Sociology 2111: Week Three
I. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Marx
" Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case." Engels, funeral oration upon Marx's death
A. Central problem of any society: its economic organization
1. How is society organized to apply a particular technology to a given environment?
e.g. Athens, slavery, class system... I.F. Stone: The Trial of Socrates
2. Macro-theory: What happens in the economic base largely determines what happens in the superstructure, and not vice versa.
3. Economic base includes: Environment, Technology, Organization of Production, Social Classes
4. Superstructure includes: Education system, Religion, Arts, Political System (including Criminal Justice), Mass media
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." (Marx)
For Marx this distinction is the beginning point of all social analysis, whether the society we are analyzing is a slave society, a feudal society, a capitalist society, or the old Soviet Union.
B. Class conflict
1. class in itself: people who share a particular position in the relations of production
2. class for itself: includes a) but also class conciousness and organization.
3. How does a class in itself become a class for itself?
a. Concentration and/or communication... This explains Marx's comment about the "idiocy of rural life;" he believed that peasants cannot become class conscious because of their isolation.
b. Role of the intellectuals (like Marx)
c. Contradictions in the current system (for example, growing poverty in the midst of abundance)
4. Revolution the eventual result, but Marx never clear on what the revolution would be like. E.g. need it involve violence? Product of revolution would be first socialism (control of economy by the government) and later communism ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs")
C. Sociology of capitalism
1. Defining characteristic: markets (supply and demand) determine not only the value of goods and services but the value of labor. Workers as "commodities."
2. Driving force: profit
3. Strengths of capitalism:
a. Technological innovation
b. Massive increase in productivity and production
c. Expansiveness: creates a world system. "The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls." (Marx)
4. Weaknesses of capitalism
a. Pauperization.
b. Proletarianization.
c. Class simplification: the proletariat and the grand bourgeoisie
d. Crises of overproduction (depressions)
e. Eventual loss of legitimacy (compare with Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy)
II. Video: "Roger and Me"
III. Marx the philosopher
A. Alienation: Systems that people create take over their lives and people lose track of their creativity. Even the capitalists are not free.
B. Species being: what is unique to humans as a species = social creativity.
C. How are workers alienated under capitalism?
1. From the profits of their labor
2. From the product of their labor
3. From their true human nature
4. From other people, who become means to an end.
D. Two views of revolution under capitalism
1. Result of actual economic impoverishment of a large majority in the midst of potential abundance
2. Result of capitalism's destruction of the human essence, which is creative, cooperative work, done freely and joyously. What if wages increase? Workers would still be alienated.... "well paid slaves"
IV. Marx the revolutionary
" For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat,which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung(1842), the Paris Vorwarts(1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung(1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune(1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else." Engels, oration at Marx's funeral
V. Discussion: The Communist Manifesto: Bourgeois and Proletarians
VI. Strengths and weaknesses of Marx's social theories
a. Strength: Emphasis on inequality and conflict, sociology of capitalism, capitalism as a world system
b. Weaknesses: Political predictions, utopian vision .