document_title: Penny (The Big Bang Theory)

question_text: where does penny work in big bang theory

text: Penny (The Big Bang Theory)

text: Personality[edit]

text: Originally from a small town outside of Omaha, Nebraska, Penny has aspirations of becoming an actress. Until season 7, she worked as a waitress at the local Cheesecake Factory.[5][6] She is a Sagittarius, born on December 2.[7] She has full confidence in horoscopes and psychics, which has led to arguments with Sheldon and Leonard about their accuracy.[6][7]

text: In contrast to the rest of the group, Penny is not well educated nor savvy in a specific technical field, but she has great social skills and is more streetwise than her neighbors. She is very knowledgeable about popular culture.[8] She is messy and disorganized but appears to like it that way.[9] Having dropped out of community college prior to the start of the series, she is the only regular character with less education than Howard Wolowitz, who has a master's degree. She initially feels insulted when Leonard shows her a list of community colleges to go to at the beginning of season 2, but in season 6, she does go back to college, taking a history class. By the middle of the season, she is also taking an acting class, and at the beginning of season 7, she is taking a psychology class as well. Despite her weak education, she is insightful. While Sheldon routinely disparages both Penny's and Howard's educations, he occasionally acknowledges her intelligence and potential, though he rarely treats Howard so. He has also asked for her advice more than once regarding various social situations.

text: Leonard has likened her to The Hulk when she gets angry,[10] while Sheldon once said to recurring character Stuart Bloom that she would "maul [him] like a rabid wolverine" if Stuart woke her up from a sound sleep.[11]

text: A recurring theme is Penny's poor driving. She fails to service her vehicle regularly, and ignores her check engine light, which has been mentioned in multiple episodes.[12][13] She once left her car's passenger side wing mirror in a parking lot.[14] She once hit a Mercedes in a parking lot and left without leaving a note.[15] She also inadvertently reveals that she knocked the mirror off Bernadette's car and did not leave a note.[16] When her car's engine finally fails in Season 7, Leonard buys her a new one so she can go to auditions and pursue her dream of becoming an actress. In Season 8, after finding a job as a highly paid pharmaceutical sales representative at Bernadette's company, she obtains a company car and sells the one Leonard bought for her, returning him the money.[17]

text: In the fifth-season episode "The Speckerman Recurrence", it is revealed that Penny was a bully during her time at school. However, she seems to be genuinely unaware of the hurt her actions caused, and upon her realization, she attempts to make amends with a classmate she tormented, with little success.[18]

text: A recurring personality trait is her consumption of alcohol, specifically wine. In "The Flaming Spittoon Acquisition", Penny, while spending the evening with Bernadette and Amy, observes that they have finished the bottle of wine, and when Bernadette and Amy point out that they consumed only half a glass and no wine at all, respectively, Penny snaps, "Okay, don't judge me! So, what do you want to do, go to the movies, go dancing, lay down for a little bit?" At the end of that episode, she passes out while the three of them play Twister, and when Bernadette initially fails to revive her, she says "Penny, we're out of wine", which manages to wake Penny. In "The Intimacy Acceleration", Sheldon asks her, "If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?" Penny replied, “Well, not to steal from the Bible, but turning water into wine sounds pretty good.”. In "The Locomotive Manipulation", Leonard declines Amy's suggestion that the group spend a weekend in Napa Valley, leading to this exchange:

text: Interaction with Sheldon[edit]

text: A staple of the series' humor is Penny's awkward interactions with Sheldon, which are fueled by the fact that they are almost polar opposites in terms of intellect and social aptitude.

text: In one episode, Sheldon tries to "improve" Penny, rewarding her with chocolate for what he considers "correct behavior", as in operant conditioning of lab rats. Leonard noticed it and accused Sheldon of modifying her like Pavlov's dogs.[19] Although the two characters sometimes clash, and Penny is frequently irritated by Sheldon's obstinacy and lack of social awareness, she has developed an affection for him. She and Leonard occasionally behave as if Sheldon were their child (once alluded to in season 11's "The Collaboration Contamination" when Penny actually uses a parenting book of Bernadette's on Sheldon), and Penny is very pleased whenever Sheldon acts tenderly towards her. Penny often calls Sheldon "sweetie", a term of endearment she frequently uses with other characters (a fact that Sheldon has himself pointed out), and Penny and Amy are the only principal characters who ever openly demonstrate their genuine fondness for Sheldon.

text: Evidence of Penny's affection for Sheldon is apparent in various episodes. Penny takes care of Sheldon while he is ill[20] and lets him stay at her apartment when he is locked out of his, or if he has a bad dream or is feeling unsafe;[21] Sheldon lent her money when she needed it[22] and takes care of her when she dislocates her shoulder.[14] Despite not being as well versed as the men in geek culture, Penny has shown attention to what each of her friends likes, although she still remains dismissive of them: during a Christmas episode, Penny gives Sheldon a signed napkin autographed by Leonard Nimoy. In return, Sheldon gives Penny several baskets of bath products and then a long hug, to both her and Leonard's surprise. When Sheldon's World of Warcraft account is hacked and the four men all back down from the much larger hacker who also steals Sheldon's Klingon Bat'leth, Penny kicks the hacker in the groin. Following her breakup with Leonard, Penny takes Sheldon along when she and some friends from work went to Disneyland, for which he is thankful. In the same episode, "The Spaghetti Catalyst", she notes that she takes Sheldon shopping for his linens. (This episode also shows her and Leonard acting like a divorced couple and Sheldon is their "son", a dynamic that recurs in successive seasons). She has also helped Sheldon resolve conflicts with Amy, as in "The Shiny Trinket Maneuver".

