Glossary
(1) Bourgeois basically means benefitting from the exploitation of working people and promoting elitism, greed and self-interest using contract, choice and consent to conceal blatant unfairness at the bottom of a free society. Bourgeois socialist: is someone who knows that the western economic system creates social, political and economic inequalities but they do not want to change the system they will just be anxious about it.
(2) Abraham Maslow stated that there was a hierarchy of human needs at the base people needed food water and shelter at the top relationships and ultimately to fulfil their own personal aspirations.
(3) Karl Marx was a political philosopher who identified how working people had been either exploited openly by elites in pre capitalist times or were exploited under the cloak of ‘freedom’ based on contract, choice and consent under capitalism. He called his theory scientific socialism.
(4) Consciousness is seeing the world framed in a way which benefits you and your class. Bourgeois consciousness is about protecting elitism, unfairness and maintaining class distinction and identity. Working class consciousness is recognising that bourgeois principles like contract, choice and consent should not be used as an excuse to exploit workers and that elitism, unfairness and bourgeois class identity undermine everyone’s right to live democratically, freely and fairly.
(5) Alienation: The experience of being detached from any ownership of your work and alienated from other people by the monotony of the workplace.
(6) Exploitation: The process by which capitalist make profit from the workers and then turn this profit into their own private property. It is an abuse of the principles of contract, choice and consent as the worker is never told that they will not receive their share of the profits they create. The economics of capitalist exploitation have become more complicated in the modern era and are of limited value today.
(7) Patriarchal: A system that controls women in interests of property ownership, control and inheritance. It is based on the privilege of men over women. It began after tribal times and extended in an economic from in the west into the twentieth century. It is still prevalent elsewhere in the world.
(8) This Marxist quote means that what we do collectively to provide for our family and society whether it is within a tribal, feudal or capitalist system shapes how we see the world and our way of thinking (our group consciousness)…rather than our group way of thinking shaping the way we provide for our families. It is putting action before thought. For example, it would not have occurred to anyone to think about ‘freedom’ before capitalism required people to be ‘free’.
(9) See 1 above.
(10) Social value is everything that contributes to society being well organised and efficient.
(11) Conscience is a belief or feeling that something is wrong and harmful to others.
