GOVT 1001 - Topic #4

KARL MARX AND V.I. LENIN AND COMMUNISM

What year was Karl Marx Born?

1818-1883

Marx was born in the Rhineland, which more than any other part of Germany had been strongly permeated with ________

Democratic ideas by the French Revolution.

In 1849 Marx went to London and he was soon joined by ________

Friedrich Engels whom he met in Paris and who became his lifelong collaborator. 

What year was Fredrick Engels born?

1820-1895

Marx stayed in England until _______

his death in 1883

In German philosophy, it was _________who greatly influenced Marx.

G.W.F. Hegel 

Although Marx was early criticized Hegel _________

he never abandoned the basic categories of Hegel’s thought.

Like Hegel, Marx felt that history had meaning and that it ________

moved in a set pattern toward a known goal.

Marx held that history had both _______

a meaning and a goal.

The historical process was dominated by the struggles between **_______**. as in Hegel, representing **_______** than the preceding one.

i\] social classes with each phase of the struggle

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ii\] a higher phase of human evolution

 The goal of history was predetermined for Marx, namely the **_______;** while for Hegel; it was the final _______

i\] classless society, leading to full human freedom

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ii\] victory of spirit over enslavement to caprice and passion.

Another important source for Marx’s intellectual development was________

French revolutionary politics

Marx theorized that if revolution was the principal method of destroying a capitalist society, then France and her _______. This must be contrasted with Burke who was horrified by _______

i\] revolutionary experience served as the best laboratory.

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ii\] what the French Revolution epitomized.

Since Marx viewed economic forces as the main driving forces in history and since he felt that industrial civilization was _________*,*__ *he was convinced that England was _______*

i\] irresistibly spreading throughout the whole world

ii\] the country to live in and to study industrial capitalism.

Marx also felt that English economic analysis was the most advanced of any country and, therefore, _______

industrial capitalism, in his opinion, could best be studied in England.

Marx believed that political and historical events are due to **_______**

the conflict of social forces arising from economic conditions.

(Marx) He advocated the concepts of **________**

thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

(Marx) The thesis represented the existing order which would be challenged and overthrown _______

an antithesis and the new order that was created would be the synthesis.

(Marx) This process would repeat itself until it finally stopped when capitalism _______

was overthrown and here was the classless society of communism.

In Marx’s thought, the classless communist society of the future was _______

by no means designed to abolish the duty to work.

The first stage of communism (socialism), Marx argued, would be guided by _______

 the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”

(Marx) In the second, and final phase of communism the principle of **_______**

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would prevail.

Under capitalism, Marx argues, the worker does not work in order to fulfil himself as a person, because **_______**

his work “is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour.”

Marx argued that the proletariat (working class) only had their labour to sell for a wage to **_______**

the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) who owned and controlled the means of production.

According to Marx, under capitalism people are alienated from **_______.** Such alienation was necessary to create the class consciousness that could drive class struggle to effect social change and progress that would **_______**

i\] their work, the objects they produce, their employers, other workers, nature, and from themselves.

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ii\] bring about the overthrow of the capitalist state and replace it with the classless state of communism.

Marx attacked the role of religion in society as it had the potential to **_______**

undermine class consciousness by offering the proletariat a means of accepting their station in life.

(Marx) He called religion **_______**

“the opium of the masses.”

The Communist Manifesto came out in _______

1848

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explain **_______**

how social change through revolution actually occurs.

(The Communist Manifesto) For them the “history of all hitherto existing society is _______

the history of class struggles”.

(The Communist Manifesto) The end of capitalism will be brought about by the _______

same inexorable laws of social change that destroyed previous systems.

There was no clear-cut theory as to how the political transformation from capitalist to the proletarian rule would actually take place- this was left to _______

the forces of history.

Marx and Engels saw in revolution, civil war, and the _______

dictatorship of the proletariat the preparatory stages of peace and harmony.

V.I. Lenin lived between _______:

1870- 1924

Lenin must be understood both as the creator of a distinctive version of ***_______*** *and also as a person steeped in the* native Russian *_______*

i\] Marxism as a revolutionary theory

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ii\] non-Marxist revolutionary tradition.

(Lenin) - He identified himself as a representative and a continuer of this tradition in an article in 1912 in which he linked himself to:

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i\] to the revolutionary nobles and landlords who unsuccessfully staged a troop rising in _________

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ii\] a later generation of revolutionary commoners whose leaders carried out the assassination of _________

i\] St. Petersburg following the death of Czar Alexander I in 1825.

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ii\] Czar Alexander II (second) in 1881.

What Lenin found enduringly valuable in this tradition was its model of the _______ and the aspects of this tradition became known **_______**

i\] dedicated professional revolutionist

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ii\] as “Russian Jacobinism”.

(**Russian Jacobinism) -** theory held that a revolutionary seizure of power from below should be followed by the formation of a _______, which would use political power for the purpose of _______

i\] dictatorship of the revolutionary party

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ii\] carrying through from above a transformation of Russian society.

(**Russian Jacobinism) -** Once these revolutionary intellectuals had captured power through revolutionary activity from below, they would rely chiefly on **_______,** rather than coercion, and would **_______**

i\] persuasion of the masses through propaganda

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ii\] gradually transform the country on socialist lines.

(**Russian Jacobinism) -** The thrust of Lenin’s thinking was toward the creation of a revolutionary party dictatorship dedicated to the transformation of _______

Russian society along socialist lines.

(**Russian Jacobinism) -** For Lenin, a proletarian dictatorship would mean a **_______**

dictatorship of the revolutionary party on behalf of the proletariat.

(**The Vanguard Party) -** Marx and Engels did not imagine that the proletariat, one in power, would have need of a party as _______

their “teacher, guide and leader” in building a new life on socialist lines.

**(The Vanguard Party) -** Leninism was, in part a revival of, _______ within Marxism.

Russian Jacobinism

**(The Vanguard Party) - In _____***, Lenin published a booklet entitled “*______”in which he described the need to create the _______

i\] 1902

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ii\] What is to be done?

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iii\] right kind of revolutionary party organization for Russia’s special conditions.

**(The Vanguard Party) -** He argued that the Russian Marxist party should not seek a mass working-class membership, although it ________ through trade unions, study circles and other groups. 

should strive to link itself with masses of workers and other discontented elements of society

This party was to be the **Vanguard Party** which consisted of the most _______

committed ideologues and against which there were no competition.

(Lenin’s Economic Theory) - According to Lenin, imperialism, in its economic essence, is

monopoly capitalism.

**(Lenin’s Economic Theory) -** This determines its place in history because the monopoly that grows out of the free competition is the transition from the **_______**

capitalist system to a higher socio-economic order.

**(Lenin’s Economic Theory) -** In other words, imperialism is the _______ of capitalism.

highest stage

**(Economic Transformation) -** In every socialist revolution, however, the principal task of the _______ which it leads is the positive or constructive work of setting up an extremely _______  extending to the planned production and distribution of the _______

i\] proletariat, and of the poor peasants

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ii\] intricate and delicate system of new organizational relationships

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iii\] goods required for the existence of tens of millions of people.

**(Economic Transformation) -** The principal difficulty lay in the _______, namely, the introduction of the _______, raising the productivity of labour and socializing production in practice.

i\] economic sphere

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ii\] strictest and universal accounting and control of production and distribution of goods

**(Economic Transformation) -** The transformation from _______, which drove capitalist production and distribution, to a new _______, had to be carefully managed in the interest of the population to ensure _______

i\]free market competition

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ii\] philosophy of State domination and control of the economy

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iii\] continuity without hardship