Question 1

English industrialists and government leaders found it difficult to suppress the Luddite rebellion because rebels carried out uncoordinated, individual acts of sabotage against factory machinery.

Accepted Answer

The Luddite rebellion involved uncoordinated acts of sabotage against factory machinery, which made it difficult for industrialists and government leaders to suppress it.

Question 2

In "standing Hegel on his head," Marx rejected the dialectical notion of change through contradiction while advancing the idea that historical change occurs at the level of ideas and beliefs.

Accepted Answer

Marx actually embraced the dialectical notion of change through contradiction, and believed that historical change occurred through material conditions and the struggles between social classes. "Standing Hegel on his head" referred to Marx using dialectical materialism to turn Hegel's idealist philosophy upside down.

Question 3

Because Marx was an active participant in the Russian revolution of 1917, it can be said that the collapse of the Soviet Union effectively repudiates and refutes Marx's ideas.

Accepted Answer

While Marx's ideas influenced the formation of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the USSR does not necessarily refute his entire body of work. Marx's ideas about the exploitation of the working class and the contradictions of capitalism are still widely debated and studied in academic and political circles. The failure of a particular implementation of Marxist theory does not necessarily invalidate the principles behind it.

Question 4

For Marx, exploitation under capitalism meant that some, but not all, employers treat their workers with abuse or injustice.

Accepted Answer

For Marx, exploitation under capitalism was not limited to individual employers mistreating their workers, but rather was inherent in the structure of capitalist relations between workers and owners of the means of production. Marx argued that the extraction of surplus value from workers' labor by capitalists was the core of exploitation within capitalism.

Question 5

According to Marx, the central contradiction in capitalism exists between consumption and production. Workers produce more than they are able to consume, leading to factory closures, rising unemployment, and deepening poverty.

Accepted Answer

This is a central tenet of Marxist theory, as outlined in his work "Das Kapital". Marx believed that capitalism created a situation where workers produced more than they could consume, resulting in an overproduction crisis that led to economic downturns and social conflict.

Question 6

According to Marx, class consciousness among workers would occur as skill differences among them are reduced to the least common denominator (the ability to operate machinery), and as employers reduce wages in the pursuit of lowered production costs.

Accepted Answer

This is known as the theory of "proletarianization," where Marx predicted that as capitalism developed, workers would become increasingly homogenized in terms of skills and income, leading to a shared consciousness of their exploitation and the need to overthrow the capitalist system.

Question 7

The New Deal reforms introduced by FDR were strongly supported by US business leaders as a means of preserving the basic outlines of a capitalist economy.

Accepted Answer

Many US business leaders opposed the New Deal reforms introduced by FDR, viewing them as too interventionist and a threat to the capitalist economy, rather than a means of preserving it.

Question 8

According to dialectical materialism, a society's belief systems (ideology) and social relations (juridico-political structure) derive their basic character from that society's mode of production, or material base.

Accepted Answer

According to dialectical materialism, a society's ideology and juridico-political structure are shaped by its mode of production.

Question 9

According to Marx's evolutionary scheme, under communism conflicts between social classes would finally disappear, leading the state to "wither away" as unnecessary.

Accepted Answer

Marx believed that communism would abolish classes and create a classless society, leading to the eventual disappearance of the state as a governing body.

Question 10

Hegemony refers to a condition in which the dominant beliefs in a society represent that social order as "right" or natural, and therefore prevent people from challenging the political, economic, and social conditions of their lives.

Accepted Answer

This is the definition of hegemony as described by the social theorist Antonio Gramsci.

Quiz 4: Theory and Practice to Change the World