Library:Fundamental principles of philosophy/Control questions

Return: Fundamental principles of philosophy.

Study of the marxist dialectical method

Traits of dialectics

Everything is connected (law of reciprocal action and universal connection)

Return: Everything is connected (law of reciprocal action and universal connection)

1. Look for examples of reciprocal action.
2. Why is a phenomenon (natural or social) unintelligible when isolated from its conditions?
3. Show on a specific example how the bourgeoisie, in order to deceive the workers, separates events from their historical conditions.

Everything is changing (law of universal change and of the continuous development)

Return: Everything is changing (law of universal change and of the continuous development)

1. How does dialectics conceive of change? Take examples from around you.
2. Why does the bourgeoisie have an interest in hiding the fact that all reality is changing?
3. Show, by means of one or two examples, the services that knowledge of the second trait dialectics can render to the worker activist.

Qualitative change

Return: Qualitative change

1. What is qualitative change?
2. Using specific examples, show that there is a necessary link between quantitative change (increase or decrease) and qualitative change.
3. How does the third trait of dialectics enable the labour activist to work better on the single front?

The struggle of opposites (i)

Return: The struggle of opposites (i)

1. Why is the struggle of opposites the driving force behind all change?
2. Briefly recall the characters of the contradiction.
3. Use new examples to illustrate points "The contradiction is internal", "The contradiction is innovative", "Unity of opposites".
4. In what way does the internal character of the contradiction allow us to understand that the revolution "cannot be exported"?

The struggle of opposites (ii)

Return: The struggle of opposites (ii)

1. Why do the dividers in the labor movement deny the existence of the struggle of opposites?
2. Show on a specific example that not every contradiction is antagonism.
3. How is self-criticism a struggle of opposites?

The struggle of opposites (iii)

Return: The struggle of opposites (iii)

1. What is the specificity of the contradiction? Illustrate with one or two examples.
2. Show how such a great artist, such a great writer knows how to realize in his work the unity of the specific and the universal.
3. Show by a specific example how a secondary contradiction becomes the main contradiction.
4. Show, by a specific example, how the secondary aspect of a contradiction becomes the main aspect.
5. In what way is the struggle of opposites, according to Lenin's expression, the "nucleus of dialectics"?
6. Why does socialism degenerate if it breaks with the dialectical method?

Study of marxist philosophical materialism

What is the materialist conception of the world?

Return: What is the materialist conception of the world?

1. How to respond to the slander of bourgeois ideologues against "materialism"?
2. What is the fundamental problem of philosophy?
3. Explain and dispel the confusion maintained by the idealists about the word "idealism".
4. What are the three fundamental features of marxist philosophical materialism?

Traits of marxist materialism

The materiality of the world

Return: The materiality of the world

1. What are the most widespread forms of objective idealism today?
2. Summarize the Marxist thesis of the materiality of the world.
3. What was the inadequacy of mechanistic materialism?
4. What were the other narrownesses of pre-Marxist materialism?
5. What distinction do you make between the inevitability of a phenomenon and the idea of "fatality"?
6. How does Marxism approach the question of religion?
7. What attitude does a consistent materialist take to the events of social life and also those of his personal life?

Matter is prior to consciousness

Return: Matter is prior to consciousness

1. On whom do you think the arguments of subjective idealism can have the most influence? Why do you think so?
2. What is meant by the idea of the objectivity of the laws of nature and society? Give examples.
3. What does the thesis that consciousness is a reflection of reality mean?
4. What is the role of work in the formation of human consciousness?
5. Show that consciousness is a product of social development.
6. Why do the abstract ideas of science reflect reality with maximum accuracy?
7. Show the link between materialism and socialism.

The world is knowable

Return: The world is knowable

1. How does agnosticism manifest itself in political opinions?
2. What is the attitude of agnosticism towards science?
3. Why do scientists remain believers? Why does agnosticism lead to fideism?
4. How should we refute agnosticism?
5. What is pragmatism and why do we need to fight against it?
6. Is it true that for marxism the truth is relative?
7. Why should we demand the union of theory and practice?

Dialectical materialism and the spiritual life of society

The spiritual life of the society is a reflection of its material life

Return: The spiritual life of the society is a reflection of its material life

1. Show through one or two specific examples how social ideas reflect the objective material development of societies.
2. Why is it in the interest of the bourgeoisie to conceal the true origin of social ideas, social theories, political opinions, political institutions?
3. How is it necessary to understand Marx's sentence, quoted here: "In the social production of existence, men enter into determined, necessary relationships, independent of their will..."?
4. Do you have experience of cases similar to that of the shoemaker that Stalin speaks of in Anarchism or Socialism?
5. Show by one or more examples how the consciousness of the workers is transformed in struggle.

