What is the role of class struggle and revolution to Marxism as a theory of history and social development?.
Marxism, or dialectical and historical materialism, has served as both the explanatory theory of history and social development and the theoretical basis for socialist and communist movements in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
What is the role of stages of history, of material conditions and consciousness, to Marxism as a theory of history? What is the role of dialectical relationships, forces of production, and relations of production, to Marxism as a theory of history and social development? What is the role of class struggle and revolution to Marxism as a theory of history and social development? What, according to Marxism, are the unique features of capitalism as a system and why, in Marxist theory, must capitalism be replaced by socialism for civilization to advance?
2. From the class work, readings in Hobsbawm, and videos, (you tube clips and in class films, Winstanley, Burn, and The Organizer) answer the following questions: what accomplishments had the socialist movement made by 1917 that is before the Soviet socialist revolution? How had issues of nationalism vs. internationalism and war and peace affected the development of the socialist movement and its responses to these questions? In what ways. Given both Marxist theory and the history of the socialist movement until 1917, can we understand both the failures of the movement to establish socialism in a leading capitalist country, the U.S., Britain, France, or Germany and its triumph in Czarist Russia?
The essay questions seek to help you put together and begin to apply the theory that guided the socialist movement to the history of the movement. Try to keep your exam to around 5 to 10 pages. Try to synthesize class lectures and readings and videos in answering the questions. Make sure to cite sources and show me in the process that you have understood the work in Eaton, Selsam and Martel, and Hobsbawm
