Socialism Flashcards
These should be produced with the aim of benefiting all.
Basic goods
They reject this. It should be owned communally by society.
Private property
Against this economic system and its unequal distribution of power.
Capitalism
This led to dangerous, difficult, undignified factory work in the first half of the 19th century.
Industrial revolution
Socialists morally object to exploitation, poverty, and greed because it leads to this:
Increased inequality
Thomas More was known as a martyr to what religion?
Catholicism
Thomas More was murdered for treason for refusing to do this:
Swear an oath to the Church of England
In Thomas More’s book Utopia he argued against these two things is social and economic relationships:
Poverty and inequality
This pre-industrial capitalist saw the injustice in persecuting people for theft with death by starvation or strangulation.
Thomas More
Thomas More wanted to abolish these two things:
Money and private property
According to More, distribution should be according to this, everyone must work and every family can draw from the common stock.
Need
True or false: More thought that conflict and inequality were natural.
False. He wanted society to be ride of pride, greed and envy.
Thomas More’s requirement to distribute goods in this way was also known as a requirement of justice.
Equally
Humans are intended to live in a state of peace and harmony, and overcome these:
Negative emotions
Saint Simon believed there were historical stages defined by these: This displayed a pattern, and indicated the “march towards socialism”.
Dominant classes
Saint Simon’s economic system was to be based on this: Dominant views legitimize systems, and old society gives way to new society.
Beliefs
Saint Simon suggested we replace capitalist inefficiency with this:
Expert planning and organizational hierarchy
Saint Simon’s government was not to be connected with impulses of this kind:
Democratic
For Saint Simon, science was to be used as an instrument of this:
Social planning
For Saint Simon, government of men and politics should be replaced with social harmony, this becomes unnecessary:
Coercive law
Fourier called selfishness, false beliefs, and material and emotional poverty the evils of this:
Commercial society
Fourier argued that there should be free and full cooperation for the common good. This could become a form of self expression:
Work
For Fourier, the state was needed to enforce this:
Inequality
For Fourier, bringing about change of this was one that would free us all.
Human nature
Robert Owen believed that human nature was this: or capable of being shaped. Anyone could be given a certain kind of character.
Malleable
He blamed debauchery, drunkenness, and theft (the original sin) on society and deformed social systems.
Robert Owen
Owen thought that capitalism rewarded these two things: Unequally, but not in any relation to social functionality. Instead, he suggested we should be rewarded based on:
Greed and selfishness, social good that we produce
True or false: Owen believed that we should produce independently for our individual benefit.
False. He thought that we should produce cooperatively for the public.
He was against child labour.
Robert Owen
Owen’s social experiment in which he reduced these: was aimed at the creation of a person with good character.
Working days
He was temporarily exiled to London, and died in relative obscurity.
Karl Marx
He was a radical journalist, known for his drinking and dueling.
Karl Marx
What was Marx’s main theoretical activity?
Scholarly research, explaining beginnings, characteristics, and the end of capitalist society.
Hegel had an idea about the meaning of history as the development of this: God comes to self awareness. Once we understand that we can understand why everything makes sense.
Spirit
What were Feuerbach’s views on God and finding meaning?
We create God in our own image, God did not create us.
What was Feuerbach’s secret of the study of God?
It is the study of human beings. We alienate our human capacities for knowledge, power, and goodness, then project these ideas onto God.
He believed that God was just a figment of our imagination, therefore there was little point to religion.
Feuerbach
“Religion is the opium of the people” Who said it?
Karl Marx
Marx argued that religion was created in response to these two things: It fulfills a need.
Poverty and suffering
Marx argued that religion produces this: a buzz, or good feeling in response to suffering.
Euphoria
Marx believed that this could render you incapable of flourishing if used regularly.
Religion
The human essence detached from human existence.
Alienation
According to Marx, workers’ lives are subject to these:
Alien forces
By nature, based on Marx’s theory of alienation, we are these, and our work is punishing, degrading, and commodified.
Creative producers
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this involves what we produce.
The product
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, we have no say in what happens to what we produce in a capitalist society; it is mystified and dominated by these.
Market forces
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this involves everyone becoming deskilled, with little understanding of their role in the purpose of production.
Productive activity
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this in a capitalist society contradicts cooperative labour, producing in common, cooperatively and creatively with others.
Species being
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this makes us see ourselves as disconnected from the role others play in cooperation.
Other human beings
According to Marx’s theory of alienation, we see others as these, our relationships and transactions as instrumental, others are treated as these and the only thing that connects us are cash payments.
Competitors, means
Engels identified these as Marx’s two major discoveries:
His law of the development of human history, and economic theory of surplus value
He was a radical journalist, known for his drinking and dueling.
Karl Marx
What was Marx’s main theoretical activity?
Scholarly research, explaining beginnings, characteristics, and the end of capitalist society.
Hegel had an idea about the meaning of history as the development of this: God comes to self awareness. Once we understand that we can understand why everything makes sense.
Spirit
What were Feuerbach’s views on God and finding meaning?
We create God in our own image, God did not create us.
