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General Exam, Social Studies > Marx > Flashcards

Marx Flashcards

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1
Q

Commodity

A

An object with both use-value (practical utility) and exchange-value (market value). Commodities are the basic units of capitalist exchange.

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2
Q

Use-Value

A

The usefulness of a commodity. It satisfies a human need but does not determine its value in exchange.

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3
Q

Exchange-Value

A

The quantitative worth of a commodity in relation to others, determined through market comparison and labor time.

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4
Q

Value (Marx)

A

The amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity. This labor theory of value underpins Marx’s critique of capitalism.

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5
Q

Fetishism of Commodities

A

The distorted perception in capitalism where social relations between people appear as economic relations between things (commodities).

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6
Q

Abstract Labor

A

Labor stripped of individual characteristics and reduced to a universal unit for comparison. The basis of value under capitalism.

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7
Q

Concrete Labor

A

Specific, skill-based work that produces use-values. It contrasts with abstract labor, which produces value.

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8
Q

Socially Necessary Labor Time

A

The average time required to produce a commodity under normal conditions with average skill and intensity.

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9
Q

Money

A

The universal equivalent in which all commodities express their value. It obscures the social relations underlying exchange.

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10
Q

C-M-C and M-C-M’

A

Two circuits of exchange: C-M-C (commodity for money for commodity) for use; M-C-M’ (money for commodity for more money) for capital accumulation.

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11
Q

Capital

A

Money that is invested with the intention of generating more money. It becomes a social relation, not just a thing.

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12
Q

Surplus Value

A

The excess value produced by labor over and above what is paid in wages. This is the source of capitalist profit.

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13
Q

Labor Power

A

The worker’s capacity to labor, which is sold as a commodity. Distinct from labor itself; its use creates value.

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14
Q

Necessary Labor

A

Time the worker spends producing the value equivalent to their wage (subsistence).

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15
Q

Surplus Labor

A

Labor performed beyond what is necessary to reproduce the worker’s wage—this generates surplus value for the capitalist.

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16
Q

Exploitation

A

The process by which capitalists extract surplus value from workers by paying them less than the value they produce.

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17
Q

Working Day

A

The total duration of daily labor. Marx analyzes its extension as a source of exploitation and class struggle.

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18
Q

Capitalist Production

A

The combination of means of production (tools, machines) and labor power under capitalist ownership to generate profit.

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19
Q

Cooperation

A

Workers laboring together under the capitalist’s direction. It increases productivity but deepens exploitation.

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20
Q

Division of Labor

A

The specialization of tasks in production, which enhances efficiency but also alienates the worker and fragments their labor.

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21
Q

Machinery and Modern Industry

A

The use of machines to control and speed up labor. While it increases productivity, it also intensifies labor discipline and deskills workers.

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22
Q

The Factory System

A

Industrial production organized around machinery and controlled by capitalists. It subjects workers to a mechanical regime.

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23
Q

Real Subsumption

A

The stage where capital not only controls the product of labor but transforms the labor process itself.

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24
Q

Primitive Accumulation

A

The historical process of forcibly separating people from the means of production (e.g., land). It is the precondition for capitalist production.

