Marx Flashcards
(130 cards)
1
Q
What does Marx see as “fundamental to human life” according to Joseph O’Malley?
A
Social-economic processes
2
Q
What, in Joseph O’Malley’s view, are the two fundamental, interacting elements of social-economic processes that Marx identified?
A
- ‘Forces of production’
- ‘Relations of production’
3
Q
What is another name for the Forces of Production?
A
Productive forces
4
Q
What are the forces of production (in Joseph O’Malley’s words)?
A
“the creative capacities of human beings, which they exercise in order to meet their needs, and which they further develop in the course of that exercise”
5
Q
How does Joseph O’Malley describe the Relations of Production?
A
“the social relationships in and through which human beings exercise and develop their…forces of production.”
6
Q
What does the development of productive forces in society evenutally lead to?
A
A conflict between the forces of production and relations of production - relations become a ‘fetter’ on the advanced forces.
7
Q
What is it that facilitates the development of the productive forces in society as a whole and of individuals?
A
The relations of production - but only at first.
8
Q
How does Joseph O’Malley summarise the conflict between relations and forces of production?
A
“The antagonism is between forces that grow and relations that do not change.”
9
Q
How is the antagonism between relations and forces of production resolved in Joseph O’Malley’s words?
A
“a social revolution out of which come new relations of production, a new social-economic form consonant with the enhanced productive forces prepared by the old, now-superseded social form.”
10
Q
How are those caught in revolutionary change likely to interpret it?
A
Purely political or other ‘ideological’ terms.
11
Q
What is actually happening in revolutions?
A
Human creative energies and capacities are bursting through, throwing off, ‘abolishing’ or ‘superseding’ the outdated social-economic relations.
12
Q
When does one social-economic form give way to another?
A
When it has generated the enhanced
productive forces of which it
is capable. Those forces are what burst through the old relations,
which had become their ‘fetters’, and lay foundations for the new.
13
Q
What represents the full development of capitalism?
A
The world market
14
Q
What was capitalism destined to do as part of its nature?
A
Become the dominant world system
15
Q
What does capitalism’s triumph simultaneously represent in Joseph O’Malley’s words?
A
“at once its fulfillment and the beginning of its supersession”
16
Q
How is capitalism’s fulfilment and immanent downfall manifested?
A
The ‘crises’ that plague the world-system of capital
17
Q
How does Joseph O’Malley describe the crisies of capitalism?
A
“They are the marks of the fatal antagonism within the system, and they are the harbingers of the revolution which will abolish it”
18
Q
Why does Joseph O’Malley not see the fall of the Soviet Union as the triumph of capitalism?
A
“the ‘triumph’ of capitalism - if what we are witnessing is indeed a triumph - is an event predicted by the materialist guideline formulated in his early writings”
19
Q
What utopian elements does O’Malley identify in Marx’s early writings?
A
- the ‘abolition’ (or disappearance) of the state
- the abolition of the division of labour, of labour itself
- abolition of private property
- the achievement by human beings, for the first time in history, of control over their own, and external, nature, and over the conditions of their lives.
20
Q
What must happen for true democracy to exist? (O’Malley)
A
“Democracy, therefore, requires that individuals recognise a ‘genuine’ common interest and make an ongoing effort to resolve the ‘conflict’ between that common interest and their particular interests.”
21
Q
How and the common and particular interests be reconciled?
A
They will become the same thing - a “synthesis of universal and particular” as Joseph O’Malley puts it.
22
Q
Why is modern society not truly democratic?
A
People are wholly focused on their particular interests. “the lack of ‘even the semblance of a universal content’ that makes modern civil society a ‘war of all against all’.”
23
Q
What would the post-bourgeois society be for Marx?
A
The first truly democratic and human society.
24
Q
Why does Marx not see a republic as truly democratic?
A
Because its democratic arrangements do not operate within, do not ‘permeate’, the social-economic order of life.
