Social Theory Exam 2

In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx makes which of the following assumptions in regard to human nature?

Humans are generally cooperative and creative.

Marx argued that all the injustices of capitalist societies come from a single root cause:

Private property.

Following Marx, the sentiment that diamonds connote eternal love, passion, constancy, and romance might be best understood as an example of which of the following?

The fetishism of commodities.

What are the chief claims of Marx’s theory of the value commodities?

The labor process determines the value of commodities.

According to Marx, the rational division of labor and machine technologies in the capitalist labor process enabled:

Greater exploitation of surplus values from workers.

According to the Communist Manifesto, the basic difference between capitalism and socialism is:

The ownership of the means of production.

When Marx observed, “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships” he meant that such idea are:

Ideological justification for class domination.

Which of the following did Marx and Engles see as creating necessary conditions for the emergence of industrial capitalism in Europe?

All of the other answers were necessary conditions for the breakthrough to industrial capitalism.

Why did Marx think that industrial capitalism would eventually have a global reach?

Western imperialism would destroy traditional societies.

The fact that advanced industrial societies still embrace capitalism more than 150 years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto suggest that Marx and Engel’s specific propositions in that text are not:

Falsifiable.

Horkheimer and Adorno saw the culture industry as the mystifying force that fostered mass obedience, while Marx emphasized ___ and Foucault highlighted ___.

Collective conscience; latent functions.

Marx and Engels depict how capitalism makes socialist revolution inevitable. Their theory identifies which general cause?

Intensifying class conflict that radicalizes workers and undermines the bourgeois social order.

Marx and Engels predicted that proletarian revolution would occur in the most economically advanced societies.  In which of the following societies did Marxist-inspired revolutionaries actually seize power:

Cuba.

Which of the following is true of Marx's thought?

Marx believed that social change occurred through class conflict.

Which of the following comparisons can be made:

Both Marx and Durkheim saw religion in terms of social relations and effects.

In Marx’s fragment “Classes”, he identifies two factors that primarily determine class position. What are these two dimensions?

Property and productivity. 

In the 19^th century, Marx claimed that capitalist societies would inevitably veer toward a dual class structure.  Drawing from the lecture and the readings, which of the following is an acceptable critique of Marx’s claim:

Marx failed to account for social differentiation.

Consider the following description of the traditional, early modern Ottoman economy in the Near East:

In the narrow sense only adherents of Islam are part of the bazaar [i.e., marketplace] milieu. Jews and Christians are present in the bazaars, of course, to carry out the activities prohibited or frowned upon by Islam. Armenian Christians were specialized in the manufacture and sale of musical instruments; the moneylenders and gold- and silversmiths were Jews. Christians as well as Jews dominated the production and sale of alcoholic beverages... They were tolerated outsiders, with whom believers interacted in the economic but not, as a rule, the social sphere (Riesebrodt 1993: 153).   Following Weber, one can say that economic roles in this society were heavily influenced by:

Ascribed status group membership

Which of the following theorists argued that politics, history, and ideology could all be reduced to the results of economic forces?

Marx.

Whereas class refers to material resources and politics refers to power, what does Weber's concept of status refer to?

Social prestige.

Following our discussion of Weber, a rationalized, achievement-based system for generating social status differences can be described as:

Meritocracy.

Which of the following best completes the sentence?

Weber considered social stratification in modern capitalist society to be:

 

Based partially on social status and political power.

Complete the sentence:

Pierre Bourdieu argues that social inequality in contemporary industrial societies reflects:

Differing positions in relation to cultural, social and economic capital. 

Which of the following would be a member of the "intermediary classes" according to Marx?

All of the occupations listed would be members of the intermediary classes.

Given the differences in the economic theories of socialism and capitalism, which of these would probably be the best indicator of how influential socialism is in modern industrial democracies?

The extent of government involvement in the economy.