YR 2 - core ideology: SOCIALISM Flashcards
what is another phrase for Marxism?
revolutionary socialism
what key thinkers can be used for Marxism / revolutionary socialism ?
KARL MARX & ENGELS
ROSA LUXEMBURG
what is historical materialism?
everything is rooted in the material conditions of life. economic factors are the driving force behind human history. human societies are the outgrowth of their collective economic activity. economic conditions determine ideas
what is historical determinism?
the engine of history rests in the internal contradictions in the system of material production each economic system in human history contained within in a contradiction that eventually led to its collapse and replacement by another
what is dialectic materialism?
CONTRADICTIONS DRIVE CHANGE.
summarise capitalism
driven by competition and the thirst for profit
wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, whilst the proletariat gets bigger and bigger and poorer and poorer
work to live
what is class consciousness to Marx?
Workers first become conscious of sharing common complaints (exploitation) against capitalism and then develop awareness of themselves as forming a social class, the proletariat opposed to the bourgeoisie
according to marxism what are the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat?
-to preserve and extend the revolution
-to take control of the means of production and put them into common ownership
-to prepare the way for the communist society
How do Marx & Engels explain the dictatorship of the proletariat?
It is a transition stage to the abolition of all classes, and to a classless society
What do Marxists / revolutionary socialists think about human nature?
-malleable: not fixed
-we are what we live in. human nature cannot be understood independently of society.
-alienated by capitalism
-change the system, change the human nature
what do revolutionary socialists/ Marxists think of society?
-it reflects + reinforces the interests of the bourgeoisie
- capitalist-taught ideas must be removed for revolution
- create a classless society
What do revolutionary socialists think about the economy?
-capitalism and private property = ‘naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation’
-forms the working class who become the ‘gravediggers of capitalism’
-must replace private ownership with common ownership
-desire universal emancipation
What do revolutionary socialists think about the state?
-the state cannot be captured + reformed, it must be overthrown and replaced by a dictatorship of proletariat.
-state will wither away once revolution is successful. No need for it
What is another phrase useful to help you remember the reform or revolution debate?
Ballots or bullets + barricades.
Give a key thinker for evolutionary socialism
BEATRICE WEBB
What was Beatrice Webb’s principle ?
The Inevitability of Gradualness.
What did Rosa Luxemburg say the Mass Strike will do?
- bring the proletariat together as a mass letting them overcome the atomisation.
-educate the workers in organisation, so that they can develop that ability to organise society themselves in the interests of the many
-unite the proletariat so that they can undermine + overthrow the state
outline the key difference between revolutionary and evolutionary socialism
-rev believes that communism can only be achieved through workers revolution, where they take the means of production into common ownership
-ev believes that communism can be achieved through gradual + legal social reform + elections. REVOLUTION VS REFORM.