Week 1
This philosophical stance argues that material conditions shape ideas, and is foundational in Marx and Engels' thought.
What is materialism?
One's relation to the means of production.
What is class?
A product made to be sold in the market, holding both use-value and exchange-value.
What is a commodity?
In The Civil War in France, Marx discusses this model of governance, which decentralized power and empowered workers.
What is the Paris Commune?
"With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization."
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
- Engels
Engels contrasts scientific socialism with this idealistic, impractical approach, popular among early socialists.
What is utopian socialism?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels identify these two primary classes as being in conflict in capitalist society.
What are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
The practical utility of a commodity, which satisfies a need or want.
What is use-value?
The state structure that Marx calls for where the proletariat temporarily controls political power to dismantle capitalism.
What is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat?
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
“Our epoch…possesses this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat.”
The Communist Manifesto
- Marx and Engels
Engels used this method, which emphasizes change and interconnectedness, to analyze social systems and processes.
What is dialectics?
This type of property is used for production and generating profit, owned by the bourgeoisie.
What is private property?
This type of value represents the additional value produced by workers beyond their wages, generating profit for capitalists. Marx identifies two types of it, one produced by extending work hours and one by increasing productivity.
What is surplus-value?
What is absolute and relative surplus-value?
Engels argues that this form of political action can complement revolutionary tactics, but shouldn’t replace the goal of societal change.
What is electoral transformation?
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas ... The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class”
The German Ideology
- Marx and Engels
Engels criticizes this philosophical stance for seeing concepts in isolation, without considering their historical and social development.
What is metaphysics?
This term, defined in the Manifesto, refers to property used by the bourgeoisie to generate profit.
What is capital?
1. Term used to refer to the utility or practical purpose of a commodity.
2. Term used to refer to how much profit you can earn for a commodity (the market value).
1. What is use-value?
2. What is exchange-value?
“A cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production.”
What is the alternative vision presented in the Gotha Program?
“All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of one definite class rule by another; but all ruling classes up to now have been only small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the people.”
The Tactics of Social Democracy
- Engels
In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels argues that this is the key factor driving historical development, not ideas or beliefs.
What are material conditions?
In Marx’s theory, this term refers to the system where the working class sells its labor to owners of production.
What is wage labor?
1: The work itself.
2: The capacity to work, sold in the labor market in exchange for wages.
3: The amount of time spent on labor.
1. What is labor?
2. What is labor-power?
3. What is labor-time?
In the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx criticizes this demand as idealistic because it overlooks the importance of transforming production.
What is the demand for equal distribution?
“Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values…as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.”
“A cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production.”
Critique of the Gotha Program
- Marx