25
What does the republic state have that we might see as democratic but Marx does not?
Democratic political arrangements: elected legislature and executive, and a democratic form of government.
26
What type of democracy is a republic and is it a true democracy?
It is a political democracy which is not a true democracy because it does not affect social-economic relations.
27
In short, what is Marx's 'true democracy'?
'economic democracy' - determination of social-economic processes and relationships by democratic procedure instead of the free market. People will exercise control over conditions and relations of existence.
28
What two assumptions did marx make according to Jon Elster?
"He seems to have proceeded on two implicit assumptions: First, whatever is desirable is feasible; second, whatever is desirable and feasible is inevitable."
29
What is derived from the fundamental feature of human life as Joseph O'Malley puts it?
Political processes - the institutions, procedures and modes of thinking proper to law and government - are secondary and derivative.
30
What does marxism signify to people in the east?
"Among intellectuals in Eastern Europe, with few exceptions, "Marxism" is a dirty word. To them it signifies not the liberation but the oppression of man." (Elster)
31
How does Elster describe Marx's scientism?
"His scientism - the belief that there exist "laws of motion" for society that operate with "iron necessity" - rested on a naive extrapolation from the achievements of natural science. "
32
What happens in historical materialsim according to Elster?
"In historical materialism, "Humanity" appears as the collective subject whose flowering in communism is the final goal of history…In Hegel's and Marx's secular theology, mankind had to alienate itself from itself in order to regain itself in an enriched form."
33
What had capitalism done for humanity according to Marx but not for Man?
"He appreciated that class societies in general and capitalism in particular had led to enormous advances in civilization, as judged by the best achievements in art and science. Yet this process was the self-realization of Man rather than of individual men, who had, for the most part, lived in misery. Indeed, only by the exploitation of the many could class societies create the free time in which a few could contribute to the progress of civilization." (Elster)
34
How do people adapt for Elster?
"The oppressed often end up accepting their state, because the alternative is too hard to live with. Yet we know little about the limits within which this mechanism operates and beyond which revolt becomes a real possibility."
35
Are workers and capitalists free agents for Marx?
"Marx often emphasizes that workers and capitalists are not agents in the full sense of the term: free, active choosers. Rather, they are mere placeholders or, as he put it, "economic character masks," condemned to act out the logic of the capitalist system. Workers are forced to sell their labor power, and the idea that they have a free choice in the labor market is an ideological construction. As consumers, their choice between different consumption plans is restricted by low wages. Similarly, capitalists are forced by competition to act as they do, including the inhumane practices of exploitation. If they tried to behave differently, they would be wiped out." (elster)
36
How does Elster describe dialectics?
""Dialectics" is a term that has been used with a number of meanings. Common to almost all is the view that conflict, antagonism, or contradiction is a necessary condition for achieving certain results. Contradiction between ideas may be a condition for reaching truth; conflict among individuals, classes, or nations may be a necessary condition for social change."
37
What is the dialectical process according to Elster?
"Dialectical processes in the world have similar stages. The most important example of a dialectical process in Hegel and Marx is probably the following three-step sequence, briefly mentioned earlier. Society, they argued, begins as a primitive, undifferentiated community. Persons are essentially similar to one another, without distinctive character traits or different productive functions. The community dominates the individual, who is left with little scope for free choice or individual self-realization. The next stage, the negation of the first one, occurs with the emergence of alienation (Hegel) or of class societies (Marx). It is characterized by an extreme development of individuality and by an equally extreme disintegration of community. The third stage, the negation of the negation, restores community without, however, destroying individuality. It is in this respect the synthesis of the two previous stages."
38
What 3 flaws did marx find in capitalism?
"Marx found three main flaws in capitalism: inefficiency, exploitation, and alienation. These play two distinct roles in his theory." (Elster)
39
Why did Marx want communism?
"Marx valued communism above all because it would abolish alienation, in several senses of that term."
40
What is alienation according to Elster?