text: In "The Panty Pinata Polarization" Penny has a fight with Sheldon as he banishes her from his apartment and using their Wi-Fi as she got "three strikes". She defends herself by refusing to take down his order at the restaurant and then ruins his weekly Saturday laundry night but then he puts Penny's underwear on the telephone wire. After having a heated argument with his mother, Sheldon apologises to Penny and then they make amends with one another.

text: Sheldon has also acknowledged that he likes Penny, although he claims this was only because he was forced to because Leonard "made him", and that Sheldon liking her was a "hard row to hoe",[23] although in "The Intimacy Acceleration" Sheldon has admitted that he considers Penny a sisterly or motherly figure.

text: Nerd traits[edit]

text: A number of episodes depict Penny's assimilation of nerd culture through her relationship with the men, and has developed to quote some science fiction shows (like Star Trek), and movies (Star Wars). After Sheldon introduces her to the online role-playing game Age of Conan, Penny becomes addicted, to the point of ignoring her friends, her hygiene, her general appearance and her job, and pesters Sheldon incessantly for gaming advice. She finally overcomes her addiction when she realizes she has agreed to go on a virtual date within the game with Howard.[24]

text: In episodes such as "The Apology Insufficiency", "The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition", "The Wheaton Recurrence" and "The Love Car Displacement", she makes casual references to Star Trek.[25] In "The Bakersfield Expedition", Penny, Amy and Bernadette read some of the men's comics, believing there is nothing interesting in them, only to get into a huge heated argument about whether or not only Thor could wield his enchanted hammer Mjolnir.[26] In season 7's "The Proton Transmogrification", she alarms herself when she realizes that she understands Raj and Howard's corny Star Wars-related puns.

text: Penny sometimes references science and technology-related ideas. In "The Codpiece Topology", Penny, having previously learned of Schrödinger's cat in "The Tangerine Factor", is seen explaining that concept to her date. In "The Beta Test Initiation", Penny references beta testing when Leonard uses a software development analogy, to describe their attempt to start a romantic relationship again, although he points out he was technically talking about alpha testing. In "The Veracity Elasticity" she demonstrates fluency in Ubbi Dubbi by having a secret conversation with Amy Farrah Fowler in front of Sheldon and Leonard, when the guys are having their own secret conversation in Klingon.

text: Financial issues[edit]

text: A recurring theme throughout the series is Penny's ongoing financial problems. This is seen in "The Financial Permeability", when she finds herself behind on her bills, and borrows money from Sheldon, only to later become paranoid that he is pestering her for repayment, even though he makes no such indications of this - he misinterprets Penny's paranoia and even offers her more money, while Leonard points out that one of the few things about Sheldon that isn't insufferable is that he genuinely doesn't care about how long it will take to repay the money. More subtle references are seen in the fact that she once attempted to pay for her electric bill using a Starbucks gift card, an apology note and pictures of her in underwear.[27]

text: A subset of this trait is addressed by other characters is her freeloading. In the second-season episode "The Financial Permeability", when Penny is short on money, Leonard pays for her share of a group dinner, which causes Raj and Howard to joke that they would get free food too if they wore skintight jeans and a tank top. A recurring gag in the fourth season is Sheldon's frequent change of his and Leonard's Wi-Fi password to address Penny's use of their signal. In "The Thespian Catalyst", he changes the password to "Penny is a freeloader",[28] in "The Roommate Transmogrification" he has changed it to "Penny, get your own Wi-Fi",[29] and in the episode "The Speckerman Recurrence", he has changed it into "Penny already eats our food, she can pay for Wi-Fi". In the seventh season "The Convention Conundrum", when the women go out for drinks, and ponder their own maturity, and Penny questions the significance of that trait, Bernadette replies that it would mean that their check would be split three ways.[16]

text: Penny's financial situation takes a turn at the start of season eight, when she lands a job in "The Locomotion Interruption" as a sales representative at the pharmaceutical company at which Bernadette works. By "The Expedition Approximation", she is making enough money to be financially self-sufficient, able to sell the automobile Leonard previously gave her ("The Friendship Turbulence") and gives him back the money for it—changing their dynamic and leading to discussions on whether her future financial windfalls may prove difficult for him, given his insecurities. This situation was later exacerbated when it was revealed that Penny now actually earns significantly more than Leonard.

text: In the season nine episode "The Big Bear Precipitation", Penny reveals she hates her job as a representative but sticks with it because she still has large debts and also does not want to go back to waitressing or acting.

