Term
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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. |
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Term
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Definition
The process through which members of a society change material nature
into useful products. |
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Term
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Definition
The natural resources and physical tools that enter into the production
process. |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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Definition
the fundamental social relations in a society, which determine who has
access to and control over the means of production. |
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Term
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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). |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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Definition
The class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of production and employers
of wage-labor. |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
An amount of money paid to a worker for the use of her labor-power for a set period of
time. |
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Term
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Definition
The wage equivalent to what is necessary to keep the wage-laborer in bare
existence as a laborer. |
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Term
| Necessary value (of the product) |
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Definition
The value of that part of the product necessary to sustain and
reproduce the lives of the members of a society. |
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Term
| Surplus value (of the product) |
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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. |
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Term
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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). |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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Definition
The antagonism between the ruling class and the working class over the fair
distribution of the benefits and burdens of the production process. |
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Term
| Economic base (of society) |
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Definition
The social relations of production, which determines the nature of
all other social institutions and relations. |
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Term
| Superstructure (of society) |
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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. |
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Term
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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. |
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Term
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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). |
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Term
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Definition
Marx’s utopian vision of a classless society in which class struggle, alienation,
and exploitation would be eliminated. |
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