I. HILDE BEGINS TO FORMULATE HER PHILOSOPHICAL PLAN, p. 387


II. Sophie gets another letter: UN Battalion

A. Why be creative when oblivion ends the toil?

B. Question--how to escape from the mental captivity of being a fictional character in the consciousness of the creator?, p. 389

III. WE MUST READ BETWEEN THE LINES...

A. Sophie meets Scrooge--why bother with $$$

B. The girl with the matches--Sophie first one in 100 years to buy a match

C. Girl threatens to destroy Scrooge--the struggle of the classes defines Communism

D. Remember the Blue Bottle, the Red Bottle and the Greek Temple., p. 391.

IV. Marx in Germany had studied Democritus and Epicurus---(materialism) and Hegel.

A. philosopher / historian / sociologist / economist

B. material changes affect the spiritual and not the converse--economic forces determine changes

V. dialectical materialism--class struggle

A. conditions of production - resources

B. means of production - tools

C. ownership - of A & B

VI. History of society is the history of all its previous class struggle--the dialectic of the haves and the have nots., P. 396

A. the slaves and the free

B. feudal lord and the serf

C. aristocrat and citizen

D. capitalism and worker--how we work affects who we are.

VII. work is positive and productive until the worker is forced to give his efforts to someone else--the worker slaves for another class

A. 1848--The Communist Manifesto

B. horrors of Victorian society and the industrial revolution--MARX spent the last 34 years of his life in London, dying in 1883.

C. Capitalism is inherently destructive because it lacks self-control

D. Modernization of factories means more and more unemployed or working for less

E. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”


VIII. Can the perfect state be achieved? [Plato]--Notice the irony at the end of the chapter, P. 402.

A. Would justice be achieved if those who made the laws had to live under them?

B. Animal Farm

1--Log on to my BRITISH LITERATURE WEB SITE and read the introduction to the Victorian Period. You will be introduced to a philosophical movement called UTILITARIANISM, and the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham and John Steward Mill.

2--The site contains links to Mill and Bentham as well as the fiction of Charles Dickens, chiefly his novel of economic oppression, HARD TIMES.

3--See also SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS for Marx.

4--Orwell's Animal Farm, using the beast fable allegory, argues the classic refutation of Marx: "Some animals are more equal..."

5--Dickens' A Christmas Carol blends romantic sentimentality with economic realism.