19/20 - Socialism Flashcards
1
Q
Core socialist themes
A
- Community
- Cooperation
- Significance of socioeconomic class
- Common ownership
- Social equality as a demand of justice
2
Q
Thomas Moore - early socialism
A
- Against poverty and inequality
- Abolish money and private property
- No more pride, greed, envy
- Conflict and inequality are unnatural
3
Q
Saint-Simon - early socialism
A
- Class-based historical stages
- Belief-based economic systems
- Replace capitalist inefficiency with expert planning and organizational hierarchy
4
Q
Fourier - early socialism
A
- Evils of commercial society
- Utopian socialist ideal
- Stateless
- Free cooperation
- The common good
5
Q
Robert Owen - early socialism
A
- Human nature is malleable
- Capitalism rewards greed and selfishness
- Combat this by producing cooperatively fo the public
6
Q
Hegel on religion
A
- History as the development of Spirit
- God comes to self-awareness in history
7
Q
Feurerbach on religion
A
- We create God in our own image
- We alienate our human capacities for knowledge, power, and goodness
8
Q
Marx on religion
A
- Religion is created in response to poverty and suffering
- “Religion is the opium of the people”
- Produces euphoria, buzz
- Painkiller
- Can render you incapable of flourishing
9
Q
Marx on alienation
A
- Human essence detached from human existence
- Creative producers whose work is punishing, degraded, commoditized
- Workers’ lives are subject to alien forces
10
Q
Alienated from
A
- From the product
- From the productive activity
- From our species-being
- From other human beings
11
Q
Marx’s theory of history
A
- History is a class struggle
- Growth of human productive power
- Our production methods develop with economic structures
- Economic structures have characteristic ‘relations of production’
12
Q
Society is like a 3 level building
A
1) Forces of production
2) Relations of production
3) Superstructure - economic structure determines legal and political superstructure
Level of development of productive forces explains the nature of economic structure
Economic structure determines legal and political superstructure
13
Q
Themes in Marx
A
- Religion
- Exploitation
- Alienation
- Class struggle
- History
- State and revolution
- Human nature
14
Q
Marx on Exploitation
A
- Exploitation = extraction of surplus labour
- Distinction between labour and labour-power
- Capitalist profit = surplus value created by the workers
- Capitalist role: never pay the workers enough
- Marx wants a world with surplus value for the common good
15
Q
Marx on class struggle
A
- History = class struggle
- Capitalism = Bourgeoisie (capitalists) vs. proletarians (workers)
- Concrete conflicts of interest (relation to the means of production)
- Future communist society = classless
- State: created/exists to deal with conflicts of interest generated by coercive surplus extraction
- Under communism, the state will wither way
