Here Are Some Questions and Points We Ll Take up in Class Wednesday, April 21
Here are some questions and points we’ll take up in class Wednesday, April 21:
Describe Marx and Engels view of human history.
When we talk of a “Marxist interpretation” of history or of a work of literature or a political or social issue, what is at the root of this perspective.
What are the short and long term goals of communists?
What arguments do the authors use to show the positive aspects of the abolition of property?
How do the authors view nationalism? Religion? Women?
Evaluate this quote: ". . . the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself , in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." (p. 11)
P 12-13: Why is colonialism (or globalism today) necessary in capitalism?
What is wrong with this expansion, according to Marx and Engels?
“It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image.”
Is this true? Is it a bad thing, in your opinion?
“In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.” Can you think of examples of “new wants” being created?
P 15:
How do Marx and Engels describe why capitalism has financial crises? And what is the solution? Any similarities (or differences) with our recent economic recession?
P 16:
Criticisms of the type of work demanded under capitalism and industrialization
“the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and consequently, all charm for the workman”
“as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”
True?
Workers “are a commodity, exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” What’s wrong with that?
P 17:
“The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminuitive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped int eh competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited form all classes of the population.”
True?
P 18-19:
Why can modern workers organize so much more easily than their medieval predecessors?
P 20 Evaluate this:
“The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.”
And :
Why is it in the interest of the proletariat to abolish property ownership?
The majority now.
21: why is the bourgeoisie unfit to rule? Is this an accurate assessment?
P 23: “Does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital;”
True?
P 24:
Last paragraph (and into 25): Does Marx want to abolish all individuality and freedom?
P 25
“It has been objected, that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.” What’s the response?
P 26 And what about the loss of freedom, culture, family as it exists under bourgeois capitalism, if replaced with communism.
P 27 How will education be different? Whose values does education now in the US reflect, do you think? Or what values? Is it possible to have unbiased education?
Women?
P 28
Nationalism and religion, philosophy –
Why do Marx and Engels say: “The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and general, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.”
Do you agree?
P 28-29: What does the passage which begins in the last paragraphs on this page and continues on the next mean?
P 30: piece by piece: what is potentially good or bad about each idea? Have any been adopted by the US?
What do you think of the statement “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”
P 43-44:
Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each case, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
What are underlying assumptions of human nature do you think in Marxism? Do you agree?
1. How do Marx and Engels define bourgeoisie? How has this class developed? What criticisms do they have of the bourgeoisie? What do Marx and Engels predict for the future?
2. Who make up the proletariat? How has this class developed historically? What should the goals of the proletariat be according to Marx and Engels?
8.What criticisms can you come up with of Marx and Engels' ideas? Is their picture realistic?
9. Do you think that Marx and Engels had any accurate things to say about their world, capitalism in general and capitalism in today's world?
capitalism: free enterprise, individual pursuit of wealth with profit (capital) as the goal.
An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
How are workers exploited?
Long hours
Demands for increased productivity
Profiting off the labor of another