10. Points for discussion:

• Hegel said that History had taught nobody anything. Do the lessons of History

exist? Does History teach statesmen, politicians, military men anything? What is your opinion? Prove it.

• Speak on the role of monarchy in modern European countries.

• Hegel considered that the state was the culmination of moral action, where freedom

of choice had led to the unity of the rational will. Subordinating himself to the state, the individual was able to realize a synthesis between the values of the family and the needs of economic life. Agree or disagree with it.

• Can the concepts “society” and “state” be treated as synonyms, if not, what concept

has a broader meaning. Express your points of view in the form of a round-table talk.

• Speak on Hegel’s classification of religions as he classified them according to the

role that they have played in the self-realization of Spirit. The historical religions fall into three great divisions, corresponding with the stages of the dialectical progression. At the lowest level of development are the religions of nature (Buddhism and those of China). At an intermediate level are the religions of spiritual individuality (Greek, Roman). At the highest level is absolute religion, which Hegel identified with Christianity. What are the shortcomings of this classification?

11. Test you logic:

Mrs. Hudson preferred to buy her egg in bulk when she visited the market.

“How many did you buy this time?” asked Dr Watson.

“One hundred and sixty five,” Mrs Hudson replied.

“Great Scot!” exclaimed Watson. “however did you carry them all?”

“Easy,” replied Mrs Hudson. “I had four baskets with me. And, I might add, I carried an odd number in each basket!”

Watson thought about this for a moment, before replying, “Poppycock, that’s impossible!”

“Not so, Watson,” Holmes informed him as he gave Mrs Hudson a wink.

HOW DID MRS HUDSON DO IT?

12. Summarize the text in a paragraph of about 200 words. Unit 8 karl marx

Learn the topical vocabulary:

производительный	productive	сила	force
устаревший	out-of-date	согласовывать	co-ordinate
заменять	replace	господствующий	ruling
воспринимать	conceive	благоприятствовать	favour
путаница	confusion	оценивать	value
упорядоченный	well-ordered	разновидность	variety

Pre-text activities:

1. What do you understand by the word “society” in its broad and narrow sense?

2. Why can a society be characterized as a system?

3. What is hatred? What is the social danger of group hatred?

4. Tell about the role of the popular masses as creators of history using examples you know.

1. Read and translate the text:

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, son of a Jewish lawyer, who converted to Christianity in 1824. After studying law at University of Bohn, Marx left for the University of Berlin in 1836, where he associated with members of the radical Young Hegelian movement and switched the study of law to philosophy. In 1841 he received his doctorate but then abandoned his academic career in philosophy and turned his talents to journalism. In 1844Marx began collaborating with Friedrich Engels, the rebellious and self-educated son of a textile manufacturing family. It was Engels who introduced Marx to both the study of political economy and the working movement.

Marx’s manuscripts on political economy exhibit a brilliant intelligence, trained in Hegelian philosophy but influenced by Enlightenment materialism, beginning to articulate radical criticisms both of the capitalist social order and of its theoretical self-understanding in the works of economists such as Adam Smith and James Mill.

Marx’s interest in philosophical materialism is evident. But as a philosopher Marx remained in the tradition of Hegelian idealism, which he sought to marry with Enlightenment materialism. From both traditions he derived the idea that philosophy must both comprehend itself historically and engage itself practically in the progressive struggle of humanity. German idealism was concerned with the problems of human selfhood, the nature of fulfilling human life, and with people’s sense of meaning, self-worth, and relatedness to their natural and cultural environment.

Marx also offered the theory of society and history where he posited socially productive activity as the fundamental determinant of social organization and historical change. For the materialist conception of history, the fundamental element determining social organization is the productive powers of a society, and the fundamental determinant of history is the tendency of these powers to grow. Whether historical materialism is a “technological theory of history” depends on how broadly or narrowly we take the crucial idea of “productive powers”. Marx indicates, however, that under this heading he understands not only the arsenal of tools and means of production at people’s disposal, along with the human skills required to employ them, but also the theoretical knowledge of nature involved in production and even forms of human cooperation, insofar as they play a direct role in productive techniques and the satisfaction of human needs.

Productive powers at a given stage of development determine the nature of human laboring activity because labor consists in the exercise of those powers. Productive powers favor certain “social relations of production”, systems of social roles relating to control of the production process and the disposition of its fruits. These relations are the basis of institutions of property. Taken together, the system of social relations of production constitutes what Marx calls “economic structure of society” characteristic of a given “mode of production”. Marx understands history as divided into periods, specifically as a series of distinct modes of production, each with its own characteristic economic structure, social relations of production, and consequent forms of property, and distribution of social power.

The material theory treats political, legal, and other such institutions as a “superstructure” erected on this economic base. Political institutions reflect the dominant relations of economic power and property, because their function is to enforce those relations. The dominant ideas, conceptions and intellectual products in a society are erected on the same economic basis. Like political institutions, they reflect and tend to reinforce the dominant economic structure in the society.

Marx’s theory of historical change depends on the fact that the productive powers of society have a tendency to grow over time. As they grow, they alter their relation to dominant relations of production or the economic structure of society. New powers come to correspond to new relations of production, which would facilitate their social employment or their future expansion. When the powers and relations of production cease to correspond and come into conflict, this brings about a change in the economic structure of society, as new relations replace old ones. The old or outdated mode of production is then replaced by a new mode of production. An epoch in which such changes are occurring is an epoch of social revolution.

The materialist conception of history is simultaneously a summary of empirical results, a methodological program for empirical research, and a device for projecting the historical future. In Capital Marx’s theory both depends on and illustrates the materialist conception of history. It begins with an abstract analysis of capitalist production, grounded on the idea of a product of labor as an exchangeable commodity. Then it works through the determinant variants of commodity production found in modern capitalism, by developing the categories of exchange value, money, capital, wage labor and surplus value.

Marx always saw his theoretical activity as vitally connected to the practical struggle of the working class for universal human emancipation. He fought for the acceptance of his ideas within the working class movement because he thought that the success of the working class movement was dependent on its liberating itself from ideological confusions and achieving a correct scientific understanding of the social and historical process in which it is involved. In line with a radical tradition within the modern Enlightenment, Marx was convinced that humanity was on the verge of a radically new way of life, which would be brought about when the scientific understanding achieved by philosophers or intellectuals joins forces with a democratic mass movement.