"Alienation can be described, very broadly, as the lack of a sense of meaning. "
41
Did capitalism allow self-realisation for people?
"Marx believed that the good life for the individual was one of active self-realization. Capitalism offers this opportunity to a few but denies it to the vast majority. Under communism each and every individual will live a rich and active life." (Elster)
42
What is self-realisation for marx?
"Self-realization, for Marx, can be defined as the full and free actualization and externalization of the powers and abilities of the individual. Consider first the fullness of self-realization. It was one of Marx's more utopian ideas that under communism there will be no more specialized occupations." (Elster)
43
What is self-realisation not compatible with?
"The ideal of self-realization is not compatible with society's coercing people to develop socially valuable talents at the expense of those they want to develop. " (Elster)
44
Does self realisation mean anyone be whatever they want to be?
"A more charitable reading suggests, however, the weaker notion of freedom as lack of coercion. People might have to choose second-best or third-best lines of self-realization if they cannot find the material resources for their preferred option, but it would still be their choice, not someone else's." (elster)
45
What does capitalism do for self-realisation?
"Marx placed almost exclusive emphasis on the lack of opportunities for self-realization in capitalism. He also emphasized, however, that capitalism creates the material basis for another society in which the full and free self-realization of each and every individual becomes possible. Communism arises when this basis has been created." (elster)
46
How is capitalism depersonalised?
"Industrial societies, however, are depersonalized in two ways that combine to render it implausible. The social nature of production makes it impossible for any individual to point to any product as his; also, production for a mass market breaks the personal bond between producer and consumer." (Elster)
47
How do people view each other under capitalism according to Elster?
"Even more importantly, in his eyes, markets operate by arm's-length transactions that subvert communitarian values and make people into mere means to one another's satisfaction. In The German Ideology Marx refers to this as "mutual exploitation.""
48
What is Elster's criticism of Marx's view of capitalism?
"Marx concluded too rapidly that all the ills he observed in capitalism were due to capitalism. In reality, some of them are due to the nature of industrial work, others to biological facts about human beings, still others to problems inherent in coordinating complex activities."
49
What is living and dead labour?
"He distinguished between living labor and dead labor - the first being the labor expended by workers during the production process, the second the labor embodied in the means of production. The produced means of production thus form a link between past, present, and future generations of workers." (Elster)
50
What are the two stages of capitalism domination of labour? (Elster)
"Marx distinguishes between two stages in capital's domination of labor. In the first stage there is a merely "formal subsumption" of labor under capital. The capitalist exploits the worker through his ownership of the means of production but does not extend his domination to the process of production…In the second stage, the "real subsumption" of labor under capital, the capitalist moves into the process of production itself. This development culminates in factory production, in which the worker is reduced to an appendage of the machinery"
51
What is the relationship between alienation and exploitation?
"Alienation adds to exploitation a belief on the part of the workers that the capitalist has a legitimate claim on the surplus, by virtue of his legitimate ownership of the means of production. The ownership, in turn, is seen as legitimate because derived from a legitimate appropriation of surplus at some earlier time. " (Elster)
52
What if fetishism?
"The capitalist economy secretes illusions about itself. There is the illusion that workers are free to escape exploitation, the illusion that capitalists are entitled to their ownership of the means of production, and the illusion that commodities, money, and capital have properties and powers of their own. The last Marx refers to as fetishism, with a reference to the religions that endow inanimate objects with supernatural powers." (Elster)
53
What was commodity fetishism?
"Commodity fetishism is the belief that goods possess value just as they have weight, as an inherent property. To the unmystified mind, it is clear that a commodity has exchange value only because it stands in certain relations to human labor and human needs. In the bewitched world of commodity fetishism, however, goods appear to exchange at a certain rate because of their inherent values. " (elster)
54
how did Marx seek to eplain price?
"Like most of the classical economists, Marx tried to explain price formation by a labor theory of value. The rates at which goods exchange against each other are explained by the amount of labor that has gone into their production." (Elster)
55
What is the labour theory of value?
