POLI 245 Ch:5 Flashcards
What is Isaiah Berlins definition of socialism?
Socialism is a body of Western teaching and practice resting upon the idea that most social evils are due to unequal, or excessively unequal, distribution of material resources: and that these evils can be cured only by the transference, gradual or immediate, total or partial, of the ownership of property, and the means of production, exchange and distribution from private to public control.
How is socialism a reaction to liberalism?
Socialism is a reaction to liberalism because it directly contrasts liberalisms view of humanity as competitive by stating humanity is cooperative. Socialism also heavily opposes liberalisms ideal handling of the market and property by aiming to remove private property and distributing wealth.
How do socialists, especially Marxist socialists, differ from conservatives, property and tradition?
They differ because conservatives believe private property should be upheld while socialists believe private property should be transferred or removed. Conservatives highly value tradition as a means to secure a natural aristocracy where as a socialist would view tradition as a means of supporting class-conflict.
What are the two approaches to public property in socialism?
Centralized and decentralized. Centralized meaning that the government should take responsibility for managing property and resources in the name of society. Decentralized meaning investing responsibilities into local control, especially local workers.
Explain the agent, obstacle, and goal of a socialist?
The agent is a member of the working class, the obstacle is class division, economic inequalities, and unequal life opportunities, and the goal is fulfilling human needs, satisfying work, and fair share of products.
What is fall consciousness?
The inability to recognize inequality and oppression under capitalism due to the reinforced implementation of social classes.
Who was Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte?
Saint-Simon was a French aristocrat who tried to set socialism on a scientific basis. A utopian socialist who directly claim that property needed to be transferred but did claim that laissez-faire economies lead to gluts and waste. Auguste Comte was Simons disciple who also believed in the scientific basis of socialism.
Who was Charles Fourier and Robert Owen?
Charles Fourier was a French utopian socialist who believed utopia mysticism, numerology, and crude physchological theory. Fourier believed society was close to barbarism and that it is afflicted with commerce among other things. Robert Owens was a British capitalist who became a socialist. He believed drunkenness, debauchery, and thievery were the result of a deformed social system.
What is Hegels account of history?
History is the unfolding or evolution of spirit. Spirit is a set of potentials waiting to be developed. Like overcoming obstacles in order to grasp freedom. There is also alienation of the spirit, spirit evolves through alienating itself like how a newborn baby eventually distances itself from its mother, developing into higher forms. Through cunning of reason and dialects, human spirit clashes with one another without realizing it, which creates more freedom of spirit.
What is Marxs theory of history?
Like Hegel, Marx saw human history as the story of human labour and struggle. He saw history not as a result of human spirit, but as a result of class struggle. He called it the materialist conception of history because classes struggle over opposing material or economic interests. The material means of production are needed in order to sustain ourselves so class struggles grows out of opposing ideas of handling it. Material forces of production are fought over like the bow and arrow in a hunting society or the seeds and farm tools in an agrarian one. Thee social relations of production refers to the hunters who hunt or the farmers who plant the seeds.
What are the 4 types of alienation in liberal capitalist societies and what do they mean?
- Alienation from the product (The product of the workers labour does not belong to them so they are disconnected from it.)
- Self-Alienation in the labouring activity (Human creative spirit is removed by the capitalist system therefore alienating the worker from the activity of production.)
- Alienation from species-being (Producing is reduced to necessity, creativity and beauty are removed which reduces workers animals.)
- Alienation from fellow men (The capitalist process separates the worker from their boss due to a class divide.)
What is Marxs Revolutionary sequence and how is distribution understood in the final stage (communism)?
Economic crisis, immiseration of the proletariat, revolutionary class conflict, seizure of state power, dictatorship of the proletariat, withering away of the state, communism. Marx said very little on the ideal because he didn’t want to “write a recipe for the kitchen of the future”, but did say that distribution will be “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
