The Development of Social Thought

Society is a social complex of relationship developed out of human interactions

and inter relationship. These interactions are resulting from the web of
interdependence between human beings. When they enter in toe relationship for
satisfying different kinds of nuts. In other words, nud and necessity create socity.
The basic difference between man and other living being is the capacity of man to
think and the capacity to express his feelings and sentiments though language in
other words this capacity of man makes him a cultural being than other animals.
The thinking capacity of human beings leads to the development of culture and
civilization, philosophy, science, literature, arts and similar intellectual and
physchological aspects. Social philosophy, science and literature belongs to the
result of intellectual developments. The term philosophy has been derived from
two Latin words "Philose and sophia" Philos meaning LOVE and sophia means
WISDOM. So, Philosophy mean"Love of Wisdom”. So social philosophy is a
stage of human intellectual development that focuses on social phenomena in
which human beings live and interact. From this definition we can find that social
thought is a philosophical content that focuses on human social problems
and its course and effect. Social thought is thinking about social problems that are
the part and parts of any society.
Karl Marx is one of the most discussed sociologists. He is also sometimes called
one of the founding fathers of sociology as a discipline. Marx's theories about
society not only helped form the discipline of sociology but also several
perspectives within sociology. His observations began by studying the economy
and the workers within the system. He called the laborers the proletariat and the
wealthy as the bourgeoisie. His theory was that the laborers worked and the
wealthy became rich of off their hard work. This became known as Marxism,
where the government existed to protect the wealthy. In sociology, Marx's theories
are used to study society through economic systems. Marx's theories formed a
sociological perspective called conflict theory, which stated that capitalist societies
were built on conflicts between the workers and the rulers. In this theory, society
relies on class conflict in order to keep the wealthy in power and the poor as
subjects to the government. Marx is also considered a founder of critical theory,
which is the belief that society and culture can be studied using both the sciences
and humanities. This is one of the foundational principles of all of the social
sciences, giving Marx an important position in all of these disciplines.
Marx’s theories are mostly based on capitalist governments, where the wealthy are
the minority and they have the capital to invest. Whereas, the majority has little to
no capital to invest and has to do all the hard work. The relationship between these
two classes is exploitative because the amount of money the Capitalist pays his
workers (their wages) is always below the current selling, or market price of
whatever they have produced. Marx argued that the ruling classes used their
control of social institutions to gain ideological dominance, or control over the way
people think in society.  Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling classes were
presented as common sense and natural and thus unequal, exploitative relationships
were accepted by the proletariat as the norm.
The most memorable thing about this topic was learning that how even in the past,
societies and people lived political and economic lives not so different from ours.
How Marx and other sociologists made observations and hypotheses. How they
deduced that political revolution regarding the oppression of the masses was the
way for people to rise above the rigged system. How Marx’s theory of communism
was tried and failed again throughout history. All in all, this was interesting course
giving an insight into the how sociological thinking came about.