text: Family[edit]

text: In "The Maternal Capacitance", Penny reveals that her father Wyatt (Keith Carradine)[30] tried to raise her like a boy, which is a source of pain for her, leading her to have father issues. When she and Leonard begin dating, Wyatt comes to appreciate that she is dating an accomplished academic, rather than an uneducated hick, so much so that when he visits Penny in the fourth-season episode "The Boyfriend Complexity" following her and Leonard's breakup, it is revealed that she has not revealed the breakup to her father. When she later informs Wyatt of the breakup, Wyatt secretly encourages Leonard to not give up on her. In contrast to all other characters, Penny and her father's last name have not been revealed. Co-creator Bill Prady stated that Penny's last name will be revealed eventually.[31] Executive producer Steve Molaro, however, has since stated her last name will remain a secret.[32]

text: In an early episode, Penny talked to Raj about her sister having shot her brother-in-law.[9] In another episode, Penny accompanied the men to the comic book store to shop for a gift for her 13-year-old nephew.[11] In "The Boyfriend Complexity" (4–9), Wyatt (Penny's father) tells Leonard he wants grandchildren one day, "and I want them to grow up on a house without wheels".[30] In "The Dumpling Paradox", Penny has an unwanted guest, Christy, staying with her who had slept with her brother while being engaged to her cousin, saying, "she's kind of family". Christy knows Penny from back in Omaha and, according to Penny, she slept with nearly every man in the city, earning her the nickname "Whore of Omaha". While staying with Penny, Christy sleeps with Howard.[33]

text: In the Season 5 episode "The Pulled Groin Extrapolation", after Penny quickly grabs and eats the last dumpling of a group dinner after a brief disagreement over who should get it, Sheldon makes the sarcastic comment, "I've seen pictures of your mother. Keep eating", a reference to Penny's mother's weight, that clearly unsettles her. In "The Flaming Spittoon Acquisition", Penny confesses to Bernadette that her mother smoked pot while she was pregnant with her.

text: Penny has mentioned having a sister who appears to be the mother of her 13-year-old nephew mentioned in Season 2. In "The Bachelor Party Corrosion", Penny tells Bernadette, Amy and viewers that at her sister's wedding she was heavily pregnant since she and their father started a father-daughter dance and then her water broke.

text: Penny has mentioned having a brother on parole, who she says is "kind of a chemist". In "The Rhinitis Revelation" (5–6), she is more explicit in revealing that he is in the practice of cooking crystal meth.[34] She mentions that he is back in prison for 12–18 months, depending on his behavior, in the seventh-season finale, "The Status Quo Combustion".

text: Penny's mother Susan, who Penny has occasionally spoken with on the phone in prior episodes (usually about other family members), finally appears in the Season 10 premiere episode "The Conjugal Conjecture", portrayed by Katey Sagal. She is shown to be very embarrassed by her family's shortcomings: her son's criminal record and jailing, Wyatt's drinking, and their overall humble existence as a farming family. Although she has previously met Leonard and likes him, she is uncomfortable about meeting his academic parents, not wanting them to think of her family as "white trash". She goes to great lengths to present them in the best possible light, including buying dental implants for her son.

text: Work[edit]

text: Until the seventh season, Penny's main job was as a waitress at her local The Cheesecake Factory, although in the first-season episode "The Grasshopper Experiment" she trained as a bartender. It seemed that she occasionally picked up the bartending shift in the restaurant. In 2010, when actress Kaley Cuoco broke her leg, Penny was shown working as a bartender in several season 4 episodes to hide the cast on her leg.

text: Her work at The Cheesecake Factory, was initially meant to be a temporary job for her desired profession as an actress, although her expectations are somewhat high and naive at the beginning. She admits in season two that her plan was to be a waitress for six months and then become a movie star, and her back-up plan was to become a TV star. She regularly goes to castings, but often ends up unsuccessful, or finding the role being auditioned to be quite different from what she expected, as was the case when she thought she was auditioning for a cat food commercial and it instead turned out to be a casting for a pornographic film. In the season one episode "The Loobenfeld Decay", she is cast in a production of Rent, and in "The Terminator Decoupling" she refers to another of her roles as "Anne Frank in a theater above a bowling alley". Frustrated with her acting career, in the season five premiere, she briefly considers returning to Nebraska until landing a part in a commercial for hemorrhoid cream. In "The Monster Isolation", Penny is seen performing the role of Blanche DuBois in her acting class' production of A Streetcar Named Desire. In this episode Sheldon, who attended the show along with Leonard and Amy, is impressed with Penny's ability to memorize lines, but still couldn't remember customers' orders as a waitress. In the season seven premiere, she was revealed to have had a topless shower scene in a low budget horror film named "Serial Apeist" when she first moved to California, which she did not realise had been uploaded to the internet until Sheldon revealed it was available online and the gang saw it on the day they met her.

text: In the season seven episode "The Hesitation Ramification", Penny believes she has finally found stardom when she lands a brief role in NCIS. She is devastated when her scene is cut, but later decides it is time to focus solely on acting; she quits her job at The Cheesecake Factory to devote herself to become an actress.

text: Despite usually going to her neighbors for technical assistance when she has problems with her computer, Penny does have some mechanical skills of her own. When she was a child, she rebuilt a tractor engine on the farm where she grew up[9] and competed in a junior rodeo.[35]

text: During season eight, Penny gives up her acting career and gets a job as a salesperson at Bernadette's pharmaceutical company. The next season has Penny admitting that she hates her job flirting with her customers for sales.

text: Relationships[edit]

text: Unlike the rest of the main characters, Penny is very outgoing and assertive, and has many romantic relationships over the course of the series. She often dates, and in one way or another all the men have gone to her for dating advice. In the fourth season opener, Sheldon estimates that Penny has dated 193 men, and had sex with 31 of them. Penny strenuously denies it was ever that many. Amy asks Penny in the same conversation if, in light of her sex partners, she considers herself a "slut", Penny responds uncertainly, "No. No. ... No?"[12]

text: In the series premiere, Penny moves in across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon because of her recent split from her boyfriend, Kurt, after living together for four years. She says she still loves him, even though he cheated on her.[6] Kurt makes two more appearances in the series.[22][36]

text: From the beginning,[6] Leonard's infatuation with Penny becomes a major force that drives the series. Howard also shows interest in her (primarily sexual), but he is always rejected abruptly due to his unsettling approaches. Although Penny occasionally teases Raj for his inability to speak to her, she is sympathetic and kind towards him, and as with Sheldon, she almost always overlooks his idiosyncrasies and appreciates that his intentions are good.

