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SOC 101. Spring 2014 Midterm Review. Attendance . A) yes I am here. B) Not here. C) Not here. D) Not here. E) Not here.
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SOC 101 Spring 2014 Midterm Review
Attendance • A) yes I am here. • B) Not here. • C) Not here. • D) Not here. • E) Not here.
What is a “bourgeois revolution”? What are its causes and its consequences? Refer to both political and economic events or developments, and discuss class struggles” in your response. • A bourgeois revolution is a revolution that opens the way for the development of capitalism. An increase in the material forces of production eventually requires an adjustment of the social relations of production to make them compatible with the former. Thus, according to Marx, the economic revolution which the bourgeoisie had brought about in Europe required a “bourgeois revolution” in political and social forms and in property relations. The continuation of progress of the material forces of production within the “feudal” political structure of Europe was becoming more difficult, the latter was impeding the former, necessitating a revolution to change the political structures and thus “freeing” society to further increase the productive forces. This relation is not mechanical, it requires organized human agency to bring about the political-social revolution, that is, class struggle.
What is a “bourgeois revolution”? What are its causes and its consequences? Refer to both political and economic events or developments, and discuss class struggles” in your response.(cont.) • In the Manifesto in 1848, Marx wondered whether the bourgeoisie as a class was fully up to the task of revolution, and thought that workers parties should push forward the process of revolution as far as possible, thus putting the working class in charge of "completing" some of the tasks of the bourgeois revolution which perhaps the bourgeoisie was unwilling to complete. • In the case of Civil War of the United States, Marx thought that even though the struggle was over the spread of slavery, or not, into the territories into which the United States was expanding, the conflict could possibly issue in a bourgeois revolution which would destroy the power of the planter class of the south and abolish slavery.
Think of the “fetishism of commodities”. What is a commodity? In what way does the exchange of commodities in capitalism “hide” social relations among producers? • A commodity is the product of human labor and it has use value and exchange value. The former is the product of "concrete labor," the latter is the product of "abstract labor," that is, labor time in the abstract that can be compared to that of producing other commodities and therefore forms the basis of exchange. Commodities and exchange hide the fact that behind the exchange relation, there is an explicit or implicit, conscious or unsconscious, comparison of the socially necessary labor times that go into their production. Economic relations are ultimately relations between people, and therefore social relations, but commodity exchange makes this social character invisible, thus creating a “fetish.” It appears, in Marx’s formulation, as if there were “social” relations between commodities, and non-social relations (material or “thing-ish” relations) between people.
Think of “primitive accumulation”. What are the two meanings of Marx’s use of the term “free labor”? What historical events produced a class of free-laborers in feudal England? • - "Free labor" refers to laborers that are free from slavery or serfdom and therefore legally free to sell their labor. • - However, free laborers are also free in the sense that they are "free" from - lack possession of - the means of production. • - The class of free laborers was produced by primitive accumulation, a process that separated producers from the means of production. • - This process involved the use of force by feudal lords and the state to drive the peasants off of the land, forcing them to become wage-laborers in order to survive.
How does Marx explain why the U.S. Civil War occurred? Discuss both economic and political processes. • Marx explains how social and economic tendencies in the Southern slave economy motivated a Southern political agenda of expansionism. Slave production had several systematic consequences, including the concentration of landed property and chattel slaves among a small slaveholding oligarchy, the corresponding development of a class of poor landless whites, the exhaustion of soil due to inefficient labor practices. The unsettled western territories ameliorated these conditions in the short term by providing fresh land for the expansion of slave agriculture. Further, settlement of open territories provided an opportunity to increase the power of slaveholders in the Senate if slave territories achieved statehood. Southerners fought sometimes violently for territorial control against similar claims of Northern “free-soil” settlers. In conjunction with a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, Southern politicians expected to attain political control of all three branches of the federal government, ensuring the power for unlimited expansion of slavery even into southerly Mexican and Spanish territory.
How does Marx explain why the U.S. Civil War occurred? Discuss both economic and political processes. (cont.) • The presidential victory of the Republican Party forestalled complete political domination. The South’s response was open war. Thus Marx implies that slavery conditioned the South to pursue a political agenda that was bound to go beyond the limits of the U.S. constitution and hence lead to open war with the North. Marx’s explanation is consistent with the priority of the economic base (slave agriculture) over the political superstructure (U.S. constitution) and with his model of bourgeois revolution. Lincoln’s “emancipation proclamation” was aimed at undermining the foundation of Southern property relations and the eventual dismantling of the slave economy after the war.
By (1) _____________is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By (2)____________, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. • bourgeoisie • proletariat
The (3) ________________ among many workers, each with his own specialized operation, is the basis of capitalist manufacture. • division of labor
The number of actual (4)_____________in the South of the Union does not amount to more than three hundred thousand, a narrow oligarchy that is confronted with many millions of so-called poor whites, whose numbers have been constantly growing through concentration of landed property. • slaveholders
The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the (5) ____________ given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. • world market
The means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in (6)_________. • feudal society
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will…The totality of these relations of production constitutes the (9) ____________ of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of (10)____________. • (9) economic structure • (10) social consciousness
The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system . . . takes away from the laborer the possession of his means of production; a process that transforms . . . the immediate producers into (7) ______________. The so-called (8)___________, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. • (7) wage-laborers (also free labor). • (8) primitive accumulation
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal (11) ___________ than have all preceding generations together. • productive forces
The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a (12) ____________or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. • commodity
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of (13)______________. • _class struggles.
If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, and if it confronts him as an (14) ____________, this is only possible because it belongs to a man other than the worker. • alien power
The relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, (15) ______________ between persons and social relations between things. • material relations
In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the (16) ______________ from the land. • peasantry
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production . . . From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of (17)______________. social revolution
The more the worker produces, the less he has to (18)_____________. • consume
The present struggle between the South and North is, therefore, nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of (19) __________________and the system of (20________________. • (19) slavery (or free labor or wage laborers) • (20) free labor or wage laborers (or slavery).
Attendance • A) yes I am here. • B) Not here. • C) Not here. • D) Not here. • E) Not here.
