Here's a good link, fill your boots. www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx

Marxism is the ideology of the followers of C. Marx. Carl Marx was a philosopher in economy. According to Marx the economic classes were locked in a struggle that would culminate in the classless society of Communism, in which class privilege disappear. Marx said that in the struggle the poor “have nothing to lose but their chance. They have the world to win.” To Marx the religion was Opiate (narcotic) taken by the people to relieve the pain, but it could not cure the disease. I can give you more info. But I don’t know how much you need/want.

from www.wikipedia.org Main ideas The main ideas to come out of Marx and Engels collective works include: mode of production: The mode of production is a specific combination of productive forces (including human labour power, tools, equipment, buildings and technologies, materials, and improved land) and social and technical relations of production (including the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets, often codified in law, cooperative work relations and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes). base and superstructure: The base refers to the means of production of society. The superstructure is formed on top of the base, and comprises that society's ideology, as well as its legal system, political system, and religions. For Marx, the base determines the superstructure. The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a distinction between actual entities "in the world". class consciousness: Class consciousness refers to the self-awareness of a social class and its capacity to act in its own rational interests. ideology: Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, including its ideology, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can create false consciousness such as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital ~ a degradation of human life). historical materialism: Historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies). political economy: The term political economy originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the new-born capitalist system. Political economy, then, studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material, and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital, and how this manifests itself in economic activity. exploitation: Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives; in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labour, in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit. alienation: Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" (Gattungswesen, usually translated as 'species-essence' or 'species-being'). Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism - it isn't necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated. He believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Class Marx believed that the identity of a social class derived from its relationship to the means of production (as opposed to the notion that class is determined by wealth alone, i.e., lower class, middle class, upper class). Marx describes several social classes in capitalist societies, including primarily: the proletariat: "those individuals who sell their labour power, (and therefore add value to the products), and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production". According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat due to the fact that the worker's labour power generates an added value greater than the worker's salary. the bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, who are recompensed by a salary, thus exploiting the proletariat. The bourgeoisie may be further subdivided into the very wealthy bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie are those who employ labour, but may also work themselves. These may be small proprietors, land-holding peasants, or trade workers. Marx predicted that the petty bourgeoisie would eventually be destroyed by the constant reinvention of the means of production and the result of this would be the forced movement of the vast majority of the petty bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Marx also identified the lumpenproletariat, a stratum of society completely disconnected from the means of production.

Marxism is a view, created by Karl Marx, that society is always in conflict between two classes; the ruling class and the working class. That capitalist society is based on the exploitation of the majority (the working class) by a few(the ruling class) because they own the means of production (wealth). that the ruling class own the material wealth of society, but also are the authors of our ideas. That man made god and not the other way about as a way to explain the unexplainable and later to alienate us. that in order to change the world and make it equal, where everyone has an equal chance of money, education etc we must revolt, collectively, and devote ourselves to making it better. that this change will only come if we seize control of the workplace etc. that in each epoch of history material and money has changed and advanced certain parts of the world so we must seize this and bring it together to be equal.

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