Hey, I need to write a paper, using the Marxist point of view. I have no idea what the Marxist teachings are. Someone tell me the basics...please

What kind of class is it?

It will take you less than 10 minutes to read The Communist Manifesto.

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/class ... festo.html

Its actually for "Effects of Mass Media". We have a clip of a newscast, involving a work stoppage at a British Auto Plant in 1975, and we have to analyze the situation using three different theoretical approaches; Marxism, Functionalism and a praxeological approach. I have functionalism down easy, and dont understand praxeology to save my life, marxism im just a wee bit fuzzy on. But i just found a copy of "the communist manifesto" i have to read later in the semester for a history course, sothat should answer some questions...but a few pointers would be appreciated.

A few key terms:

mode of production- industry is the underpinning factor of Marxism. This term basically means who controls (exploits) whom.
bougeois- rich bastards, since the industrial revolution
proletariat- poor bastards, since the industrial revolution

In the beginning, there's primitive socialism, which if you've read Daniel Quinn refers to all the 'Leaver' people, with their lack of social hierarchy. Then we had the classics age in Greece/Rome, when slavery was the norm. Then the feudal age, when we had the kings and bishops and knights and peasants. After that came the post-industrial revolution age, where there's the bourgeois, capitalists who owned things, and the proletariat, those who worked for the bourgeois. The bourgeois is always rorting the proles. They may give them some goodies like welfare and wages to satisfy them, but in the end they always win. Until the proles rise up and kick out the rich bastards, bringing in the age of communism. Everyone is equal, blah blah blah. End of evolution.

That is the essence of Marx 101.

Possibly the most interesting thing about Marxism is that every government that has tried implementing it has failed miserably because they didn't understand the teachings or that they only applied to industrial societies. The non-industrial societies are the only ones that have attempted Marxism.

Marx also taught that in order for true communism to be achieved, capitalism would first have to be achieved, and then gradually change to a liberal capitalism, then to socialism, and then the government would be phased out completely and communism would occur.

Thank you. That is exactly what i needed. Just a very basic definition of what it is, and a few key terms that I could throw in there to spice things up. The part on Marxism only has to be two pages...so im good. But feel free to keep giving me some ideas.

USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, N. Korea- none of these are communist countries. A communist country is an oxymoron. Of these, only China has come out of the experiment with a bright future, and that has more to do with its current market policies and cultural history than anything else that happened during the "Cultural Revolution".

Where socialism has worked is through social democracy, in the Scandinavian countries. Interesting to note that these countries all have relatively small populations.

Yeah, the Communist Manifesto wasn't exactly written to be tough reading.

--PunkDavid

I rememeber when I read it for the first time back in Sociology 101, and then I spent the next 2 hours working on a bum's version of the paper just cos I felt like it.

I don't think mine made it all that much easier to read. When Marx wrote it, I think he took into consideration those who have not had a strong education, which was the overwhelming majority then.

Das Kapital, however, will take a genius to fully understand.

It should be noted that no country has ever achieved Marx's ultimate goal, which is a classless society with no state. Interestingly enough, this is the same goal as anarchism, even though the two philosophies obviously disagree on the means to achieve that goal.

Why do I feel like I just read a paragraph from Lord of the Rings?

Please, I'm a much better writer than that dunce, Tolkien.

It might also be worth differenciating between systems of government and economic systems.

Its my understanding, and I might have this wrong, that there are conflicting goals within them, lending themselves to "evolution" into something else.

Capitalism vs Democracy
Socialism vs Marxism

Where people tend to argue that Democracy cannot exist long term in a Capitalistic society and eventually evolves into something looking like socialism, for example.

I don't know what is what, and I'm no economist nor social scientist, but it's probably worth investigating as part of your project.

good luck!

c-

no offense...but your professors are probably looking for academic citations...as opposed to (Purple Hawk 2005)

i had classes about Marx in my Post Graduation Course in Economic Development. what i can remember without refering to my notes is the great description of capitalism as a mode of production. my teacher had just finished the translation of the "Notes" (i can't write the name in German, maybe Das Gründish, or something like that) that Marx had written to prepare for writing The Capital, so we were almost reading from the source. the theory begins with what you expect from an economical process, especially the industrial one: M (merchandise). capitalism is a means of putting together the factors (sorry for the poor translation) of production: C (capital, money) and L (labour, working force). the "almighty market" is this entity with an invisible hand that has its own laws, almost natural laws, that determine the needs of consumers and the behaviour of the factors of production (demand determines offer). the owner of the factors of prodution (producer) always seek the factor that costs less (fine alocation of resources), according to the law of the market: the more you have of a factor (quantity), the less it costs (price). and L is generally more available and, thus, less expensive than C, that's why people get exploited. what Marx added to the relation between C and L to produce M is what i can call "added value" (i don't know how to say it in english), which is that part of the labour energy that is given by the working force that is not considered as part of the production process, and is not rewarded by any kind of payment. what happens with the evolution of capitalism is that it goes into enthropy, when the result expected is not M anymore, but only the Capital itself, when C becomes so cheap that the producer has no interest in keeping the production process itself. in the end, it's C -> C', money for money (sounds familiar?). at this point, capitalism will end. by this time, the working forces will have had time to educate themselves, gather forces and build a new society, where a different mode of production can be established without the exploitation. that's the economic theory. the political approach was given more by Engels than by Marx himself, in the Manifesto. it focus more on comunism as an alternative mode of production, where the Government is present to control the forces active in the market. my 2 cents.

My history teacher said that he had to do a paper explaining 2001 (the Kubrick movie) in a Marxist point of view when he was in college

Ok, I have Functionalism and Marxism down...but does anyone know what the fuck Praxiology (praxeology) is?

Here ya go. http://www.praxeology.net/praxeo.htm