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176.101 Intro To Sociology > 5. Karl Marx > Flashcards

Flashcards in 5. Karl Marx Deck (46)
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0
Q

To acquire an understanding of Marx’s theoretical approach to the study of the workings of society, it is first of all necessary to grasp the basic tenets of his ____ ____ of ____.

A

materialist conception of history

1
Q

Karl Marx was born in Trier in the German Rhineland in ____.

A

1818

2
Q

The fundamental assumption underpinning the materialist conception of history is that it is ____ ____ ____ rather than ideas which plays the crucial role in historical development.

A

practical human activity

3
Q

The production of the means of ____ (food, shelter, clothing) and the conditions under which they are produced, are of primary importance.

A

subsistence

4
Q

The capacity of human beings to ____ on and transform nature to meet their needs is at the very core of human life. Work/labour is what makes us human.

A

work

5
Q

Marx was in particular reacting against the thought of the German philosopher, ____ (1770-1831).

A

Hegel

6
Q

Hegel had argued that ____ were the principal dynamic force in historical development. Ideas determine material life.

A

ideas

7
Q

Marx’s counterargument against this idealism was that ideas originated in the fundamental problems of material life. Marx’s ____ is the reverse of Hegel’s idealism.

A

materialism

8
Q

Bearing in mind the key point that the economic organisation of society is the point of departure for the study of society, Marx goes on to make a crucial distinction between the economic base or ____ of socety and the ____.

A

infrastructure, superstructure

9
Q

The ____ includes the political legal and cultural institutions and the corresponding forms of social consciousness (ideas).

A

superstructure

10
Q

The economic infrastructure of a society is the foundation stone which upon particular political, legal and cultural (eg. the media, churches) ____ are built.

A

institutions

11
Q

The superstructure is usually described as a reflection of the economic infrastructure in the ____, legal and cultural institutions.

A

political

12
Q

The infrastructure/base/foundation of any society can also be called the ____ of ____.

A

mode of production

13
Q

Any mode of production is made up of ____ of production and ____ of production

A

forces, relations

14
Q

A mode of production is ____ both by the level of development reached by its productive forces and by the nature of the relations of production.

A

defined

15
Q

The ____ of ____ include the whole range of means available to human beings for controlling nature and producing material goods to satisfy their needs.

A

forces of production

16
Q

The ____ of production: natural resources (eg, oil, wood, minerals, water) tools, machinery, technology.

A

means

17
Q

The ____ ____ of human beings (their capacity to work) - without which natural resources could not be extracted from the earth, nor machines transform these same resources into objects for human use.

A

labour power

18
Q

The ____ of production, according to Marx, have to do with the ways in which the production process is organised.

A

relations

19
Q

____ occurs, according to Marx when the objects created by human beings confront them as external, alien, hostile and oppressive things. Alienation means that human beings are estranged from ther own creative activity and from other people.

A

Alienation

20
Q

Alienation is the process through which workers lose control over their ____ and the products of that ____.

A

labour

21
Q

Marx identifies three principal forms of alienation in modern, capitalist society the human being is alienated from ____, from ____ and from their ______ (their species being).

A

nature, themselves, fellow human beings

22
Q

In the human being’s alienation from ____, Marx sees, in particular, the worker’s alienation from their capacity to shape their world

A

nature

23
Q

In respect of the human being’s alienation from ____, Marx argues that capitalism alienates the worker from their own activity and from the product of their activity (ie, ‘alienation of things’).

A

themselves

24
Q

Regarding alienation from ________, Marx stipulates that competition between workers for scarce jobs, between capitalists to maximise profits, and class conflict between capitalists and workers have all rendered most forms of co-operation impossible.

A

fellow human beings

25
Q

All in all, then, human beings in modern, capitalist society have, in Marx’s view, lost their ____. They have been reduced to an animal existence.

A

humanity

26
Q

The fact that the worker, in particular, is separated from nature, themself, their activity, the product of their activity and others, all confirm the total ____ conditions of modern capitalism.

A

dehumanising

27
Q

Workers are mainly measured in terms of their ____ ____, that is, how much profit can be made out of them in the shortest period of time.

A

labour value

28
Q

Alienation is ____ ____. It is the outcome of a particular set of historical circumstances namely, the capitalist mode of production. Because alienation is not intrinsic to the human condition it can be overcome.

A

historically contingent

29
Q

Marx analyses alienation in modern capitalism the against backdrop of a state of ____, a future communist society.

A

unaleination

30
Q

____ ____ would involve the full return of human beings to themselves as social beings.

A

Communist society

31
Q

Many of the characteristics ascribed to ____ by Marx such as by the end of a highly specialised division of labour (each worker would be involved in a variety of tasks rather than simply performing one boring task), and the overthrow of the class system - attest to this envisaged full flowering of an intrinsically social humanity under communism.

A

communism

32
Q

The splintered human being of modern, ____ society would be healed.

A

capitalist

33
Q

According to Marx a ____ is a group of individuals who stand in a common relationship to the means of production. Man develops a two-class model peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.

A

class

34
Q

The capitalist owners of the means of production are called the ____ The bourgeoisie also accumulate capital through trade.

A

bourgeoisie

35
Q

The propertyless workers who have nothing to sell but their labour power are called the ____. The proletariat are the producers of wealth.

A

proletariat

36
Q

Marx reasons that the class division between the numerically small bourgeoisie and the numerically enormous proletariat, is based on a relationship of _____.

A

exploitation

37
Q

Essentially, this means that the capitalist owners extract more value from the workers in the form of ____ than is returned to them in the form of ____. Workers labour longer hours than is necessary to produce the value of their wages.

A

profit, wages

38
Q

____ between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is an objective, unavoidable necessity growing out of the very nature of the capitalist mode of production.

A

Conflict

39
Q

Marx predicted that once the workers became _____ aware of their objective position, that is, fully conscious of the fact that they were being exploited by their capitalist employers - they would organise themselves and rebel against their capitalist oppressors.

A

subjectively

40
Q

This, in very rough outline, is what Marx refers to as ____ ____.

A

class consciousness

41
Q

What Marx calls ____ is part of the superstructure of a society. The ideas, values and beliefs found in a particular society are never simply neutral.

A

ideology

42
Q

The ____ ideas, values and beliefs are always ideological in the sense that they serve to legitimise the interests of ____ social groups within a society.

A

dominant, powerful

43
Q

The dominant social groups in a society, of course, always masquerade their ideas values and beliefs as general and ____.

A

universal

44
Q

It is Marx’s contention that ideology acts to give a ____ picture of reality since it conceals the way in which the dominant groups in a society take advantage of and exploit subordinate social groups

A

distorted

45
Q

In the case of modern, capitalist society, the dominant ideas, values and beliefs are, in Marx’s view, those of the ____. Although the working class is subordinate to and exploited by the bourgeoisie, it nonetheless shares the bourgeoisie’s conception of reality.

A

bourgeoisie