Marx

Question 1

What is dialect materialism?

Answer 1

The historical process where a existing material condition (the thesis e.g capitalist class inequality) produce an opposition (the anti-thesis e.g class revolution) which in turn leads to a new economic system (communism- the synthesis)

Question 2

Marx view on labor

Answer 2

Positive. He saw the individual’s productive skills and capacities as an integral part of what it means to be human.

Question 3

Alienated labor

Answer 3

The objective result of the economic and social
organization of capitalist production (e.g., division of labor):

(a) alienation from products produced: Wage-workers are alienated from the product of their labor; a worker’s labor power is owned by the capitalist, and consequently the products of the worker’s labor belong not to the worker but to the capitalist who profits from them.
(b) alienation within the production process: Wage- workers are actively alienated by the production process; labor is not for the worker an end in itself, freely chosen, but coerced by and performed for the capitalist; the worker is an object in the production process.

(c) alienation of workers from their species being: By being reduced to their use-value (capitalist profit), workers are estranged from the creativity and higher consciousness that
distinguish humans from animals.

(d) alienation of individuals from one another: The com- petitive production process and workplace demands alienate individuals from others.

Question 4

bourgeoisie

Answer 4

the capitalist class; owners of capital and of the means of production, who stand in a position of domination over the proletariat (the wage-workers).

Question 5

class consciousness

Answer 5

the group consciousness necessary if wage-workers (the proletariat) are to recognize that their individual exploitation is part and parcel of capitalism, which requires the exploitation of the labor power of all wage-work- ers (as a class) by the capitalist class in the production of profit.

Question 6

class relations

Answer 6

unequal relations of capitalists and wage- workers to capital (and each other). capitalists (who own the means of production used to produce capital/profit) are in a position of domination over wage-workers, who, in order to live, must sell their labor power to the capitalists.

Question 7

commodification of labor power

Answer 7

the process by which, like manufactured commodities, wage-workers’ labor power is exchanged and traded on the market for a price (wages).

Question 8

division of labor

Answer 8

the separation of occupational sectors and workers into specialized spheres of activity; produces for Marx, alienated labor.

Question 9

economic base

Answer 9

the economic structure or the mode of production of material life in capitalist society. Economic relations (relations of production) are determined by ownership of the means of production and rest on inequality between private- property-owning capitalists (bourgeoisie) and property-less wage-workers. Economic relations determine social relations and social institutional practices (i.e., the superstructure).

Question 10

exchange-value

Answer 10

the price (wages) wage-workers get on the market for the (coerced) sale of their labor power to the capitalist; determined by how much the capitalist needs to pay the wage-workers in order to maintain their labor power, so that the workers can subsist and maintain their use-value in producing profit for the capitalist. The workers’ exchange-value is of less value to the worker than their use- value is to the capitalist.

Question 11

exploitation

Answer 11

the capitalist class caring about wage-workers only to the extent that wage-workers have “use-value,” i.e., can be used to produce surplus value/profit

Question 12

false consciousness

Answer 12

the embrace of the illusionary prom- ises of capitalism.

Question 13

fetishism of commodities

Answer 13

the mystification of capitalist production whereby we inject commodities with special properties beyond what they really are (e.g., elevating an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt to something other than what is really is, i.e., cotton converted into a commodity), while remaining ignorant of the exploited labor and unequal class relations that determine production and consumption processes.

Question 14

historical materialism

Answer 14

history as the progressive expansion in the economic-material-productive forces in society.

Question 15

ideology

Answer 15

ideas in everyday circulation; determined by the ruling economic class such that they make our current social existence seem normal and desirable.

Question 16

inequality

Answer 16

structured into the profit objectives and organization of capitalism whereby the exploited labor power of wage- workers produces surplus value (profit) for the capitalist class.

Question 17

means of production

Answer 17

resources (e.g., land, oil wells, factories, corporations, financial capital) owned by the bourgeoisie and used for the production of commodities/profit as a result of the labor power of wage-workers.

Question 18

mode of production

Answer 18

how a society organizes its material- social existence (e.g., capitalism rather than feudalism or socialism).

Question 19

objectification

Answer 19

the dehumanization of wage-workers as machine-like objects, whose maintenance (with subsistence wages) is necessary to the production of commodities (objects) necessary to capital accumulation/profit. The term is interchangeable with “alienation.”

Question 20

private property

Answer 20

the source and result of the profit accumulated by capitalists; and a source and consequence of the inequality between capitalists and wage-workers.

Question 21

ruling class

Answer 21

the class which is the ruling material force in society (capitalists/bourgeoisie) is also the ruling intellectual/ ideological force, ensuring the protection and expansion of capitalist economic interests.

Question 22

ruling ideas

Answer 22

ideas disseminated by the ruling (capitalist) class, invariably bolstering capitalism.

Question 23

species being

Answer 23

what is distinctive of the human species (e.g., mindful creativity).

Question 24

standpoint of the proletariat

Answer 24

the positioning of the proletariat vis-à-vis the production process, from within which they perceive the dehumanization and self-alienation structured into capitalism, unlike the bourgeoisie, who experience capitalism (erroneously) as self-affirming.

Question 25

subsistence

Answer 25

wage minimum needed to sustain workers’ existence (livelihood) so that their labor power is main- tained and reproduced for the capitalist class.

Question 26

superstructure

Answer 26

non-economic social institutions (legal, political, educational, cultural, religious, family) whose routine institutional practices and activities promote the beliefs, ideas, and practices that are necessary to maintaining and reproducing capitalism.

Question 27

surplus value

Answer 27

capitalist profit from the difference between a worker’s exchange-value (wages) and use-value; the extra value over and above the costs of commodity production (i.e., raw materials, infrastructure, workers’ wages) created by the labor power of wage-workers.

Question 28

use-value

Answer 28

the usefulness of wage-workers’ labor power in the production of profit.