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.
production were in a sense parasitic on workers’ labour. The injustice of the system
was palpable. Marx predicted that inequalities of capitalism would become so
extreme that workers would eventually recognize their common class interests,
develop a common “class consciousness” or understanding of their situation, and
revolt. Class struggle would lead to the destruction of the institution of private
capital and to the final stage in human history, which he called “communism.”
Although Marx did not call his analysis sociology, his sociological innovation was
to provide a social analysis of the economic system. Whereas Adam Smith (1723–
1790) and the political economists of the 19th century tried to explain the economic
laws of supply and demand solely as a market mechanism (similar to the abstract
discussions of stock market indices and investment returns in business pages of
newspapers today), Marx’s analysis showed the social relationships that had created
the market system and the social repercussions of their operation. As such, his
analysis of modern society was not static or simply descriptive. He was able to put
his finger on the underlying dynamism and continuous change that characterized
capitalist society. In a famous passage from The Communist Manifesto, he and
Engels described the restless and destructive penchant for change inherent in the
capitalist mode of production:
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. Conservation of
the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence
for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance
of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguishes the bourgeois epoch
from all earlier ones. 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 which is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to
face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind (Marx and Engels
1848).
Marx was also able to create an effective basis for critical sociology in that what he
aimed for in his analysis was, as he put it in another letter to Arnold Ruge, “the self-
clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.” While he took a clear and
principled value position in his critique, he did not do so dogmatically, based on an
arbitrary moral position of what he personally thought was good and bad. He felt
rather that a critical social theory must engage in clarifying and supporting the issues
of social justice that were inherent within the existing struggles and wishes of the
age. In his own work, he endeavored to show how the variety of specific work
actions, strikes, and revolts by workers in different occupations for better pay, safer
working conditions, shorter hours, the right to unionize, etc. contained the seeds for
a vision of universal equality, collective justice, and ultimately the ideal of a classless
society.
Harriet Martineau: The First Woman Sociologist?
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