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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did Marx and Engels view their theory of history?
(a) They knew it was a fantasy.
(b) They never doubted it would succeed.
(c) They wondered whether they had underestimated the greed of the lower classes.
(d) They saw it as one model among many.

2. Marx's study of economics contains a discrepancy because he included _______.
(a) Morality in predicting economic behavior.
(b) Pragmatism in defining group psychology.
(c) Religion in making a mathematical argument.
(d) Statistics in predicting class warfare.

3. Who was ruler of Russia when Lenin was growing up?
(a) Tsar Alexander II.
(b) Tsar Alexander III.
(c) Peter the Great.
(d) Tsar Nicholas I.

4. What industrial facility did Engels grow up across the river from?
(a) A bottling plant.
(b) A textile factory.
(c) A coal mine.
(d) An iron works.

5. How does Edmund Wilson characterize Bakunin's career?
(a) He spent his life trying to be part of revolutions in Europe.
(b) He became a close ally of Marx's and was responsible for spreading Marx's ideas internationally.
(c) He made a name for himself as the actor who would fulfill Marx's prophecies.
(d) He wrote extensively, but he never participated in a political movement.

6. How did Lenin differ from the German Marxists?
(a) He preached reconciliation with the bourgeoisie as a method of bringing about the workers' state.
(b) He thought that historical processes could only be accomplished by consensus.
(c) He felt that historical processes required intervention.
(d) He simply waited for historical processes to accomplish themselves.

7. What was Trotsky's role in the early years of the Russian Revolution?
(a) He was a vocal critic of the Revolution.
(b) He plotted with the Tsar's loyalists against the regime.
(c) He helped implement the regime's policies.
(d) He spurred the revolutionaries to excesses.

8. The "Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engel wanted to end ____________.
(a) Free education for children and workers.
(b) Appropriation of land.
(c) The right of inheritance.
(d) State run transportation.

9. Where was Engels working while he and Marx were writing articles together?
(a) In a publisher's house in Berlin.
(b) In an exchange in Zurich.
(c) In a factory in London.
(d) In a mill in Manchester.

10. When did Lenin break with the Central Committee in Germany?
(a) 1906.
(b) 1917.
(c) 1908.
(d) 1904.

11. How do Marx and Engels describe a socialist society?
(a) As the synthesis of bourgeoisie and proletariat.
(b) As the end of economics.
(c) As the next thesis, which will create a new anti-thesis.
(d) As the humanization of industrialism.

12. How did Engels characterize classical economic theories?
(a) As rationalizations for capitalists' greed.
(b) As mathematical abstractions out of touch with the finances of poverty.
(c) As obsolete relative to new technologies for production.
(d) As mere meditations on capital, without grounds in reality.

13. Where did Trotsky go after he escaped from Russia?
(a) America.
(b) China.
(c) Cuba.
(d) London.

14. How does a dialectical system progress?
(a) Institutions grow by repressing or appropriating internal movements.
(b) A dominant culture spawns emergent cultures that become dominant in turn.
(c) The thesis is negated by the antithesis, and the conflict produces a new synthesis.
(d) Systems remain vital by bringing opposing views into dialogue.

15. Marx began to work with Proudhon, who had written _____________.
(a) Newspaper articles on the working poor.
(b) A series of essays on capital.
(c) A book treating property as a form of theft.
(d) Political prophecies.

Short Answer Questions

1. What action did Lassalle warn Bismarck against when they met?

2. According to Trotsky, why did the 1905 revolt fail?

3. How do Marx and Engels describe the bourgeoisie?

4. Where did Lenin move after being released from prison?

5. In what project did Marx involve Proudhon?

(see the answer keys)

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