sociology midterm

I According to Marx, history can be divided up into stages defined by their mode of production.

I A mode of production is characterized by forces of production (the tools and technology we use to make things) and by relations of production (the relations with other people we enter into as we produce what we need to survive).

I Marx discusses five modes of production: tribal, slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist.

I Marx argues that “the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general.” (4)

I This means that the mode of production (or “base”) gives rise to the legal system, the political system, and the ruling ideas (the “superstructure”).

I It is too strong to argue that believed that that the base always determines the superstructure, and we can find examples in Marx’s work where he suggests otherwise. But, on the whole, Marx believed that a society’s economic base—its mode of production—is the most important factor influencing other aspects of a society (its culture, ideas, legal system, and politics).

I For these reasons, we call Marx’s theory materialist.

I We can contrast Marx’s materialist philosophy with the idealist philosophy that influenced him when he was a young university student.

I Marx writes that “legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life” (4)

I Marx takes Hegel’s conception of history (that history progresses through the clashing of opposing forces) and modifies it.

I Hegel believed the main clashing forces were ideas.

I Marx believed the main clashing forces were economic forces.

I Feuerbach, a “young Hegelian” philosopher who influenced Marx, argued people create God, but then act as if they are controlled by God.

I Marx argued that the same is true when people produce commodities: the very things we create come to control us.

I In his early work, Marx developed a four-part theory of alienation:

I (1) Alienation from the product of one’s labor. Workers do not take pride in the commodities they produce. These commodities belong not to them but to someone else.

I (2) Alienation from the act of production. Workers producing commodities become alienated from their own bodies. They do not use their bodies to create things of their own design, but use them to produce objects for someone else. They experience work as something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

I (3) Alienation from their species being. Marx believed people are inherently creative and multifaceted beings who can be distinguished from non-human animals by the fact that they envision things they would like to create, then realize these visions through their labor. In commodity production, people instead make products based on someone else’s design.

I (4) Alienation from other people. Commodity production leads people to treat each other instrumentally—as objects or mere inputs into the process of production.

I Although Marx stresses the importance of the economic base of society, elsewhere in his writing he discusses the ability of people to “modif[y] old circumstances with completely changed activity” (172).

I Marx believed that over time people would increasingly fall into one of two classes: those who own the means of production and those who have only their labor to sell. We will see in more detail why Marx believed this when we read selections from his book Capital.

I Marx gives some very nice-sounding descriptions of life under communism (“hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner”) but these descriptions and explanations of how they will be achieved are not always clear.

Review

Review

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Marx’s Theory of History

I “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle” (473)

What is a class?

I “In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that divide their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them into hostile contrast to the latter, they form a class” (608).

Marx’s Theory of History

I “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (474).

Marx’s Theory of History

I Tribal ⇒ State-ownership (slavery) ⇒ Feudal ⇒ Capitalist I “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (473).

The productive forces of capitalism

I “It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation” (475) I “It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades” (476).

The destructive forces of capitalism

I “It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers” (476) I “It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in the place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade” (475).

Technological change

I “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society” (476).

I “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, all his relations with his kind” (476).

Globalization

I “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere” (476).

I “National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature” (477).

I “it creates a world after its own image” (477).

I “the confluence of globalization and technology is making the gap between rich and poor, the mismatch in power between capital and labor, greater all the time”

The concentration of political power

I “It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization” (477).

I “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (475).

The creation of new wants

I “In the place of old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes” (476).

Capitalism creates the conditions for its own downfall

I “But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians” (478).

I “The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers” (483).

Capitalism creates the conditions for its own downfall

I “The small peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions, but without entering into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead bringing them into mutual intercourse” (608).

I “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (483).

What is Communism?

I “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation” (486).

If Marx and Engels are materialists, why would they write The Communist Manifesto?

I “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances” (144).

I “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted by the past” (595).

If Marx and Engels are materialists, why would they write The Communist Manifesto?

I “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (145)

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