The role and importance of ideas in social life

Return: The role and importance of ideas in social life

1. What is the error of vulgar materialism? Can you illustrate it with an example?
2. Show how dialectical materialism assures the power of ideas, while idealism, which proclaims the supremacy of ideas, actually underestimates their power?
3. What do we mean by new ideas?
4. Show by a few examples how the reactionary bourgeoisie tries to pass off very old ideas as "new".
5. Using a current example, analyze the role of new ideas as organizers, mobilizers and transformers.

The formation, importance and role of scientific socialism

Return: The formation, importance and role of scientific socialism

1. What are the three sources of marxism?
2. Why is the socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen called "utopian socialism"?
3. Why is the socialism of Marx scientific?
4. What is spontaneity? Why is scientific socialism not a spontaneous product of the proletariat's consciousness?
5. Show by a few specific examples how scientific socialism has been enriched.

Historical materialism

Production: productive forces and production relationships

Return: Production: productive forces and production relationships

1. What are the conditions of the material life of the society?
2. Define the productive forces.
3. Define the production relationships.
4. What is the decisive element in production relationships?
5. Define the means of production.
6. What is a social class?
7. Show that changing the mode of production necessarily changes the whole physiognomy of society.

The law of necessary correspondence between the relations of production and the character of the productive forces

Return: The law of necessary correspondence between the relations of production and the character of the productive forces

1. What is the most mobile element in production and why?
2. Why do production relationships change? Examples.
3. What is the action of production relationships on the productive forces? Examples.
4. What is the role of the conscious action of humans in history, taking into account the existence of a necessary law of correspondence between production relations and productive forces?

The class struggle before capitalism

Return: The class struggle before capitalism

1. What is the first mode of production in the history of societies?
2. How did the classes come into being?
3. What is the essential feature of the slavery regime, and why did it disappear?
4. How did the contradictions of feudal society develop?

The contradictions of capitalist society

Return: The contradictions of capitalist society

1. Characterize the boom period of capitalism.
2. Show the objective character of the class struggle under capitalism.
3. What is the objective basis of the social revolution that is called to change the capitalist mode of production?
4. By what method can the contradiction between the relations of capitalist production and the character of the productive forces be resolved?

The superstructure

Return: The superstructure

1. Show by an example the real content of the struggle of ideas in a society of antagonistic classes.
2. What kinds of ideas belong to the superstructure? Examples.
3. What attitude should the proletariat take towards the transformations of the capitalist superstructure?
4. Scientific progress and "moral" progress.

Socialism

Return: Socialism

1. What are the main economic and social consequences of the socialization of the means of production?
2. What are the objective conditions for the transition to socialism?
3. Describe and explain the basic principles of socialism.
4. What are the subjective conditions for the transition to socialism and its development?

From socialism to communism

Return: From socialism to communism

1. How is the transition from capitalism to communism? What are the main characteristics of the two phases of communist society?
2. What are the conditions that need to be met to ensure the transition from socialism to communism?
3. What is the role of ideas in socialist society?
4. Why is socialism the true humanism?

The materialist theory of state and nation

The state

Return: The state

1. Why was it historically necessary for the state to appear at a given time?
2. Scientific definition of the state.
3. Why does historical materialism consider the question of the state to be decisive?
4. Show the class content of the bourgeois state.
5. For what class reasons did the bourgeois-democratic form of the state emerge?
6. Reasons for the struggle of the working class against the bourgeois state, in defense of bourgeois-democratic freedoms.

The nation (i)

Return: The nation (i)

1. Recall the characters of the national reality.
2. Why is the state not a constituent element of the nation? How can it help the development of the nation?
3. To show, on specific examples, how the reactionary bourgeoisie is working to destroy the different characteristics of the French nation?
4. What is bourgeois cosmopolitanism?
5. What is proletarian internationalism?
6. Show how the interests of the French and German working class are in solidarity.
7. Comment on and explain Stalin's text quoted at the end of this lesson.

The nation (ii)

Return: The nation (ii)

1. "A people that oppresses others cannot be free" (Marx). Why not?
2. What is the right of nations to self-determination?
3. Does respect for the right of nations to self-determination matter for world peace?
4. Illustrate with a current example how proletarian internationalism makes it possible to give a fair assessment of the national independence movement in a particular colonial or dependent country.
5. What are the characteristics of a socialist nation?
6. What is meant by fusion of nations?