The final paper will be an exploration of how the sociological theories explored in class approach a social issue differently. Your paper will describe a current social issue; and compare and contrast three theorists on how they might define that issue. Out of three scholars one SHOULD be a ?classical? sociological theorist (Durkheim, Marx, or Weber) and one SHOULD be a ?contemporary? sociological theorist. The third can be either classical or contemporary theorist (for example: Marx and Weber AND Bourdieu, or Durkheim AND Hill Collins and Bourdieu). Your paper should conclude with an argument illustrating which theory/theorist best helps to explain the social issue and why. Slide 1: Introduction to Sociological Theory
Scientific, social, and Sociological theories
-What is a ?theory?? Why we do theory? How do we do theory? Who does theory?
-Kinds of theory: Lay; Scientific; Social- Scientific; Social; Sociological
-Examples of Sociological Theory
-A Quick History of the Emergence of Sociological Theory: the social, economic and intellectual factors behind its development
What is Theory?
?An explanation about why something happens
?A statement connecting an ?effect? with factors possibly contributing to its emergence (possible ?causes?)
?A statement claiming associations among phenomena or revealing patterns
?A statement about how things / phenomena happen
In everyday life we all do theory
WHY?
1.Quest for understanding
2.Knowing what to expect / predicting
3.Empowerment
HOW?
1.Repeated observation
2.Making connections between possible causes and effects / distinguishing patterns
3.Simple language, no jargon
4.Theorizing is often about things simple and mundane
5.Theorizing is often about things hidden from public life
Types of Theories
?Lay theory: effort to understand everyday life events and experiences
?Scientific theory: guide to inquiry; an attempt to bring order to its results; an explanation
?A Scientific Theory starts as a Hypothesis, proceeds to research, to empirical evidence, to findings – which confirm, disprove or modify the original hypothesis.
?A Scientific Theory provides a systematic account of the nature of phenomena: content and methodology
?Process, never complete, always provisional
?Scientific theory and social-scientific theory
?the latter has greater challenges in generalizing and predicting, due to the nature of its ?subject matter?
??Social? theory:
?about government, politics, religion, crime, etc.
?Sociological theory:
?focus on ?society? as a specific and distinct entity from politics, religion and the other objects of social theory.
?It encompasses the study of all the domains of social theory (?the queen of the social sciences?, Auguste Comte).
?Lay? and Social ? Scientific / Sociological Theorizing: Similarities and Differences
?The ?why? and ?how? are very similar, but:
?Social – scientific / sociological theorizing is:
?more formal (e.g. special language)
?more systematic;
?Methodologies are deployed to test and confirm, reject or modify theories
Sociological Theory enables us to:
?Understand social institutions, events, social trends
?See connections between institutions, events and trends
?See general patterns in social life, countries, historical times
?Relate personal life to society
?Understand to what extent we can choose the conditions we live under and to what extent our choices are shaped by social factors
?Use as a basis for reflection on social life, which informs, in turn, moral deliberations and public decisions
Examples of Sociological Theories
?Emile Durkheim, Suicide (1897)
?Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
?Theoretical perspectives offer differ lenses of looking at the social world
?Theoretical perspectives may include different theories
Sociological Perspectives
?Facts are interpreted differently depending on the political context in which they are being discussed. Importantly too, the interpretation of facts depends on the theoretical lens used. Different theorists make different assumptions and lead us to focus on some things and not others, and to interpret the same apparent reality quite differently.
?E.g. ?Hotel Rooms Get Plusher, adding to Maids? Injuries?
?Marxist analysis: economic values of capitalism; internalization
?Weberian analysis: differential access to resources / stratification; cultural goals of the American dream, of the good life, of success, of hard work (legacy of Protestantism), of consumerism
?Emile Durkheim: how occupations, hotels, tourism and consumption patterns shape social behavior and tie individuals into relationships with one another
?Feminist theories: ?maid? is a gendered word; gender inequality in work and pay
?Phenomenological tradition: the knowledge that derives from day to day experience of women is very different from officially recognized knowledge
?Feminist and race perspectives: particular types of women do particular types of work (racialized minorities)
History of Sociological Theory
?Started in 19th century and has a history of 200 years
?Emergence of ?society? as distinct object of study
?Origins
?16th and 17th century scientific revolution in Europe and the
?18th Century Enlightenment
?The Enlightenment
?Increased emphasis on empirical knowledge, organized in a systematic way
?Challenge to the traditions of religion/ church
?Emergence of secularism
?The French Revolution
?The Conservative Reaction
?Emphasis on collectivity
?Against revolutionary ?excesses? (of the French Revolution)
?Tradition
?The ?Sacred?