"The labor theory of value says that the prices of goods are explained by their labor content." (Elster)
56
How does Elster describe the labour theory of value?
"If I spend six hours putting straws together to form a mat and you spend three hours to catch one fish from the stream with your hands, the expected rate of exchange - if there is an exchange - would be two fish against one mat. I would not be satisfied with anything less than two fish, because I could have caught that amount myself in the time I spent making the mat; similarly, you would not settle for less than the whole mat. "
57
Why was capitalism not a rational way of distributing goods as it is commonly claimed?
"On the other hand, he argued that capitalism fails to deliver the goods even in its own terms. In particular, it is prone to recurrent economic crises that undermine any claim to being a rational way of organizing production and distribution."
58
What is exploitation for Marx?
"Marx's notion of exploitation has a very specific content. A person is exploited, in Marx's sense, if he performs more labor than is necessary to produce the goods that he consumes." (Elster)
59
What makes someone an exploiter?
"Conversely, a person is an exploiter if he works fewer hours than are needed to sustain his consumption. For there to be exploiters, there must also be some who are exploited." (Elster)
60
When does exploitation start in the first place?
"According to Marx, it typically arises because workers are forced by economic circumstances to sell their labor power. They have no land they can cultivate: neither do they have the capital necessary to set themselves up in business. Nor do they usually have the documented entrepreneurial skills that could persuade a bank to lend them money. All alternatives to wage labor - starving, begging, stealing, or the workhouse - are so unattractive that no man in his senses would choose them. The choice of wage labor is forced, although uncoerced." (Elster)
61
What is the link between exploitation and justice?
"The conclusion is almost unavoidable that part of Marx's indictment of capitalism rests on its injustice. It is unfair that some should be able to earn an income without working, whereas others must toil to eke out a miserable existence. " (Elster)
62
Does Marx claim to making claims about justice in his views on capitalist exploitation?
"Yet Marx explicitly denies that he is advocating a particular conception of justice. He asserts that theories of morality and justice are ideological constructions, which only serve to justify and perpetuate the existing property relations. Actions are said to be just or unjust according to a moral code corresponding to a particular mode of production." (Elster)
63
Did Marx morally condemn capitalism?
"He believed that historical development was governed by laws of motion operating with iron necessity, so that moral condemnations were either pointless or superfluous. Communism cannot come about before conditions are objectively ready for it; and when they are, capitalism will fall away by itself. As long as exploitation is historically necessary, it will remain; as soon as its time is past, it will disappear. " (Elster)
64
Is exploitation justified?
"The development of the productive forces requires the relentless operation of the profit motive, at least up to the point when that very development has created the material conditions for a society in which further development can take place as part of the general self-realization of the individuals" (Elster)
65
Is exploitation fair?
"More specifically, he frequently refers to the capitalist extraction of surplus value as theft, embezzlement, robbery, and stealing. These are terms that immediately imply that an injustice is being committed. Moreover, the sense in which it is an injustice cannot be the relativistic one. Marx insists that, with respect to capitalist conceptions of justice, exploitation, unlike cheating and fraud, is fair." (Elster)
66
What is communism in the stages of history?
"Communism is both the goal of history and the point at which it comes to rest." (Elster)
67
How does each mode of production change?
"Within each mode of production, there initially obtains a correspondence between the relations of production and the productive forces. Later the correspondence turns into a contradiction, which causes "an epoch of social revolution" and the setting up of new relations of production, which, for a while, reestablish the correspondence." (Elster)
68
What causes a change is relations of production?
"What causes the contradiction is the development of the productive forces that took place during the period when the relation was one of correspondence. Any mode of production stimulates a development of the productive forces that will lead to its own obsolescence. Being obsolescent, it will then be thrown on the scrap heap of history and a new one, better suited to the historical task of developing the productive forces, will take its place. A change in the relations of production occurs when and because the existing relations cease to be optimal for the development of the productive forces." (Elster)
69
What was necessary to understanding social change?
