What is the German Ideology to which Marx and Engels refer in their work so entitled?
All students must select one (1) paper topic from the list below.
Be sure to indicate the number of the question you are answering.
1. In his Second Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared: “The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.” We know that Karl Marx too saw the emergence of private property as a fateful moment in human history. Compare and contrast Marx’s and Rousseau’s critiques of the bourgeois state. What roles do (1) the division of labor and (2) the emergence of private property play in each critique? Why could not Marx be content with Rousseau’s critique?
2. What is the German Ideology to which Marx and Engels refer in their work so entitled? How do their exposure and critique of that “ideology” in this and other early writings lay the groundwork for the critique of capitalist political economy found in Capital? Discuss the role the concept of alienation plays in that critique, and evaluate Marx’s and Engels’s analysis of the roots of that phenomenon.
Answer preview What is the German Ideology to which Marx and Engels refer in their work so entitled?
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