Marxist Theory

Question 1

What are communist societies?

Answer 1

Oligarchies in which a small group of leaders controls the money and the guns, and forces its policies on a population kept in line through physical intimidation.

Question 2

By Marxist theory, are the real forces that create human experience.

Answer 2

Economic systems

Question 3

Is the motive behind all social and political activities

Answer 3

Getting and keeping economic power

Question 4

Is the base on which the superstructure of social/political/ ideological realities is built.

Answer 4

Economics

Question 5

Material circumstances

Answer 5

Economic conditions in Marxist theory.

Question 6

Historical situation:

Answer 6

The social/political/ideological atmosphere generated by material conditions.

Question 7

Marxist praxis

Answer 7

Marxist methodology that dictates that theoretical ideas can be judged to have value only in terms of their concrete applications, that is, only in terms of their applicability to the real world.

Question 8

Bourgeoisie

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Proletariat

Answer 9

Most of the global population who live in substandard conditions and who have always performed the manual labor that fills the coffers of the rich.

Question 10

Social classes in america

Answer 10

the homeless, the poor, the financially established, the well-to-do, and the extremely wealthy // underclass, lower class, middle class, upper class, and “aristocracy.”

Question 11

Ideology

Answer 11

For Marxism, and ideology is a belief system, and all belief systems are products of cultural conditioning.

Question 12

the most successful ideologies

Answer 12

are not recognized as ideologies but are thought to be natural ways of seeing the world by the people who subscribe to them.

Question 13

The success of the American Dream

Answer 13

the misery of many (genocide of Native Americans, the enslavements of the Africans, etc.)

Question 14

false ideal, or false consciousness

Answer 14

when an ideal function to mask its own failure, whose real purpose it to promote the interests of those in power.

Question 15

Classism

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Patriotism

Answer 16

An ideology that keeps poor people fighting wars against other poor people from other countries while the rich on both sides rake profits of war-time economy.

Question 17

Religion

Answer 17

An ideology that helps to keep the faithful satisfied with their lot in life. The question of God’s existence is not the fundamental issue for Marxist analysis; rather, what human beings do in God’s name—organized religion—is the focus.

Question 18

Rugged individualism

Answer 18

An 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 19

Consumerism

Answer 19

Ideology that says, “I’m only as good as what I buy”.

Question 20

The goal of Marxist criticism

Answer 20

identify the ideology at work in cultural productions and to analyze how that ideology supports or undermines the socioeconomic system (the power structure) in which that cultural production plays a significant role.

Question 21

the primary bearer of ideology because it reaches so many people in what seems to be an innocent form

Answer 21

Entertainment

Question 22

Alienated behavior

Answer 22

Disassociation of a man with his works because of the large quantities of products that aren’t promoting his name.

Question 23

Commodities values

Answer 23

Use value, exchange value, and sign-exchange value.

Question 24

Commodification

Answer 24

The act of relating to objects or persons in terms of their exchange value or sign-exchange value.

Question 25

Imperialism

Answer 25

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 26

To colonize the consciousness

Answer 26

Means to convince subordinated people to see their situation the way the imperialist nation tries to convince them to.

Question 27

Conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life

Answer 27

The mode of production of material life

Question 28

Marxist theory argues that…

Answer 28

the way we think and the way we experience the world around us are either wholly or largely conditioned by the way the economy is organized.

Question 29

determines the superstructure

Answer 29

the way its economy is organized broadly speaking

Question 30

Commodity fetishism

Answer 30

use value and exchange value.

Question 31

is the base because all forms of oppression or well being

Answer 31

The economy

Question 32

The ideological State apparatuses autor

Answer 32

Louis Althusser

Question 33

Ideology hall and interpellates us in the different social roles that we play.

Answer 33

Jacques Lacan

Question 34

Hegemony

Answer 34

the domination of a set of ruling beliefs and values through consent rather than through coercive power (Antonio Gransci)

Question 35

Raymond Williams said this about hegemony

Answer 35

hegemony is not singular… its own internal structures are highly complex, and have conditionally to be renewed, recreated and defended… they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified” (there is room for dissenting voices).

Question 36

Pierre Macherey said

Answer 36

literary works are pervaded by ideology. So, in order to get beyond a text’s ideological dimension, we still have to begin with the cracks in its façade, with those where the text represses rather than expresses. What makes a text incoherent?