"When there are several organized classes with opposed interests, what will the outcome be of their confrontation with one another? Marx argued that this is the central problem in understanding social change, because he claimed that in the final analysis all social conflict reduces to class struggle." (Elster)
70
What did Marx mean by class?
"Marx never said in so many words what he meant by a class. " (Elster)
71
What is class not?
"One possible criterion can be excluded at the outset: Marx tells us in so many words that classes are not differentiated by income. Although members of different classes will, typically, earn different incomes, they need not do so; and, even when they do, it is not by virtue of this fact that they belong to different classes. He also rejects the idea that classes can be distinguished by the occupations of their members, that is, by the specific nature of the work they perform. The work context, not the work itself, is constitutive of class. Finally, we can exclude the idea that classes are differentiated by status, be it by the informal status criterion of honor or by the formal criterion of belonging to a legal order. " (Elster)
72
What is frequently said about class definitions by Marx?
"Most frequently, class membership is defined by the ownership or lack of ownership of the means of production. For Marx's purpose, this definition cannot be the whole story, although it surely is an important part of it." (Elster)
73
What is Elster's view of Marx's idea of class?
"Market behavior is a more plausible criterion. The working class is made up of those who sell their labor power, the capitalist class by those who buy labor power; the petty bourgeoisie by those who do neither."
74
What is a condition of class consciousness?
"A first condition for concerted, collective action is that the members of the class have a correct understanding of their situation and their interest" (Elster)
75
What was Marx's criticism of the English working classes?
"Marx was somewhat more optimistic with respect to the capacity of English workers to form an adequate conception of their interests. Yet he was also frustrated by their lack of revolutionary class consciousness, which in part he imputed to their lack of understanding of their real interests…Because the capitalists did not themselves take political power but left its exercise to the class of aristocratic landowners, the workers were confused about the nature of their real enemy - Capital or Government? Struggling simultaneously against political oppression and economic exploitation, and not understanding that the former was only the extension of the latter, they had a very diffuse notion of where their interest lay." (Elster)
76
What makes a conclfict a class conflict?
"What makes a conflict into a class struggle is, first, that the parties involved are classes and, second, that the objects of the struggle are interests they have as classes, not as, say, citizens or ethnic groups." (Elster)
77
What is politics for Marx?
"There are two perspectives on politics in Marx's writings. On the one hand, politics is part of the superstructure and hence of the forces that oppose social change. The political system stabilizes the dominant economic relations. On the other hand, politics is a medium for revolution and hence for social change. New relations of production are ushered in by political struggles. " (Elster)
78
Does communist revolution create a new politics?
"The political movement that leads up to communism does not, after its victory, solidify into a new political system but rather proceeds to the dismantling of politics." (Elster)
79
How did Marx view the state?
"Marx had not one but two or three theories of the capitalist state. Prior to 1848 he held a purely instrumental theory, usually thought of as the Marxist theory of the state, according to which it is "nothing but" a tool for the common interests of the bourgeoisie. After 1848, when this view became increasingly implausible, he substituted for it an "abdication theory," to the effect that capitalists abstain from political power because they find their interests better served this way." (Elster)
80
What tasks does the capitalist state perform and give an example?
"Among the tasks of the capitalist state, Marx cites expropriation of private property when it is in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole; legal regulation of the length of the working day; and enforcement of competition…Marx argued that the state had to take the long view. In the long run, the viability and hence the legitimacy of capitalism depend upon the spur of competition. Similarly, he argued that the Ten Hours Bill of 1848 was introduced to protect capitalists against their short-term greed. By over-exploiting the workers, for the purpose of short-term profits, they were threatening the physical reproduction and survival of the class that formed the very condition for profit." (Elster)
81
When will the communist revolution occur?
"It follows from the central propositions of historical materialism that the communist revolution will occur when and because communist relations of production become optimal for the development of the productive forces." (Elster)
82
Will revolution occur because capitalism stagnates or expands?
