Marxist

Examples of Marxist in the following topics:

• Marx's View of Class Differentiation

  • In the Marxist perspective, social stratification is created by unequal property relations, or unequal access to the means of production.
  • Marxist inequality is exemplified by the relationship between a factory owner and factory employee—a factory owner is concerned only with financial profits and earns material wealth, while the assembly line employee is concerned with the conditions of production and is unlikely to accumulate material wealth.
  • In Marxist theory, the capitalist mode of production consists of two main economic parts: the substructure and the Superstructure.
  • These relations of production—employer-employee relations, the technical division of labor, and property relations—form the base of society or, in Marxist terms, the substructure.

• Functions of the State

  • Marxists explain political outcomes and policies not by reference to different interest groups, but by assuming that the state acts in a way that benefits capitalists and hurts workers.
  • So, for example, Marxists would not be surprised to see government forces such as the police or national guard mobilized in order to put down strikers, nor would they be surprised when politicians continually give tax cuts to the rich.
  • On an even more mundane level, Marxists might point out that many states have given capitalists extra privileges by treating corporations as people, affording them the same rights as human beings.
  • Marxist theory, on the other hand, sees politics as intimately intermingled with economic relations, and emphasizes the relationship between economic power and political power.
  • Marxists view the state as a partisan instrument that primarily serves the interests of the upper class.

• The Marxist Critique of Capitalism

  • Marxists define capital as "a social, economic relation" between people (rather than between people and things).
  • Marxists have offered various related lines of argument claiming that capitalism is a contradiction-laden system characterized by recurring crises that have a tendency towards increasing severity.

• Colonialism and Neocolonialism

  • One approach sociologists take to colonialism and neocolonialism is a Marxist perspective.
  • According to some Marxist historians, in all of the colonial countries ruled by Western European countries, indigenous people were robbed of health and opportunities.
  • From a Marxist perspective, colonies are considered vis-à-vis modes of production.
  • Dependency theory builds upon Marxist thought, blaming colonialism and neocolonialism for poverty within the world system.
  • Differentiate between dependency theory, world-systems theory, and the Marxist perspective on colonialism

• Religion and Social Control

  • From a Marxist perspective, these expectations become part of religion's ability to control society and maintain the status quo.

• Ideology

  • In the Marxist account of ideology, it serves as an instrument of social reproduction.
  • In the Marxist economic base and superstructure model of society, base denotes the relations of production, and superstructure denotes the dominant ideology (religious, legal, political systems).

• Types of Governments

  • While almost all claim lineage to Marxist thought, there are many varieties of Communist states, with indigenous adaptions.
  • For Marxist-Leninists, the state and the Communist Party claim to act in accordance with the wishes of the industrial working class; for Maoists, the state and party claim to act in accordance to the peasantry.
  • Map of countries that declared themselves or were declared to be socialist states under the Marxist-Leninist or Maoist definition at some point in their history.
  • Note that not all of these countries were Marxist-Leninist or Maoist at the same time.

• Student Subcultures

  • Marxist theories account for some diversity, as they focus on classes and class-fractions rather than youth as a whole.
  • Conversely, Marxists of the Frankfurt School of social studies argue that youth culture is inherently consumerist and integral to the divide-and-rule strategy of capitalism.

• Evaluating Global Theories of Inequality

  • Marxists, by contrast, see global inequality as indicative of exploitation and consider it a detriment to society.
  • Differentiate between the positions on social inequality taken by functionalists, Marxists, modern liberalism, and social justice advocates

• Class

  • Common models used to think about social class come from Marxist theory: common stratum theory, which divides society into the upper, middle, and working class; and structural-functionalism.
  • In Marxist theory, the class structure of the capitalist mode of production is characterized by two main classes: the bourgeoisie, or the capitalists who own the means of production, and the much larger proletariat (or working class) who must sell their own labor power for wages.
  • For Marxists, class antagonism is rooted in the situation that control over social production necessarily entails control over the class which produces goods—in capitalism this is the domination and exploitation of workers by owners of capital.