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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Edmund Wilson say Marx discovered through his work with the International Working Men's Association?

2. Describe Lenin's relationship with his wife?

3. When did Trotsky first study Marx and Lenin?

4. How did Marx review Proudhon's book on private property?

5. According to the author, what does the "dialectic" means in "dialectic materialism"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Marx approach the question of studying capitalism?

2. What work did Engels have to finish after Marx died?

3. Describe Lenin's meeting with Trotsky.

4. Describe the relationship between Lenin and Trotsky.

5. What is dialectical materialism?

6. Why, according to Trotsky, did the 1905 Soviet fail?

7. What are the ten points addressed in the Communist Manifesto?

8. Describe Lenin's relationship with his wife.

9. How does Edmund Wilson say Marx thought about Das Kapital?

10. What critique did Engels make of classical economics?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Edmund Wilson says that Comte d Saint-Simon represented the new kind of writer. Describe the transition taking place in Europe for which Saint-Simon was an emblem.

Essay Topic 2

Which of the thinkers which Edmund Wilson describes had the greatest effect on bringing about the Russian Revolution? What metrics would you use to justify such a claim for a particular thinker?

Essay Topic 3

How would you characterize Edmund Wilson's values and his intellectual temperament? What part of this genealogy was interesting to Wilson? Judging by his material, his omissions, and his methods, what can you say about Wilson's style and his intellectual preoccupations?

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