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ActiveHistory provides entertaining, educational award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans for teachers and students. View the top 75 activities here.
An introduction to the "Marxism for Beginners" project A couple of PowerPoint slides outlining that the project will consist of producing a guide to Marxism covering the following areas. Students will use tables, mindmaps, diagrams as appropriate to illustrate comparisons and contrasts in the most effective way possible.
Mark Steel's Video Documentary on Marxism and accompanying worksheet I set this as a homework task and discuss the answers in class afterwards, but if time allows it's a good one to watch together. Mark Steel approaches the topic with rigour but also with humour.
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists: Reading and Comprehension Exercise An extract from the excellent novel by Robert Tressell and some accompanying questions forms the ideal follow-up to the roleplay activity above.
Teacher-Led Lecture: The Contribution of Lenin to Marxism This presentation, including two illustrative video clips, outlines the development of revolutionary parties in Russia and then focuses on Lenin's specific contribution to the Marxist canon. It also covers the split in the Social Democratic movement between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks which will become important when we later look at the October Revolution.
In Defence of Capitalism / Criticisms of Marxism It is very important that in a study of this kind students are reminded that an understanding of Marxist thought does not necessarily mean agreement with it. In this exercise students are presented with a series of common criticisms of Marxism and points in defence of the free market. They are then asked to consider how and if a Marxist could effectively respond to these criticisms. Before tackling this worksheet I like to watch the following classic movie in defence of the capitalist free market system: "I, Pencil".
Individual Research phase - Other Forms of Socialism: The Contributions of Trotsky, Stalin and Mao Looking ahead to our later IB studies of Trotsky, Stalin and Mao, this activity encourages students to consider how other key communist figures added their own twists to Marxist ideology. Students conduct their own research and feed back in small groups with their findings.
Concluding Discussion: Which side of this argument do you agree with? Students should then be given some time to work on their "Marxism for Beginners" guides. During this process, they should watch the following clip from the excellent film "The Edukators" in which some communist kidnappers try to shame their capitalist captive into admitting that he was not only wrong to make an insurance claim against one of their group for a car accident, but that his whole economic system is flawed. Which students side with the capitalist? Which with the communists? Why?
Other resources for the individual project phase The links below provide valuable extra material for research. I allocate different students to watch a different clip and then work in pairs and small groups to compare their findings.
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Births (450 years ago today): 1571 – Abbas I of Persia (d. 1629)
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