Marx & Critical Tradition

Question 1

Marx: Years of Life

Answer 1

1818-1883

Question 2

Marx: Intro: Critical vs Positivist Tradition

Answer 2

Positivism: social physics
Critical: can’t study society objectively–either making cultural contingency natural or baptizing the status quo

Question 3

Marx: Intro: General Theory of History

Answer 3

Dialectical Materialism:

• internal contradictions of the economic system
• Hegel did thesis/antithesis for human progress
• for Marx, thesis/antithesis will end in communism

Question 4

Marx: Human Nature

Answer 4

Often misunderstood
Tied to Conception of Labor:
- “Humans begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they being to produce their means of subsistence.”
- labor makes us human–our species-being–satisfying (like an artist)
- production only happens in social relationships:
— they change as “material means of production” changes
— these “relations of production” form society in a particular stage of historical development

Question 5

Marx: Capitalism: Systems of Production (Stages)

Answer 5

• Primitive Communism (ancient hunter-gatherers)
• Ancient Rome & Slavery (conquered peoples and their labor)
• Feudal system (land is important–land for labor)
• Capitalist society (owners & workers)

Question 6

Marx: Capitalism: Commodities

Answer 6

Commodity–made to be exchanged on a market

• Use Value–what an object does (different values)
• Exchange Value–represented in a common metric–in order to make profit, need to exploiting someone
• Fetishism of Commodities (see production of profit)

Question 7

Marx: Capitalism: Production of Profit

Answer 7

Capitalists vs Proletariat
Capital
Commodification of Labor
- slavery is direct forced labor, wage-labor is indirect (as means of subsistence)
Surplus Value/Surplus Labor (gap between exchange-value & use-value)

Question 8

Marx: Alienated Labor

Answer 8

Commodification of Labor leads to Alienation
- Alienation from Products
- Alienation from Production Process
- Alienation from “species being”
- Alienation from other individuals
Even Capitalists Exist to Serve Capital:
- the more they save and acquire, the less they express their life through labor

Question 9

Marx: Cultural & Political Consequences

Answer 9

Base & Superstructure

• relationship between economic production & other social institutions
• ideology (ruling ideas that attempt to hide contradictions of capitalism–mental means of production)

Question 10

Marx: Capitalism after Marx

Answer 10

Why did the Revolution not Happen/Succeed?

• Expansion of education & affluent middle class (tied up with capitalist class, also knowledge classes)
• Move to a stock-owning society (now workers own capital)
• State Intervention
• Worker Unionization (& collective bargaining)
• Ideology (culture became complicit in capitalism–all wrapped up together)

Question 11

Marx: Legacy

Answer 11

Starting point for Engels
Starting point for many theories:
- Theory of Social Class
- theory of ideology
- theory of political conflict (property is upheld by state)
Varieties of Neo-Marxists (Hegelian, Analytical, Feminist)