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AQA A-level Sociology: Theory and Methods
What is scientific socialism?
Marx’s belief that it is possible to study society and its progress scientifically and use this knowledge to create a better society.
Who coined the term scientific socialism?
Marx
How did Max believe societal progress would occur?
Change would be a contradictory progress.
Capitalism would increase and so would human misery.
This would lead to a classless society where humans are free to maximise thier potential.
What are Marx’s key ideas? [7]
Historical materialism.
Class society and exploitation.
Capitalism.
Class consciousness.
Ideology.
Alienation.
The state, revolution and communism.
What is materialism?
The view that humans are beings with material needs and therefore must work to meet them and use the means (or forces) of production in the process.
Outline Marx’s ideas of historical materialism?
In the earliest stages of history, the means of production were just unaided human labour.
Technological development → tools and machines to aid production.
Humans began to cooperate, entering social relations of production.
As the means of production develop, so do the social relations of production.
This leads to the creation of the division of labour.
Which leads to the creation of two classes: the owners and the labourers.
Production is now directed by the owners in a way that meets their needs.
What are the social relations of production?
The ways of organising production.
What are the means (or forces) of production?
The necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production.
What is the mode of production?
A specific combination of the means of production and the social relations of production.
Which mode of a production do we currently live in?
A capitalist mode of production.
What are the three successive class societies that Marx identifies?
Ancient society - based on the exploitation of slaves legally tied to their owners.
Feudal society - based on the exploitation of serfs legally tied to the land.
Capitalist society - based on the exploitation of free-wage labourers.
Outline Marx’s ideas on class society and exploitation?
In early human history, there were no classes, private ownership nor exploitation.
Everyone worked and everything was shared - primitive communism.
The growth of the means of production → different types of class society emerge.
What are the features of a class society according to Marx?
One class owns the means of production.
This allows them to exploit their labourers for their benefit.
They can control society’s surplus product.
What is surplus product?
The difference between what the labourers actually produce and what is needed to keep them alive and working.
What is capitalism based on?
A division between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
What are the three distinctive features of capitalism?
The proletariat are legally free.
The competition between capitalists → the concentration of the means of production.
The expansion of the forces of production in pursuit of profit.
What is polarisation?
When society divides into a minority capitalist class and a majority working class.
Who owns the means of mental production?
The ruling class
What are the means of mental production?
The production of ideas.
What is ideology?
Sets of ideas and beliefs that legitimise the existing social order as desirable or inevitable.
Outline Marx’s ideas on class consciousness and ideology?
Capitalism is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
Capitalism creates the conditions for workers to develop consciousness of their exploitation.
The proletariat go from being a class in itself → a class for itself.
The ruling class own the means of mental production that allow them to control the dominant ideology.
This ideology serves the dominant class by producing their ideologies.
This ideology creates a false class consciousness that maintains inequality.
However, this impoverishment → workers develop a class consciousness.
This is when they see through the ideology and become aware that they are wage slaves.
Outline Marx’s ideas on alientation.
Alienation is a result of our loss of control over our labour.
Alienation separates humans from their true nature that is based in our ability to create things that meet our needs.
Alienation occurs in all class societies as the ruling class control the production.
How does Marx define the state?
As “armed bodies of men” who work in the interests of the bourgeoisie.
What will the revolution to end capitalism do?
Abolish the state and create a classless society.
Abolish exploitation, introduce social ownership and replace production for profit with the production to meet human needs.
End alienation.
According to Marx, where will the victory of the proletariat occur first?
In the most advanced capitalist societies.
What are criticisms of Marx’s view of class? [4]
Simplistic and dismisses other forms of inequality.
Weber: status and power are also important forms of inequality and having those doesn’t always mean owning the means of production.
Weber: includes other classifications, e.g. skilled and unskilled proletariat, white-collar middle class and the petty bourgeoisie.
Class polarisation has not happened.
How has Marx been criticised in terms of determinism?
Economic determinism.
Marx fails to argue that humans have free will.
He also ignores the role of ideas in his base-superstructure model.
Marx’s predictions have not come true, e.g. a revolution first happened in Russia.
Marx has however acknowledged autonomy by saying “men make their own history.”
What is economic determinism?
The view that economic factors are the sole cause of everything in society.
What are the two types of Marxism?
Humanistic and Scientific.
Describe humanistic Marxism?
It has similarities with action theories and interpretivist sociologists.
Describe scientific Marxism.
Takes a structural approach and has similarities with positivist sociologists.
What are the two ways in which the ruling class maintain their dominance, according to Gramsci?
Coercion
Consent (hegemony)
Who coins the term hegemony?
Gramsci
What is hegemony?
The use of ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule is legitimate.
How does Gramsci say the proletariat should gain leadership of society?
The proletariat must create their own counter-hegemony.
Who said that the proletariat should create a counter-hegemony?
Gramsci
Why does Gramsci reject economic determinism?
The change from capitalism to communism won’t occur due to economic factors.
Ideas will play a key role in determining whether change will happen.
According to Gramsci, why will the hegemony of the ruling class never be complete?
The ruling class are the minority.
To rule they have to create a power bloc through other alliances, e.g. alliances with the middle class.
They may have to compromise their ideology to favour their allies.
The proletariat have a dual consciousness allowing them to partially see through the dominant ideology.
What is Gramsci’s solution that will lead to a revolution?
The working class will have to create their own organic intellectuals.
This will be a body of class conscious intellectuals.
They will form a revolutionary political party that can offer an alternative vision of how society could operate.
This counter-hegemony would win ideological leadership from the ruling class.
How are Gramsci’s ideas evaluated?
He over-emphasises the importance of ideas and undermines the importance of state coercion and economic factors.
However, mat Marxists take a similar approach to Gramsci focusing on ideas.
These thinkers draw on interactionism as they focus on the ideas and meanings behind actions.
This combination of Marxism with other approaches is referred to as neo-Marxism.
The political level
The ideological level
The economic level
The political and ideological levels have relative autonomy from the economic level.
This means that they do not always reflect the economic level and can affect it.
This creates a two-way causality instead of the one-way causality Marx describes.
The economic level dominates in capitalism, but the political and ideological levels perform indispensable functions.
E.g. for capitalism to continue, the workers need to be socialised, and those who don’t conform need to be punished.
Through the two state apparatuses:
The repressive state apparatus (RSA): these are armed bodies of men that coerce the working class into conformity.
The ideological state apparatus (ISA): how the state ideologically manipulates the working class into thinking capitalism is legitimate.
He believes that everything is actually a product of the underlying social structures.
This makes Althusser dismissive of humanism as they believe through creativity and free will, we can change society.
This belief is simply an ideological state apparatus.
Althusser, therefore, believes that socialism won’t come about through gaining class consciousness, but rather a crisis of capitalism that leads to over-determination.
