Marxism Flashcards
What did Marx think of human’s relationship to the environment?
Humans were very poorly adapted to the natural world, if a human went out into the woods they would starve, so we had to change it. we freed ourselves from natural constraints but made new social constraints
thousands of years ago vs feudal age
thousands of years ago everyone hunted for food and every one was equal. but In the feudal age we have lords who kept all the surplus and peasants who worked all day but still didn’t have much food.
What is historical materialism
a theory that’s concerned with change over time and with these questions of material reality that is how production is organized and who has things like food or money and who doesn’t
What is superstructure
Super structure are the things Marx thought lied on top of material reality, true underlying cause of all systems like politics religion, and even families was production and control of resources.
How did marx’s understand production
as stages of history, like primitive communism, feudalism and capitalism
what are forces of production
forces of production are the technical scientific and material, like tools and human labor, but things like the idea of the assembly line
relations of production
How people organized themselves around labor asked questions about ,do people work for wages or does everyone produce and sell their own goods? how does ownership or property work? is trade a central part of the economy. specify how the surplus is taken from the people who produce it and who gets to decide how the surplus is used.
what is a proletariat
a worker who doesn’t own or control the means of production ,(the physical stuff like machines), so they have to sell their labor, and are being paid less than the worth of the goods that they produce
aligned with forces of production, and want complete change of forces of productions
what is a bourgeoisie
someone who does own the means of production and the products that come from this, Marx believed they would always maximize profits by driving up prices and drive down wages, this leads to wage exploitations
aligned with the relations of production
what is the crisis of capitalism
we had surplus of things but nobody had money to buy anything.
Why did Marx think advancement stalled
forces of production run up against the limits created by the relations of production. If the economy grows to much capitalist start competing with each other over limited recourses. driving down wages, but if this is happening to the entire proletariat then nobody can buy anything.
How did Marx see history.
As a matter of struggling classes, who aligned with either the forces or relations of production the bourgeoisie are aligned with the relations or forces of production, the proletariat are aligned with the forces, thee bourgeoisie aligned with the relations.
How do the bourgeoisie stay in power
Hegemonic culture, a dominant set of ideas that are all pervasive and taken for granted in this society, ideas shape everyone’s understanding of the social world blinding us to the realities of things like economic exploitation, but hegemonic ideas don’t need to be economic ones. they could just as easily be beliefs about gender or race.