text: In the first-season episode "The Fuzzy Boots Corollary", Penny describes her approach after a failed relationship: she picks up an attractive man to have rebound sex with over the course of a 36-hour weekend, then leaves him.[37]

text: In the first-season finale, Penny breaks up with her boyfriend after he posts intimate details about their private life on his blog. This gives Leonard the opportunity to ask her out on a first official date.[38] Although the date is successful, Penny becomes worried after she lies to Leonard about graduating from community college (it is mentioned in a later episode, "The Cohabitation Formulation", that she was enrolled in one, but dropped out). When Sheldon asks her why she lied, she indicates that she is self-conscious about her comparative level of education. Leonard eventually learns the truth, but makes matters worse when he tries to encourage Penny to enroll in Pasadena City College, as Penny interprets his suggestion as an insult to her intelligence, and rebuffs him.[39]

text: In "The Maternal Capacitance", Penny's introduction to Leonard's mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, causes Penny and Leonard to seek comfort in each other. They nearly have sex, but when Leonard comments in bed that she was attracted to him because of a psychological need to be closer to her father, her revulsion at this causes her to rebuff him.[40]

text: Afterwards, Penny dates Stuart, from the comic book store, but their dates do not lead to a relationship. The first time, Penny and Stuart are interrupted by Sheldon, who argues at length with Stuart over whether Dick Grayson or Jason Todd should be Batman's successor, while Penny falls to sleep.[11] Their dating ends in "The Classified Materials Turbulence", when Penny and Stuart are kissing, and Penny mistakenly calls him "Leonard".[41]

text: In the second-season finale Penny finally shows strong romantic feelings for Leonard. When she discovers that Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj will be spending three months at the magnetic North Pole for a scientific experiment, she becomes sad and gives Leonard a Snuggie and a long hug, that Leonard perceives as unusually long. Although Penny dismisses the meaning into which Leonard reads the gift and the hug, she later admits to herself that it meant that she did not want him to leave.[42]

text: In the third-season premiere, after the men returned from the expedition, Penny kisses Leonard immediately upon his return, having missed him immensely.[43] Initially, Leonard and Penny feel uncomfortable with their new relationship, and they agreed to remain only friends, but are unable to maintain this resolution and began a stable relationship.[44] Their relationship sours, however, when Leonard tells Penny he loves her for the first time, and an unsure Penny simply replied, "Thank you." The resulting tension eventually led to Penny breaking up with Leonard during a bowling match.[45] However, they remain friends and even sleep together once after breaking up after Penny gets drunk following a bad date with Zack Johnson, after she realizes Leonard ruined her ability to tolerate and date unintelligent men.[46]

text: In the fourth season, Penny reveals to her friends Bernadette Rostenkowski and Amy Farrah Fowler during a "Truth or Dare?" game that she has still not moved on from Leonard. This is further implied in "The Justice League Recombination" when she indicates to Leonard that her reunion with Zack, and Zack's decision to have the two of them join the men in dressing up as the Justice League for New Year's Eve costume party at Stuart's comic shop is made difficult by her history with Leonard. In "The Love Car Displacement", Penny and the rest of the cast attend an academic conference in Big Sur. She and Leonard share the same hotel room for the night and they almost have sex until Raj walks in on them. The next day, bored with the conference, Penny accepts a ride back to Los Angeles from Professor Glenn, Bernadette's tall and attractive ex-boyfriend. When Raj's sister, Priya, returns in the episode "The Cohabitation Formulation", Priya and Leonard begin a romantic relationship. Penny appears to be initially accepting of their relationship, but is later discovered by Amy to be heartbroken over it.

text: In the Season four finale, Penny reveals to Raj that she regrets breaking up with Leonard. However, even though she and Raj both agree to be friends, they get drunk and wake up in bed together, apparently both naked, the next morning. Leonard, Sheldon, and Howard discover Penny leaving the apartment, deducing that they just had sex. In the Season 5 premiere, Raj confides to her that they had not consummated their encounter, prompting Penny to refer to Raj as "Quickdraw" because of that. She spends the rest of the episode with Amy, avoiding the men due to her embarrassment over her encounter with Raj

text: In "The Ornithophobia Diffusion" Leonard and Penny go on a platonic date as friends, but after Leonard decides that he does not have to pay for everything or defer to her because they are not a couple, they end up bickering and sabotaging each other's attempts to socialize with members of the opposite sex. Penny realizes that she finds Leonard's more assertive demeanor attractive, but when he regresses to groveling in order to have sex with her, she rebuffs him.

