|
Opium Of The People
The opium of the people or opium of the masses () is a dictum used in reference to religion, derived from a frequently paraphrased partial statement of German revolutionary and critic of political economy Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people." In context, the statement is part of Marx's analysis that religion's role is as a metaphysical balm for the real suffering in the universe and in society.Rogers, M., and M. E. Konieczny. 2018.Does religion always help the poor? Variations in religion and social class in the west and societies in the global south" ''Palgrave Communications'' 4(73). . This statement was translated from the German original, "" and is often rendered as "religion ..is the opiate of the ." The full sentence from Marx translates (including italics) as: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the of the people."Marx, Karl. 8431970.Introduction" ''A Contribution to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dictum
In legal writing, a (Latin 'something that has been said'; plural ) is a statement made by a court. It may or may not be binding as a precedent. United States In United States legal terminology, a ''dictum'' is a statement of opinion considered authoritative (although not binding), given the recognized authority of the person who pronounced it. There are multiple subtypes of , although due to their overlapping nature, legal practitioners in the U.S. colloquially use to refer to any statement by a court the scope of which extends beyond the issue before the court. in this sense are not binding under the principle of , but tend to have a strong persuasive effect, by virtue of having been stated in an authoritative decision, or by an authoritative judge, or both. These subtypes include: * : A personal or individual dictum that is expressed by the judge who delivers an opinion but that is not necessarily concurred in by the whole court and that is not essential to the disposi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opium
Opium (also known as poppy tears, or Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the seed Capsule (fruit), capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. Opium's main psychoactive alkaloids, primarily morphine, act on μ-opioid receptors, causing analgesia and addiction with long-term use leading to tolerance, dependence, and increased cancer risk. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine, and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off and dehydrated. The English word for opium is loan word, borrowed fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alienation (Marxism)
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the separation and Self-estrangement, estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their Marx's theory of human nature, human nature, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class. The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legitimation
Legitimation, legitimization ( US), or legitimisation ( UK) is the act of providing legitimacy. Legitimation in the social sciences refers to the process whereby an act, process, or ideology becomes legitimate by its attachment to norms and values within a given society. It is the process of making something acceptable and normative to a group or audience. Legitimate power is the right to exercise control over others by virtue of the authority of one's superior organizational position or status. Power and influence For example, the legitimation of power can be understood using Max Weber's traditional bases of power. In a bureaucracy, people gain legitimate use of power by their positions in which it is widely agreed that the specified person hold authority. There is no inherent right to wield power. For example, a president can exercise power and authority because the position is fully legitimated by society as a whole. In another example, if an individual attempts to conv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Relations Of Production
Relations of production () is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's published book ''The Poverty of Philosophy'', although Marx and Engels had already defined the term in ''The German Ideology'' which was only published posthumously in 1932. Some social relations are voluntary or freely chosen (ie. a person chooses to associate with another person or a group). But other social relations are involuntary, i.e. people can be socially related, whether they like that or not, because they are part of a family (ie. biosocial kinship) a group, an organization, a community, a nation, etc. By "relations of production", Marx and Engels meant the sum total of social relationships that people ''must'' enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life. As people ''must'' enter into these social relationships, i.e. because participation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classless Society
A classless society is a society in which no one is born into a social class like in a class society. Distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture, or social network might arise and would only be determined by individual experience and achievement in such a society. Thus, the concept posits not the absence of a social hierarchy but the uninheritability of class status. Helen Codere defines social class as a segment of the community, the members of which show a common social position in a hierarchical ranking.Codere, H. (1957). Kwakiutl Society: Rank without Class. ''American Anthropologist'', ''59''(3), 473–486. Codere suggests that a true class-organized society is one in which the hierarchy of prestige and social status is divisible into groups. Each group with its own social, economic, attitudinal and cultural characteristics, and each having differential degrees of power in community decision. Classless societies can be attained through numerous means, such a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists seek to combat the worst effects of capitalism and to eventually replace capitalism with an alternative economic system. Characteristics Anti-capitalism can range from a reformist position, which aims to limit corporate power and oppose neoliberal policies, to a radical position, which entirely rejects capitalism and seeks to replace the existing social order. Key principles of anti-capitalism, as outlined by the charter of the World Social Forum, include a committent to democracy and egalitarianism. Anti-capitalists view capitalism either as a social relation or as a distinct economic and political system, and how they view it informs their methods of opposing it. Reformist anti-capitalism places itself in opposition to specific economic practices, including commodification and capital accumulation, and seeks to combat the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socialist Revolution
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests. Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermined. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple political and social movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. These include movements based on orthodox Marxist theory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruling Class
In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply their cultural hegemony to determine and establish the dominant ideology (ideas, culture, mores, Norms (sociology), norms, Tradition, traditions) of the society. In the case of the Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory), capitalist mode of production, that class is the capitalist class, also known as the bourgeoisie. In the 21st century, the worldwide political economy established by globalization has created a transnational capitalist class who are not native to any one country. Background In previous mode of production, modes of production, such as feudalism (inheritable property and rights), the feudal lords of the manor were the ruling class; in an economy based upon Slavery, chattel slavery, the slave owners were the rulin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
False Consciousness
In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation and inequality intrinsic to the social relations between classes. As such, it legitimizes and normalizes the existence of different social classes. According to Marxists, false consciousness is consciousness which is misaligned from reality. Thus, it is a serious impediment to human progress and correcting it is a major focus of dialectical materialism. Origin of terminology Although Marx never used the term "false consciousness" in his writings, he made references to workers having misguided or harmful ideas, and he suggested how those ideas get reinforced by powerful elites. For example, in an 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, Marx discussed the antagonism between English proletarians and Irish proletarian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. Class is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and Social history, social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of class. Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term social class is usually synonymous with Socioeconomic status, socioeconomic class, defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g. the working class, "an emerging professional class" etc. However, academics distinguish socia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exploitation (Marxism)
Exploitation is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. When applying this to labour (or labor), it denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers. When speaking about exploitation, there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory and traditionally this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of their vulnerable position, giving the exploiter the power.Dowding, Keith (2011). "Exploitation". ''Encyclopedia of Power''. SAGE Publications. pp. 232–235. . Karl Marx's theory of exploitation has been described in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' as the most influential theory of exploitation. Marx described exploitation as the theft of economic power in all class-based societies, including capitalism, through the working class (or the proletariat, as Marx called them) being force ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