What was Feuerbach’s secret of the study of God?
It is the study of human beings. We alienate our human capacities for knowledge, power, and goodness, then project these ideas onto God.
He believed that God was just a figment of our imagination, therefore there was little point to religion.
Feuerbach
“Religion is the opium of the people” Who said it?
Karl Marx
Marx argued that religion was created in response to these two things: It fulfills a need.
Poverty and suffering
Marx argued that religion produces this: a buzz, or good feeling in response to suffering.
Euphoria
Marx believed that this could render you incapable of flourishing if used regularly.
Religion
The human essence detached from human existence.
Alienation
According to Marx, workers’ lives are subject to these:
Alien forces
By nature, based on Marx’s theory of alienation, we are these, and our work is punishing, degrading, and commodified.
Creative producers
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this involves what we produce.
The product
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, we have no say in what happens to what we produce in a capitalist society; it is mystified and dominated by these.
Market forces
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this involves everyone becoming deskilled, with little understanding of their role in the purpose of production.
Productive activity
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this in a capitalist society contradicts cooperative labour, producing in common, cooperatively and creatively with others.
Species being
Based on Marx’s theory of alienation, alienation from this makes us see ourselves as disconnected from the role others play in cooperation.
Other human beings
According to Marx’s theory of alienation, we see others as these, our relationships and transactions as instrumental, others are treated as these and the only thing that connects us are cash payments.
Competitors, means
According to Marx’s theory of history, all history up to now is the history of this:
Class struggle
According to Marx’s theory of history, history is the growth of this:
Human productive power, productive forces that develop technology.
According to Marx’s theory of history, our productive methods develop within these: and are defined by these types of relationships.
Economic structures, property relationships
According to Marx’s theory of history, these have characteristic relations of production.
Economic structures
According to Marx’s theory of history, society is like this type of structure:
A three level building
According to Marx’s theory of history, these indicate the way we organize the state and the relations/forces of production.
Political and legal superstructures
According to Marx’s theory of history, this goes up the three levels of the superstructure.
The explanatory arrow
According to Marx’s theory of history, the level of development of productive forces explains this:
The nature of the economic structure
The steam mill gives you a society with this, the hand mill gives you a society with this:
Industrial capitalism, feudalism
According to Marx’s theory of history, this determines the legal and political superstructure. A society dominated capitalists serves the interests of the ruling class.
Economic superstructure
True or false: socialists are against the liberal emphasis on self interest, competition and individual liberty.
True.
Who is the agent in socialism?
The individual
What did Saint Simon indicate as the two stages of human history?
- feudalism, replaced by:
2. the Enlightenment
The quest for freedom and self realization, in which the spirit breaks down the old society and forms/creates a new one.
Operation of dialect
Each needs each other, but the relationship is unstable. One wants the other to recognize them as equal/free, one wants the other to respect him. The upper hand is gained when respect is refused, both are stripped of particularity, and they confront each other in universality.
The master-slave dialect
What is the socialist concept of freedom?
Freedom to compete without interference from the government, and a free enterprise system.
Marx believed the working class suffered from this, and weren’t aware of their own interests/possibilities.
False consciousness
What are the three historically progressive functions of capitalism?
- ended feudalism
- made humans masters over nature
- created a need for progressive forces
Socialists thought capitalism should be replaced for this reason, it constrains the actions of everyone.
Self-subverting
What are the stages of revolutionary sequence?
- economic crisis
- immersion of the proletariat
- revolutionary class consciousness
- seizure of state power
- dictatorship of the proletariat
- communism
What is exploitation?
The extraction of surplus labour.
What is the distinction between labour and labour power?
The capitalist makes a profit by purchasing the labour power of the workers at market value, and gets that worker’s labour for a day, which is more than subsistence value.
What is the market value of labour?
Whatever it costs to keep the worker alive at the subsistence level.
Why is capitalism referred to as dead labour?
It has to keep itself going by getting more living labour supply.
How does surplus value work?
It is created by the worker and goes to the capitalist, gained from the unpaid labour taken, nothing is given in return.
According to Marx, conflicts of interest are linked to our relation to this:
The means of production
According to Marx, the state exists to deal with these, generated by coercive surplus extraction.
Conflicts of interest
What are Marx’s two accounts of the state? What models were they based on?
- a committee for managing the common interests of the bourgeoisie, based on 19th century British politics
- the state as an independent actor, based on French and German politics
His strategy to quell revolution was to buy off the working classes and maintain a loyal army. He introduced an early welfare state.
Bismarck
It was believed that this could lead to the election of a socialist government.
Universal suffrage
These disproved Marx’s theory in the Capital that conditions for the proletariat would get worse, and supported Bernstein’s criticisms.
Wages rose, unions were created
Based on socialist ideas of revolution, it is more likely in states that fail to do this:
Integrate their excluded capitalists
A main objection to socialist claims about human nature is that this is important. We can’t get beyond what divides us. We are creative producers, which makes us distinctive.
Particularity
A main objection to socialist claims about human nature is that this is not our essence. It does not account for religion, language, and anxiety about the future.
