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Summary

Socialism is a political and economic order in which the means of production (e.g. land, factories, machinery, communication and transportation infrastructure, etc.) are subject to public control and the traditionally gendered and often unpaid labor of reproduction (e.g. child rearing, domestic labor, etc.) is compensated or socialized. While the structure of governance, use of markets, degree of cooperative labor, and kinds welfare guarantees may vary, socialism seeks to prioritize the satisfaction of human needs, while mitigating material inequality and social oppression. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) argued that the objective possibility of socialism was immanent to capitalism. (Socialism supported by moral principles or human will alone, was critically referred to as utopian.) Immanent to socialism, in turn, is the objective possibility of communism, which entails the complete dissolution of the state, division of labor, and the value form associated with commodity production. Marxist socialism is thus a stage in the historical development of communism, whose defining characteristic is the overcoming of all internal contradictions and radical otherness (a characteristic it shares with Hegel’s notion of absolute spirit). Marxism, however, also refers to a systematic, dialectical, and historical analysis of capitalism; a reflexive form of critical social theory with an emancipatory intent; a historical materialist methodology; theories of class formation, conflict, and ideology; as well as to critiques of alienation, reification, and commodity fetishism. There are now several different schools of Marxist thought, from Humanist, Structuralist, and Autonomist Marxism, to Analytical, Feminist, and Cultural Marxism, among others.

Key works Major early works in socialist thought include Charles Fourier,

The Theory of the Four Movements

(1808), Robert Owen,

New View of Society

(1813), and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? (1840). Major works by Marx and Engels include Karl Marx's Capital, Volumes 1-3, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, “On the Jewish Question,” and The Eighteenth Brumaire; Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884); as well as 

The Communist Manifesto

(1848) and the German Ideology (1845), which Marx and Engels authored together. The collected works of Marx and Engels in German are here (MEGA) and in English here (MECW). Other key texts in the Marxist tradition include Lenin, State and Revolution (1917); Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks; Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), Georg (György) Lukács,

History and Class Consciousness (1923); Louis Althusser, For Marx (1965); and Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 2 Volumes (1960, 1985).

