Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Surplus Labour, Class Conflict, Productive Forces

• School: Western University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: Political Science 1020E
• Professor: Bruce William Morrison, Charles William B Jones, Nigmendra Narain

Document Summary

All of history up to now is the history of class struggle. History is the growth of human productive power. Our production methods develop within economic structures. Levels of development pr productive forces explains the nature of the economic structure. Economic structure determines the legal and political superstructure. Capitalism will be replaced by communism and common ownership. Capitalist profit is the surplus value created by workers. History is the history of class struggle: under capitalism, it is the bourgeoisie (capitalists) vs. proletarians (workers) Conflicts of interest are linked to our relation to the means of production: the future communist society will be classless. The state exists to deal with conflicts of interest generated by coercive surplus extraction: under communism, the state will wither away. The state as a committee for managing the common interests of the bourgeoisie (based on. The state as an independent actor (based on 19 th -century french and german politics)