Belief: A capitalist economy is flawed and self-destructive; the capitalist class will inevitably become far wealthier than the working class.
Policy recommendation: The working class should revolt and establish socialism.
Marxism posits that that human societies develop through class struggle. This refers to a conflict between the ruling classes (the bourgeoisie) who control the means of production and the and the working class (the proletariat) who work by selling their labour for wages. Through his theories of alienation and surplus value, Marx asserted that capitalism facilitated social relations through the exploitation of labour.
Marx goes on to argue that states are run in the interest of the ruling class but represented as being in favour of all. Moreover, he asserted that capitalism produced internal tensions which would ultimately lead to its own downfall and replacement by socialism. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism would cause the working class to develop class consciousness and lead them to their conquest of political power and the establishment of a classless communist society. Marx encouraged the working class to engage in revolutionary action to destroy the capitalist system.
He disagreed with capitalism because it is profit motivated and leads to an uneven exchange of lesser value for greater value. Alternatively, he posited that exchanges should be of equal value so that the amount of work put into whatever is being produced is the determinant of value. This lead Marx to develop his labour theory of value; this essentially contends that the value of a good can be objectively measured by the average number of labour hours required to produce that good.