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  1. Ethical Life.Liam Kofi Bright - manuscript
    A sketch of my ethical views, or secular moral philosophy. Emphasis is on stating how it all hangs together.
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  2. Marxism as a Learning Process: The Epistemic Rationality of Precedential Reasoning.Stephen D'Arcy - manuscript
    My aim in this paper is fairly modest. I obviously do not claim that there has never been or could never be an instance of irrational or fallacious appeals to quotations from canonical sources in the marxist tradition. Instead, I claim that the practice of using quotations from canonical sources is not, as such, irrational. If we understand the epistemological infrastructure of the practice -- the rational underpinnings of it -- we can grasp how these citations appeal to the presumptive (...)
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  3. Heideggerian Marxism, Dasein, and the Nature of Revolution.Jarryd Louw - manuscript
    This present paper is concerned with clarifying the relationship between the specifics of revolution and historical Dasein as elaborated by Herbert Marcuse in his early work concerning Heideggerian Marxism. In this early work, Marcuse identifies the industrial proletariat as constituting an expression of historical Dasein and in which the eventual proletarian revolution not only brings about the liberation of the proletariat from the effects of capitalism but also allows for the authentic expression of historical Dasein. While Marcuse holds that this (...)
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  4. The Economics of Diversity.Ryan Wasser - manuscript
    At first blush values such as diversity appear to be worth striving for. The question is whether or not such values—which have become increasingly prevalent the institutional credos of academia—are values as such, that being that they are things of moral worth (Value, n.d.), or if they are something else altogether. My unpopular suspicion leans toward the latter. Personal opinions, of course, can hardly be said to be good justification for a withering critique, however, these opinions of mine mirror similar (...)
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  5. To Question is the Answer: Questioning Capitalism and 20th Century Communism for Communist Freedom.William Aguilar -
    Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...)
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  6. A ‘Grooming Chamber’ For Antisemitism.Jan M. Van der Molen - Jan 28, 2020 - University of Groningen.
    If Jewish Bolsheviks could put an end to the imperial rule of the Romanovs, could they pose a threat to the vision of a Third Reigh? A question the German National Socialists are likely to have asked themselves before and on the eve of plotting the rise of the Nazi regime. After all, Europe had had a long-standing relationship with blaming the Jews for the world’s miseries. A relationship Germany was ready to refuel, as indicated by German Field Marshal Walter (...)
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  7. Mark Neocleous, Fascism.T. Abse - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  8. Bargaining and Nonbargaining Nonmarket Strategies: A General Model and Data From Post-Communist Countries.Yusaf H. Akbar & Maciej Kisilowski - forthcoming - Business and Society.
    This article addresses a theoretical gap in the literature by highlighting the significance of nonbargaining nonmarket strategies of firms. Relying on neo-statist political theory, we propose a theoretical model that hypothesizes a reliance on nonbargaining nonmarket strategies in situations marked by historically and situationally conditioned weakness of societal forces relevant to a firm (including the firm itself) as well as when relevant state institutions display high degrees of professional, structural, and ideological bureaucratic insularity. We survey 165 managers (each representing a (...)
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  9. Lenin reads Hegel.Andreas Arndt - forthcoming - Hegel-Studien.
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  10. The End/s of Socialism.Ronald Aronson - forthcoming - Theoria.
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  11. Has the Soviet Union Taken a Step Toward Communism?Alexander S. Balinky - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  12. The Proclaimed Emergence of Communism in the USSR.Alexander S. Balinky - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  13. The crisis in Marxist sociology.Norman Birnbaum - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  14. Phenomenology and existentialism in dialogue with Marxist humanism in Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s.Una Blagojević - forthcoming - Studies in East European Thought:1-20.
    The paper looks at how Marxist humanists around the Yugoslav philosophical journal Praxis engaged with existentialist and phenomenological categories. After presenting the early 1950s critiques of existentialism in Yugoslavia, the paper considers how the categories used by the representatives of existentialism (and phenomenology) were interpreted and incorporated by Yugoslav Marxist humanists in the 1960s.
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  15. Un martor al realimului socialist.Radu Bogdan - forthcoming - Dilema.
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  16. Market Socialism: A Subjectivist Perspective.R. Bradley - forthcoming - Journal of Libertarian Studies.
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  17. Still Primus Inter Pares for Understanding and Opposing the Capitalist System.Richard A. Brosio - forthcoming - Journal of Thought.
  18. Marxism and the Multitude '.Alex Callinicos - forthcoming - Multitudes: Revue Politique, Artistique, Philosophique.
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  19. To Study Marxism with Marx's Academic Spirit.Xu Chang-fu - forthcoming - Modern Philosophy.
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  20. The Dialectics of Standing One's Ground.George Ciccariello-Maher - forthcoming - Theory and Event 15 (3).
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  21. Philippe Van Parijs, Marxism Recycled.A. Collier - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  22. From Cultural Marxism to Critical Literacy: Rethinking Douglas Kellner’s Media Theory.Otávio Daros - forthcoming - Philosophy and Social Criticism.
    Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influ...