"Marx argued that under capitalism the productive forces develop at an ever faster rate. Yet at some level of their development communist relations of production will allow for an even higher rate of their further progress. Hence, the communist revolution will be caused not by technical stagnation but by the prospect of an unprecedented technical expansion." (Elster)
83
What does experience suggest about communist revolution?
"Theory suggests and experience confirms that communist revolutions will take place only in backward countries that are nowhere near the stage of development at which they could overtake capitalism. Russia around the turn of the century was a breeding ground for revolution because its backwardness created the proper economic and ideological conditions." (Elster)
84
Was communist revolution violent?
"In The German Ideology Marx made a point that was later to be developed by the French socialist Sorel (much admired by Mussolini). A violent revolution is doubly necessary, "not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew." His later writings moved away from this view, emphasizing that a peaceful transition was desirable and arguably also possible. In 1852 Marx asserted that the inevitable result of universal suffrage in England would be the political supremacy of the working class, suggesting the possibility of a peaceful road to communism." (Elster)
85
What are the two stages following communist revolution (perhaps some form of political emancipation?
"Between the communist revolution and the full-blown communist society there lie two intermediate forms. The first is "the dictatorship of the proletariat," a phrase that has acquired an ominous meaning that probably was not present to Marx and his contemporaries...The dictatorship of the proletariat is a stage in the political transition to communism. In the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx states that it is succeeded by an economic transitional form, which Marx refers to as the lower stage of communism. Roughly speaking, it is a form of state socialism with distribution according to labor effort. Marx has very little to say about these two intermediate stages and their relation to one another." (Elster)
86
What will the final stage of communism look like?
"In the final stage of communism, all political institutions disappear. What takes their place is the self-government of the community - a task, according to Marx, no more difficult than the control of an individual over himself. With the disappearance of alienation and exploitation, social relations will be perfectly transparent and nonconflictual." (Elster)
87
What is ideology?
"What are the forces that shape and maintain ideological thinking? The standard and, as it were, official Marxist answer is interest; more specifically, the interest of the ruling class" (Elster)
88
how does capitalism give the illusion of independence?
"Because capitalism, unlike earlier modes of production, allows the worker the freedom to choose his own master, it may appear as if labor is more independent of capital than is actually the case. Although there is no capitalist for whom the worker has to work, he has to work for some capitalist or other. The freedom of choice obscures the structural dependency." (Elster)
89
What is the link between religion, alienation, and ideology?
"In religion man creates God, who appears to man as his creator. This conception of an inversion of subject and object, of creator and created, is at the origin of Marx's concept of alienation. Man becomes the slave of his own products in economic life by the subsumption of labor under capital; in politics, by the usurpation of power by representatives or delegates; and in religion, by the subjection of man to an imaginary divine being." (Elster)
90
Why do we have religion?
"All class societies have religion, because religion serves certain important interests linked to class subjection and class domination. Capitalism has Christianity because of cognitive affinities between the two systems. " (Elster)
91
How did Marx's views on the stae change?
"The theory for which he is best known, that the state is "nothing but" a tool for the collective class interests of the capitalists, is one that he himself abandoned early on, when it was disproved by the tum of events in the main European countries around 1850. Instead, he proposed an "abdication theory" of the state, according to which the state is allowed to have some autonomy but only because it suits the interests of the capitalists." (Elster)
92
What was Marx the fist to do?
"He was first to chart the staggering transformation produced in less than a century by the emergence of a world market and the unleashing of the unparalleled productive powers of modern industry…He emphasized its inherent tendency to invent new needs and the means to satisfy them, its subversion of all inherited cultural practices and beliefs, its disregard of all boundaries, whether sacred or secular, its destabilization of every hallowed hierarchy, whether of ruler and ruled, man and woman or parent and child, its turning of everything into an object for sale." (GSJones)
93
What impact has Marx's work had?
