Education – The Social Proletariat

VOCABULARY

Socialism – is a political, social and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers’ self-management of enterprises.
Communism – is a philosophical, social, political, economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and the state.
Capitalism – is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
Marxism – is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation
Proletariat – is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian or a prole.
Bourgeoisie – the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society.
Reify – to make something that is ‘not real’ into a ‘real’ ‘thing.’
Reification – is the process by which social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity.
Praxis – is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, or realized. “Praxis” may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas.
Dialectic – a contradiction between ideas that serves as the determining factor in their relationship. Dialectic comprises three stages of development: first, the thesis, a statement of an idea; second, the antithesis, a reaction that contradicts or negates the thesis; and third, the synthesis, a statement through which the differences between the two points are resolved
Dialectical Materialism – is a philosophy of science and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions, in terms of class, labor, and socioeconomic interactions. This is in contrast to the Hegelian dialectic, which emphasizes the observation that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved by analysing them and synthesizing a solution whilst retaining their essence. Marx supposed that resolutions to such material conditions laced with contradictions could be in new forms of social organization.
Commodity – any good or service (“products” or “activities”) produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.
Commodity Fetishism – is the perception of certain relationships (especially production and exchange) not as relationships among people, but as social relationships among things (the money and commodities exchanged in market trade). As a form of reification, commodity fetishism perceives economic value as something that arises from and resides within the commodity goods themselves, and not from the series of interpersonal relations that produce the commodity and evolve its value.
Class Consciousness – is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests.According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution that would “create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class”.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat – is a state of affairs in which the proletariat holds political power. Not necessarily an actual ‘dictatorship.’