Marxist

Question 0

Alienation

Answer 0

State which comes about when worker is deskilled and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks in a sequence whose nature and purpose he or she has no overall grasp

Question 1

Materialist philosophy

Answer 1

Tries to explain things without assuming the existence of a world, or of forces, beyond the natural world around us, and the society we live in

Question 2

Reification

Answer 2

Way, when capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount, workers are bereft of their full humanity and are thought of as hands or the labour force, so that, the effects of industrial closures are calculated in purely economic terms; people become things

Question 3

Dialectic

Answer 3

Opposing forces or ideas bring about new situations or ideas

Question 4

Base

Answer 4

Material means of production, distribution, and exchange

Question 5

Superstructure

Answer 5

Cultural world of ideas, art, religion, law, and so on; determined by nature of the economic base

Question 6

Economic determinism

Answer 6

Cultural ideas are determined or shaped by the nature of the economic base

Question 7

Art/literature theory

Answer 7

Good art always has a degree of freedom from prevailing economic circumstances, even if these economic facts are its ultimate determinant

Question 8

Marxist literary criticism

Answer 8

Maintains that a writer’s social class, and its prevailing ideology have a major bearing on what is written by a member of that class

Question 9

Engelsian

Answer 9

Stresses the necessary freedom of art from direct political determinism

Question 10

Leninist

Answer 10

Insists on the need for art to be explicitly committed to the political causes of the Left

Question 11

Overdeterminism

Answer 11

An effect which arises from a variety of causes, that is, from several causes acting together, rather than from a single (economic) factor

Question 12

Relative autonomy

Answer 12

In spite of the connections between culture and economics, art has a degree of independence from economic forces

Question 13

Ideology

Answer 13

Althusser - system of representations endowed with an existence and a historical role at the heart of a given society

Question 14

Decentering

Answer 14

Structures which have no essence, focus, or centre

Question 15

Repressive structures

Answer 15

Institutions which operate by external force

Question 16

Idealogical structures or state ideological apparatuses

Answer 16

Groupings which foster an ideology which is sympathetic to the aims of the state and the political status quo

Question 17

Hegemony

Answer 17

The whole lived social process as practically organized by specific and dominant meanings, values, and beliefs of a kind which can be abstracted as a world view or class outlook

Question 18

Interpellation

Answer 18

Trick where we are made to feel that we are choosing when we really have no choice

Question 19

Real forces that create human experience

Answer 19

Economic systems that structure human societies; for Marxism, getting and keeping economic power is the motive behind all social and political activities

Question 20

Material circumstances

Answer 20

Economic conditions

Question 21

Historical situation

Answer 21

Social/political/ideological atmosphere generated by material conditions

Question 22

Marxist analysis focuses

Answer 22

On relationships among socioeconomic classes, both within a society and among societies, and it explains all human activities in terms of the distribution and dynamics of economic power

Question 23

Marxist praxis (methodology)

Answer 23

Dictates that theoretical ideas can be judged to have value only in terms of their concrete applications

Question 24

Bourgeoisie

Answer 24

Those who control the world’s natural, economic, and human resources

Question 25

Proletariat

Answer 25

Majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions and who have always performed the manual labor

Question 26

Marx belief that few Marxists now believe

Answer 26

Proletariat will one day spontaneously develop the class consciousness needed to rise up in violent revolution against their oppressors and create a classless society

Question 27

Major socioeconomic divisions in America

Answer 27

Homeless, poor, financially established, well-to-do, extremely wealthy (underclass, lower class, middle class, upper class, and aristocracy)

Question 28

Marxist theory definition

Answer 28

Works to make us constantly aware of all the ways in which we are products of material/historical circumstances and of the repressive ideologies that serve to blind us to this fact in order to keep us subservient to the ruling power system

Question 29

America - 2 important socioeconomic realities

Answer 29

1. Wealthy in position of power who decide who pays the most taxes and how the money will be spent
2. Poor receive but a small portion of the funds earmarked for them because much of it goes, through kickbacks and creative bookkeeping, into the pockets of the wealthy

Question 30

American dream

Answer 30

Blinds middle class by telling them that financial success is simply the product of initiative and hard work

Question 31

Competition

Answer 31

To have better than what others have and belief of getting ahead

Question 32

False consciousness/false ideal

Answer 32

When an ideal functions to mask its own failure and real purpose is to promote the interests of those in power

Question 33

Classism

Answer 33

Ideology that equates one’s value as a human being with the social class to which one belongs, inborn quality

Question 34

Patriotism

Answer 34

Ideology that keeps poor people fighting wars against poor people from other countries; rich can get out of combat; poor see themselves as members of a nation so don’t band together globally

Question 35

Religion

Answer 35

According to Marxism, ideology that keeps the faithful poor satisfied with their lot in life, or at least tolerant of it; what human beings do in God’s name - organized religion is focus

Question 36

Rugged individualism

Answer 36

Ideology that romanticizes the individual who strikes out alone in pursuit of a goal not easily achieved, a goal that often involves risk and one that most people would not readily undertake

Question 37

Consumerism

Answer 37

Ideology that says I’m only as good as what I buy

Question 38

Use value

Answer 38

Commodity value based on what it can do

Question 39

Exchange value

Answer 39

Commodity value based on money or other commodities for which it can be traded

Question 40

Sign-exchange value

Answer 40

Commodity value based on social status it confers on the owner

Question 41

Commodification

Answer 41

Act of relating to objects or persons in terms of their exchange value or sign-exchange value

Question 42

Imperialism

Answer 42

The military, economic, and/or cultural domination of one nation by another for the financial benefit of the dominating nation with little or no concern for the welfare of the dominated

Question 43

Colonize the consciousness

Answer 43

To convince subordinate people to see their situation the way the imperialist nation wants them to see it, to convince them, for example, that they are mentally, spiritually, and culturally inferior to their conquerors and that their lot will be improved under the guidance and protection of their new leaders