"For a century or more, it's now seemingly extraordinary theory of history as a class struggle leading inevitably towards the triumph of world communism constituted a credo embraced by tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of adherents in every part of the world. " (GSJones)
94
How was Marx's arguments presented?
"Enunciated not as a statement of principle or an expression of desire, but as a set of predictions" (GSJones)
95
Are communist to credit with societal changes?
"Communists take no personal responsibility for the imminent expropriation of the bourgeoisie and even the proletariat will only be playing the role which history has assigned to it. Communists are no longer those who espouse a particular set of ‘ideas or principles’, they ‘merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes’. " (GSJones)
96
Were communsits a particular group?
"‘the Communists’ did not form ‘a separate party’, they pointed out ‘the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality’ and clearly understood ‘the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement’." (GSJones)
97
What did Engels say at Marx's graveside?
"‘Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature’, Engels proclaimed at Marx’s graveside in 1883, ‘so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.’ " (GSJones)
98
Was communism political?
"Communism was political. It represented a revival of the revolutionary republican tradition, an extension of the cause of equality from the destruction of privilege into a generalized assault upon private property." (GSJones)
99
How did Sismondi define the proletariat?
"Proletarians, according to Sismondi (who had introduced the term in 1819), were ‘a miserable and suffering population’ that would always be ‘restless’ with ‘no affection’ for their country and ‘no attachment to the established order’." (GSJones)
100
Why did Weitling call for revolution?
"Weitling called for a revolution that would bring about the community of goods and the abolition of the state ‘since every state, even the most extensive democracy, requires subordination’ and subordination was incompatible with equality." (GSJones)
101
Where did the proletariat come from?
"The proletariat was the product of industrialization, disciplined by the factories which gave them employment and the cities in which they were congregated." (GSJones)
102
What was law, morality, and religion to the proletariat?
"The proletariat still lacked a country; ‘law, morality and religion’ were still to him ‘so many bourgeois prejudices’." (GSJones)
103
What would communism do to religion?
"But with the coming of communism, hell would no longer exist on earth, nor heaven beyond it; rather, everything that in Christianity had been represented prophetically and fantastically would come to pass in a truly human society founded upon the eternal laws of love and reason." (GSJones)
104
What was money and what had it doen to people?
"Money, ‘the alienated empty abstraction of property’, had become the master of the world. Man had ceased to be the slave of man and had become ‘the slave of things’. " (GSJones)
105
What was Engels confident in?
"Engels was confident of the ‘irresistible progress’ of the human species through history, ‘its ever certain victory over the unreason of the individual’. He wrote in 1844: 'Man has only to understand himself [, and] to organize the world in a truly human manner according to the demands of his own nature, and he will have solved the riddle of our time.'" (GSJones)
106
What was the first stage of humanity's recovery?
"But pauperization and dehumanization formed the essential prelude to their recovery of humanity through proletarian revolt, beginning with crude acts of individual violence and culminating in an organized labour movement, Chartism and social revolution." (GSJones)
107
What are relations of production and forces of production?
"the property system (‘relations of production’) and the development of human productive power (‘forces of production’)" (GSJones)
108
What is communism?
"the negation of private property" (GSJones)
109
What is religion and economics?
"Religion and economics had jointly expressed the alienation of Man’s true ‘species’ or ‘communal’ being. Religion had represented the alienation of Man’s thought, private property the alienation of his practical activity." (GSJones)
110
How must communism be achieved?
"Communist aims, according to the Manifesto, could ‘be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions’." (GSJones)
111
Where was freedom found for hegel?
"The true location of ‘free subjectivity’ had changed from the church to the state. The state, as Hegel taught, was ‘the actuality of the ethical idea’; reason and freedom constituted its essence and this meant that the state must stand with science and philosophy against all forms of ‘positivity’." (GSJones)
112
What was the state and law for Hegel?
