WHAT WERE THE CORE TENETS OF (KARL)
MARXISM (1818-83)?
What are the supposed contradictions of capitalism?:
•What kind of world was Marx writing for?
•What is the law of capitalist accumulation (why do the bourgeoisie take surplus
value from the proletariat)
•What is the law of increasing misery and alienation
•What is the superstructure & hegemony (false consciousness)?
Why did Marx think revolution was inevitable?:
•Why did capitalism replace feudalism and to what effect?
•Concentration of capital kills off the petit bourgeoisie
•Worker (proletariat) alienation increases
•Overproduction leads to crisis and war
What supposedly happens after the revolution? What’s really happened?
•Why would there have be a dictatorship of the proletariat?
•What was good communist (vs. socialist) life supposed to look like… no property
and roughly equal outcomes end oppression (and restructure families
•In what sense did Western, social democratic capitalism ultimately
incorporate Marx’s ideas more effectively than communism?
WAS MAJOR REVISIONS
DID VI LENIN & MAO MAKE?
Leninism:
•Why revolution in Russia? Why hadn’t revolution
happened in W. Europe as predicted by Marx?
•Can imperialism explain the lack of global revolution by
temporarily dealing with the capitalism?
•Why were the Bolsheviks needed as a vanguard party of
the proletariat?
•What’s the appeal of democratic centralism as a way of
decision-making
•Why did Lenin think that a command economy and the
strong state would be needed at first. How did Joseph
Stalin make them permanent?
WAS MAJOR REVISIONS
DID VI LENIN & MAO MAKE?
Maoism
•In what sense was it a response to Stalinism
and its nomenclatura?
•Why did Mao think communism requires
violence by peasant revolutionaries?
•Why did he think a society could function on a
“moral economy” instead of a command
economy?
•Why did he think guerilla warfare and perpetual
mobilization must be permanent aspects of the
communist society?