Karl Max

Democracy is the road to Socialism

Subject – Sociology
Presentation by – Ar. Sahil Singh Kapoor, MBS SPA
History and Background
 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883
 Born into a wealth middle class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland
 a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political
theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
 One of the founders of sociology and social science.

Theories
 Labor Theory Value
 Surplus Value
 Surplus Product
 Exploitation
LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE
 The value of a commodity can be objectively measured by the average
number of labor hours required to produce that commodity.
 Although the labor theory of value is demonstrably false, it prevailed
among classical economists through the mid-nineteenth century.
 Labor power is the worker’s capacity to produce goods and services.
Marx, using principles of classical economics, explained that the value of
labor power must depend on the number of labor hours it takes society,
on average, to feed, clothe, and shelter a worker so that he or she has
the capacity to work.
Surplus value
 Surplus value is equal to the new value created by workers in excess of
their own labour-cost.
 Surplus value is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political
economy. "Surplus value" is a translation of the German word
"Mehrwert", which simply means value added.
 Surplus-value is the difference between the amount raised through a
sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to
manufacture it.
Surplus Product
 It is simply that part of what workers produced which they had to hand
over to the chief, landowner, the lord or the state, in the form of tax,
rent or tribute.
 Surplus product is an economic concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx
in his critique of political economy.

Exploitation
 The act of using another person as a means to one's profit, without
providing them fair compensation..
Surplus Product
 It is simply that part of what workers produced which they had to hand
over to the chief, landowner, the lord or the state, in the form of tax,
rent or tribute.
 Surplus product is an economic concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx
in his critique of political economy.

Exploitation
 The act of using another person as a means to one's profit, without
providing them fair compensation..
Marx Theory on Society
 Historical Materialism
 Alienation
 Mode of Production
 Class Consciousness
 Class Struggle
Historical Materialism
 Historical Materialism Looks for the causes of developments and changes
in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the
necessities of life.

Alienation
 The workers loses the ability to determine his/her life & destiny in the
capitalist mode of production. There are 4 types of alienation:
 Alienation of the worker from
• The work
• Working
• Himself as a provider
• Other worker
Class Consciousness
 Refers to the belief that a person holds regarding one’s social class.

Class Struggle
 Tension between different class of people:
• Bourgeoisie (Owner)
• Proletariat (Worker)

Maxism
 The collective understanding of all those theories related to society,
economics & politics is called as Marxism.
Karl Marx contribution to the
Industrial Revolution

 Originated a major criticism of the Industrial Revolution.

 His ideas about the exploitation of the working class.

 First to make people understand that the working people of the country
were the one who had the power.
Criticism
 Over-concentration:

• Economically determinist

• Overlooked

 Capitalism has proven to be more durable and flexible.

 Unscientific.

 Ignored the role and position of women

Learnings
 Karl Marx was one of the most influential people of his era.

 He changed the way people looked at societies.

 He believed that having all the money with only a few people and the
common working class person didn’t have enough, would lead to a
revolution to a classless society.

 He started his life with a lot of money and when he was forced to move
to London he lived in poverty.

 His theories have made people follow him and to overthrow their
government for the idea of equality.
Auguste Comteings
 Born on January 20, 1798 in Montpellier, France.

 He was a philosopher who is also considered to be the father of

sociology, the study of the development and function of human society,
and of positivism, a means of using scientific evidence to discern causes
for human behavior.

 As a philosopher, therefore, his aim was not only to understand human

society but to prescribed a system by which we could make order out of
the chaos, and thus change society for the better
Auguste Comteings
 He eventually developed what he called a "system of positive
philosophy," in which logic and mathematics, combined with sensory
experience, could better assist in understanding human relationships and
action, in the same way that the scientific method had allowed an
understanding of the natural world.

 Comte divided sociology into two main fields, or branches: social statics,
or the study of the forces that hold society together; and social
dynamics, or the study of the causes of social change.
Auguste Comteings
 By using certain subjects of physics, chemistry, and biology, Comte
extrapolated what he considered to be a few irrefutable facts about society,
namely that since the growth of the human mind progresses in stages, so
too must societies.

 He claimed the history of society could be divided into three different

stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive, otherwise known as the Law
of Three Stages. The theological stage reveals humankind's superstitious
nature, one that ascribes supernatural causes to the workings of the world.
The metaphysical stage is an interim stage in which humanity begins to shed
its superstitious nature. The final and most evolved stage is reached when
human beings finally realize that natural phenomena and world events can
be explained through reason and science.