"his ‘concept of the state as the realization of rational freedom’. The bedrock of this rational state was the law. The law comprised ‘the positive, clear, universal norms in which freedom has acquired an impersonal theoretical existence’. " (GSJones)
113
Why did hegel champion a free state?
"The free press was ‘the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a people’s soul’. It would recall the state to its inner principle as the embodiment of reason and freedom…Through the activity of the free press, reason and freedom would rapidly triumph over the ‘Christian state’." (GSJones)
114
What was human emancipation for Marx?
"Human emancipation was not a question of political forms, but of social relationships." (GSJones)
115
What was the relationship between private property and the state?
"Now he saw something more universal and systematic. The modern state as such was the creature of private property and this made hollow all Hegel’s claims about mediation. Private property was not simply a pillar of the constitution, but the constitution itself." (GSJones)
116
What did democracy mean for Marx?
"‘Democracy’ did not mean a modern representative republic based upon universal suffrage. That would only have been another version of the discredited ‘political state’, whereas ‘in true democracy the political state is annihilated’." (GSJones)
117
What would the relationship between communism and the state be after the revolution?
"It would be a society in which the distinction between state and civil society would have been abolished. With the removal of mediating institutions, the constitution would be brought back to ‘its actual basis, the actual human being, the actual people’. The distinction between political and unpolitical Man would be overcome. " (GSJones)
118
How did capitalism treat men in relation with each other?
"From the beginning, political economy treated the relation of Man to Man as a relationship between property owner and property owner. It proceeded as if private property were a natural attribute of Man or a simple consequence of ‘the propensity to truck, barter and exchange’ described by Adam Smith." (GSJones)
119
What was man's labour
"His labour belonged to another and was therefore unfree. It was the labour ‘of a man alien to labour and standing outside it’, or the relation to it of ‘a capitalist’." (GSJones)
120
Was the communism the goal of human development?
"But although it was ‘the necessary form and dynamic principle of the immediate future’, communism was not as such ‘the goal of human development’. Communism was the abolition of private property" (GSJones)
121
What must humanity be put through?
"‘The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outside world.’" (GSJones)
122
What would follow the abolition of private property for Marx?
"In his conception, the abolition of private property would be followed by ‘the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities’." (GSJones)
123
What were the two stages of communism and socialism?
"The two stages of communism or socialism, the first as the abolition of private property, the second as ‘the complete return of Man to himself’ " (GSJones)
124
What sort of communism did Marx reject?
"Marx consistently rejected all theories of communism based upon rights. Rights, justice and the state went together. Communism, on the other hand, would not be about ‘the government of men’, but about ‘the administration of things’. Communism or socialism concerned a society in which the ‘self-activity’ of individuals would be directed towards the satisfaction of need." (GSJones)
125
What would communism give back to Man?
Himself
126
Why did Marx and Engels praise the bougeoisie in the Manifesto?
"why did the Manifesto devote so much space to a panegyric extolling the achievements of the bourgeoisie? It was because the bourgeoisie was driving the world to the threshold of a new epoch of relative abundance in which rights, justice, labour, private property and the political state could be left behind, and the world could again become open to every form of human activity as it once had been in primeval time." (GSJones)
127
What had capitalism done to nations?
"Large-scale industry based upon the ‘automatic system’ had ‘created everywhere the same relations between the classes of society’ and therefore destroyed ‘the peculiar features between different nationalities’." (GSJones)
128
What would take the place of the state in communism?
"It would replace the state as ‘the illusory community’, which always ‘took on an independent existence’ in relation to the individuals who composed it, with ‘a real community’ in which ‘individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association’." (GSJones)
129
What would activity be like under communism?
"communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow" (GSJones)
130
What would be the condition under which all lived in communism?
"Once the ‘gigantic means of production and exchange’ conjured up by ‘modern bourgeois society’ had been brought under human control, there would arise ‘an association, in which the free development of each’ would be ‘the condition for the free development of all’." (GSJones)