Labour
We are alienated by capitalist society because it makes it impossible to live according to this and reach our creative capacities.
Species essence
He supported Marx financially, and co-authored many works, later becoming the creator of Marxism.
Friedrich Engels
“All I know is I’m not a Marxist” Who said it?
Marx
He exposed poverty and criticized the subordination of women. For this reason he is also considered a socialist feminist.
Engels
In this work, Engels studied the exploitation of the proletariat.
Condition of the Working Class in England
While Marx was a materialist, who believed we organize ourselves in ways to produce, Engels was a _________, who believed that everything is matter in motion.
Reductionist
He criticized earlier socialists for being utopian moralists.
Engels
Engels believed that true socialism sees the proletariat as this type of force. It is historically necessary and inevitable.
Revolutionary
What were Engels’ three objections to capitalism?
- the destructive trade cycle - boom and bust wasteful of human potential
- the large number of unproductive people - in a socialist, planned economy everyone is productive
- it generates unjust inequalities
He questioned the predictions and inevitability of Marxist socialism, and thought that Marx’s theory needed to be revised.
Eduard Bernstein
Bernstein thought that socialism should be _______, with gradual reform instead of revolutionary violence.
Evolutionary
Bernstein critiqued Marx and Engels for their view on this. They thought it to be just a part of the superstructure (served a purpose but had no effect).
Morality
Bernstein emphasized this. We are responsible for our actions and have to respect others’.
Rational agency
He argued that humans are ends in themselves, and are entitled to respect.
Bernstein
Bernstein argued that this was an end in itself.
Democracy
These disproved Marx’s theory that conditions for the proletariat would get worse, and supported Bernstein’s criticisms.
Wages rose, unions were created
This type of socialism was named after the tactic of wearing down an enemy in battle until they surrendered.
Fabian socialism
They supported long term social reform, and the parliamentary path to socialism.
Fabian socialists
They emphasized national efficiency and social justice.
Fabian socialists
Fabian socialists wanted to make the state in capitalist societies more committed, and for the state to use its power to improve the lives of this group:
The worst off
They argued that you can improve on market outcomes by using the state.
Fabian socialists
Brian Barry described socialism as a theory of:
Citizenship
According to Barry, citizenship is meaningless without this and political equality.
Democracy
An account of collective action to overcome undesirable consequences of individual actions.
Socialism, according to Barry
What are Freeden’s five core socialist ideas?
- the group - class as a basic social unit to overcome class alienation and exploitation
- equality - to remove hierarchy and redistribute based on need
- labour - productive activity as the main feature of human nature
- ideal of welfare/flourishing - end poverty, free participation
- history is going somewhere and we can help it get there
According to Engels’ science of dialects, these laws are absolute and unchanging.
Nature and human history
Bernstein was influenced by these socialists.
Fabian socialists
Bernstein argued that we should focus on these types of goals instead of these types, to find practical/non-utopian solutions.
Short term, long term
Bernstein thought this could be the worker’s ally and guardian instead of suppressing them.
The state
Lenin argued that any means justify the end. Revolutionaries must be hardened against this:
Softness/sentimentality
“A revolution cannot be made without breaking heads” Who said it?
Lenin
This faction of the communist party was the agitator, organizer, and educator to the workers of their true interests (they suffered from false/trade union consciousness)
The Bolsheviks
In Soviet Marxism-Leninism, evolutionary class consciousness was to be brought by this: Otherwise the working force becomes reactionary.
Vanguard party
This confirmed Lenin’s hostility towards revisionists.
Imperialism
Lenin replaced war communism with this:
New Economic Policy - government controls on manufacturing, secret police
He was responsible for the political purges and show trials of his opposition.
Stalin
Stalin used art and literature for propaganda, otherwise known as:
Socialist realism
Mao Zedong used this group for his socialist revolution because they were the largest, most oppressed, and had nothing to lose.
Rural proletariat
Mao replaced the concept of class with this: Proletarian nationalist forces with international capitalism, a nationalist party with wars of liberation.
Nation
He made himself dictator in the name of the proletariat, and like Lenin, thought the communist party to be the vanguard.
Mao Zedong
Mao wanted to restore the ideologically pure and correct, so he killed and imprisoned: in what is known as the:
Experts, cultural revolution
Based on the lost appeal of communism, it appears Marx overemphasized material and economic factors, and underestimated: to explain social change.
Cultural and ideological factors
Non-violent, non revolutionary socialism that incorporates the teachings of Jesus in political practice.
Christian socialism
Why are Americans anti-socialist?
- two party political system, three wouldn’t survive
- working class movement
- voting according to aspirations
- tradition
Why is communism dying in the USSR?
- it doesn’t speak for the proletariat
2. the command economy is inefficient
What is the explanation function of socialism?
Economic and class relations, individuals are caught up in societal relations that shape and structure choices available to them.
What is the evaluation function of socialism?
Social conditions, class divisions are only just when minimal or non-existent, all members control the major means of production.
What is the orientation function of socialism?
Position in the class structure because of class consciousness.
What is the program for socialism?
Classless society.
