Modern International System & Marxism

Flashcards covering key Marxist concepts and their application to the modern international system, including dialectical materialism, labor value, and contradictions within capitalism.

Modern International System (Marxist View)

A free market, liberal, or capitalist international economic system, emphasizing the economic dimension over the anarchic dimension.

Karl Marx

Considered the 'godfather of Marxism'; developed a framework for understanding historical change based on material conditions during the era of industrialization.

Dialectical Materialism

Karl Marx's basic framework, adapting Hegel's dialectical change but arguing that changes happen at the level of the material world and economic conditions, rather than at the level of ideas or consciousness.

Feudalism

A historical political and economic system (lasting centuries) where nobility by birth or blood held power, and peasants had no power, primarily an agricultural system.

Capitalist/Bourgeois Revolution

Marx's historical argument that economic changes, such as the rise of merchants, lead to demands for political change (e.g., representation) to address tensions between economic power and lack of political voice, replacing feudalism.

Commons

In the feudal era, lands that were considered to be publicly available, not owned privately for exclusive use.

Labor Power

In a free market economy, the ability of individuals to work, which becomes a commodified item to be bought and sold for wages.

C-M-C (Commodity-Money-Commodity)

An exchange where a commodity is sold for money, and that money is then used to buy another commodity, creating no additional value but exchanging equivalents.

M-C-M' (Money-Commodity-More Money)

An exchange process initiated by an entrepreneur with money (M), who buys commodities (C - land, labor, capital) to produce another product, which is then sold for more money (M') than originally spent, illustrating the creation of 'profit'.

Factors of Production

The basic resources used to produce goods and services, identified by Marx (and classical economists) as land, labor, and capital.

Use Value of Labor

How much value an individual ends up creating with the work they are doing, which Marx argues can be higher than their exchange value (wages).

Exchange Value of Labor

The amount of money an individual is paid for their labor, their wages or 'hourly wage'.

Surplus Value (Profit)

For Marx, profit derived from the difference between the use value and exchange value of labor; workers are not fully paid for all the value they create, leading to exploitation.

Contradiction of Production

A Marxist tension where maximizing profits requires exploiting workers, which can lead to workers' strikes and demands for rights like voting or safety regulations.

Contradiction of Realization

A Marxist tension where maximizing profits by lowering wages as much as possible leads to a lack of purchasing power for produced goods, causing markets not to clear due to insufficient demand.

Welfare State (Marxist Perspective)

Government policies that emerge in response to contradictions (like realization), involving increased government spending, transfer payments, and social assistance, which then create new tensions related to budgets and taxation.

International Expansion of Capitalism

The tendency for capitalist countries, facing internal contradictions and pressures (e.g., high labor costs), to expand their markets and production abroad (e.g., building factories in other countries) to relieve domestic tensions.