Reading Guide Karl Marx in Sociology and Anthropology

Collins and Makowsky, Ch. 2 (skip the final section on Engels)

This chapter is a useful introduction to Marx, but it is only that: reading even a bit of Marx himself, combined with textual analysis in class, will enable us to go much deeper. Still, the chapter provides a useful overview of Marx's life and work. Keep in mind, however, that our interest in Marx in this course is primarily as a sociological theorist, not as an economist or as a political figure.

Pay particular attention to the sections on "Marx's Sociology" and "Marx's Theory of Politics."

1. What do C&M mean by saying that Marx's research and theory are mainly about capitalism, not socialism? What doomed him to "a life in the underground"?

2. C&M say that Marx provided an original theory of "how classes are produced." What was his theory about this? What is distinctive about his concept of class, compared to others?

2. What was Marx's theory of class consciousnesss? What did he mean by "false consciousness"? What is ideology and how can ideology be a form of power?

3. What is Marx's theory of the state? How did he interpret political struggles and what did he believe determined their outcome?

4. What did Marx mean when he said: "Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one"?

5. What do C&M mean when they say that "Marx's sociology appears to be basically correct"?

6. In the section on Marx's Social and Political Phiosophy, pay attention to the concept of alienation and the role it played in Marx's theory.

"Manifesto of the Communist Party, Section I: Bourgeois and Proletarians" (online; relate to C&M's "Marx's Sociology' and the Coser reading below)

You may already have read the "Communist Manifesto" in other courses. It provides the most readable introduction to Marx's thought available, and there's a whole theory of society and social change in it. It's a good way to start with Marx, but as we'll see, the Manifesto has two limitations: 1) as a polemical document, prepared as a political manifesto, it tends to simplify and overstate positions which Marx explored with more subtlety in other writings; 2) its emphasis on class struggle provides insight into one side of Marx's theory, but it says less about the other, more structural, side. In any case, despite its status as probably the most famous political manifesto ever written, I want you to focus not on its politics but on the sociological theory it presents. There is a tremendous amount of sophisticated sociological theory packed into this short statement.

1. What does it mean to say that the history of hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles? What does Marx mean by social classes? Why does Marx think classes are so important? How do they make history?

2. How have class societies varied, according to Marx? What does he see as distinctive about the nature of the class structure under capitalism?

3. What is Marx's attitude towards the bourgeoisie? What historical role does he see it as playing? Is his view an entirely negative one?

4. Why does Marx believe that capitalism is inherently unstable, that it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction?

5. Marx believes that classes go through stages in their development. How does he describe the development of the proletariat? Why does he believe it is likely to play a revolutionary role? What role does he attribute to intellectuals like himself?

Lewis Coser, A Summary of Ideas:"Class Theory " at Dead Sociologists Index (online; click on appropriate link to access text)

1. In "Class Theory," focus on Coser's discussion of the distinction between class-in-itself and class-for-itself, and what it takes for an aggregate of people to move from the first to the second. This is at the core of Marx's class theory, and his analysis of the necessary conditions for this to occur is nuanced and sophisticated. What do these two terms mean and what is the relation between them?

2. Why did Marx believe that the capitalist class (bourgeoisie) could not in the end act collectively to secure its own interest? Why did he think the working class would be different?

Marx, "Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" (online; relate to C&M's "Marx's Theory of Politics")

This short statement provides an extremely succinct statement of what might be called the "structural" side of Marx's theory. Note the absence here of the emphasis on class struggle found elsewhere in Marx's writings, e.g. the Communist Manifesto. Here the emphasis is on the basic structure of society, and on how contradictions in its mode of production inevitably lead to instability and change. Try to make sense of the following basic concepts and the relations between them:

civil society
political economy
relations of production
productive forces
mode of production
base and superstructure
fetters
ideology
contradictions
social revolution
social formation
prehistory

Lewis Coser, A Summary of Ideas:"The Sociology of Knowledge" at Dead Sociologists Index (online)

1. How does Marx analyze ideas? What is his sociology of knowledge?

2. How did Marx and Engels "soften" their position somewhat in their later years?

Marx on the "Opium of the People" (Answers.com/Wikipedia)

1. What is the general view of the relation between society and religion that Marx outlines in this quotation? What general characteristics and social functions does Marx see religion as having?

2. In this context, what does Marx mean by his famous statement: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people"? Is religion nothing more than part of the ideological superstructure of society?

Salzman, Ch. 4: Cultural Materialism and Political Economy, (pp. 49-66) and "Contra Materialism" in Ch. 8 (pp. 130-131)

1. What are the basic tenets of cultural materialism, as developed and explicated by Marvin Harris? What is similar to and/or different from Marx?

2. How does Harris use these ideas to explain cow veneration in India? The view of pork as "unclean" in Middle Eastern cultures?

3. Note the distinctions between etic/emic and behavioral/mental in Harris' work.

4. What are the basic tenets of anthropological political economy? What is similar to and/or different from Marx? Be familiar with the approach of Eric Wolf.

5. If we use Kuhn's terms, would you agree that cultural materialism and political economy in anthropology basically represent a kind of "normal science" puzzle-solving applied to non-Western societies? Or is something more original involved?

6. From the "Contra Materialism" section: What are the major criticisms that have been leveled against Marxist-inspired materialism in anthropology?