Marxist IQ for the Month of May 2024

Although we are passed May Day, the most important workers holiday in the world, this Marxist IQ is dedicated to a May of May Day struggles for the working class and against racism, imperialism and war.

1. Although capitalist mass media focuses attention on personalities and scandals in understanding what is happening today and what happened in the past, Marxists see as the central force in understanding history the:

a. struggle between
b. political parties
c. social classes
d. ideas
e. great powers

2. In the United States presidential elections have at crucial times been both a response to and a material force accelerating major domestic progressive transformations, which makes the 2024 election important. Which of the following elections did not serve to accelerate a major progressive transformation in domestic politics:

a. Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860
b. George W. Bush’s alleged victory in 2000
c. Franklin Roosevelt’s victory in 1932
d. Lyndon Johnson’s victory in 1964

3. While Trump blames Biden for the present economic crisis, Marxists contend that capitalist governments and capitalists cannot increase workers purchasing power enough to overcome the crisis of overproduction because:

a. they are inherently greedy
b. they don’t want workers to waste their money
c. their profit comes from controlling and reducing the cost of labor
d. they want workers to save money before they purchase goods

4. Marxists have contended that the working class purchasing goods and services under credit/installment plan conditions strengthens the capitalist class because:

a. the capitalist class gets back in interest payments wage increases to workers
b. debt forces workers to live from paycheck to paycheck, increasing their insecurity and the ability of capitalists to exploit them
c. credit/installment plan conditions fosters the illusion among workers that their purchase of personal property on credit makes them “middle class”
d. all of the above

5. The Biden administration is hurting its own chances by continuing Trump policies against Cuba, Venezuela, and other progressive and socialist oriented governments. These imperialist policies are in the tradition of:

a. The CIA 1954 overthrow of elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, which resulted in a brutal dictatorship in which tens of thousands were murdered
b. The failed U.S. planned and CIA directed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba which set in motion the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis which nearly resulted in nuclear war
c. The U.S. support for the 1973 military coup against the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, which resulted in the murderous military dictatorship of Augusto Pinchochet
d. All of the above

6. The Biden administration continues to advance the cold war against The Peoples Republic of China, continuing Trump’s threat to implement punitive tariffs against China while condemning China’s record on “human rights” and “democracy” as it did against the Soviet Union after WWII. Historically, the U.S. government and ruling class showed its respect for the “human rights” and “self determination” of the Chinese people by:

a. Refusing to participate in the foreign armies bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900
b. Refusing to sell oil and other goods used for war to the Japanese Empire after it launched a full scale invasion of China that would cost millions of lives in 1937
c. Recognizing the Peoples Republic of China after its establishment in 1949 and refusing to intervene with the U.S. navy to block the re-unification of China with Chinese Taiwan in 1950
d. None of the above

Answers: Click here.

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