Sociological Theory: Karl Marx: Major Features of Capitalist Mode of Production
Sociological Theory: Karl Marx: Major features of capitalist mode of production Introduction.
Karl Marx is one of the outstanding and influential social scientists of the 19th century, an undeniable founder of modern social science. Some critics, however, believe that Marx was not an original thinker and that his claim to recognition lies in the fact of his remarkable synthesis of German Philosophy, French Sociology and English Economics of his time. He collected the stray and isolated thoughts in these fields and constructed a coherent intellectual mansion for academic enlightenment and practical application, very much according to his own design. Hegel 's dialectical process or principle of development through thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis provided the philosophical background for his theory of historical development through 'contradiction and conflict '. However, he replaced Hegel 's notion of the development of the 'Idea ' through the dialectical process to its final and highest form with the 'Materialism ' of Feuerbach and introduced the concept of dialectical materialism to explain the historical process through 'class war '. He derived both the phrase and the concept of "class war" from French socialists like Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. On the Economics side, Marx adopted in its entirety the Ricardian theory that labor was the source of value and developing it drew conclusions which Ricardo might have disdained. Thus, in short, Marx 's social theory consists of three parts, with a fourth one thrown in later, and very ingeniously interwoven to present a coherent picture of a social organization, at once dynamic and in a state of flux. First is a philosophy of history anchored in the theory of Dialectical Materialism, which is manifested in a recurring class war in which the negation of the negation produces ever new negations. Secondly, there is the economic analysis which gives an exposition of a theory of value in an attempt to discover the
Karl Marx is one of the outstanding and influential social scientists of the 19th century, an undeniable founder of modern social science. Some critics, however, believe that Marx was not an original thinker and that his claim to recognition lies in the fact of his remarkable synthesis of German Philosophy, French Sociology and English Economics of his time. He collected the stray and isolated thoughts in these fields and constructed a coherent intellectual mansion for academic enlightenment and practical application, very much according to his own design. Hegel 's dialectical process or principle of development through thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis provided the philosophical background for his theory of historical development through 'contradiction and conflict '. However, he replaced Hegel 's notion of the development of the 'Idea ' through the dialectical process to its final and highest form with the 'Materialism ' of Feuerbach and introduced the concept of dialectical materialism to explain the historical process through 'class war '. He derived both the phrase and the concept of "class war" from French socialists like Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. On the Economics side, Marx adopted in its entirety the Ricardian theory that labor was the source of value and developing it drew conclusions which Ricardo might have disdained. Thus, in short, Marx 's social theory consists of three parts, with a fourth one thrown in later, and very ingeniously interwoven to present a coherent picture of a social organization, at once dynamic and in a state of flux. First is a philosophy of history anchored in the theory of Dialectical Materialism, which is manifested in a recurring class war in which the negation of the negation produces ever new negations. Secondly, there is the economic analysis which gives an exposition of a theory of value in an attempt to discover the
References: M. Blaug, Ricardian Economics. A Historical Study Greenwood Press, 1973 Freedman, Robert, 1961, Marx on Economics, Ed.., Penguin Books, England, 1961 Hegel, G.W.F. Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller, Allen & Unwin, 1969 Leibknecht, W. `Reminiscences of Marx ', in Marx and Engels Through the Eyes of their Contemporaries, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Lenin, V.I. `A Great Beginning ' and `Left Wing ' Communism, in Selected Works (one volume), Lawrence & Wishart, 1969 Marx, K. Critique of the Gotha Programme, FLP, Peking, 1976. From: Radical Philosophy (Spring 1980) Marx, K. The Poverty of Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966. Letter to P.V. Annenkov, in Poverty of Philosophy Karl Marx, Preface and Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, FLP, Peking, 1976. Marx, K, Critique of the Gotha Programme, FLP, Peking, 1976. From: Radical Philosophy 24 (Spring 1980) Marx, K. Capital, Vol. I, Penguin Books, England Marx, K and Engels, F. Communist Manifesto, Martin Lawrence, London, 1933 Resnick and Wolff, Knowledge and Class, University of Chicago Press, 1987. Ricardo, David, (1999). Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) (5th ed.). Prentice-Hall. 1999 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon. (2006). In Britannica Student Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9277635