Marxism

Question 1

List key Marxist figures and their contributions: (6)

Answer 1

Marx: founded discipline. Communist manifesto that create the ideas of class struggle. Das Kapital: development of capitalism.

Gramsci: examines why Italy went facist instead of communist. Looks at culture in context.

Frankfurt school: examines why Germany went facist. Cultural focus.

Hill: English civil war. Economic reasons for war

E.P. Thompson: making of the English working class. Economic change and culture. People agents of change.

Hobsbawm: age of revolution

Question 2

Ideas of Marxism: (3)

Answer 2

Importance of class structures

Historical materialism: the struggle to fulfil peoples needs. Needs are never fully met as new ones develop driving human endeavour. History is driven by this.

Society is built around production. Divide into structure and superstructure: includes culture and politics. When these forces clash it create revolutionary change.

Question 3

What are historical periods that Marx outlines: (4)

Answer 3

Ancient: Greece and Roman. Built on a slave society

Feudal: aristocracy and the importance of land

Capitalist: bourgeois. Importance of money/capital

Socialist: proletariat. Workers own means of production. Develops into communism.

Question 4

What models does Marxism create? (3)

Answer 4

Linear and progressive ( deterministic) model. Class conflict invites change in a viscous circle.

Question 5

What are the main theories of Marxism? (4)

Answer 5

Historical materialism. Development to meet human needs.

Centrality of economic and class interests

History as series of class struggles developing in stages.

Class consciousness is shaped by material and working conditions. This is what causes revolution.

Question 6

How does Marxism look at the French Revolution? (3)

Answer 6

Pre Rev France was consisted by unproductive aristocrats.

Capitalist wanted freedom and launched a revolution against the aristocrats

France moves from a feudal society to a capitalist system.

Question 7

Applications of Marxism to historiography: (3)

Answer 7

Political Marxism is routed in history

Focuses on structures of society and long periods of time.

Marxist readings emphasis production and economy. Class, culture, politics all derive from this.

Question 8

Marxist themes: (2)

Answer 8

Based on economic structures in society and the effects of culture and politics

Produces work on class struggle.

Question 9

What the focus of British Marxists. Hill, Hobsbawm and Thompson?

Answer 9

Feudalism, civil war, industrialisation, impact of capitalism in science and revolutions.

Class relations and how this developed into revolutions and conflicts.

Question 10

What impact has Marxism had? (3)

Answer 10

History from below: looks at all aspects of society and not just the elite (similar to annales but not empiricism)

Focuses on structures and social change (social and cultural history)

Unlike annales, Marxism is deterministic.