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Global Political Economy

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Global political economy is recognition of the need to properly study the interaction of the economy and the state for a better understanding of society. This concept is concerned with the way that governments intervene in the state’s economy and the implications that this has, and the role the government plays. Study into this relationship has given birth to conflicting theories from liberals and Marxists. The ideas of Liberalism in the global economy emerged in 18th- and 19th- century Britain alongside the Industrial Revolution. This liberal outlook offered a new analysis of economic nationalist by arguing that protectionism and restriction of economic activity were actually impoverishing states. The Marxist theory emerged during the 19th …show more content…

For Marxists, they focus on class as the most important actor in the global economy, rather than the state. Both Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx are the founding fathers of this theory and the ones that unleashed the conflict between the workers and capitalists. According to Engels and Marx (1848), the working class seizing power would bring about the resolution of this conflict. Marxist theory rejected the notion of individualism of liberal theory and embraced the collective nature of economic nationalist perspective. Marxists have however, rejected statism and instead choosing to focus on the significance of class. According to O’Brien and Williams (2013), Marx defined class in relation to the structure of production, which creates owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the labourers who sell their labour power to the bourgeoisie (the workers). The main conflict arises from between the bourgeoisie (the owners of capital) and the proletariat (the workers). Capitalism is built upon two key principles of the pursuit of profit and the protection of private property. These principles allow the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat by paying them a wage that is less than the market value of the goods and services that they produce. Marxists see TNCs as contributing to the exploitation and oppression of the working class. Followers of this theory argue the centralisation and concentration of capital visible in the form of TNCs is a key feature of imperialism, whereby dominance is expressed in the global economy. In this case, the state is seen as the representative of class interests rather than the expression of the harmony of communal interests posited by economic

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Karl Marx, a ground breaking sociologist, economist, and philosopher, lived from 1818 to 1883. During his lifetime he propounded this epic sociologic perspective, the conflict theory. (McClelland) The conflict theory discusses how the rich and the poor have been fighting ongoing battle for power. The group in control actively defends their advantages.

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Marxist theory aimed to examine capitalism's trends, workers' liberation, and the potential for revolution through class

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In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment

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People hide and refuse to accept their deepest secrets and desires. But what happens when it is time to face the truth? “The Vine” by Robert Herrick is about the narrator’s secret desire to rape a young virgin girl. In the poem about the narrator’s wet dream, Herrick uses phallic imagery to express this secret idea to the unsuspecting reader. The poem also includes the idea of repressed dreams to explain his undesirable desires.

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Foundations of Sociology (SOC10010) Mid-Term Essay: Question: ‘’Discuss three main ideas from the Communist Manifesto.’’ Answer: In this essay I have been asked to discuss three main ideas from the ‘’Communist Manifesto’’, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. To do this I will summarise three main ideas from the text and critically analyse them.

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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels express their major critiques and opinions on capitalism in their 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto. Their critiques are based around the idea that capitalism is simply unfair, meaning that one class benefits significantly more than the rest. The class that benefits least from capitalism is the proletariats. This unintelligent labor class suffers from the capitalists dominance, and is unaware of the damage they are experiencing. George Orwell’s depiction of Boxer in his novel, Animal Farm, fits precisely into Marx and Engels’ negative critique of capitalism by representing a strong symbol for the proletariat class and succumbing to the powerful demands of the capitalists.

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“In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations” (Manifesto, 1848). In the Communist manifesto, Marx discusses the class type of his time, bourgeois and proletariat. The bourgeois were the higher class who exploited the proletariats. They constantly strived to expand their power and wealth in society.

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Capitalism is understood to be the “economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” In modern society, capitalism has become the dominant economic system and has become so integrated that it has resulted in a change in the relationships individuals have with other members of society and the materials within society. As a society, we have become alienated from other members of society and the materials that have become necessary to regulate ourselves within it, often materials that we ourselves, play a role in producing. Capitalism has resulted in a re-organization of societies, a more specialized and highly segmented division of labour one which maintains the status quo in society by alienating the individual. Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim theorize on how power is embodied within society and how it affects the individuals of society.

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Karl Marx talks about the role of communism and his conjecture of underlying this type of revolution. He speaks of two different class struggles, the "Bourgeoisie and Proletarians". Bourgeoisie are the people with authority, the ones who own production and are bosses of wage labor while the proletariat are the individuals with no authority, no ownership and are giving up their own power to the Bourgeoisie in order to survive. Societies began to separate and became hostile and aggressive classes. It all became about social ranking because of the increase and need of production.

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Marx believed that the class struggle forced social change. Marx’s theory is based on a class system

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Marx and Engels wrote that capitalist globalization was completely eroding the foundations of the international system of states in the mid-1840s. Conflict and competition between nation-states had not yet over in their view but the main fault-lines in future looked certain to revolve around the two main social classes: the national bourgeoisie, which controlled different systems of government, and an increasingly cosmopolitan proletariat. Over revolutionary action, the international proletariat would insert the Enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and fraternity in an exclusively new world order which would free all human beings from exploitation and domination. Many traditional theorists of international relations have pointed to the failures of Marxism or historical materialism as an explanation of world history. Marxists had undervalued the vital importance of nationalism, the state and war, and the implication of the balance of power, international law and diplomacy for the structure of world politics.

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According to Edwards et al. (2006) Marx thought that within capitalism there would be an increased divide between the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class in the future. The proletariats are lower of the two classes, the people who have to work for wages in order to survive. The bourgeoisie are the people in society who controlled and owned the means of production in a capitalist system.

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Bourgeoisie, which gains the power, defines superstructure “including all social and legal institution, all political and educational systems, all religions and all art” (Bressler, 162), and articulate the ideology which is based on profits of bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie ideology leads to alienation of individuals, especially proletariats. This bourgeoisie ideology creates the clash between the two classes. Marx supported the working class and their victory over dominant class. Marxism believes in providing equal opportunity to the working class as that are available to the

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Question 1. What do you make of Karl Marx’s contributions to sociology? Answer: It would take volumes to describe how important Karl Marx’s work is in sociology. His work is important in the 21st century because his concepts and ideas are the only genuine seeds for a better society.

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Class conflict, Marx believed, was what encouraged the evolution of society. To quote Marx himself, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one

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