Chapter 13: The Materialist: Karl Marx Flashcards
Critical of Kant, how does Hegel understand Kant’s categories?
a. They are identical to Plato’s Forms.
b. They exist only as mental constructs.
c. They exist independently of any specific individual’s mind.
d. They refer only to moral maxims, not to facts.
c. They exist independently of any specific individual’s mind.
Which philosopher was the grand systematizer who saw all of history as the unfolding of the Absolute Spirit, or the whole of Reality?
a. Hegel
b. Marx
c. Feuerbach
d. Saint-Simon
a. Hegel
What is the dialectic according to Hegel?
a. A three-step pattern that results in a synthesis, which repeats until realization of Absolute Spirit
b. A five-stage pattern that culminates in the kingdom of God
c. A three-step pattern that results in an antithesis that corrects past wrongs
d. A three-step pattern that begins and ends in a thesis of Absolute Reality
a. A three-step pattern that results in a synthesis, which repeats until realization of Absolute Spirit
How did Marx’s experience as a journalist contribute to his reworking of Hegel into more material terms, as Feuerbach encouraged?
a. Writing for and about everyday people made him think about the practical effects of philosophical theories.
b. Having to write for a public, not academic, audience made him simplify his theories.
c. Months of consistent investigative journalism showed him every corner of London, from the wealthy to the poor.
How did Marx’s experience as a journalist contribute to his reworking of Hegel into more material terms, as Feuerbach encouraged?
a. Writing for and about everyday people made him think about the practical effects of philosophical theories.
b. Having to write for a public, not academic, audience made him simplify his theories.
c. Months of consistent investigative journalism showed him every corner of London, from the wealthy to the poor.
d. Witnessing the landowner’s repression of wine-making workers made philosophical analysis real and clear.
d. Witnessing the landowner’s repression of wine-making workers made philosophical analysis real and clear.
What is the textbook’s preferred name for the theory sometimes called Marxism, communism, historical materialism, Marxian dialectics, or historical dialectics?
a. Wokeism
b. Capitalism
c. Dialectical materialism
d. Critical theory
c. Dialectical materialism
Which class consists of those who own the means of production yet produce nothing themselves (middle class), and which class consists of those whose labor produces goods and services yet who do not own the means of production (working class)?
a. Proletariat and bourgeoisie
b. Dialecticians and zeitgeist
c. Bourgeoisie and proletariat
d. Zeitgeist and dialecticians
c. Bourgeoisie and proletariat
What differing interests cause conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
a. Owners need the expertise of the workers who actively make the goods the owners sell, but they also need the workforce to be ignorant and uneducated or they won’t do the work for such low wages.
b. The bourgeoisie want to maintain political power and rights exclusively in the hands of the owners of production, whereas the proletariat seek full suffrage for everyone and threaten revolution to get it.
c. In addition to keeping workers alienated from their labor, the owners need costs, including wages, low and prices high. Workers need reasonable wages, especially when prices go up.
d. The proletariat masses seek religious freedom so they can live pious lives of conscience, but the bourgeoisie are creating a secular state that benefits only those who’ve given up religious falsehoods.
c. In addition to keeping workers alienated from their labor, the owners need costs, including wages, low and prices high. Workers need reasonable wages, especially when prices go up.
How is Marx, a materialist, different from most other philosophers?
a. Marx attributed the shape of human history to social and economic conditions much more so than by ideas as most philosophers did.
b. Marx never taught a class at a university, which was traditionally the profession of other philosophers.
c. Marx thought from the perspective of everyday people, though philosophers typically think from the perspective of those who rule rather than those who are ruled.
d. Marx lived much of his adult life in poverty, unlike other philosophers who came from wealth.
a. Marx attributed the shape of human history to social and economic conditions much more so than by ideas as most philosophers did.
What does Marx call the philosophical use of abstract metaphysics that makes no improvement in actual living conditions?
a. Idealism
b. Delusion
c. Red Herring
d. Mystification
d. Mystification
How does Marx’s materialism make him a social, not hard, determinist?
a. Marx thinks change is possible and that revolution is inevitable, so he can’t be a hard determinist.
b. Marx treats economic and social conditions, and the reciprocal relationship between people and their environment, as relevant beyond just physical nature.
c. Marx understands that only those in oppressive economic conditions, not everyone, lacks freedom.
d. Marx is a social scientist, not a natural scientist.
b. Marx treats economic and social conditions, and the reciprocal relationship between people and their environment, as relevant beyond just physical nature.
What, according to Marx, is economics?
a. The array of social relationships and arrangements that constitutes a particular social order
b. The system of free trade and industry internal to and across nations
c. The domain of the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of commodities and services
d. The study of scarcity and its implications for the use of resources and the production of goods and services
a. The array of social relationships and arrangements that constitutes a particular social order
The relationship between the economic structure of a society—the means, forces, and relationships of production—and the social relationships—the kinds of people, ideas, and institutions—it produces is also known as what?
a. Dialectic of mode and being
b. Dialectic of matter and form
c. Relationship of theory and practice
d. Substructure–superstructure relationship
d. Substructure–superstructure relationship
According to Marx, what role in production is played by factories, equipment, knowledge, and skill, as compared to the role played by natural resources, such as water, coal, and land?
a. Means and relationships
b. Substructures and superstructures
c. Forces and means
d. Forces and substructures
c. Forces and means
What is Marx’s moral judgment of the economic system of capitalism?
a. The whole of Marx’s work is a moral condemnation of capitalism, from the vantage point of every moral theory and culminating in his own original arguments that give the final negative judgment.
b. There was only objective description of the economic conditions of actual capitalism in practice, with some predictions for the future. Marx never made a moral judgment of capitalism as a whole.
c. Marx condemned capitalism in theory and practice, in any form that has ever or could ever exist; he advocated for the immediate rising up of the workers for a revolution, without which individuals cannot live moral lives.
d. Marx condemned the capitalist system enacted in Europe during his lifetime but reserved moral judgment of pure capitalism, which contains possibilities for a future good version of itself.
b. There was only objective description of the economic conditions of actual capitalism in practice, with some predictions for the future. Marx never made a moral judgment of capitalism as a whole.
