Prof. Currah's Core 3 Section
Questions on Marx and Engels

I. Questions for George R. Vickers, "Karl Marx and the Process of Change"

1. What makes up the "mode of production"?

2. What are the "relations of production"?

3. What are the "forces of production"?

4. Why do societies change, according to Marx?

5. What are the main class relationships under capitalism?

6. What is the relationship between class and political power?

7. What is the "superstructure"?

8. What happens to the balance between the mode of production, the social relations integral to that mode, and the "superstructure" when the forces of production change? Why?

II. Questions for  Marx and Engels, "The Manifesto of the Communist Party"

9. How does class conflict affect the process of history?

10. What classes were conflicting in the feudal system?

11. What classes conflict under the capitalist system?

12. What is the "bourgeoisie"? How did the bourgeoisie's economic power affect its political power?

13. What was the bourgeoisie's "revolutionary role" in history? What did that class accomplish? What changes were brought about?

14. How are the "weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground...now turned against the bourgeoisie itself"? Be specific?

15. What has happened to the proletarians under the capitalist mode of production?

16. Why is the proletariat now the "revolutionary class"? What must the proletariat class do to overcome capitalism?

17. Why would a proletariat revolution free all classes, all people?

18. What view of human nature do Marx and Engels implicitly espouse? What view of human nature are they implicitly arguing against?

 

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Paisley Currah
718-951-4148
Department of Political Science
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210
pcurrah@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Last Revised -- 01/28/99