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Marxism has developed into different branches and schools of thought. Different schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of Classical Marxism while de-emphasizing or rejecting other aspects of Marxism, sometimes combining Marxist analysis with non-Marxian concepts. Some variants of Marxism primarily focus on one aspect of Marxism as the determining force in social development - such as the mode of production, class, power-relationships or property ownership - while arguing other aspects are less important or current research makes them irrelevant. Despite sharing similar premises, different schools of Marxism might reach contradictory conclusions from each other. For example, different Marxian economists have contradictory explanations of economic crisis and different predictions for the outcome of such crises. Furthermore, different variants of Marxism apply Marxist analysis to study different aspects of society (e.g.: mass culture, economic crises, or Feminism).

These theoretical differences have led various socialist and communist parties and political movements to embrace different political strategies for attaining socialism, advocate different programs and policies. One example of this is the division between revolutionary socialists and reformists that emerged in the German Social Democratic Party during the early 20th century.
Marxist understandings of history and of society have been adopted by academics in the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociological theory, art history and art theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy.



The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of material conditions, taking at its starting point the necessary economic activities required by human society to provide for its material needs. The form of economic organization, or mode of production, is understood to be the basis from which the majority of other social phenomena — including social relations, political and legal systems, morality and ideology — arise (or at the least by which they are greatly influenced). These social relations form the superstructure, for which the economic system forms the base. As the forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient and stifle further progress.[citation needed]
These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority (the bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population (the proletariat) who produce goods and services. Taking the idea that social change occurs because of the struggle between different classes within society who are under contradiction against each other, the Marxist analysis leads to the conclusion that capitalism oppresses the proletariat, which leads to a proletarian revolution.
Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer sustain the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing military aggression. The socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through workers' revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from Crisis theory, Socialism is a historical necessity (but not an inevitability).
In a socialist society private property in the means of production would be superseded by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, but would instead base production and economic activity on the criteria of satisfying human needs — that is, production would be carried out directly for use.



HISTORICAL MARXISM

"Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand."
— Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1858

The historical materialist theory of history, also synonymous to "the economic interpretation of history" (a coinage by Eduard Bernstein), looks for the causes of societal development and change in the collective ways humans use to make the means for living. The social features of a society (social classes, political structures, ideologies) derive from economic activity, an idea often conveyed with the metaphor of the base and superstructure.
The base and superstructure metaphor explains that the totality of social relations regarding "the social production of their existence" i.e. civil society forms a society's economic base, from which rises a superstructure of political and legal institutions, i.e., political society. The base corresponds to the social consciousness (politics, religion, philosophy, etc.), and it conditions the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provokes social revolutions, thus, the resultant changes to the economic base will lead to the transformation of the superstructure. This relationship is reflexive; the base determines the superstructure, in the first instance, and remains the foundation of a form of social organization which then can act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure, whose relationship is dialectical, not literal.[citation needed][clarification needed]
Marx considered that these socio-economic conflicts have historically manifested themselves as distinct stages (one transitional) of development in Western Europe.



Primitive Communism: as in co-operative tribal societies.
Slave Society: a development of tribal progression to city-state; aristocracy is born.
Feudalism: aristocrats are the ruling class; merchants evolve into capitalists.
Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the proletariat.
Socialism: workers gain class consciousness, and via proletarian revolution depose the capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, replacing it in turn with dictatorship of the proletariat through which the socialization of the means of production can be realized.
Communism: a classless and stateless society.

to be continued...