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
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
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.
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.
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
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:
i] to the revolutionary nobles and landlords who unsuccessfully staged a troop rising in _________
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.
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
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
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
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
ii] What is to be done?
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
ii] intricate and delicate system of new organizational relationships
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
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
ii] philosophy of State domination and control of the economy
iii] continuity without hardship