Karl Marx- Historical Materialism for OAS Sociology Optional

 Sociology Optional,

Paper-1, Chapter-4

Karl Marx - Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle

Historical Materialism

• Historical because Marx traced the evolution of human societies from one stage to another. Materialism because he interpreted the evolution of societies in terms of their economic base. 

• Humans are not naturally free - we cannot adapt to nature well, hence Labour = modifying nature

• Only when we change nature, laboring cooperatively can we get rid of natural constraints

• Primitive communism = natural constraints (everyone equal socially but need food), then we have social constraints in all other stages - due to unequal distribution of surplus - working together helped us overcome natural constraints 

• HM - looks at change over time and looks at questions like how production is organized, who have food, money, etc.

Criticism

The monocausal [Economic] Explanation of Society draws criticism for its myopic view.

1. Rudolf Steiner- History is not predetermined, it can be accidental.

2. M. Weber- It is difficult to determine the beginning and the end of history. Ex- Livingbeings directly jump to capitalism without ancient/ feudal. India has a mix of socialism, feudalism, & Slavery.

3. Alan Eister-  Applying hm/mop, One can not study history scientifically. I.e it is more ideological than scientific.

Significance

1. It has provided a sequence of social growth and development.

2. HM/MOP introduced to society a new method of inquiry, new concepts, and a bold hypothesis to explain the rise, development, and decline of a particular form of society

3. It was normal in its study of human progress and tried to synthesize the entire legacy of social knowledge since Aristotle

4. HM/MOP provides a method to understand the existing social reality.

Mode of Production

1. Mode of Production: It is a system of material production that persists over a long period of time. Each mode of production is distinguished by its means of production (e.g.: technology and forms of production organization) and the relations of production (e.g.: slavery, serfdom, wage labor).

2. Modes of production = forces of production + relations of production = feudalism, etc. = stages of history

3. FOP = technical and scientific parts of the economy, tools, buildings, material resources, technology, human labor that makes it go - factory, oil, the engine also cultural and social technology like an assembly line

4. ROP = how people organize themselves around labor - work for themselves? Or for wages? How is ownership?

5. Superstructure built on top of material reality

6. Means of production = inanimate part - the actual physical stuff that makes up forces of production - land, raw material, tools, and machines

7. Capitalism does not have legally defined classes - but the proletariat does not control means of production - bourgeoisie control means of production and what comes out of them - this difference gives rise to exploitation in form of wage labor - proletariat can only sell labor as no control - paid less than the worth of what they produce - profit - so bourgeoisie wants to keep wage low and production high 

8. Crisis of production - overproduction - but people cannot afford to buy - market collapse - Forces of production are constrained by the limits created by relations of production 

9. Bourgeoisie aligned with ROP, proletariat want to change with forces of production and also ROP - revolution 

10. Gramsci - ruling class stays in power, in part, due to hegemonic culture - dominant ideas all-pervasive in the society - not necessarily economic ideas

11. Conflict theory is the basic idea of looking at power dynamics and analyzing the ways in which struggles over power drive societal change as all groups fight for control over resources.

Alienation

1. The psychological detachment that happens to every worker in the industrial society

2. You are what you produce

3. Species essence - people identified with what they made - example bread was an extension of the baker

4. Marx talks of 2 types of DOL - social DOL was unavoidable, but DOL in production increases efficiency, alienation both

5. Alienation from the product, from one's own labor, from others (competition, no sense of cooperation), from oneself

6. Marx used the term to refer to the loss of control on the part of workers over the nature of the labor task, and over the products of their labor

7. A process in capitalist society by which human beings are separated and distanced from (or made strangers to) nature, other human beings, their work, and its product, and their own nature or self

8. C.W. Mills states that the growth of the tertiary (service) sector in modern industrial societies has contributed to self-alienation among the white-collar (non-manual) workers. In these societies, ‘skills with things’ have been replaced by ‘skills with persons’ which the nonmanual workers have to sell like commodities. Mills calls this ‘personality market’ since aspects of personality at work is false and insincere.

9. Herbert Marcuse, talking of work and leisure in advanced industrial societies, says that both work and leisure alternate people from their true selves. Work is ‘stupefying’ and ‘exhausting’ while leisure involves modes of relaxation that only soothe and prolong this stupefaction and it is largely a pursuit of false needs. 

10. Melvin Seeman applied Reputational Approach to study alienation. He has tried to define alienation in a comprehensive way. He argues that alienation could be decomposed into five separate elements; powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. However, Seeman simply treats them as subjective dispositions which can be measured with the help of attitude scales.

11. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel say that in 'Post Fordist' societies, work is no longer mechanical, but skill-based and this diminishes Alienation 

12. Harry Braverman claims that the introduction of new technology leads to a reduction in creative input and increases deskilling and alienation

13. Marx misjudged the extent of alienation in the average worker. The great depth of alienation and frustration which Marx “witnessed” among the workers of his day is not “typical” of today’s capitalism or its worker who tends to identify increasingly with a number of “meaningful” groups-religious, ethnic, occupational, and local. This is not to deny the existence of alienation but to point out that alienation results more from the structure of bureaucracy and of mass society than from economic exploitation.