Socialism is the broad political tradition that holds that the means of production should be collectively rather than privately owned, and that economic life should be organised for social benefit rather than private profit. Marxism is one specific variant of socialism — the most influential — which grounds the case for socialism in a theory of history, class, and political economy derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Marxism’s core claims

Marx argued that history was driven by class struggle — the conflict between those who owned the means of production and those who sold their labour. Capitalism would inevitably produce its own gravediggers: an industrial proletariat whose immiseration and class consciousness would eventually produce revolution, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the establishment of a classless communist society. The state, law, religion, and culture were in Marx’s analysis ‘superstructure’ — shaped by and serving the interests of the economically dominant class.

The socialist split

Twentieth-century socialism divided into two broad camps: democratic socialism (pursue socialist goals through parliamentary democracy and welfare reform) and revolutionary communism (seize state power through revolution and use the state to build socialism). This split, crystallised by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, shaped the entire political landscape of the twentieth century — from the German revolution of 1918–19 to the Cold War to decolonisation.

Further reading: Social Democracy · Stalinism · Revolution vs Reform · Dialectical Materialism
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