Study Questions For 2^nd Midterm, Fall 2002

1) Describe Marx's analysis of alienated labor, including the 4 main aspects of alienated labor, how these aspects are logically related to one another, what effect higher wages or being a state employee has on alienation. Explain and evaluate Marx's claim that communism as the positive overcoming of private property would eliminate alienation, but that crude and thoughtless communism would not. What features of society (including organization of work) are necessary in order to overcome alienation?

           2) Describe the stages that post-capitalist society would go through, according to the Critique of the Gotha Program. Include standard according to which goods would we distributed, the role of labor, need, and equal rights. Why is the "people's free state" slogan rejected? What is the role of the state in the various stages of post-capitalist society?

           3) Describe the forces which mold the working class into the grave diggers of capitalism, according to the Communist Manifesto. What is Marx's (and Engels') case that the overthrow of capitalism by the working class is inevitable? Is this a fatalistic point of view? Explain. Explain the concept of agency. Can a class be an agent? What role does agency play in Marx's analysis of the likelihood of revolution? How is the working class different in its potential agency from slaves, or serfs?

           4) Describe how the structure and internal conflicts of capitalist society (both between classes and within classes) lead to the following tendencies according to the Communist Manifesto: (1) Revolutionizing the instruments of production, (2) expansion abroad, (2) crises of overproduction. Explain what the "anarchy of capitalist production" is and the role it plays in making periodic crises inevitable.

          5) Describe Marx's view of the role of relations of production, forces of production, politics, and ideology in historical development and change. What is "productive forces determinism"? How does it differ from the "zig-zag" interpretation? What is the relevance of the organic system interpretation to the question of whether ideas are effective in history? What is internal history of ideas? Does Marx think that kind of history is possible? Why or why not?

Pages in the red book: (a) assigned so far: 157 - 186 (Manifesto), 98 - 101(Theses on Feuerbach), 209 - 213 (Preface to Critique of Political Economy), 196- 205(18th Brumaire), 294- 300 (Capital); (b) please read: 315 - 332 (Critique of the Gotha Program), 111-112, 118 mid - 122, 129 bot - 130 top, (German Ideology),