PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Political Ideologies
What is the contemporary relevance of Marxism?
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
G) Post-1991 funeral declared premature — 2008 crisis revived Marx as diagnostic lens Marxism outlasted Soviet collapse — capitalism's own contradictions returned the question
Body flow
Core categories: inequality + labour precarity (Piketty, Streeck, Wolff) → alienation reappears in gig economy (Lukacs: reification) → cultural /ideological domination: Gramsci's hegemony + Marcuse's democratic unfreedom → global capitalism: world-systems and imperialism still Marxist terrain → Marxism itself forced capitalism toward welfare reform
Counter-view
Economic reductionism (Weber); authoritarian outcomes (Popper, Arendt) weaken revolutionary prescription while leaving analytical categories intact
Conclusion routes
R1 Marxism survives not as blueprint but as indispensable critique of capital Its categories grow sharper as inequality deepens — relevance is structural, not nostalgic
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
