Quiz: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

All 33 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Why is the concrete concrete, according to the section on method?

   Because it is simple, the first and most abstract category, from which all analysis must begin Because it is immediately visible and given to the senses before any thought begins Because it combines many objects with different destinations, a unity of diverse elements Because it comes first in history, before any of the simple categories have developed
2. 2. What determines the quantity of money in circulation, according to Marx?

   The decrees of the state and the mint regulations The prices of commodities and the velocity of circulation The amount of gold mined in the world and imported into the country The rate of interest set by the central bank
3. 3. Which American does Marx credit with formulating the fundamental law of modern political economy, that value is measured by labour?

   Thomas Jefferson Alexander Hamilton Henry Carey Benjamin Franklin
4. 4. Which newspaper debates first led Marx to economic questions as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842–43?

   The Prussian debates on factory legislation and the labour of children The reports on the Irish famine and the emigration of the Irish peasantry The Rhine Diet on forest thefts, and the controversy over the Mosel peasants The Commons debates on repeal of the English Corn Laws
5. 5. In what order did Marx plan to examine bourgeois economy, according to the 1859 preface?

   Money, credit, banking, trade, crises and the national debt Value, price, profit Capital, landed property, wage labour; state, foreign trade, world market Production, distribution, exchange and consumption, in that order
6. 6. What problems does mankind always take up, according to Marx?

   Only problems left unsolved by earlier ages Only such problems as it can solve Only moral problems Only problems posed by philosophers
7. 7. What does Marx say about the disappearance of a social order?

   Social orders, once established, are eternal and change only in their outward form Social orders disappear only through conquest by a more warlike and vigorous neighbouring people Any social order can be overthrown at any time by a sufficiently resolute and organised minority No social order perishes before all the productive forces it has room for are developed
8. 8. Which two writers does Marx name in connection with the quantity theory of money, Hume being the most important?

   Berkeley and Mandeville Smith and Ricardo Mill and Malthus Montesquieu and Hume
9. 9. With which lines from Dante does the preface end, set at the entrance to science as at the entrance to hell?

   Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l’etterno dolore Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto; ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta
10. 10. Which modes of production does Marx name as epochs in the progress of society’s economic formation?

    Savagery, barbarism and civilisation Asiatic, ancient, feudal, bourgeois Hunting, pastoral, agricultural and commercial Primitive communist, civilised and socialist
11. 11. How does Marx explain the eternal charm of Greek art?

    It used finer materials and techniques that modern industry can no longer reproduce The Greeks were “normal children”; mankind’s childhood charms as an age never to return It was religious art, and its charm comes from the gods it still makes us believe in It was produced by slave labour, which freed the citizens to devote their whole lives to beauty
12. 12. Who called “labour the father and earth the mother of wealth”?

    William Petty David Ricardo Adam Smith John Locke
13. 13. What does bourgeois society close, according to the 1859 preface?

    The age of political revolutions The history of mankind as a whole The prehistoric stage of human society The era of nations and national wars
14. 14. What happens when the material forces of production come into conflict with the relations of production?

    Production stops until the old relations are restored by the state The relations turn into fetters, and a period of social revolution begins The forces of production are destroyed and society falls into barbarism The relations adapt at once, so the superstructure remains unchanged
15. 15. Where, Marx concluded, is “the anatomy of civic society” to be sought?

    In law and the state In political economy In religion In the philosophy of right
16. 16. What does Marx say is the real difficulty about Greek art?

    Understanding why it still gives us aesthetic pleasure and remains an unattainable model Explaining why it declined so quickly after the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War Dating the works accurately, since so few written records of them have survived Understanding how it arose out of Greek social conditions and Greek mythology
17. 17. What does Marx call the economists’ starting point of the isolated hunter or fisher?

    A historical fact of primitive society Robinsonades: insipid illusions A scientific model borrowed from Newton’s mechanics and astronomy A necessary abstraction of every science
18. 18. Of which system does Marx call the mercantile system “but a variation”?

    The monetary system The physiocratic system The old feudal system The modern credit system
19. 19. Which of these is a heading under “Money” in its own right, in chapter II?

    Hoarding Taxation Banking Investment
20. 20. Which American controversy does Stone say makes the book timely?

    The recent silver agitation Prohibition The tariff on imported wool and woollens The federal income tax of 1894
21. 21. Who first systematically developed the theory of labour-money, criticised by Marx?

    John Bray Robert Owen John Gray Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
22. 22. What happened to the manuscript Marx and Engels wrote in Brussels in 1845?

    They left it to the stinging criticism of the mice It was rewritten as the Communist Manifesto It was seized and burned by the Belgian police It was published in Westphalia in 1846
23. 23. From which edition did N. I. Stone make his 1904 translation?

    The French translation, checked against the German A manuscript copy kept by Engels in London The first Berlin edition of 1859, with Engels’s later corrections The second German edition, edited by Karl Kautsky in 1897
24. 24. What Greek term does Marx use for man in the 1857 Introduction?

    Homo economicus, an individual who pursues his own interest in isolation Animal rationale, a reasoning being who forms society by free contract Zoon politikon, an animal that can individualise itself only in society Anthropos, a being whose nature is fixed apart from all society
25. 25. Why did Marx move from Paris to Brussels?

    To escape a cholera epidemic in Paris To take up a post at the free university To join Engels in the family cotton firm An order of expulsion issued by Guizot
26. 26. By what is labour measured, as motion is measured by time?

    Physical effort Labour-time Quantity of output Money wages
27. 27. Complete Marx’s remark: “The anatomy of the human being is the key to …”

    the science of society all philosophy the history of nature the anatomy of the ape
28. 28. In the famous summary, what constitutes the economic structure of society, “the real foundation”?

    The population and its needs The political constitution and the laws of the state The sum total of the relations of production The ideas and morals of the ruling class
29. 29. Whom does Marx call “the first Briton who elaborated the general system of bourgeois economics”?

    Thomas Mun Sir William Temple David Hume Sir James Steuart
30. 30. Complete Marx’s sentence: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but …”

    their physical needs determine their consciousness their social existence determines their consciousness their language and its forms determine their thought their history and traditions determine their will
31. 31. What did Gladstone remark in the debate on Peel’s Bank Act?

    Gold alone is true wealth, and paper is only a promise to pay it The love of money is the root of all evil, in the City of London as in the Gospel Paper money is a fraud upon the public, however well the Bank manages it Not even love has made so many fools of men as pondering over the nature of money
32. 32. What twofold aspect does every commodity have?

    Price and cost of production Use value and exchange value Supply and demand on the market Quality and quantity only
33. 33. With whom does the classical school of political economy begin and end, according to Marx?

    Petty and Boisguillebert; Ricardo and Sismondi Smith and Malthus; Say and Bastiat John Locke and David Hume; Senior and McCulloch Quesnay and Turgot; John Stuart Mill