claris, jaime & soco

I. Marxism: branch of socialism that holds that the more powerful classes oppress and exploit the less powerful by denying them their share of the excess they create.•

Class struggle: the oppressed classes try to obtain power to take more of the wealth for themselves.
 Karl Marx: labor is the result of the surplus (excess).
• Peasants, an important class during the past century, they were considered ignorant and backwards by the Marxist.
 Ex. Chinese Revolution.
• Marxist looked to the advanced industrialized countries for revolution and socialism.
• Marxists have mostly followed by Lenin, founder of Soviet Union.
• After European colonization finished, the United States as the richest country in the world, became the target of revolutionaries. In some countries revolutionary nationalists took power.
• One of the most important revolution was in China, where the communist Mao Zedong took the power on a Leninist platform. A similar situation occurs in India with Gandhi but with a different mean; nonviolence. This pattern was repeated in a lot of countries like; Indonesia and Cuba.
• The revolutionaries in this countries said that exploiting poor countries by rich ones concentrates the wealth toward rich countries.
• Leon Trotsky, archrival of Stalin because Trotsky didn’t believe that socialism couldn’t be just in one country and Stalin does.
• Nowadays Marxists have take power in Venezuela and Bolivia, as a result have become allies of Cuba, Nicaragua and Nepal.

II. Peace Studies

• Peace studies, tries to make a change in the focus of IR away from the interstate level of analysis and toward a broad conception of social relations.
• War peace
• Conflict resolution: Development and implementation of peaceful strategies for settling conflicts using alternatives to violent forms of leverage.
• Most conflict resolution uses a third party whose role is mediation between two conflicting parties.
 Arbitration: is the process when in both sides agree in advance to abide by a solution devised by a mediator. The arbitrator decides on a “fair” solution.
• War=militarism
• Militarism refers to the structuring of society around war.

 Example: Dominant role of a military industrial complex in a national economy.
• Examples of less militarized culture: Costa Rica has had no army for 50 years & Japan since World War II has developed strong norms against war and violence.
• Positive peace: resolves the underlying reasons for a war that is the transformation of relationships.
• Peace movements: Is when people take to the streets in protest against war and militarism.