Marx Flashcards
(51 cards)
How does Marx view production in relation to society?
Marx saw society’s way of producing as central to the way society is constructed.
Marx does not focus on individual labour but sees the labour force as a social reality.
Human labour is related to the social interaction between others.
What elements is the mode of production made up of?
Forces of production
Social and technical relations of production
What is meant by the forces of production?
These include human labour power and means of production (e.g. tools, productive machinery, commercial and industrial buildings, technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and exploitable land).
What is meant by the social and technical relations of production?
Includes the property, power and control relations governing society’s productive assets.
Includes the relations between people and the objects of their work and the relations between social classes.
Relates to the social distribution of control over means of production.
What is the relationship between the forces and relations of production?
Marx believed within capitalist society there is a tension/contradiction between the forces and relations of production.
What is feudalism?
The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which peasants or workers were tenants of the nobles land, and were obliged to live on their lord’s land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, in exchange for military protection.
How did the feudal system change into capitalism?
The discovery and colonization of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries required new methods of production and exchange.
The increased debt incurred by the aristocracy, eventually led to the English Revolution (1640) and the French Revolution (1789), both of which opened the way for the establishment of a society structured around commodities and profit.
Because of the demand for more efficient, larger scale production, the medieval feudal system gave way to new methods of manufacturing, with the widespread use of division of labor and the advent of industrialization, by steam and machinery.
How did class systems change according to Marx?
While human societies have traditionally been organised according to complex, multi-membered class hierarchies, the demise of feudalism effected by the French Revolution has brought about a simplification of class antagonism. Rather than many classes fighting amongst themselves, society is increasingly splitting into only two classes: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
How did the bourgeoisie gain power?
While the bourgeoisie had originally served the nobility or the monarchy, they had come in the middle of the 19th century to control the representative states of Europe.
With this political empowerment the bourgeoisie introduced an ethic based on the absolute right to free trade and the rational, egoistic pursuit of profit.
These economic and social forces unsettled the boundaries of nations and created pressure toward globalisation, producing economic imperialism which demands other nations assimilate to bourgeois practice.
Finish the Marx quote:
The ____ “create the ____ after their ____ _____”
Marx (1848)
The bourgeoisie “create the world after their own image.”
Who are the bourgeoisie?
In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production and societal wealth during modern industrialization. Their societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society
How do the bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat’s labour?
Within capitalist society, the bourgeoisie exploit the labour of the working classes for their own benefit and they can control society’s surplus product. This is the difference between what the labourers actually produce and what is needed simply to keep them alive and working. This produces class polarisation which means society divides into a minority capitalist class of the bourgeoisie and a majority working class
How do the bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat’s ideology?
For Marx, the bourgeoisie also own and control the production of ideas and so the dominant ideas in society are the ideas of the economically dominant class. The capitalist institutions that produce and spread ideas, such as religion, education and the media, all serve the dominant class by producing ideologies and this set of ideas and beliefs justify and legitimise the existing social order as desirable or inevitable.
What is a Marx quote about the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
They “face each other as two warring camps.” (1848)
How should we understand society according to Marx?
Marx believed that it was possible to understand society scientifically and this knowledge would lead us to a better society, he described his theory as ‘scientific socialism.’
How does a commercial crisis come about according to Marx?
Overproduction is when capitalists produce too much compared to the demand for things or services.
Suddenly capitalists build up stocks of things they cannot sell, they have factories with too much capacity compared to demand and they have too many workers than they need.
So, they close down plants, slash the workforce and even just liquidate the whole business.
That is a capitalist crisis.
What is class consciousness?
It is the awareness of one's place in a system of social class and the awareness of class conflict with an antagonistic relationship between other classes. It is the set of beliefs and values that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society.
What happens to the proletariat class without class consciousness?
Class without class consciousness is class in itself. They share their position towards the means of production. They are unaware of their being a class and class conflict, so they are unlikely to organise politically in their own class interest.
What happens to the proletariat class with class consciousness?
Class with class consciousness is class for itself. They are aware of their being class and class conflict within society and so they are likely to organise a political revolution in their own class interest.
What is historical materialism?
It is a methodology used by Marx that focuses on human societies and their development through history.
Marx argued that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideas.
Marx believed that history was defined by the society’s mode of production, the mode of production changed when the productive forces came into conflict with social relations.
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is the social class that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power for a wage or salary. They are capable of revolutionary action to topple capitalism in order to create a classless society.
What are the four stages of economic development?
Marx (1845): Tribal society Primitive communism Feudal system Capitalism
How does Marx describe tribal society?
Tribal society has no social classes but is structured around kinship relations, with hunting the province of men and domestic work the province of women.
The tribal form is elementary at this stage, a further extension of the natural division of labour exists within the family.
During this stage, it is possible to see a slave culture established, as population increases, leading to the growth of wants and the growth of relations with outside civilisations (through war or barter).
With slave culture, we see the beginning of class society.
How does Marx describe primitive communism?
Primitive communism is the ancient communal and State ownership which proceeds from the union of several tribes into a city by agreement or by conquest.
During this stage, the concept of private property begins to develop.
With the development of private property, it leads to a concentration and demand for private property and begins the transformation of the small peasantry into a proletariat.
