Marx (Updated)

Update: Forgot to say this last night; remember, you're required reading has been decreased. You only must read part I and II of the Communist Manifesto, not III and IV.

Use this thread to pose questions about Marx, for discussion or to pose a question to me.

Key terms:

Capital
Social relations of production
Modes of production (Slave-based society, capitalism, feudalism)
Social Class
Historical Materialism
Dialectical change

Be prepared to explain the following three forms of estrangement/alienation:

Man's alienation from his species being
Man's alienation from his fellow worker
Man's alienation from his product

Be prepared to explain what it is that Marx likes about capitalism and what he dislikes about it. Be clear about the role of the division of labor under capitalism.

What, according to Marx (in the estranged labor essay) makes us distinctly human?

Marx argues that there are two significant classes in capitalist society—the bourgeois and the proletariat. How are these classes defined? What would Marx say to the suggestion that perhaps a rural peasant class might play a significant role in a communist revolution?

Marx argues that political ideals and theories should be analyzed by examining whose interests they serve. With that in mind, consider what Marx might say about liberal and conservative political thought.

According to Marx in The German Ideology, what happens to the division of labor in communist society? How could this be feasible?