text: On the spur of the moment in "The Recombination Hypothesis", Leonard asks Penny out on a date after he imagines what getting back with her might be like. In "The Beta Test Initiation", their date goes well until Leonard asks about the status of their relationship. This causes conflict, due to Penny's subsequent admission that commitment frightens her, but they agree to take their relationship slowly. On a spur of the moment while having sex in "The Launch Acceleration", however, Leonard proposes to her, causing Penny great distress. After discussing the matter, Penny declines his proposal, while affirming her feelings for him, and her desire to remain with him. In the season 6 episode "The Date Night Variable", Leonard wants a reluctant Penny to define their relationship. In "The Decoupling Fluctuation", she wonders if she is really in love with him, but cannot bring herself to discuss it with Leonard. In "The Date Night Variable", Raj shows up unannounced at a private dinner of Penny and Leonard's, and inserts himself into their discussion of where their relationship is headed. When Leonard complains that Penny has yet to say "I love you" to Leonard, Raj attempts to get her to say it, causing Penny to eject him from the apartment.

text: In "The 43 Peculiarity", Leonard becomes jealous of Penny's classmate, an attractive Englishman. At the end of the episode, Penny and Leonard discuss this, during which Penny casually mentions that she loves him, which Leonard notes is the first time she has said this to him. In "The Egg Salad Equivalency" Penny learns that Sheldon's attractive assistant Alex asked Leonard out to dinner and eventually admits to Leonard her own insecurity about their relationship. After a major argument with Sheldon, Leonard suggests moving in with Penny in "The Spoiler Alert Segmentation", but she indicates that she is not ready for this. In "The Tangible Affection Proof", Leonard again tries to propose to Penny on Valentine's Day, but she expresses that she is not ready for this, and is unnerved by that level of commitment. They resolve that when she is ready to get married, she can propose to him. In "The Bon Voyage Reaction", Penny deals with Leonard going off to Europe for a summer science assignment, resolving that they are more secure in their relationship.

text: In "The Hesitation Ramification", Penny, inebriated and frustrated over the state of her acting career, proposes to Leonard, who is hesitant to answer, given the circumstances. Though this further frustrates Penny, she admits in the following episode, "The Occupation Recalibration", that Leonard did the right thing.

text: By season 5, Penny has formed strong friendships with Doctors Amy Farrah Fowler and Bernadette Rostenkowski, and the three are often seen spending time together. However, Amy and Bernadette occasionally prefer to meet without Penny, and often tease her incessantly.

text: In the penultimate episode of season 7, "The Gorilla Dissolution", she and Leonard become engaged, after Penny realizes that it is not fame she wants out of life, but happiness with Leonard. Throughout season 8, a running gag is their reluctance to decide upon a wedding date. In the season 8 finale, Penny asks Leonard to marry her that night in Las Vegas. Leonard happily accepts, but during the journey, after Penny expresses happiness that they will get married while knowing everything about each other, Leonard confesses to having shared a drunken kiss with another woman while on the boat in Europe, though he adds that the woman started it and he rejected her. Penny becomes hurt by the revelation, and even though she claims to forgive Leonard, there is clearly tension between them, leaving the season ending in a cliffhanger as to whether or not they will go through with the wedding.

text: At the beginning of season 9, Leonard and Penny marry, although not without some initial problems. They both reveal that they were subconsciously trying to sabotage their relationship, feeling unworthy of the other. After an aborted attempt for Leonard to move into Penny's apartment and live with his wife, Sheldon forces them to spend most of the nights a week in Leonard's old room. Although CBS now refers to the character with the married name Penny Hofstadter, it has not been explicitly indicated in series whether she took Leonard's surname.[47] In season 10, Sheldon moves into Penny's old apartment with Amy allowing Penny and Leonard to live on their own as man and wife.

text: Development[edit]

text: In the original, unaired pilot of the series, the conception of the female lead was very different. She was called Katie, and was envisioned as "a street-hardened, tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior". Sheldon and Leonard would "approach her with honesty, to draw the real, sensitive Katie out".[31] The role was played by Amanda Walsh.[48] However, the test audiences reacted to the character negatively, seeing her as too mean. Because of this, the character was changed, and the role was recast.[31]

text: Tom Jicha of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel praised Cuoco's portrayal of Penny, stating: "Her character had the potential to be a bimbo, but she [Cucco] has developed it into a fully fleshed-out woman, who isn't as book-smart as the other characters but is wiser in so many ways. She's also a great straight person, who can get off zingers of her own".[49]


document_title: Marx's theory of history

question_text: who suggested class conflict drives human history and is at the core of human progress

root

text: Marx's theory of history

text: Private property[edit]

text: The Marxist concept of private property gives the basis for Marx's theory. "Private property" in the terminology of Marx's time, for Marx himself, and for Marxists sometimes today, does not mean the simple possessions of a person, but the ownership of productive property or property which produces a profit for the owner,[2] such as corporate ownership, share ownership, land ownership, and—in the case of slave society—slave ownership (since slaves work the land, mines and other means of producing the material means of existence).

tag: p

text: Stages of history[edit]

text: Marx saw that each stage or epoch created a new class or invention that would lead to its downfall. However the downfall would not be an automatically negative event, since with each step humanity at large would benefit. Each passing stage would therefore raise the standard of living of the masses while at the same time be doomed to its own downfall because of internal contradictions and class conflicts.

text: Only the last two epochs are to avoid this fate. With socialism (stage 5) the final oppressive class is overthrown and society is put under the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus advances into communism (stage 6).

text: The first three stages are not given particular attention, since by Marx's time they had long come to pass. As such, he does not provide the principles of these stages as he does for capitalism (stage 4) and the stages that follow. Nonetheless, these epochs have common characteristics.

text: Primitive communism[edit]

text: The First Stage: is usually called primitive communism. It has the following characteristics.

