Marxist Sociology and Marxist Ideology

Abstract

We readily use the term Marxism. The assumption underlying the use of this term is that a whole coherent well-knit body of ideas exists forming a system whose guiding principles, at least, were discovered by Karl Marx. This system would embrace, by right if not in fact, the whole body of intellectual, moral and even aesthetic problems that beset mankind. It would introduce a method by which to resolve them, at least to a great extent. Marxist protestations of fidelity to an open concept, according to which much is still to be discovered and even revised, are often contradicted by their opposition in matters of fact to continuation and revision. Consequently, one cannot see what fundamental distinction exists between Marxism and the classic philosophical systems, despite anything Marx and the Marxists may have said against the pretentions of the previous systems of this kind.