Marxist Theory Flashcards
What are communist societies?
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.
By Marxist theory, are the real forces that create human experience.
Economic systems
Is the motive behind all social and political activities
Getting and keeping economic power
Is the base on which the superstructure of social/political/ ideological realities is built.
Economics
Material circumstances
Economic conditions in Marxist theory.
Historical situation:
The social/political/ideological atmosphere generated by material conditions.
Marxist praxis
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.
Bourgeoisie
Those who control the world’s natural, economic, and human resources.
Proletariat
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.
Social classes in america
the homeless, the poor, the financially established, the well-to-do, and the extremely wealthy // underclass, lower class, middle class, upper class, and “aristocracy.”
Ideology
For Marxism, and ideology is a belief system, and all belief systems are products of cultural conditioning.
the most successful ideologies
are not recognized as ideologies but are thought to be natural ways of seeing the world by the people who subscribe to them.
The success of the American Dream
the misery of many (genocide of Native Americans, the enslavements of the Africans, etc.)
false ideal, or false consciousness
when an ideal function to mask its own failure, whose real purpose it to promote the interests of those in power.
Classism
Ideology that equates one’s value as a human being with the social class to which one belongs.
Patriotism
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.
Religion
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.
Rugged individualism
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.
Consumerism
Ideology that says, “I’m only as good as what I buy”.
The goal of Marxist criticism
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.
the primary bearer of ideology because it reaches so many people in what seems to be an innocent form
Entertainment
Alienated behavior
Disassociation of a man with his works because of the large quantities of products that aren’t promoting his name.
Commodities values
Use value, exchange value, and sign-exchange value.
Commodification
The act of relating to objects or persons in terms of their exchange value or sign-exchange value.
Imperialism
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.
To colonize the consciousness
Means to convince subordinated people to see their situation the way the imperialist nation tries to convince them to.
Conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life
The mode of production of material life
Marxist theory argues that…
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.
determines the superstructure
the way its economy is organized broadly speaking
Commodity fetishism
use value and exchange value.
is the base because all forms of oppression or well being
The economy
The ideological State apparatuses autor
Louis Althusser
Ideology hall and interpellates us in the different social roles that we play.
Jacques Lacan
Hegemony
the domination of a set of ruling beliefs and values through consent rather than through coercive power (Antonio Gransci)
Raymond Williams said this about hegemony
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).
Pierre Macherey said
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?