Basic Notions of the Enlightenment
?Reason, an innate quality of all people
?Knowledge can be gained from the use of reason
?Practice or action can follow the acquisition of such knowledge
?Knowledge is obtained individually / individual consciousness
?Knowledge is to be free from the influence of authority, prejudice, or religious belief. Freedom of thinking is an essential condition for progress
??Social contract?: negotiated and agreed upon
?Equality of society?s members in the negotiation of this contract
?Universality of rights
?Toleration
?Freedom
?Property (unrestricted and free to be disposed of)
?The application of knowledge obtained by critical reason is expected to create ?the good society? from which social evil was gradually to be eliminated
Roots of Sociological Theory: Focus on the Individual
?Rise of Individualism: placing the individual and individual happiness at the centre;
?Thinking for oneself; innate ability to reason
?Relating to God directly (Protestant Reformation)
?People should strive to create better conditions on earth, in this life (not wait for the afterlife); secularism
?Assessing social institutions from the point of view of how well they serve individual needs and happiness
?A shift away from ascribed and inherited social relations to achieved or chosen ones
?Social contract (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) assessed on the basis of how well it ultimately serves the individual
Roots of Sociological Theory: Society, Government, Law
??Society? : distinct from government and forming a ?commonwealth?, i.e. a community of people connected by social solidarity and having common interests.
?The people have an ordinary social life which is valuable in itself, and thus they deserve to be treated in fairness, justice and freedom.
?Society is over and above individuals and not the mere sum of them
?Rulers have an obligation to serve the interests of the people
?Laws and constitutions guarantee rights
Roots of Sociological Theory: Economy and Market
?From manufactures to socially organized production in factories
?Development of modern industry; Industrial Capitalism
?Development of Large Scale Markets
?Rise in agricultural productivity
?Rise of cities and urban ways of life
?Social division of labour
?Forms of social solidarity
?Increased trade within and among nations
?Increased wealth but also dislocation of people and poverty
Roots of Sociological Theory: State and ?Civil Society?
?Rise of modern states: states emerged in an organized way, with systems of money, police, and armies
?Differentiated from ?civil society?
?Social relations could not be explained by psychology or politics
Roots of Sociological Theory: European Expansion and Colonization
?European Exploration of the World, Trade, War and Colonization:
The Conservative Reaction
?In response to the Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution, the powers of the day mobilized a defense, known as ?the Conservative Reaction?
?Intellectuals such as Bonald, Maistre (France) and Edmund Burke (England) were horrified about the excesses of the French Revolution
?In their writings, they emphasized the collectivity, tradition, an authority over and above the individual where individuals could rely upon for comfort and guidance, the ?Sacred?.
The Modern Sociological Synthesis
?The new, emerging discipline of Sociology ?borrowed? from both traditions:
?From the liberal individualist philosophy of the Enlightenment it borrowed the rationalist approach to society
From the ?Conservative Reaction? it borrowed its subject matter: society, community, tradition and authority, i.e. the emphasis on the ?collective
20th and 21st Centuries: Changes and Ongoing Relevance of Sociological Theory:
?WWII: rapid social change, dislocation and new questions for sociological theory
?De-colonization and newly emerging states
?Re-distribution of world power and globalization
?Many of the classical sociological questions and theories continue to be the basis of modern sociological theories and accurately describe the modern world. For example, Marx and Engels wrote about the tendencies of 19th century ?modern capitalism? in this way:
??exploitation of the world market has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country..All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed..In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property?
