1.) What are some of Marx’s criticisms of capitalism?
Marx’s view of capitalism is a system that alienates the masses. His reasonings were; although workers produce things for the market, market forces, not workers, control things. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace.
2.) How might you respond to the criticisms you discussed in question 1?
A claim that communism will provide workers with more leisure? I agree with Tom woods on the fact that we won’t have capitalists anymore, but does it mean more leisure? Capitalists have an incentive to increase the productivity of labor and increases in the productivity of labor are what make leisure possible. Under capitalism, people may prefer additional income to more free time.
3.) Discuss the following three items in brief:
a. What Is To Be Done?
~ Lenin’s work on “what is to be done” he argues that the working class will not spontaneously become political simply by fighting economic battles with employers over wages, working hours, and the like.
b. New Economic Policy
~ Introduced by Vladimir Lenin in 1921, he understood that economic conditions were dire, so he opened up markets to a greater degree of free trade, hoping to motivate the population to increase production. The significance of this was that it eased the harsh restrictions of war communism, the Bolshevik economic policy during the Civil War, and allowed the return of markets and petty trade.
c. Ukrainian terror-famine
~ The famine was planned and exacerbated by Joseph Stalin in order to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement, a dual-purpose by-product of collectivization, designed to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and the most important concentration of prosperous peasants at one throw. 3.3 percent of Ukraine’s population died at the time of the Holodomor.
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