ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Karl Marx’s general theory of social structure and his detailed analysis of economic life, ideology, and alienation in capitalism. Marx’s writings, as well as those of more than a century of followers, interpreters, and critics, form an enormously tangled thicket of theory, historical analyses, political strategies, and polemics. The overall task is motivated by belief that Marxism remains essential to an adequate understanding of contemporary social life. The distinctive features of Marx’s theory emerge from a group of writings completed between 1843 and 1848. Historical materialism is a particular conception of the relative importance and mutual effects of social relations. Marx believed that the mode of production is more important than other parts of social life in two very critical ways. A shorthand way to sum up Marxism’s intellectual superiority over its opponents is to call them “ideological.”
