Details Title: Final Exam Description: Marx, Simone de Beauvior, Sartre Total Flash Cards: 23 Created: 04/29/2009 15:25:29		New Users: To study from this flashcard set, or to create your own your own study flash cards, REGISTER HERE. Existing Users: CLICK HERE. Additional Philosophy Flashcards
Cards in this set: Term Historical materialism Definition Marx’s theory of history according to which historical change within a given society occurs through the reciprocal interaction and development (i.e. the dialectical relation) of members of that society and the material conditions of their existence. Term Production process Definition The process through which members of a society change material nature into useful products. Term Means of production Definition The natural resources and physical tools that enter into the production process. Term Forces of production Definition The means of production plus the human labor, including the types of skills and the size of the labor supply, used in production process. Term Relations of production Definition the fundamental social relations in a society, which determine who has access to and control over the means of production. Term Mode of production Definition The forces of production as utilized at any given historical moment within determinate relations of production. The three fundamental modes of production (economic systems) in the West have been despotism (ancient), feudalism (medieval), and capitalism (modern). Term Capitalism Definition The modern economic system (mode of production) in which the ruling economic class owns the means of production and the working class sells its labor-power. Term Economic class Definition A group of people defined by their access to, or control over, the means of production. Each period of history has two basic economic classes: the ruling class, which controls access to the means of production, and the working class, which has no independent access to the means of production. Term Bourgeoisie Definition The class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of production and employers of wage-labor. Term Proletariat Definition The class of modern wage-laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live. Term Labor-power Definition The ability to work. Term Wage Definition An amount of money paid to a worker for the use of her labor-power for a set period of time. Term Minimum wage Definition The wage equivalent to what is necessary to keep the wage-laborer in bare existence as a laborer. Term Necessary value (of the product) Definition The value of that part of the product necessary to sustain and reproduce the lives of the members of a society. Term Surplus value (of the product) Definition The value of that part of the product over and above what is necessary to sustain and reproduce the lives of the members of a society. Term Exploitation Definition The unequal exchange between the wage-laborer and the capitalist in which the worker must contribute most of the labor-power to the production process, but in exchange gets none of the surplus value of the product (or only the wage approximately equal to the necessary value of the product). Term Alienation Definition The degraded condition to which the modern wage-laborer is reduced wherein she is estranged from the product of her labor, her productive activity, her species-being, and other human beings. Term Class struggle Definition The antagonism between the ruling class and the working class over the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of the production process. Term Economic base (of society) Definition The social relations of production, which determines the nature of all other social institutions and relations. Term Superstructure (of society) Definition The legal, political and cultural institutions, along with the social relations that they organize, which are founded on the economic base of society, and which tend to stabilize prevailing relations of production and thereby to promote the interests of the ruling class. Term Ideology Definition System of beliefs and values (in the form of scientific and philosophical theories and common opinion) which is presented as—and generally regarded as if it were—the objective truth, but which in reality serves to perpetuate and legitimate the power of the ruling class over the working class. Term Critique of ideology Definition The practice of unmasking of the dominant system of beliefs and values as a system of representations that tends to perpetuate and legitimate the power of the ruling class over the working class, or, more generally, to promote asymmetrical power relations between any two social groups (e.g., whites over blacks, men over women, or heterosexuals over homosexuals). Term Communism Definition Marx’s utopian vision of a classless society in which class struggle, alienation, and exploitation would be eliminated.