Lecture Outline: Marx

The key to such a theory is based on the following aspects of
PRODUCTIVE RELATIONS, which focuses on:

What resources exist (ie, wood, oil, water)

HOW we produce things (ie, the TOOLS we use, such as hammers or
rocks to pound, hand looms or industrial looms to weave).

SOCIAL RELATIONS (ie, How we are SOCIALLY ORGANIZED TO PRODUCE,
such as in "cottage industry" or in factories).

Culture (social expectations, shared values, language, laws, etc)

The first two are called the MEANS OF PRODUCTION, the second two
the MODE OF PRODUCTION.

means of production = economic base
      1) resources
      2) tools/etc
mode of production = superstructure
      1) forms of production/organization
      2) culture, language, social control, etc

Some people are able to control and
benefit, and are more able to dominate the distribution of good,
resources, or privileges (or which power and law are examples).
Others are NOT so-able.  Those who are able to control or
dominate the MEANS OF PRODUCTION and therefore are more able to
affect culture, wealth, or decision making, for example, are in
one class, those are are not able to do so are in the other.
Marx calls these groups CLASSES.  It is useful he says, to study
how CLASS relations affect society.  Although the concept of
class DOES have problems, this nonetheless forms the basis of a
Marxian analysis, and many feel provides on useful way of looking
at the TOTALITY of social interconnections between, for example,
crime and other aspects of society.

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Marx's theory was in part a theory about social transformations.
In brief, Marxism as formulated by Marx and Engels was:

1. A theory of history that posited the transitory nature
ofcapitalism

2. A analysis of captialist production that showed labor to be
exploited by capital

3. An analysis of the capital acumulatio or growth process that
concluded that capitalism creates both wealth and pvoerty and,
for this and other reasons, is subject to periodic crises; and

4. A theory of proletarian revolutios that alleged the inevitable
victory of socialism in advanced capitalist countries (Gurley,
1982: 4).

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