon self-sustained growth in the periphery this favors the appearance of specific patterns of class relations these require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance[16]

Dependency and world system theory propose that the poverty and backwardness of poor countries are caused by their peripheral position in the international division of labor. Since the capitalist world system evolved, the distinction between the central and the peripheral nations has grown and diverged. In recognizing a tripartite pattern in division of labor, world-systems analysis criticized dependency theory with its bimodal system of only cores and peripheries. Immanuel Wallerstein [edit]

The best known version of the world-systems approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein, who is seen as one of the founders of the intellectual school of world-systems theory.[5] Wallerstein notes that world-systems analysis calls for an unidisciplinary historical social science, and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the 19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics, as is manifest for example in the de facto overlap of analysis among scholars of the disciplines.[1] Dependency theory is a body of social science theories predicated on the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "world system." The theory arose as a reaction to modernization theory, an earlier theory of development which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, that today's underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today's developed areas at some time in the past, and that therefore the task in helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Dependency theory rejected this view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy.[1]

The premises of dependency theory are that: 1. Poor nations provide natural resources, cheap labour, a destination for obsolete technology, and markets for developed nations, without which the latter could not have the standard of living they enjoy. 2. Wealthy nations actively perpetuate a state of dependence by various means. This influence may be multifaceted, involving economics,media control, politics, banking and finance, education, culture, sport, and all aspects of human resource development (including recruitment and training of workers). 3. Wealthy nations actively counter attempts by dependent nations to resist their influences by means of economic sanctions and/or the use of military force. Dependency theory states that the poverty of the countries in the periphery is not because they are not integrated into the world system, or not 'fully' integrated as is often argued by free market economists, but because of how they are integrated into the system. This introduces a paradoxical effect, in that although both the first and third-world countries are benefitting, the poorer side is being locked into detrimental economic position. They rely on the rich for the little work that is available to them, yet this causes a barrier from the nation growing independently. In a future perspective, such nations have no opportunity to improve their quality of life (Garrett 2007).