October 29, 2019

1. The answer is d. The capitalist class is served by the idea of a strict separation, enabling that class to recklessly exploit nature. The division of labor between urban and rural tasks reinforced the idea of a separation. Marx and Engels challenge the idea.

2. answer is c. Farmers realized that they could amend the soil, and sought solutions like guano and even human bones to improve soil productivity. It’s doubtful that Europe in the 1850s experienced either b or d. If industrial pollutants were causing widespread lung disease at the time, as they probably were, it was not recognized as a major problem and was not the focus of Marx in Capital.

3. The correct answer is a. As Marx wrote in Capital Vol. 3: “[humans] are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”

4. The correct answer is d. The organic analogy of metabolism refers to the systems of taking in nutrients and expelling wastes. Marx applies the analogy to the local, national and global levels. On the global level, for example, was the mining of guano in South America for applications to fields in Europe.

5. The correct answer is b. Marx argued that capitalist agriculture, by deepening the divide between urban and rural production, inevitably created the conditions for the problem of soil depletion and ever lower agricultural productivity.

6. The correct answer is c. Private ownership of agricultural land prevented effective use of the latest scientific breakthroughs, no one wants to abolish fireplaces, and crop rotation is not an answer to the rural-urban divide.

Score:

0 wrong: Theoretician. Write an article! Teach a class!!

1 wrong: Developed Marxist. Form a study group, join the party.

2 to 3 wrong: Class conscious worker – study harder.

4 to 5 wrong: Danger! Deviations possible. Study and then study some more lest you drift into the marsh of opportunism.

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