What is it called when owners amass wealth at the expense of workers by keeping prices higher than the costs of production while wages are low?
a. Superstructure
b. Surplus value
c. Bourgeoisie property
d. Relationships of production
b. Surplus value
How does the government operate under capitalism, which helps maintain it and thus the power of the bourgeoisie?
a. As oligarchic aristocracy: laws of taxation and inheritance protect the few wealthy families in power
b. As a constitutional republic written to protect business interests that drive innovation and growth
c. As democracy that is of, by, and for the people
d. As a committee managing common affairs on behalf of bourgeoisie interests
d. As a committee managing common affairs on behalf of bourgeoisie interests
How does co-optation—appearing to be a willing participant in one’s own exploitation—occur, according to Marx?
a. When you are trapped inside a closed system with no way to experience or imagine anything else, you simply conclude that this must be the best of all possible worlds.
b. Choosing a “sour grapes” response, where political participation is deemed worthless because political outcomes never help the masses, creates a cycle of repetition that maintains the status quo.
c. Human free will means people make their own choices and must accept responsibility for the consequences.
d. Schools and media participate in generations of capitalistic conditioning, instilling hope that any proletariat can become bourgeoisie.
d. Schools and media participate in generations of capitalistic conditioning, instilling hope that any proletariat can become bourgeoisie.
What is Marx’s analysis of social identities other than class (gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, etc.) under capitalism?
a. Any of these identities can be, and have been, used to further exploit some people at the expense of others, so each social identity category warrants independent analysis.
b. Marx’s work offers an underdeveloped precursor to intersectional analysis that highlights not just each identity separately but the unique experiences of oppression at the intersections of particular identities, such as Black woman or senior Jewish man.
c. Marx did not have an analysis of other kinds of differences. He focused only on the position of working-class European white men.
d. Focus on differences in these identities keeps the proletariat divided and distracted from shared exploitation.
d. Focus on differences in these identities keeps the proletariat divided and distracted from shared exploitation.
What is the place of revolution in Marx’s critique of capitalism?
a. He foresaw the coming revolution and wrote to show people there is another, less violent, way forward.
b. He advocated for the collective rising up of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
c. He predicted it as a logical stage in the dialectical movement of history.
d. He was glad to endorse the revolution but made sure to stay safely away from the streets, tucked up in the ivory tower of the university.
c. He predicted it as a logical stage in the dialectical movement of history.
What did Marx think is the most destructive feature of capitalism?
a. Alienation: separation from the products of one’s labor
b. Surplus value: few owners amassing wealth at the expense of many workers
c. Co-optation: appearing as a willing participant in one’s own exploitation
d. Private property: the fundamental feature that puts people in competition
a. Alienation: separation from the products of one’s labor
What causes humans happiness, and how are the proletariat prevented from it?
a. Being free, unconstrained by law or social norm, brings us happiness. Overly regulated substructures destroy chances for happiness.
b. Being engaged in meaningful work brings us happiness. Being alienated from our work prevents our happiness.
c. Working for wages makes people unhappy because they cannot afford housing and food, so secure salaried management positions bring happiness.
d. We are happy when we are free from the burdens of work, free to create and to indulge in sensual pleasures. Needing to work for wages makes that impossible.
b. Being engaged in meaningful work brings us happiness. Being alienated from our work prevents our happiness.
How does capitalism alienate people, especially the proletariat, from nature?
a. Seeking ever more refined and advanced innovation and technology, capitalism uses up natural resources, polluting rivers and skies, and making it unsafe to commune with nature.
b. We come to see money, not nature, as that which provides for us; we grow distant from nature as the means of production that earns wages and nature that sustains our lives through nourishment.
c. We labor in factories, surrounded by machines far away from grass and trees and blue skies.
d. Trade in money, rather than in goods and services, makes money an item worthy of almost religious-level worship that separates us from the primal pagan religions preferred by Marx.
b. We come to see money, not nature, as that which provides for us; we grow distant from nature as the means of production that earns wages and nature that sustains our lives through nourishment.
What does Marx call non-alienated life—life with work that is fulfilling and done for the creative, self-actualizing joy of it?
a. Communism
b. Superstructure
c. Species-life
d. Bourgeoisie
c. Species-life
What legacy of Marx’s dialectical materialism carries on still today as critical theory?
a. That if we only look hard enough we will find, or can create, a group of people suffering under structures of oppression in social and political life
b. That the only legitimate way to do philosophy is to actively contribute to the transformation of the world through violent revolution
c. That culture and society can be interpreted and critiqued from a historical and materialistic perspective
d. That the bourgeoisie class is entirely made up of rich white men who need to recognize their privileges, feel guilt over their place in society, and give up power to everyone else
c. That culture and society can be interpreted and critiqued from a historical and materialistic perspective
