in the last few lessons we've been talking about um the introduction to socialism uh looking at some of the main ideas of what socialism actually is i'm looking at a number of different movements within the socialist tradition and in this lesson what we're going to do is we're going to go into more detail at the development of socialism look at how it has developed over the years and we're gonna do this by examining a number of key thinkers in this in this lesson we're gonna be focusing mainly on uh marx and engels what they contributed to the socialist tradition and then look at rosa luxembourg and how she contributed to the socialist tradition as well before we look at socialist society and a different a number of other issues within the idea and the traditions of socialism in a couple of lessons time so let's begin by talking about karl marx and frederick angles now marx and engels are arguably the founding fathers of the socialism and the socialist tradition that we now understand today so don't forget there were what existed these kind of utopian socialists and a number of socialist ideas and a socialist thought that were built upon older philosophical traditions so for example the work of jean-jacques crousseau contributed heavily to a number of utopian socialist ideas however what we understand socialism to mean in this modern context in the context as we understand it today originates almost entirely from marx and engels over here so they are arguably the founding fathering the uh founding fathers of the socialist tradition that we understand today okay and they contributed extensively to both political economy and also to philosophy through a number of key works that are authored by uh both marks and engels just marks and just engels in some areas okay so one of them being the communist manifesto that is arguably the the bedrock ground um the groundwork of what they proposed as a solution as a as a normative um expansion of what the worker and what society ought to be doing and to achieve this revolution into socialism into transitionary socialism and then into into a communist state you also have works such as this capital or which contributed as a critique of the modern political economy at the time so the development of capitalism at the time with works such as adam smith's and david ricardo marx contributed this by critiquing their understanding of of political economy equally you've got a couple of works of historical materialism and later works by marx so for example the german ideology talks a lot about historical materialism in a lot more detail and also critique of the gotha program was also one of marx's later pieces now in terms of their beliefs we should note that in the communist manifesto they argue that society and that the history of society is the quote history of class struggle that is one of the first lines in the communist manifesto if you were to ever read it it's very short and this places an emphasis on their understanding of historical materialism and if you want to know more about historical materialism check out our last lesson where we went into it a lot more detail talking about historical materialism and a number of cross-cutting issues such as alienation and class consciousness etc etc they argue that the existence of the state perpetuates the interests of whichever class has control of the means of production the means of production and they argued in this case it was the uh the bourgeois class the owner class who have control of the means of production and so therefore the existence of the state doesn't seek to intervene and to support the interests of the workers those who have to sell their labor for profits profit instead it perpetuates the interest of those who own the means of production so it perpetuates the interest of this relatively small owner class this bourgeois owner class and therefore that this emphasizes the fact that marx was not a statist marx was not a status in any regard he regarded um that the state is something that would quote unquote wither away something we'll look at in a second when it comes to other philosophical traditions marx and engels refer to the concept of religion and the existence of religion in society as the quote-unquote opium of the people now this is a a quote that has been mischaracterized a lot by um socialist traditions um following marx and engels and ultimately all it refers to is that opium and religion serve the same kind of purpose in that they sedate society and whereas opium is a sedative and it is a uh something that um and a pain relief as well uh it's also a painkiller religion acts in this similar way it's also a pain pain relief okay and it's a pain relief in the sense that it sedates society from realizing their material and their class struggles it stops the the pain of material and class consciousness and class struggle from ever perpetuating just like opium does the same thing when you have pain and then when it comes to the reform into a social into a communist state into a communist society marx and engels set about thinking about how this would be achieved they believed it would be inevitable um owing to their understanding of historical materialism that inevitably this is something that would take place they believed that a reform into a communist society would be done by a number of means by a number of steps so firstly a worker revolution will take back the means of production they will control communally control the means of production this is a transitionary socialist period whereby we have what is known as the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship again as i referred to many times in these lessons does not mean have the same kind of connotations as it does in today's in today's common parlance in the sense that dictatorship just simply means control or or ultimate control so the ultimate control of the means of production will lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat and then eventually this transition into socialism and this transitionary period will lead us into a state um well into a situation if you will which we would describe as communism which would be a withering a way of of the class structure that exists in and creating a classless society and a society where the state will simply seeks to be important cease to be necessary in the in anything because as we've already mentioned mark says that the state exists to perpetuate the interests of those who own the means of production but if everybody owns the means of production as communally owned and there's no such thing as a class and class struggle then there's no need for the state to perpetuate and uphold the interest of a particular class because there is no class therefore the state shall quote unquote wither away when it comes to rosen luxembourg there has been she adopted and um uh reformed and talked about um you know adding to a lot of uh the socialist tradition she contributed a number of works to the socialist tradition namely uh the book uh reform and revolution and also the work the mass strike the political party and the trade unions all um both very key works that contributed greatly to the socialist tradition the most important thing that we can take away from rosa luxembourg's um philosophy or or her political economy is that she was very heavily critical of the idea of socialism through reform the reformist understanding of socialism so she was heavily critical of a reformist a reformist understanding of socialism the idea that we can achieve socialism using reform like legal reform and and political reform for example she said that the only way to achieve quote-unquote worker emancipation is for there to be mass strike and worker revolution so she um took what marx and engels had said that you know revolution is is something that is required to um achieve this dictatorship of the proletariat and she emphasized that this is uh emphasized this even stronger so she said that reform is nothing hasn't has no way of achieving uh being able to achieve a state of socialism the only way we can achieve worker emancipation the only way we can achieve this is through mass strike and worker revolution she said that striking and and the existence of mass strikes of the workers are provide a number of key utilities so the first of them being that they bring the proletariat together in their class consciousness so they they they develop a sense of camaraderie among the working class and it allows the ability for the working class to realize their class consciousness to realize their their their material struggles and they also said that it helps educate the workers as to better develop and organize their work movements ultimately if you um organize more and more mass strikes you're going to be better at organizing worker movements and worker striking operations in the future and again finally before we end just emphasizing the fact that she um argues that basic reform legal reform such as legal reform legal reform or even political reform or or maybe even economic reform all these things that we do in a liberal democracy like the one we're living in none of these will ever achieve any kind of state of communism or socialism they will never be able to achieve socialism the only thing that can lead to this and can lead to this worker emancipation is the existence of mass strikes and worker revolution