SOC3070 - Lecture 4

Karl Marx

Last week

Durkheim on history as a social process largely independent of the individuals who enact it.

‘Forced division of labour’ as ‘abnormal’.

But, historically, the division of labour occurs always in a context of structured inequality.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

Describe well the two-sidedness of history.

‘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 encountered, given and transmitted from the past.’

The Eighteenth Brumaire

History is made by the action of individuals in pursuit of their intentions.

But individual action has almost invariably unintended consequences

Task: to understand the relationship between human intentions and their historical outcome

Historical Materialism

Methodology, type of analysis that relates present action to the structures of the past

Historical: all human societies are embedded in their past

Materialism: the processes and relationships of production are essential to the creation of all human societies

Engels:

‘The production of the means to support human life is the basis of all social structure’

Division of labour as key process.

At its core is not interdependence, but inequality

‘In production men not only act on nature but also on one another. […] In order to produce they enter into definite connections and relations with one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature take place.’

‘Forces of production’ / ‘Relations of production’

A ‘mode of production’ is the economic structure of society. Which is also a mode of power (‘classes’).

The materialistic conception of history

Marx, 1859:

‘In the social production of their life men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will…’

The priority of society

‘… relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.’

the material basis of social organisation

‘The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general.’

economic production and social organisation

‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.’

the shaping of consciousness

‘At a certain stage in their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production [i.e.] with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto.’

the source of social change

‘From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters’

The nature of social change

‘Thus begin the epoch of social revolution’

‘With the change of the economic foundation, the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed’

the economic sources of social change

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Marxism as a form of historical sociology:

1. Two-sided interaction of action and structure through time

2. Division of labour as the source of both individuality and inequality

3. Contradictions between forces of production/relations of production hardens into systems of class relationships

4. Class domination legitimates itself through religion, philosophy, law, and the state

Main empirical test: the historical transition from feudalism to capitalism

Two kinds of historical writings:

1. MethodologyMarx-Engels, The German IdeologyMarx Engels, The Communist Manifesto

2. Historical case-studies. They bring out in detail the nature of the interaction of social structure and individual action within a specific historical setting

K. Marx, The Class Struggles in France K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis BonaparteF. Engels, The Peasant War in Germany

In these historical studies

Three levels of analysis:

1) Events, subjective world of action;

2) Political structures, institutions, ideologies;

3) Class structure.

Superstructures: politics, philosophy, religion, culture,

etc…

Economic situation

History as ultimately determined by economic relationships