text:
Shared property: there is no concept of ownership beyond individual possessions. The tribe shares everything in order to ensure its survival.[citation needed]
Hunting and gathering: tribal societies have yet to develop large-scale agriculture and so their survival is a daily struggle.[citation needed]
Proto-democracy: there is usually no concept of "leadership" yet. So tribes are led by the best warrior if there is war, the best diplomat if they have steady contact with other tribes and so forth.[citation needed]

tag: ul

text: The primitive communism stage most likely begins soon after the dawn of humanity itself, at the stage where fire is developed, and communal living therefore becomes more convenient.[citation needed] Primitive communist societies tend to be very small, consisting of a maximum of a few hundred members, with size being dependent upon the environment. In this stage humanity does not differ from any other animal group, in that it has not yet found ways to bend nature to its will.

text: This stage ends with the development of private property,[citation needed] especially with the development of large-scale agriculture. This in turn produces productive property, such as cattle and slaves.[citation needed]

text: Slave society[edit]

text: The Second Stage: may be called slave society, considered to be the beginning of "class society" where private property appears.

text:
Class: here the idea of class appears. There is always a slave-owning ruling class and the slaves themselves.
Statism: the state develops during this stage as a tool for the slave-owners to use and control the slaves.
Agriculture: people learn to cultivate plants and rear animals on a large enough scale to support large populations.
Democracy and authoritarianism: these opposites develop at the same stage. Democracy arises first with the development of the republican city-state, followed by the totalitarian empire.
Private property: citizens now own more than personal property. Land ownership becomes especially important during a time of agricultural development.

text: The slave-owning class "own" the land and slaves, which are the main means of producing wealth, whilst the vast majority of people have very little or nothing. The propertyless included the slave class, slaves who work for no money, and in most cases women, who were also dispossessed during this period. From a Marxist perspective, slave society collapsed when it exhausted itself. The need to keep conquering more slaves created huge problems, such as maintaining the vast empire that resulted (i.e. the Roman Empire). It is ultimately the aristocracy born in this epoch that demolishes it and forces society to step onto the next stage.

text: Feudalism[edit]

text: The Third Stage: may be called feudalism; it appears after slave society collapses. This was most obvious during the European Middle Ages when society moved from slavery to feudalism.

text:
Aristocracy: the state is ruled by monarchs who inherit their positions, or at times marry or conquer their ways into leadership.
Theocracy: this is a time of largely religious rule - when there is only one religion in the land and its organizations affect all parts of daily life.
Hereditary classes: castes can sometimes form and one's class is determined at birth with no form of advancement. This was the case with India.
Nation-state: nations are formed from the remnants of the fallen empires - sometimes to rebuild themselves into empires once more. Note England's transition from a province to an empire.

text: During feudalism there are many classes such as kings, lords, and serfs, some little more than slaves. Most of these inherit their titles for good or ill. At the same time that societies must create all these new classes, trade with other nation-states increases rapidly. This catalyzes the creation of the merchant class.

text: Out of the merchants' riches, a capitalist class emerges within this feudal society. However, there are immediate conflicts between capitalists and aristocrats. The old feudal kings and lords cannot accept the new social changes the capitalists want for fear of destabilizing or reducing their power base, among various other reasons that are not all tied to power or money.

text: These proto-capitalist and capitalist classes are driven by the profit motive but are prevented from developing further profits by the nature of feudal society, in which, for instance, the serfs are tied to the land and cannot become industrial workers and wage-earners. Marx says, Then begins an epoch of social revolution (the French Revolution of 1789, the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, etc.) since the social and political organization of feudal society (or the property relations of feudalism) is preventing the development of the capitalists' productive forces.[3]

text: Capitalism[edit]

text: Marx pays special attention to this stage in human development, as it was the one he lived on. The bulk of his work is devoted to exploring the mechanisms of capitalism, which in western society classically arose "red in tooth and claw" from feudal society in a revolutionary movement.

text: Capitalism may be considered the Fourth Stage in the sequence. It appears after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists overthrow the feudal system. Marx sees capitalism as categorized by the following:

