ENGL 302 Study Guide - Final Guide: Bourgeoisie, Social Relation, Dialectic

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 302
• Professor: David Sigler

Document Summary

The spectre of communism haunts europe: the european powers recognize it"s coming and its existence heretofore. Classes are a capitalist construction to create necessary difference. The bourgeoisie own the means of production and capital; require the instability of their own class to profit. Capitalism depends on globalization and imperialism to exploit labourers and resources through free trade. Labourers accept this exploitation through ideology, believing the class difference is natural; by only seeing its results, we are blind to the cause. A commodity is a product labourers create whose exchange value > use value, due to a mystical signification of class that comes from it (ie. iphone, lamborghini). Commodity fetishism is seeing the commodity as a product without looking at its history of creation, thus seeing its exchange value as a value innate to the product. This fetishism blinds people to the exploitation where labourers are paid less than they contribute in order for the bourgeoisie to profit.