IFE study

History of all society according to Marx

History of class struggles

Bourgeoisie definition

Capital-owning class who control production and evolved from feudal lords

Bourgeois political domination

Executive branch functions as committee managing bourgeois interests

Bourgeois global impact

Break national barriers to expand markets and impose global capitalist relations

Bourgeois cultural impact

Turns all values into exchange value and destroys religion, sentiment, and honor

Proletariat definition

Workers who must sell labor power to survive

Why proletariat isn’t unified

Competition, fragmentation, self-interest

Capitalism cycle of crisis

Overproduction → layoffs → collapse → expansion → larger collapse

Labor theory of value (Marx)

Value determined by socially necessary labor time

Impact of machinery on workers

Worker becomes appendage of machine, loses individuality

Why proletariat becomes revolutionary

Larger class, falling wages, rising exploitation, mechanization pressure

Purpose of trade unions

Raise awareness but cannot abolish class structure

Communist political goals

Unite proletariat, overthrow bourgeoisie, abolish private property

Meaning of abolishing private property

End private ownership of productive assets, not personal items

Communist view of individuality

Individuality does not require exploiting others’ labor

Communist response to “laziness” objection

Bourgeois are the class that stops working first

Communist critique of family

Bourgeois family is an economic unit that commodifies women

Communist view of nationality

Proletariat has no homeland under capitalism’s globalization

Historical materialism

Material economic forces drive social and political development

Transitional communist measures

Progressive tax, central bank, abolition of inheritance, equal work duty

Origin of socialism (Engels)

Product of earlier rationalist thinkers limited by their epoch

Flaw of early utopians

Ignored class struggle and focused on “humanity” as a whole

Saint-Simon view

Scientists/industrialists should rule but still preserves class hierarchy

Fourier view

Harsh critique of capitalism with women’s status as measure of social freedom

Robert Owen significance

Model factory communities emphasizing education and moral uplift

Dialectics definition

Truth emerges through conflict of opposing ideas

Marxian vs Hegelian dialectic

Marx bases contradictions in material forces, not ideas

Historical materialism (Engels)

Forces and relations of production shape superstructure

Four conditions for a good (Menger)

Need + properties + knowledge of use + command

Economic good definition

Scarce relative to need

Non-economic good definition

Abundant relative to need

Value (Menger)

Importance of satisfying a need that depends on the good

Utility definition

Capacity of a thing to satisfy needs

Imaginary value

Value wrongly attributed to something unnecessary

Marginal utility

Value equals least important satisfaction that would be lost if one unit were removed

Why labor doesn’t determine value

Labor irrelevant if object lacks utility or scarcity

Higher-order goods definition

Goods used to make other goods

Effect of losing complementary goods

Whole production process loses value

Origin of social institutions (Menger)

Spontaneous, organic emergence from individual actions

Causal-genetic method

Trace complex institutions back to simple individual actions

Exact-theoretical method

Derive causal laws from human axioms

Empirical realist method

Describe historical facts without causal explanation

Social institutions vs pragmatic institutions

Social evolve organically; pragmatic are deliberately created

Origin of the state (Lenin)

Product of irreconcilable class antagonism

Function of the state

Instrument of oppression by ruling class

Ideal political shell for capitalism

Democratic republic

Revolutionary strategy (Lenin)

Smash bourgeois state by force

Dictatorship of the proletariat

Transitional regime replacing bourgeois rule

Why democracy doesn’t solve class conflict

It is “democracy for the rich”

Withering away of the state

State disappears as classes disappear

Lower vs higher phase of communism

Socialism (remainders of bourgeois law) vs full communism

Why socialism cannot calculate (Mises)

No private property → no exchange → no prices → no allocation

Technical vs economic knowledge

Socialists know how to produce but not whether it’s efficient

Effect of no price system

Surpluses, shortages, misallocation

Why labor can’t be priced

Would reintroduce wages and capitalism

Why higher-order goods can’t be valued

Too complex without money-based calculation

Why natural calculation is impossible

Interconnected production chains too complex to compare

Origin of individualism (Keynes’s account)

Locke and Hume’s rights + Bentham’s utilitarianism

Limitations of laissez-faire

Imperfect competition, inequality, incomplete knowledge

Where Keynes wants state intervention

Investment, population, land use, research

Where Keynes rejects intervention

Personal life and creative freedom

Keynes argument for state action

Use government where collective action outperforms individuals

Central question of social sciences (Hayek)

How dispersed knowledge produces coordinated results

Scientific vs local knowledge

General theory vs particular time-and-place knowledge

Why central planning fails (Hayek)

Cannot aggregate real-time, local, tacit knowledge

Equilibrium definition (Hayek)

Compatibility of all individual plans

Conditions for equilibrium

Plans can be carried out + expectations match reality

Why markets move toward equilibrium

People adjust expectations when disappointed

Division of knowledge

Knowledge is inherently scattered like labor

Laws of production (Mill)

Fixed by physical and technological factors

Laws of distribution (Mill)

Determined by social institutions and fully alterable

Preventive checks (Malthus)

Voluntary limits on births

Positive checks (Malthus)

Conditions that raise mortality

Purpose of separation of powers (Montesquieu)

Prevent tyranny by dividing authority

Definition of good vs economic good (Menger)

Economic good is a good made scarce relative to needs

Origin of money (Menger)

Spontaneous, organic development through voluntary human action

Why socialism eliminates price signals (Mises)

No private exchange because no private ownership

Why economic calculation needs markets

Only voluntary exchanges generate meaningful prices