Part 1

We’ve read about the ideas of oppression, exploitation, discrimination and their ever-present companion, the threat of violence. Choose ONE idea from one of the Zeitgeist films plus one article assigned in Week 4 and compare them based the most powerful main ideas you heard and read. Respond to 2 other students. You will receive instructor feedback on this Discussion. Be sure to discuss ONE of the Zeitgeist films in connection with one of the readings below.

See the article choices below:

“The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx (with Definitions), pp91-101
“The Chinago” by Jack London
“Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail” by Clarence Darrow, pp47-54
Excerpt from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, pp89-93

Student 1: The Zeitgeist Movement is now ubiquitous. The Zeitgeist Movement goes in depth on how the new world will look, but it offers no vision on how to create the new world within the shell of the old. The second problem is essentially an extension of the former: people should not be told what kind of society they should have. It is highly doubtful that anti-authoritarian theory can come from an authority, academic or otherwise. Anti-authoritarian theory is participatory, and if meaningful, is created by a majority. Wherein “revolution” is needed, to remain anti-authoritarian and relevant to a majority of the population, it requires the majority. Otherwise, it risks the danger of becoming a vanguard. But “Zeitgeist” has no mention of how to get from here-to- there. Troublesome in the dialogue I have heard, as mentioned, is the idea that “Zeitgeist” is anarchism (Johnson, 2009). Anarchism has never preached one way, as does “Zeitgeist” (save for the anarcho-dogmatists). The lack of plurality within the movement and acceptance of, say, primitivists, syndicalists, communists, or other socialists, is not known because it is omitted. “Zeitgeist” also immediately connotes hierarchy since it puts all of its faith in science, hence scientists. Since some will be more apt than others towards science, this could easily give us a new bureaucracy. Revolutionary social and political theories that historically come from class struggle in contrary to the development of capitalism are not naïve about this; these theories acknowledge that if revolution is to be successful, i.e., dismantling the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, there must be organized resistance among the majority of people (the working-class) and, an unfortunate matter, a clash with the State (if only in defense). Marx acknowledged the class struggle in he and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto, and believed that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ ‘ (Marx & Engels). Further: Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (Marx) Marx’s acknowledgements are spot-on; it is his techniques on how to have revolution that many believe to be flawed. Marx favored an educated sect of the working-class, what he referred to as the dictatorship of the proletariat, running a transition state which would yield a stateless, classless, society, sans monetary systems (sounds a bit like the Zeitgeist Movement, no?).

Student 2: After watching the Zeitgeist film: Moving Forward, there was a lot of emphasis on society and why we struggle a lot of times and eventually reach our peak with issues such as poverty, diseases, war, and so on. While we cannot get to a point where society is going to be good, there are ways to improve our current situation. They mention a proposal in the Zeitgeist film about what an economy and society really should look like to survive in the future. Their proposal is called a resource-based economy where money or any form of servitude is irrelevant, and goods and services are available to all. Their idea involves a society in which, without wanting more, we should rely solely on our resources and survive. According to them, using the intelligence of technology is the way to achieve this goal or idea. “When, during development, class distinctions have disappeared and all productions have been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. “Karl Marx states in the “Communist Manifesto”. Here, Marx emphasizes the point that equality is the basis of his idea of communism and that to achieve this, everyone is essentially the same and no social classes can exist. Both speak about how to eradicate class or group to form a civil society. They focus a lot on the point in the film about how we live in a society in which we are caught up in mindless consumption.

Part 2

You can use citefast.com to do perfect Works Cited lists for free! Please go to www.citefast.com (Links to an external site.) to create the Works Cited page for your Finished Research Paper then post it as a document here (attach it to your post). Also, view the next link when you do the discussion to explain why we use MLA formatting in English.

Since MLA formatting can be confusing, please visit the link or to the Purdue Owl site for help: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/675/1/ (Links to an external site.)

For this Discussion, post your Works Cited in PERFECT FORM in this discussion and review two other students’ lists. Help each other get it right so you can earn all your points on the Finished Research Paper!

Try to explain the purpose of MLA formatting (hint: it is relevant to the Works Cited list and in-text citations) and read two other students’ postings. Ask your classmates for help if needed!