Marxism

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Materialist

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the world is made up of natural physical things like food and shelter rather than idealistic abstractions like beauty and truth

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Karl Marx

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believed life shapes consciousness

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Material world

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a base

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superstructure

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rest of the world, produced by the base

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Economic determinism (economism)

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Marx's notion that economics is the cause of everything.

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Division

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leads to different classes with competing interests

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trade =

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bourgeoise

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Division of labour

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leads to different classes with competing interests

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Bourgeoisie

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exploited proletariate

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People who have capital...

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use their capital to purchase labour through wages and exploit the labour to accumulate wealth for themselves

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Dialectic

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history as an ongoing class struggle between those who labour and those who own.

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Marxist dialectic

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refers to the way in which contradictory arguments and economic forces engage with each other to prove something else.

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dialectic materialism would eventually resolve into...

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a socialist futur

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proletariates would....

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rise up in revolution, overthrow capitalism, and establish a socialist state with class divisions or private property.

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contemporary marxist is often....

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less about provoking social change than about using marxist ideas to interpret culture

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alienation of labour:

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factory workers work on only one small part of product and may never see the finished product let alone use it. this leads to workers feeling alienated from their labour.

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use-value

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pre-capitalist workers used the objects they produced

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commodities

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objects for sale on the markets that have exchange value

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exchange value

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leads to commodity fetish

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roles of art and literature as....

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commodities AND in competition with commodities

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certain commodities signify ...

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status and bring sign exchange value.

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commodification

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the process by which people themselves are commodified

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socialist realism

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literature that specifically endorsed a romantic vision of the common people and a communist vision of their future

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reification

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refers to the way that commodification reduces social relations, ideas, and even people to things, thus intensifying alienation

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gramsci

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distinguished between state (government) and civil society (culture)

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hegemony

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dominating culture influence -- leadership that won the seemingly spontaneous consent of the masses

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gramsci argued that...

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we might change bourgeoisie culture dominance by changing people's cultural assumptions

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Althusser

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contributed to an ongoing discussion about what marxists called ideology

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ideology

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an unconscious set of beliefs and assumptions, our imagination relation to real conditions that may not match what we imagine

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we believe that choices express our individuality but...

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we have been interpreted into unconsciously accepting the assumptions underneath the choice (consumerism)

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interpellation

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the process of being passively unconsciously drawn into dominant social assumptions

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intervention

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technical word for changing the system or at least trying to change it

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agency

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the ability to make things happen

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relative autonomy

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suggests at least a little independence from the system from interpellation but such independence does not have to come in the form of individualism

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relative autonomy seems to come from...

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imperfections in the overall system of any ideology

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false consciousness

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refers to a way of thinking that is interpolated into oppressive ideologies that it leads people to act against their own interest

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interest for a critic coms in the intricate negations across....

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the interlocking possibilities in any particular cultural activity

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we might ask who's labour makes it possible ...

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for the characters to do the things they do not do and how much the text makes labour visible

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if labour is invisible or rarely visible...

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that can interpellate readers into assuming that labour somehow matters less than other activities and that people who labour are somehow less than people whose class positions separates from from the working class