Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
objectively describe society, but to use a rigorous scientific analysis as a basis to
change it. This framework became the foundation of contemporary critical
sociology.
Marx rejected Comte’s positivism with its emphasis on describing the logical laws
of the general “mind.” For Marx, Comte’s sociology was a form of idealism, a way
of explaining the nature of society based on the ideas that people hold. In an idealist
perspective, people invent ideas of “freedom,” “morality,” or “causality,” etc. and
then change their lives and society’s institutions to conform to these ideas.
This type of understanding could only ever lead to a partial analysis of social life
according to Marx. Instead, he believed that societies grew and changed as a result
of the struggles of different social classes over control of the means of production.
Historical materialism is an approach to understanding society that explains social
change and human ideas in terms of underlying changes in the “mode of production”
or economy; i.e., the historical transformations in the way human societies act upon
their material world (the environment and its resources) in order to use it to meet
their needs. Marx argues therefore that the consciousness or ideas people have about
the world develop from changes in this material, economic basis. As such, the ideas
of people in hunter-gatherer societies will be different than the ideas of people in
feudal societies, which in turn will be different from the ideas of people in capitalist
societies.
The source of historical change and transition between different historical types of
society was class struggle. At the time Marx was developing his theories, the
Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism had led to a massive increase in the
wealth of society but also massive disparities in wealth and power between the
owners of the factories (the bourgeoisie) and workers (the proletariat). Capitalism
was still a relatively new economic system, an economic system characterized by
private or corporate ownership of goods and the means to produce them. It was also
a system that was inherently unstable and prone to crisis, yet increasingly global in
its reach.
As Marx demonstrated in his masterpiece Capital (1867), capitalism’s instability is
based on the processes by which capitalists accumulate their capital or assets,
namely by engaging in cold-blooded competition with each other through the sale
of commodities in the competitive market. There is a continuous need to expand
markets for goods and to reduce the costs of production in order to create ever
cheaper and more competitive products. This leads to a downward pressure on
wages, the introduction of labor-saving technologies that increase unemployment,
the failure of non-competitive businesses, periodic economic crises and recessions,
and the global expansion of capitalism as businesses seek markets to exploit and
cheaper sources of labour. Yet as he pointed out, it was the workers’ labour that
actually produces wealth. The capitalists who owned the factories and means of
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