European Left Within The Context Of Orthodox Marxism
Ortodoks Marxizmi Bağlamında Avrupa Solu

Author : Uğur EYİDİKER
Number of pages : 34-58

Abstract

The West happens to be in a constant state of motion and change which works in tandem with the societal, economic, political and cultural factors laying the groundwork for the emergence of a number of ideologies in Western civilization. Contradictions which come into play in conjunction with the experience of change and interaction show up along with different phenomena. As a matter of fact, socialism which was essentially predicated on collective ownership and labor issues did not also remain the same in its original form. This ideology which was briefly called as the leftism was first identified in France. Afterwards, socialism changed fundamentally along with contributions made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and entered into a path different from the one taken by its predecessors who were utopist socialists. In this way, by highlighting the revolutionary aspect of labor class, a Marxist understanding which argued that capitalism could be eliminated only through a violent revolution developed. However, it was deduced that a violent revolution as the one experienced in the case of the Soviets would not take place in Europe, and hence a deviation from Marxism occurred. As well as the effect of social democracy and parliamentarism in the West, policies implemented by the Soviets induced the adoption of the revolution attached to the ballot box rather than the violence. Today, in parallel to this basic deviation, political parties position themselves in the European left. This study intended to put forward the ideological basis of Europe’s leftism, and, in this respect, aimed to identify its basic aspects distinguishing it from Orthodox Marxism.

Keywords

Europe, Marxism, Left, Revolution, Social

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