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25
Enclosure Movement
The privatization of common land in early modern England. A key mechanism of primitive accumulation.
26
Reserve Army of Labor
The unemployed or underemployed population created by capitalism to discipline labor and keep wages low.
27
Accumulation of Capital
The reinvestment of surplus value to expand production. Central to capitalist growth and crisis tendencies.
28
Concentration of Capital
The centralization of production and ownership in fewer, larger capitalist firms through competition and accumulation.
29
Frantz Fanon
Anticolonial psychiatrist and philosopher from Martinique. His works examine the psychological effects of racism and colonialism, emphasizing liberation through radical transformation, not gradual reform.
30
Historical Change (Fanon's View)
Driven by violent rupture, not evolutionary progress. Colonialism dehumanizes both colonized and colonizer; liberation comes not through persuasion or reform but through revolution and radical action.
31
Colonialism
A violent, racist, and dehumanizing system that imposes material and psychological domination. It divides the world into colonizer and colonized, light and dark, civilized and savage.
32
Decolonization
Not a peaceful negotiation, but a violent, cleansing process of ending colonial rule. Fanon insists liberation must match the violence that established colonial domination.
33
Manichaean World
Fanon’s description of colonial society: a stark division between good/evil, white/black, colonizer/colonized. Reinforces racist binaries that structure colonial domination.
34
National Bourgeoisie
The educated elite of colonized nations who replace colonizers post-independence but replicate colonial structures. Fanon sees them as a major barrier to true liberation and progress.
35
Lumpenproletariat
The marginalized, criminalized underclass (e.g. beggars, delinquents) whom Fanon identifies as the most revolutionary group in urban colonial settings.
36
Peasant Masses
The largest, rural class in colonized nations. Fanon argues they are the most revolutionary force, capable of true decolonization when organized politically.
37
Alienation
The psychological estrangement experienced by colonized people, especially Black individuals, who are forced to see themselves through the lens of whiteness.
38
Black Skin, White Masks
Fanon’s first major work. Analyzes how colonialism produces racial inferiority complexes and internalized whiteness in Black individuals, especially through language, desire, and the body.
39
The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon’s final work. Combines revolutionary theory with psychiatric case studies to argue for violent decolonization, national culture, and a new form of humanity.
40
Violence (Fanon)
A necessary and liberating force. Violence breaks the colonial order and restores dignity to the oppressed. It is both political and psychological, undoing years of internalized inferiority.
41
Colonized Intellectual
Torn between two worlds—colonial education and native identity. Initially mimics the colonizer’s worldview, but must undergo radical transformation to truly support national liberation.
42
National Culture
Not a return to pre-colonial past but emerges through struggle. Fanon argues culture is created in motion, through revolutionary praxis—not frozen traditions.
43
Negritude
A literary-political movement celebrating Black identity. Fanon critiques its mysticism and essentialism, arguing it fails to engage with present material realities.
44
Historical Progress
According to Fanon, true progress comes through rupture, not continuity. Liberation requires creating a “new man” by breaking from colonial and European models of humanity.
45
Psychoanalysis
Used by Fanon to explore the psychological impact of colonialism. He critiques Eurocentric psychoanalysis for its failure to understand Black experience shaped by racism.
46
Inferiority Complex
A psychological condition caused not by childhood trauma (contra Mannoni), but by systemic racism and colonialism. Internalized by colonized people as racial self-hatred.
47
Negrophobia
Anti-Black fear and loathing. Fanon argues this “phobia” is rooted in colonial sexual fears and social structures, not mere individual psychology.
48
Jean-Paul Sartre
French existentialist who influenced Fanon. Sartre supported Negritude but also saw it as a stage to be “gotten over”—a claim Fanon critiqued as patronizing.
49
G.W.F. Hegel
German philosopher whose master-slave dialectic influenced Fanon. Fanon revises it to show that in colonialism, the slave never receives recognition as a full subject.
50
Master-Slave Dialectic
A Hegelian concept where self-consciousness arises through recognition. Fanon argues that the colonial master denies this recognition, arresting the colonized's development.
51
National Consciousness
The collective political awakening of a people. Fanon believes this is the only path to authentic liberation and cultural creation after colonial rule.
52
Psychopathology of Colonization
Fanon links colonial violence to psychological disorders in both colonizer and colonized. He draws on psychiatric case studies to show widespread trauma.
53
Atmospheric Violence
The constant presence of systemic and structural violence in colonial life. It affects daily life, bodies, and psyches of the colonized—always threatening, always present.
54
The New Man
A radical reimagining of humanity, liberated from colonial legacies. Fanon envisions this figure as the outcome of revolutionary decolonization.
55
Neocolonialism
Continuation of colonial domination through local elites and capitalism, even after formal independence. Fanon sees this as a major threat to genuine progress.
56
Europe (Fanon’s Critique)
Europe represents a failed model of progress based on violence, domination, and hypocrisy. Fanon urges newly independent nations to chart a new path.
57
Oedipus Complex (Critique)
Fanon critiques Freud’s universalism, arguing colonial conditions fundamentally reshape psychic development. Black people experience family and identity differently.
58
Collective Unconscious
Fanon believes Black people share a common psychological inheritance shaped by history and colonial trauma. Healing requires collective catharsis.
59
Catharsis
In Fanon’s thought, a political and psychological release from colonial trauma, achieved through struggle—especially violent struggle.
60
Value
Determined by the socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity. It expresses the abstract, quantitative side of labor.
61
Social Relations Between Things
In commodity exchange, relations among producers appear as if they are natural properties of the commodities themselves.
62
Private Labor as Social
Under capitalism, labor becomes social only when its products enter the market. The social character of labor is mediated through exchange.
63
Value Form
The specific way that labor manifests socially in capitalist society—as value. The value form disguises the actual labor process.
64
Money-Form
The final development of the value form. Commodities express their value in a universal equivalent—money—which conceals their labor origin.
65
Hieroglyphic of Value
Marx’s metaphor for how the meaning of value is encrypted in the commodity. Like a code that hides social labor beneath object form.
66
Dual Character of Labor
Labor under capitalism has a twofold nature: it is both concrete (use-value) and abstract (value-creating). This duality underpins commodity form.
67
Social Character of Labor
In capitalism, this appears as an objective quality of things rather than as cooperation among people. Value becomes a property of the object.
68
Exchange as Social Validation
Labor becomes part of social production only through exchange, which indirectly connects producers via commodities.
69
The Table Analogy
Marx’s example: a wooden table becomes animated as a commodity—it 'stands on its head.' Commodities appear to think and relate independently of their makers.
70
Religious Analogy
The fetishism of commodities is like religious mystification: human creations appear as autonomous powers. Commodity fetishism is a secular version of theology.
71
Bourgeois Forms of Thought
Economic categories like 'value,' 'money,' and 'capital' are historically specific forms of thought tied to capitalism but treated as natural.
72
Robinson Crusoe Example
A counterexample used by Marx to illustrate non-capitalist production: in isolation, labor and value are transparent and not mystified.
73
Mystical Veil of Production
Marx’s term for how capitalist production conceals real social relations, making them appear natural or eternal.
74
The Secret of Value
That the value of commodities is based on abstract labor time—an insight Marx calls the 'epochal' breakthrough of critique.

General Exam, Social Studies (6 decks)

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