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Marxism

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MARXISM
Over 150 years ago Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto. In The Communist Manifesto they were the first to give a thorough and scientific analysis of the laws and workings of capitalist society: why it results in the polarization of wealth and how it can be overthrown. In the last few years their ideas have been regaining popularity. At the end of 1999 Marx was voted the greatest thinker of the millennium in a BBC online poll.
It is the economic crisis of capitalism internationally that has forced many to reassess their view of Marx. Capitalism is a cyclical system: crises can be caused by a number of factors, such as financial crashes or political unrest.
Marx recognized that capitalism, despite all its abuses, played an important role in developing the productive forces and the world market. It was an advance from the feudal societies that preceded it. Today, capitalism has developed the world market and the wealth, science and technology have laid the foundations for a socialist society.
Under capitalism, wealth and power have always been concentrated in the hands of the capitalists. And the development of technology is driven by the need for profit. The anarchy of the capitalist market always results in increasing wealth and power for a few but poverty for the many.
Today the capitalists are a far wealthier and a far smaller class than they were in Marx's time. In the last 50 years the wealth gap between the richest 20% of humanity and the poorest 20% doubled. Individual multinational companies have become richer than entire countries. The world's 100 biggest companies now control 70% of global trade. Any one of them sells more than any of the poorest 120 countries on the world export market, while 23 of the most powerful sell more than even semi-developed countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia or Mexico.
The working

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