Both Marxism and liberalism grew out of the European Enlightenment and have influenced each others development. Both share a respect for liberty and equality but their relationship to these ideals is fundamentally different.
Liberalism is a worldview fundamentally based around abstract values and philosophical idealism, with an emphasis on understanding political, economic and social phenomena from an individualist perspective. From the liberal perspective, issues in society and the economy are often given disjointed solutions that focus on individual behavior. As an idealist worldview, liberalism sees ideals like liberty and equality as things to strive towards.
Marxism is a fundamentally materialist worldview with a systemic approach to understanding political, social and economic phenomena. This means that issues in society are understood in their relation to the structure of society, and proposed solutions take systemic issues into account. As a materialist worldview, Marxism is purportedly scientific and unconcerned with ethical ideals - values like equality or liberty are seen to be outgrowths of material development and achievable with specific levels of economic development, but not necessarily things to blindly strive toward on the basis morality. This perspective extends down to individual: humans are understood to be primarily driven by material interests rather than spiritual or philosophical interests, though the latter is predicted to become predominant in a highly-developed state of affairs where material needs are taken care of (i.e. a communist society).
As a result of their different methodologies, Marxism understands the issues of capitalism to be structural in nature therefore advocates for systemic change - a transition to socialism, an economic system that does not suffer from the structural defects of capitalism because it replaces the dynamics that give rise to the defects in the first place.
Sia ? 3 years, 6 months ago
Both Marxism and liberalism grew out of the European Enlightenment and have influenced each others development. Both share a respect for liberty and equality but their relationship to these ideals is fundamentally different.
Liberalism is a worldview fundamentally based around abstract values and philosophical idealism, with an emphasis on understanding political, economic and social phenomena from an individualist perspective. From the liberal perspective, issues in society and the economy are often given disjointed solutions that focus on individual behavior. As an idealist worldview, liberalism sees ideals like liberty and equality as things to strive towards.
Marxism is a fundamentally materialist worldview with a systemic approach to understanding political, social and economic phenomena. This means that issues in society are understood in their relation to the structure of society, and proposed solutions take systemic issues into account. As a materialist worldview, Marxism is purportedly scientific and unconcerned with ethical ideals - values like equality or liberty are seen to be outgrowths of material development and achievable with specific levels of economic development, but not necessarily things to blindly strive toward on the basis morality. This perspective extends down to individual: humans are understood to be primarily driven by material interests rather than spiritual or philosophical interests, though the latter is predicted to become predominant in a highly-developed state of affairs where material needs are taken care of (i.e. a communist society).
As a result of their different methodologies, Marxism understands the issues of capitalism to be structural in nature therefore advocates for systemic change - a transition to socialism, an economic system that does not suffer from the structural defects of capitalism because it replaces the dynamics that give rise to the defects in the first place.
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