Professor Lindskog
Introduction to Political Theory
November 12, 2017
Identification Terms #3
For each of the terms/quotes below, please identify the book, the author, the speaker (if that is different from the author), define the term, and demonstrate its context and importance in the text from which it is taken. Please DO NOT use bullet points. You need to write in full sentences. A couple of paragraphs per identification term should be enough but please explain the terms fully.
General Will- The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau Rousseau crates his ideal government as a direct democracy. This means that all citizens directly vote on all laws and policy. If the vote gets a majority, it will become law because it is …show more content…
Who will then write the constitution of the state? That is the role of the legislator. It is a temporary position that will write the constitution of the state. After this the position will be resolved and the legislator will have no further power. They cannot enforce their own constitution because this is the job of the people. Rousseau describes the legislator as a person grounded in reason and without emotional attachment. My issue with the legislator is that the legislator is acting as a robot. How is society going to find someone who is immune from emotional attachment? Every person is biased in some way. This person would have to be trained from a young age to be the …show more content…
The revolution would likely be violent because bourgeoisie would not want to give up their means of production. Marx thought that socialism was better than capitalism but still left citizens unequal. While socialism moves away from the strong class divide of capitalism, it still treats people differently based on their abilities. This was because people are given credit to buy things according to their work. Each person can only do certain jobs based on their skills. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their work” became the motto of socialism. Although Marx was critical of socialism, he saw it as a necessary step to the final stage of history, communism. It would be a slow nonviolent transition from socialism to communism.
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle” The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx This quote represents Marx’s view on classes based off the time he lived in. In the bibliography provided on D2l we see that Marx lived in Europe during the period of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Marx lived in Europe during the rise of capitalism, this made him critical of it. It was natural for Marx to see classes as the cause of up rise in Europe at the