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  23. From Cultural Marxism to Critical Literacy: Rethinking Douglas Kellner’s Media Theory.Otávio Daros - forthcoming - Sage Journals.
    Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...)
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  24. From Cultural Marxism to Critical Literacy: Rethinking Douglas Kellner’s Media Theory.Otávio Daros - forthcoming - Sage Publications Ltd: Philosophy and Social Criticism.
    Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...)
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  25. Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR.C. el-Ojeili - forthcoming - Thesis Eleven.
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  26. John E. Roemer, A Future for Socialism.G. Elliott - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  27. Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison.G. Elliott - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  28. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.Giorgio Fazio - forthcoming - Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche.
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  29. The Point of Change: Marxism/Australia.Carole Ferrier & Rebecca Pelan - forthcoming - History/Theory.
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  30. Platform socialism: How to reclaim our digital future from big tech.Jennifer Forestal - forthcoming - Contemporary Political Theory.
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  31. Søren Mau, Stummer Zwang: eine marxistische Analyse der ökonomischen Macht im Kapitalismus.Joseph Fracchia - forthcoming - Danish Yearbook of Philosophy:1-2.
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  32. Centennial evolution of Marxist philosophy of education in China.Boya Geng & Shi Zhongying - forthcoming - Educational Philosophy and Theory.
    Marxist philosophy of education plays a key role in contemporary education in China, serving as an important theoretical foundation for reforms. With a history of more than one hundred years in China, Marxist philosophy of education has gone through three major historical stages: emergence (before 1949), localization (from 1949 to 1979), and new development (after 1979). Looking back and reflecting on the exploration of Marxist philosophy of education in China, it can be found that the following problems still remain to (...)
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  33. La funzione del parlamento.Ludovico Geymonat - forthcoming - (l'Unità).
  34. Apriamo un franco dibattito all'interno del Partito.Ludovico Geymonat - forthcoming - (l'Unità).
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  35. Fredric Jameson, Brecht and Method.S. Giles - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  36. Democracy’s History of Inegalitarianism: Symposium on Michael Hanchard, The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2018, 272 pgs. [REVIEW]Robert Gooding-Williams, David Theo Goldberg, Juliet Hooker & Michael G. Hanchard - forthcoming - Political Theory:009059172090186.
  37. Liberalism and Socialism since the Nineteenth Century: Tensions, Exchanges and Convergences.Stéphane Guy (ed.) - forthcoming - Palgrave.
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  38. Contemporary Marxist Sociology.Erich Hahn - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  39. Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity.H. Harootunian - forthcoming - Radical Philosophy.
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  40. Literature on the Theory of a Socialist Economy.Eduard Heimann - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  41. Marxism and underdeveloped countries.Eduard Heimann - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  42. The interplay of capitalism and socialism in the american economy.Eduard Heimann - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  43. Socialism and Democracy.Eduard Heimann - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  44. Existentialism, existentialists, and Marxism: From critique to integration within the philosophical establishment in Socialist Romania.Adela Hîncu & Ştefan Baghiu - forthcoming - Studies in East European Thought:1-23.
    In this paper, we discuss how existentialism was criticized, disseminated, and gradually autochthonized in the main philosophical journals of Socialist Romania. We show that the early critique of existentialism was both a statement against contemporary bourgeois philosophy in general and a condemnation of the local philosophical production of the interwar period. In the 1950s, this kind of critique was attuned to the growing fame of several Romanian authors who had emigrated to the West (e.g., Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade) and targeted (...)
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  45. Strategic Socialism. The Updating of Cuba’s Model.Marek Hrubec - forthcoming - Human Affairs.
    The article deals with the theme of updating of Cuba’s economic model mainly from the perspective of economic and political philosophy and its interdisciplinary contexts. First, it examines the historical origins of Cuba’s socialist model and the subsequent changes after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Second, it analyses the actualization of Cuba’s model in the first two decades of the 21st century, that is, mainly the introduction of market and private ownership to complement planning and public ownership. Third, it (...)
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  46. The Communist Farmer.Alvin Johnson - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  47. The American Worker and his Education.Horace M. Kallen - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  48. Communism as a Secret Individualism.Horace Meyer Kallen - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  49. Should socialists be republicans?Jan Kandiyali - forthcoming - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
    This paper presents a critique of left republican writings from a non-republican socialist standpoint. It examines three claims that have been advanced by left republican authors: that workers are dominated 1) by their lack of access to the means of production; 2) by the market; and 3) by their employer. With regard to 1) and 2), it argues that alternative conceptions of freedom can identify the unfreedom in question, and that there are good reasons for pressing these complaints on the (...)
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  50. Communism and social democracy.Harry W. Laidler - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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1 — 50 / 6655