What do you make of Karl Marx’s contributions to sociology?

What do you make of Karl Marx’s contributions to sociology?

Karl Marx is regarded as one of the founding fathers of sociology and the most outspoken critic of everything that exists. He proposed a critical critique of capitalism that identified inequality and power relations as the sources of social conflict and insecurity (Little, n.d.). This concept is still taught in sociology classes today. Marx’s contribution to sociology was to study economic systems in order to better understand society. He observed that the allocation of power within society was organized in a top-down structure and unequally distributed, so that it was governed by the wealthy, who owned or managed their means of production. While those with less social status have to struggle and fight over scarce resources. This birthed the emergence of a sociological standpoint known as the conflict theory (Cole, 2018). Warfare, revolutions, impoverishment, inequality, and spousal abuse, have all been understood using the conflict theory. Most essential changes in human history, such as democracy and civil rights, are attributed to bourgeoisie attempts to control the people, according to this theory (Hayes, 2020).

2. What perceptions of Marx have you been exposed to in your society, and how do those perceptions influence your views?

Growing up in Jamaica in the lowest social class, I witnessed how my family was used, overworked and underpaid for their skills. The upper class owned all of the factories, supermarkets, and gas stations, that employed poor people and paid them low wages. After paying the gas and water bills, sometimes we did not have enough left to buy food. This made some laborers disgruntled and they would walk off their jobs. When my family emigrated from Jamaica to the U.S. we quickly saw that it was more of the same process. Big corporations paid their employees low wages and required them to work long hours on holidays. This made me view wealthy people as selfish and less charitable than people in lower social classes. I thought that all rich people exploited people less fortunate than themselves to get where they are financial.

References

Cole, N.L. (2018, October 20). Karl Marx’s greatest hits : A review of Marx’s most important contributions to sociology. ThoughtCO.

What do you think of Karl Marx’s contributions to Sociology?

Karl Marx’s point of view was heavily influenced by his economic leanings and thus he thought about much of everyday life from an economic point of view. Marx is commonly remembered for providing sociology with a conflicting theory of the functioning of society. Though Marx didn’t live long enough to truly see his predictions come to pass in the time frame he expected, his idea that social conflict leads to social change remains one of the main theories used in modern sociology. The work of Marx provided sociology with several critical theories, including materialistic historical theory and methods of studying society.

Karl Marx’s thoughts on alienation, historical changes, class relations, the capitalist system, and social revolution had a lasting impact on sociology. Although interest in his work fluctuated, sociologists did not always agree with the relevance. (Paolucci, n.d.) Marx is still considered by many to have been born of that which we define as Marxism. His ideas about the economy paved the way for understanding the workforce and its relationship with capital. He first refuted an important philosophical principle at that time: Hegel’s dialectics, thus forming this theory.

How do Marx’s perceptions influence your views?

Marx believed that communism is a fairer system than capitalism. While I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, it is one that I could argue has more basis in the modern capitalist, inequality-filled world we currently have. One Marxist theory is that the government will do anything, even at the cost of its own people’s quality of life, to keep the capitalist machine and economy running, so as to continue its existence through the continuous restoration of capitalist production relations.