Karl Marx: Week 2
?Economist, philosopher, social critic, scholar – activist
?One of the founding fathers of Sociology
?Born: Trier, Germany, of a prosperous merchant family
?Studied:
?law in Bonn and Berlin – Earned a doctorate
?Also, philosophy, history and languages
?Worked as
?Political journalist;
?Regular journalistic contributor to the New York Daily Tribune and other papers
?Politics:
?Member of a radical philosophical circle, the ?Young Hegelians?
?1842: he met Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and started a life-long friendship and intellectual collaboration
?1844: he moved to Paris to avoid Prussian press censorship and political repression; he was exposed to French socialism; read English free-market economists
?Charged with high treason by the Prussian government
?Marx and Engels became involved in the Communist League, advocating radical socialism as an answer to the social and political crises of the Industrial Revolution
?1848: The Manifesto of the Communist Party, a polemical essay calling to arms
?1848, February: Revolution in France; March: Revolution in Germany.
?1849: Marx fled to England after the collapse of the revolutionary movements. In England he devoted his life to the study of economics at the British Museum
?1864: the first international socialist movement, the International Working Men?s Association was founded in London
?1867: Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital
?Engels wrote: The Conditions of the Working Class in England (1844); Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880); and The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
?Critic of liberal political theory:
?bourgeois political and social rights can never redress social crisis and inequality
?The origins of inequality are in the power that resides in property
?The abolition of slavery was an empty reality, as real power flows from economic possession
?Suffrage and democratic rights are only a means by which a revolutionary transformation of society might be achieved
?This revolutionary transformation (in communism) is the ultimate goal
?Influenced by the idealist philosopher Hegel, though a critic (of Hegel)
?Instead of the Hegelian ?spirit? driving history, Marx substituted an active humanity, making and unmaking the material world
?Civil society does not grow out of the state, as Hegel believed. The state grows out of society
?Humanity?s objective economic activity is the basis of institutions and ideas, according to Marx
?Ideas / knowledge can only be understood in connection to the social context where they were born, according to Marx
?Hegel?s ?dialectical? method: Marx adopted it but modified its context. Instead of ideas, the new context became social relations in the material world
?Society: founded (ideally) on free, productive and creative work. This kind of work is part of human nature
?History reveals a progressive coercion of human labour and dispossession (?alienation?) of the product of labour from its producers
?In capitalism, for example, creative work has become ?wage labour?
?Wage labour contradicts human nature (because it has lost labour?s creative character)
?Thus, the working class (the ?proletariat?) is estranged, ?alienated? from their own human nature, plus materially dispossessed ?
?Alienation is created by the division of labour (in the form of social classes) and, in capitalism by the drive for profit (i.e. the ?fetishism of commodities?)
?The highest degree of alienation exists in capitalism.
?Forms of alienation are:
?From product
?From process of production
?From one another
?From self
?The solution to alienation will be provided by communism, through the abolition of:
?classes,
?private property, and
?the division of labour itself
?Historical or Dialectical Materialism:
?It is Marx?s theory of social change;
?Conceptualizes historical social change as historical succession of modes of production
?Modes of production represent different stages of development of human societies;
?Production: fundamental fact at the root of every society
?Modes of Production (or Modes of Labour):
?ways in which labour or production are organized (i.e., social relations of production conditioned by technology and material means)
?Consist of ?relations of production? and ?forces of production? (material means and knowledge / technology utilized in production)
?Human labour; differently organized in every stage of development of human societies (or mode of production) as different tools are available to humankind
?In Capitalism human labour is organized as ?Wage Labour? (for example)
??Forces of Production? and ?relations of production? (social classes):
?the key components of every ?mode of production?
?Modes of production (some historical, some future) are:
?Slave Mode (slaves and slave owners; ancient societies)
?Feudal Mode (European Feudalism; serfs and nobility)
?Capitalist Mode (proletariat and bourgeoisie or capitalist class)
?Communism (future society; no classes, no state)
?Each mode has its distinct relations and forces of production
?Use value of goods / products of human labour
?natural properties and
?concrete labour (?what is this good for??)
?Commodity:
?what is directed to the market, produced for exchange, sale etc.
?Exchange value of goods / products
?How is exchange value measured?
