Marxist theory in the context of "God's eye view"

The socialist mode of production, also known as socialism, is a specific historical phase of base and superstructural development and its corresponding set of social relations that emerge from capitalism in the schema of historical materialism within Marxist theory. Communist states that claimed to have established socialist material relations claimed to have established socialist states.

The Marxist definition of socialism is that of production for use-value (i.e., abolition of commodity production, direct satisfaction of human needs, or economic demands), therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning. According to Marx, distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs"; Soviet models often distributed products based on the principle of "to each according to his contribution". Marx characterized the social relations of communism, the first stage of which is now called socialism, by the abolition of class distinctions and the common ownership of the means of production. As classes are abolished, the state withers away. Later self-titled communist states revised this definition of socialism and used the term more loosely as a rough equivalent to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an interpretation of Marxism distinct from classical and Orthodox Marxism and the Marxism–Leninism of the Soviet Union.

Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development. Key themes included the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Karl Marx's thought, and the recovery of the "Young Marx," emphasizing his early, humanistic writings.

Class reductionism is an epithet used to describe social theories that emphasize the role of the exploitation of labour along the lines of social classes in creating societal inequality, over all other social divisions and forms of oppression, such as racism or sexism. It is also used to describe political policies and strategies that prioritize broad economic reform to the exclusion of addressing issues facing specific minorities. The term is most commonly used in the context of Marxist theory and critiques thereof.

Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850. Since then different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), have used the phrase to refer to different concepts.

Trotsky's permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that have not achieved an advanced capitalist mode of production. Trotsky's theory also argues that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat; and that the proletariat can and must therefore seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry. Trotsky also opposed Joseph Stalin's principle of socialism in one country and stated that socialist revolutions needed to happen across the world in order to combat the global capitalist hegemony. According to Russian historian Vadim Rogovin (1937–1998), the success of Stalin's theoretical position had a significant and negative impact on the entire course of the international revolutionary process.

Marxist theory envisions that a new democratic society would rise through the organized actions of the international working class, enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market. There would be little, if any, need for a state, the goal of which was to enforce the alienation of labour; as such, the state would eventually wither away as its conditions of existence disappear.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto (1848) and later works that "the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy", and universal suffrage being "one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat". As Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". He allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands) but suggested that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means", the "lever of our revolution must be force" on the grounds that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression.

György Lukács (born Bernát György Löwinger; Hungarian: Szegedi Lukács György; German: Georg Bernard Lukács; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Vladimir Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.

Lukács was especially influential as a critic due to his theoretical developments of literary realism and of the novel as a literary genre. In 1919, he was appointed the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March–August 1919). Lukács has been described as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Stalinist era, though assessing his legacy can be difficult as Lukács seemed both to support Stalinism as the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet also to champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism.

This is a list of prominent figures who contributed to Marxist theory, principally as authors; it is not intended to list politicians who happen(ed) to be a member of an ostensibly communist political party or other organisation.