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Opium Of The Masses
The opium of the people (or opium of the masses) (german: Opium des Volkes) is a dictum used in reference to religion, derived from a frequently paraphrased statement of German sociologist and economic theorist Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people." In context, the statement is part of Marx's structural-functionalist argument that religion was constructed by people to calm uncertainty over their role 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 '' masses''." 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 ''opium'' of the people."Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dictum
In general usage, a dictum ( in Latin; plural dicta) is an authoritative or dogmatic statement. In some contexts, such as legal writing and church cantata librettos, ''dictum'' can have a specific meaning. Legal writing In United States legal terminology, a ''dictum'' is a statement of opinion considered authoritative (although not binding), given the recognized authoritativeness of the person who pronounced it."dictum", Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed. 2004); C.J.S. Courts §§ 142-143. There are multiple subtypes of ''dicta'', although due to their overlapping nature, legal practitioners in the U.S. colloquially use ''dictum'' to refer to any statement by a court the scope of which extends beyond the issue before the court. ''Dicta'' in this sense are not binding under the principle of '' stare decisis'', 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: * ''di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organized Religion
Organized religion, also known as institutional religion, is religion in which belief systems and rituals are systematically arranged and formally established. Organized religion is typically characterized by an official doctrine (or dogma), a hierarchical or bureaucratic leadership structure, and a codification of rules and practices. Definition Organized religion is distinguished from the broader idea of religion especially in anthropology, sociology and philosophy. American philosopher William James considered organized religion to be distinct from and secondary to religion in and of itself, stating that "out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow". James further comments that the essential elements of "institutional religion" are "worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity 'i.e.''theology, and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization". Organized rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Relations Of Production
Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) 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''. Some social relations are voluntary or freely chosen (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, 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 in them is not voluntary, the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classless Society
The term classless society refers to a society in which no one is born into a social class. 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 suggest 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. Since determination of life outcome by birth class has proved historically difficu ... [...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. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism. Socialism Socialism advocates public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.''Newman, Michael''. (2005) ''Socialism: A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press, # A theory or policy of social organisation which aims at or advocates the ownership and democratic control of the means of production, by workers or the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all. # Socialists argue for a worker cooperative/community economy, or the commanding heights of the economy, with democratic con ... [...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.Thompson, Carl D. (October 1903)"What Revolutionary Socialism Means" ''The Vanguard''. Green Bay: Socialist Party of America. 2 (2): 13. Retrieved 31 August 2020 – via the Marxist Internet Archive. Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermine ... [...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 capitalist social class who own the means of production and by extension determine and establish the dominant ideology (culture, mores, norms, traditions) of society by way of cultural hegemony. In the 21st century, the worldwide political economy established by globalization has created a transnational capitalist class that is not native to any one country. Background In previous 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 chattel slavery, the slave owners were the ruling class. The political economy of the feudal system gave socio-economic and legal power to the feudal lord over the life, labour, and property of the vassal, including military service. The political economy of a slave state gave ... [...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 intrinsic to the social relations between classes. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class. Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it. "Consciousness", in this context, reflects a class's ability to politically identify and assert its will. The subordinate class is conscious if it plays a major role in society and can assert its will due to being sufficiently unified in ideas and action. Later development Marshall I. Pomer has argued that members of the proletariat disregard the true nature of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in 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 List of sociologists, 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, socio-economic class", defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class". H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exploitation (Marxism)
Exploitation of labour (also known as labor) is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. 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 inferior 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. In analyzing exploitation, economists are split on the explanation of the exploitation of labour given by Marx and Adam Smith. Smith did not see exploitation as an inherent systematic phenomenon in speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people. No universally accepted model or terminology has yet emerged to describe oppression in its entirety, although some scholars cite evidence of different types of oppression, such as social oppression, cultural, political, religious/belief, institutional oppression, and economic oppression. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers a benchmark from which to assess both individual and structural models of oppression. The concept, popularized in Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto of 1848, is often used to justify state persecution. Authoritarian oppression The word ''oppress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proletarian Revolution
A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists and anarchists. The concept of a revolutionary proletariat was first put forward by the French revolutionary socialist and radical Auguste Blanqui. Marxists believe proletarian revolutions can and will likely happen in all capitalist countries, related to the concept of world revolution. The Leninist branch of Marxism argues that a proletarian revolution must be led by a vanguard of "professional revolutionaries", men and women who are fully dedicated to the communist cause and who form the nucleus of the communist revolutionary movement. This vanguard is meant to provide leadership and organization to the working class before and during the revolution, which aims to prevent the government from successfully ending it. Vladimi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
