Theoretical Perspectives - Marx

Alienated from the products of labor (2)

The product belongs to the capitalist. It becomes capitalist's private property. Now the product opposes the worker as an object over which she has no control—where and how it is sold and its price.

Marx believed that capitalism was a necessary stage in the transition toward socialism/communism.

True

Forces and relations of production

available technology to extract and develop resources and the property relations that govern ownership of resources

superstructure

cultural institutions, laws, art, religion, and so forth, that provide the ideological and political anchor for the social order

Marxist Alienation

estranged from others and social/economical institutions; alienated from institutions

Marx refers to propertyless wage earners as:

proletariat

According to the authors, Karl Marx's basic theoretical orientation would fall under the category of:

rational, collective

Which of the following is a "class" in capitalism according to Marx?

wage laborers

What term did Marx coin for a worker becoming part of the 'machine itself'?

'cog in a wheel'

What is Marx's catalyst for social change (mover of history)?

Class struggle

As discussed by the authors, Marx's basic theoretical orientation could be said to be individualist and nonrational.

False

Marx's arguments stem from his agreement with Hegel on the real basis of the progression of human societies.

False

Alienated from other human beings (fellow workers) (3)

In capitalism, cooperation is disrupted, and people, often strangers, are forced to work side by side for the capitalist. Moreover, because the worker is alienated from the process of production as well as the product of his labors, he becomes alienated from himself.

Alienated from human potential (species being) (4)

Work becomes the activity that we feel least human, least ourselves. Life activity becomes reduced to a means to exist.

alienated from labor (1)

Workers don't work to produce for themselves. They work for capitalists, who pay them a wage. Workers don't decide what to do with the product being produced. They are alienated from it.

material base

a society's technological control over, and social relations with, the means of subsistence

What term does Marx use to refer to when the process of production and the results of our labor confront us as a dominating power?

alienation

Class consciousness

an awareness of the working class of its common relationship to the means of production and common source of the workers' oppressive conditions.

Marx used the term class consciousness to refer to:

an awareness on the part of the working class of their common relationship to the means of production

Marx refers to the middle-class owners of capital as:

bourgeoisie

For Marx, which of the following is a catalyst for social change and the prime mover of history?

class struggle

Species Being (Marx)

full human, creative potential everyone wants to work to reach capitalism constrained the exercise of full human potential impossible in capitalism

Forces of production

the raw materials, technology, machines, factories, and land that are necessary in the production of goods

Marx's stages of human development

tribalism-ancient communalism-feudalism-capitalism-socialism-communism (end of history)