Sociological Marxism

From the middle of the 19 century until the last decade of the 20, the Marxist tradition provided the most systematic body of ideas and social theory for radical critics of capitalism as an economic system and social order. Even those critics of capitalism who did not directly identify with Marxism relied heavily on Marxist ideas about class, exploitation, commodification, the state, ideology. And while many anti-capitalists felt that the specific political project that came to be identified with Marxism -the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism -was deeply flawed, they nevertheless shared the emancipatory vision of a socialist society within which class inequalities attenuated and the economy was democratically controlled in the interests of everyone. Above all it was this defense of a vision of an emancipatory alternative to capitalism that gave Marxism its emotional and ideological power: we might live in a world of great misery, inequality and oppression, but an alternative was both imaginable and achievable.