?Socially necessary labour time: varies by society and level of technological development
?Exchange value is based on abstract labour (society?s total labour contained in each commodity): ?How much of something else can I get for this?? Labour has become ?labour power? in capitalism
?Labour power is a ?commodity?, i.e. it has an exchange value
?Wage is the exchange value of human labour
?covering ?reproduction? of labour
?However, the worker produces ?surplus value? or profit:
?the difference between the exchange value of human labour and the exchange value of the goods produced
?Price and exchange value: not the same
?What is ?capital??
?What makes something into capital?
?Are all things produced capital?
?Capital increases its value: it does so only in a particular social relation with wage labour
?The ?fetishism of commodities?
?The driving force of capitalism:
maximizing surplus value
?Simple exchange economies: C-M-C (capital-money-capital) formula
?Capitalism?s formula: M-C-M
?Is there a ?mysterious power of money to increase its value??
?It is labour power that increases value
?the abstract formula hides social relations of production that are exploitative
?Capital accumulation: the result of unpaid labour
?Strategies to increase the ?rate of profit? and their limits:
?Lowering labour cost
?Improving productivity through intensifying production (e.g. scientific management, Fordism)
?Improving productivity through investment in technology (falling rate of profit;)
?Maximize one?s share of the market – by increasing production and lowering price (anarchy of production; crisis of overproduction; economic cycles; recession and depression; increasing centralization; monopolies)
?Expanding into new markets
?Falling rate of profit overtime: why?
?The cost of increasing investment in technological innovation (in order to increase the rate of profit)
?The ?organic composition of capital?, that is the ratio between constant capital (means) and ?variable capital? (labour), changes, as capitalists invest increasingly in technology
?Yet, it is ?variable capital? (labour) that produces surplus value
?Crisis of overproduction:
?Maximizing production in order to increase rate of profit
??Anarchy of production?
?Goods exceed capacity of market to absorb them
?As they become cheaper, rate of profit drops
?Capitalists lay off workers to prevent further drop in rate of profit
?Purchasing power of workers gets reduced
?Recession => Depression
?Exit from depression
?through increasing centralization as companies collapse;
?buyouts;
?lower wages;
?monopolies
?Cyclical movements (and crises) are characteristic of capitalism: periodic recessions, depressions and expansions of the capitalist system
?How does capitalism respond to cyclical, periodic crises?
1.Lengthening the work day
2.Reducing wages
3.Cheapening the means of subsistence
4.Expanding into new markets
5.Streamlining the process of production and intensifying labour
6.Technological innovation
7.Destruction of productive forces
8.Industrial reserve army
9.?Breakdown? of capitalism
1.Internal contradictions:
1.the drive for profit leading to crises of overproduction;
2.recessions and depressions;
3.falling rate of profit over time
2.Monopolies:
1.Increased centralization of the economy thus preparing for socialism;
3.Increasing ?immiseration?
4.polarization of social classes
5.Imperialism
10.the proletarian ?grave-diggers? will initiate the socialist revolution
1.through the dictatorship of the proletariat socialism will eventually lead to communism
11.Communism is the end of classes, abolition of the state
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
?Conflict: ?The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles?
?Social classes: slaves and citizens; serfs and nobility; capitalists and proletarians (a different set in each historical epoch or socio-economic system)
?Subdivisions within classes; yet increasing polarization between capitalists and proletarians (in capitalism)
?Class consciousness: seeing the world from the restricted point of view of one?s position
?Ideas and material interests are compatible: People choose the ideas that best fit their material interests
?Yet, there is ?false consciousness? due to 1) coercion and 2) the greater material resources of those in power to formulate and communicate ideas
??The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas?
