Marxism is strictly speaking not a Socio-Economic or Political Ideology but a way of looking at History. That can have implications on how one looks towards achieving their political goals, but you can in theory agree with a Marxist analysis of history while having politics that are the opposite of Marx’s.
At its broadest most basic sense Marxism is viewing history as primarily driven by Class Conflict and Material Conditions. And in that I am essentially Marxist. And my political goals are also the same, I am a Communist who desires a Moneyless, Classless Stateless Society.
However I view a lot of the specifics of how Marx and Engels framed their History of Class Conflict as gravely mistaken, which many contemporary Marxists and especially MLs still cling to dogmatically. The division of eras simplistically into Primitive-Communism then “Slavery” then “Feudalism” then Capitalism being where we are now is very problematic in how biased towards a Western Perspective it is. But even within that Western Perspective is still an oversimplification and tied to now outdated terminology. The Socio-Economic Mode of Production of the Middle Ages is better defined as Manorialism not “Feudalism” for one example.
I have prior posts on this Blog already talking about aspects of all that. But for further understanding of how wrong both the Marxist and common Liberal understanding of “Feudalism” and the Middle Ages is I recommend reading the book Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking The Myths by Regine Pernoud and/or watching the YouTube videos on this Playlist I made.
Marxism is an Apostate child of Hegelianism. Hegelianism was all about viewing History as driven by Conflicts, New Atheists are very Hegleian their devotion to the discredited Science vs Religion Conflict thesis. But I say Apostate because while keeping a form Conflict in his view of History Marx also rejected the Idealism that Hegel inherited from Kant and Plato preferring to see things Materialistically like an Empiricist or Epicurean or Aristotelian or Stoic. But Marx and Engels were not the first Materialist Worker focused Socialists, before them came Flora Tristan and Moses Hess.
TIK ignores the ways in which Marx Apostatized from Hegelianism in building his little Ideological Genealogy. He recognized Aristotelianism as ultimately independent of Platonism in-spite of how Aristotle started as a student of Plato, well Marx is to Hegel as Aristotle was to Plato.
However the Marxists have brought this on themselves by not rejecting all the Hegelian terminology they should have. “Dialectical Materialism” is an Oxymoron, Dialectics is definitionally an idealist concept having its roots in Pythagorean Dualism. It no longer means what it originally meant in how Marx and Engels use the word, but modern Marxists fall right back into Hegelian Idealism for example in how Slavoj Zizek refuses to see a third option existing for anything including Gender.
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