Marx’s Theory of the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Abstract

Karl Marx’s analysis of the internal dynamics of capitalist society led him to conclude that this order would be replaced by socialism. Since Marx laid down his pen, academics and political activists alike have hotly debated the accuracy of his predictions and the adequacy of his theory. Though this discussion is by now almost one hundred years old, a few basic lines of argument have been repeatedly advanced by the various antagonists in the debate. Conservatives and liberals have generally argued that various structural developments in capitalist society — such as the growth of the middle class, increasing affluence and the separation of ownership and control — have made Marx’s theory, and socialism, irrelevant. Moderates in the right wing of labour and social democratic movements have contended that Marx erred in underestimating the flexibility of capitalism and the independence of the state in capitalist society. In their view, through the extension of universal suffrage and the expansion of the welfare state, the working class in the West has been politically and economically integrated to play a major role in capitalist society. Revolutionaries, on the other hand, have contended that the changes in capitalist society in the past hundred years have been merely cosmetic. The basic exploitative structure of advanced capitalist society is unaffected by the welfare state or affluence.