text:
Market economy: In capitalism, the entire economy is guided by market forces. Supporters of laissez-faire economics argue that there should be little or no intervention from the government on the economy under capitalism. Marxists, however, such as Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), argue that the capitalist government acts as a powerful instrument for the furtherance of capitalism and of the capitalist nation-state, particularly in the conquest of markets abroad, and also in the direct repression of reactionary/neofeudal movements and of proto-socialist or socialist movements.
Private property: The means of production are no longer in the hands of the monarchy and/or the nobility - rather they are controlled by the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois classes. The bourgeoisie and the petit-bourgeoisie control the means of production through commercial enterprises (such as corporations) which aim to maximize profit.
Bourgeois democracy: The bourgeoisie eventually (after years of struggle and opposition) accepted a form of democratic governance, descendent of the elective monarchy system (such as the Sejm of Poland-Lithuania) through elected representatives. Bourgeois democracy at its beginning had minimum wealth/status requirements and sometimes led to different weight in voting, depending on the wealth/status of the voter. Historically it has also excluded (by force, segregation, legislation or other means) sections of the population such as women, slaves, ex-slaves, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. Eventually the bourgeoisie accepted to extend the right to vote gradually to a large part of the population, although this did not necessarily lead to universal suffrage. A democratically elected government today usually only reaches power with heavy monetary support from the bourgeoisie, and even if it doesn't act directly on behalf of them, is forced to do so by the structure itself.
Wage labor: In capitalism, the proletariat sells its labour to survive, and is paid for its productivity. The bourgeoisie and its supportive classes propagate the illusion that market forces mean wages converge to an equilibrium at which workers are paid for precisely the value of their services. In reality workers are paid less than the value of their productivity—the difference forming profit for the employer (surplus value), with the medium being manipulable by the elites (See Industrial reserve army). In this sense paid employment is exploitation and while working in the production line the workers become alienated from the product of their work. Insofar as the profit-motive drives the economy, it is impossible for all workers to be paid for the full value of their labour, with the exception of a small "labour aristocracy", specialized workers which are paid from the surplus value other workers produce, in exchange for their knowledge and loyalty.
Imperialism: Capitalist states actively seek to conquer, dominate or indirectly control other regions or states, encouraged and aided by the bourgeoisie, in order to gain access to important raw materials, but most importantly to provide captive markets for finished products. This is done directly through war, through the threat of war, through the election of a politician aligned with that nation or through the export of capital and eventual control of the victimized state economy. The imperialist state's control over other regions or states can play an essential part in the development of the imperialist state's economy and capitalism, to the extent the state has money spat[clarification needed] directs warfare and other foreign intervention.
Monopolistic tendencies: Market forces develop monopolies from the most successful or deceitful commercial entities, as the market rewards those who smash their opponents through capital war, and drives down the profit of those in competition, though it can happen that opponents which can't defeat each other or don't want to, seek agreements to reduce competition and increase profits.

text: In capitalism, the profit-motive rules and people become freed from serfdom in order to work for the capitalists in exchange for wages. The capitalist class are free to spread their laissez-faire practices around the world. In the capitalist-controlled parliament, laws are made to protect wealth.

text: But according to Marx, capitalism, like slave society and feudalism, also has critical failings — internal contradictions which will lead to its downfall. Capital accumulation over time leads to increased inequality. Additionally, since capital demands a return, it also leads to increased returns coming from those without capital - the working class. Over time the number of work hours which the working class labors "for itself" decreases in order to provide returns for an ever-increasing pile of capital controlled by the capitalist class. Following the Marxist labor theory of value, this can be seen in how increasing labor productivity in the past 30 years in the United States has been accompanied by stagnant wage growth. In 2016 average U.S. labor productivity (attributing all productivity to labor, in accordance with the labor theory of value) was $70.00 an hour [citation needed] while the average minimum wage was around $10.00 an hour [citation needed], meaning that capital (and other costs) absorbed 6/7ths of the value produced by the average minimum-wage laborer. Marx hypothesized that this asymmetry generates social instability.

text: The working class, to which the capitalist class gave birth in order to produce commodities and profits, is the "grave digger" of capitalism. The worker is not paid the full value of what he or she produces. The rest is surplus value—the capitalist's profit, which Marx calls the "unpaid labour of the working class". Capitalists are forced by technological advances and partially by competition to drive down the wages of the working class in order to increase their own profits, and this creates a more direct conflict between these classes, and gives rise to the development of class consciousness in the working class. The working class, through trade-union and other struggles, becomes conscious of itself as an exploited class.

text: In Marx's view, the struggles of the working class against the attacks of the capitalist class lead the working class to establish its own collective control over production—the basis of socialist society. Marx believed that capitalism always leads to monopolies and brings the people to poverty; yet the fewer the restrictions on the free market, (e.g. from the state and trade unions) the sooner it finds itself in crisis.

text: Socialism[edit]

text: This section contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Please help improve the article by presenting facts as a neutrally-worded summary with appropriate citations. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote. (December 2017)

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text: After the working class gains class consciousness and successfully mounts a revolution against the capitalists, socialism, which may be considered the Fifth Stage, will be attained.

text: Lenin divided communism, the period following the overthrow of capitalism, into two stages: first socialism, and then later, once the last vestiges of the old capitalist ways have withered away, stateless communism or pure communism.[4] Lenin based his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, on a thorough study of the writings of Marx and Engels. Marx uses the terms the "first phase" of communism and the "higher phase" of communism, but Lenin points to later remarks of Engels which suggest that what people commonly think of as socialism equates to Marx's "first phase" of communism.[citation needed]

text: Socialism may be categorized by the following:

text:
Common property: the means of production are taken from the hands of a few capitalists and put in the hands of the workers. This translates into the democratic communes controlling the means of production.
Council democracy: Marx, basing himself on a thorough study of Paris Commune, believed that the workers would govern themselves through system of communes. He called this the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, overthrowing the dictatorship (governance) of the bourgeoisie, would democratically plan production and the resources of the planet.
Labor vouchers: Marx explained that, since socialism emerges from capitalism, it would be "stamped with its birthmarks". Economically this translates into the individual worker being awarded according to the amount of labor he contributes to society. Each worker would be given an amount of standardised credit verifying his contribution which he could then exchange for goods produced by other workers.