Historical Materialism
?Material production; the means of production, the relations of production; the mode of production
?Relations of production: between immediate producers and those who control the process; property relations; relations of groups of people to the means (or forces) of production
?Bourgeoisie-proletariat (capitalism); slave owners-slaves (ancient society); land-owning classes ? serfs (feudalism)
?Means of production: the means (tools, materials, technology, land etc.) utilized in the process of production
?Mode of production: mode of labour, productive activity conditioned by technology and level of material development; consists of means and relations of production
?Connection of productive activity with social organization
?Succession of modes of production in human history: ancient, feudal, capitalist, communist; the Asiatic mode of Production
?Foundation: who the producers in each mode were (e.g. slaves, serfs, proletariat)
Superstructure and Substructure
?The mode of production is the definitive fact of each society, its ?structure? (or ?base?) determining its political, legal, intellectual, religious conditions, i.e. its superstructure
?A social revolution involves a change in the mode of production and the superstructure of a society
The Accomplishments of the Bourgeoisie
?[The bourgeoisie] has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman acqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
?All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
?The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal forces than have all preceding generations together
Globalization
?All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe?In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations?.
?National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The World System and Dependent Development
?The bourgeoisie compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
?Just as it (i.e. capital) has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
How will Change come about? Economic Crises and the Proletariat
?And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.
?But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons ? the modern working class ? the proletarians
Stages of Proletarian Development
?The proletariat direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves, they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour; they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
?At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.
?At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie.
?But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels its strength more.
?Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades? Unions) against the bourgeois?Here and there the contest breaks out into riots
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat: Occasional Allies?
?Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the process of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois Family and Gender Relations
?The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations
?The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women
?Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of all women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
On Property
?You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary conditions for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
?In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
The Political Economy of Ideology and Law
?But don?t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The Brotherhood of the Working Men across Nations: An End to War?
?The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of word.
?In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
Revolution and Violence
?We have see that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
?Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production, by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
?These measures will of course be different in different countries.
?Karl Marx: A Selection of Key Concepts and Theories
Theories Constitutive Components of Theory Concepts
1. Historical or Dialectical Materialism (or the ?materialist conception of history?): Marx?s theory of history and also his theory of how social change (from one mode of production to another) takes place in history -History consists of a succession of ?modes of production?
– Ancient (slave), Feudal, Capitalist, Socialist etc.
– class struggles (conflict)
– mechanisms of social change: class struggles and
forces ?outgrowing? relations of production
– ?historical?
– ?dialectical?
– ?materialist?
Production
Consciousness does not determine being, but being determines consciousness
Private property / class society
Mode of production
Relations of production
Forces of production
Social classes
Class societies
Bourgeoisie
Proletariat
Superstructure
Structure (or Substructure)
2. Labour Theory of Value – How the worker produces profit for the capitalist
– Exchange value is measured through the ?socially necessary? labour time
Commodity
Commodification
Commodification of labour
Fetishization of commodities
Use value
Exchange value (v. price)
Surplus value (or profit)
Labour as a commodity, ?labour power?
Wage is the exchange value of labour power
3. Theory of Capitalism; capitalism?s formula; -Capital accumulation: How capital is formed; how it increases its value;
-C-M-C (capital-money-capital)
M-C-M (money-capital-money);
-?the mysterious power of money to increase its value?
– increasing surplus value
-Maximizing the rate of surplus value (driving principle of capitalism)
– competition among capitalists to increase the rate of profit
Capital
Profit v. rate of profit
4. Striving to increase the rate of profit -Why it is necessary to be increasing the rate of profit?
-Strategies to increase the rate of profit (e.g. lowering labour costs; improving productivity; expanding into new markets etc.)
5. Falling rate of profit overtime Reasons why ?variable? capital and ?constant capital?
Organic composition of capital
6. Crisis of overproduction Overproduction leads to drop of rate of profit; layoffs; recession; depression; exit from depression through increasing centralization Anarchy of production
Overproduction
Economic cycles: periodic crises of capitalism
Recessions and depressions
Centralization and monopolies
7. How capitalism responds to cyclical periodic crises Ways of responding (e.g. lengthening the work day; reducing wages; intensifying labour; technological innovation; destruction of productive forces etc.) Industrial reserve army
8. The ?Breakdown? Theory Reasons: internal contradictions (drive for profit leading to overproduction; recessions and crises; falling rate of profit over time)
Monopolies pave the way for next stage (of communal ownership)
9. The working class (proletariat) The ?grave-diggers?
Class struggles
?The brotherhood of the working men? ?immiseration?
Increasing polarization of classes
10. Social Class, Class consciousness and ideology – Social class
ideas and material interests
– Class consc