text: Marx explains that socialist society, having risen from a class-conscious movement of the vast majority, makes such a society one of the vast majority governing their own lives:

text:
“
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.[5]
”

text: Now the productive forces are truly free to develop, but in a democratically planned way, without the vast waste of anarchic capitalist society, its wars and its destruction of the planet. One of the primary tasks of the workers in the socialist society, after placing the means of production into collective ownership, is to destroy the "old state machinery". Hence the bourgeoisie's parliamentary democracy ceases to exist, and fiat and credit money are abolished. In Marx's view, instead of a dictatorship of capital, in which rulers are elected only once every few years at best, the state is ruled through the dictatorship of the proletariat with the democratically elected workers' commune to replace the parliament:

text:
“
The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable.[6]
”

text: The commune, in Marx and Engels' view, modeled after the Paris Commune, has a completely different political character from the parliament. Marx explains that it holds legislative-executive power and is subservient only to the workers themselves:

text:
“
The Commune, was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time...Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress [ver- and zertreten] the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business.[6]
”

text: Marx explained that, since socialism, the first stage of communism, would be "in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges", each worker would naturally expect to be awarded according to the amount of labor he contributes, despite the fact that each worker's ability and family circumstances would differ, so that the results would still be unequal at this stage, although fully supported by social provision.

text: Fiat money and credit whose values were determined by anarchic market forces are abolished. Instead, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx speculated schematically that from the "total social product" there would be deductions for the requirements of production and "the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc", which latter deduction "grows in proportion as the new society develops", and, of course, deductions "for those unable to work, etc". After these deductions the workers could divide up the wealth produced by their labor and everyone could be simply given a "certificate from society", which could then be exchanged for products. This schematically introduces a means of exchange ("the same principle" - i.e., money) in socialist society but with the speculative element removed.

text: In this way, each worker is paid according to the amount of labor contributed to society, in other words according to the agreed difficulty, length of time, and intensity of his labor. All goods (such as housing, for instance) are priced in a greater degree according to the amount of labor required to produce them, which the individual worker can buy with his labor voucher.

text:
“
What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.[7]

”

text: Only if this new socialist society manages to end the destructiveness of capitalism and leads to a higher quality of life for all will socialist society be successful. As socialism raises everyone's quality of life above the precarious existence they knew hitherto, providing decent health-care, housing, child-care, and other social provision for all without exception, the new socialist society begins to break down the old inevitably pecuniary habits, the need for a state apparatus will wither away, and the communist organization of society will begin to emerge. Socialism, in the view of Marxists, will succeed in raising the quality of life for all by ending the destructive contradictions which arise in capitalism through conflicts between competing capitalists and competing capitalist nations, and ending the need for imperialist conquest for the possession of commodities and markets.

text: Communism[edit]

text: Some time after socialism is established society leaps forward, and everyone has plenty of personal possessions, but no one can exploit another person for private gain through the ownership of vast monopolies, and so forth. Classes are thus abolished, and class society ended. Communism will have spread across the world and will operate worldwide. Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments or laws. Thus, stateless communism or pure communism, which may be considered the Sixth Stage, is established, which has the following features:

text:
Statelessness: there are no governments, laws, or nations anymore.
Classlessness: all social classes disappear; everyone works for everyone else.
Propertylessness: there is no money or private property; all goods are free to be consumed by anyone who needs them.

text: In The Communist Manifesto, Marx describes communism as:

text:
“
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.[5]
”

text: Few applications of historical materialism, the philosophical system used by Marxism to explain the past progressions of human society and predict the nature of communism, account for a stage beyond communism, but Marx suggests that what has ended is only the "prehistory" [8] of human society; now, for the first time, humankind will no longer be at the mercy of productive forces (e.g. the free market) which act independently of their control. Instead human beings can plan for the needs of society, inclusively, democratically, by the vast majority, who now own and control the means of production collectively. By implication, only then will the real history of human society begin.

text: Cohen's interpretation of Marx[edit]

text: Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence by G. A. Cohen is a key work for the philosophical school of Analytical Marxism. In it, Cohen advances a sophisticated technological-determinist interpretation of Marx "in which history is, fundamentally, the growth of human productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth."[9]

text: Cohen proposes that explanation in Marx’s conception of the social system is functional, by which he means roughly that the character of what is explained is determined by its effect on what explains it, so that economic relations of production profoundly affect productive forces (technology), and legal-political superstructures strongly condition economic foundations. Thus, in the latter case, in one direction a society’s legal-political superstructure stabilizes or entrenches its economic structure, but in the other direction the economic relations determine the character of the superstructure, so that in this sense the economic base is primary and the superstructure secondary. It is precisely because the superstructure strongly affects the base that the base selects that superstructure. As Charles Taylor puts it, "These two directions of influence are so far from being rivals that they are actually complementary. The functional explanation requires that the secondary factor tend to have a causal effect on the primary, for this dispositional fact is the key feature of the explanation."[10] It is because the influences in the two directions are not symmetrical that it makes sense to speak of primary and secondary factors, even where one is giving a non-reductionist, "holistic" account of social interaction.

text: The level of development of society’s productive forces (i.e., society’s technological powers, including tools, machinery, raw materials, and labour power) determines society’s economic structure, in the sense that it selects a structure of economic relations that tends best to facilitate further technological growth. In historical explanation, the overall primacy of the productive forces can be understood in terms of two key theses:

text:
“
(a) The productive forces tend to develop throughout history (the Development Thesis).
(b) The nature of the production relations of a society is explained by the level of development of its productive forces (the Primacy Thesis proper).[11]
”

text: In saying that productive forces have a universal tendency to develop, Cohen’s reading of Marx is not claiming that productive forces always develop or that they never decline. Their development may be temporarily blocked, but because human beings have a rational interest in developing their capacities to control their interactions with external nature in order to satisfy their wants, the historical tendency is strongly toward further development of these capacities.