Materialism as a methodology in the study of sociology

-Vivaswan Nawani

Introduction:
Understanding the nature of reality has been a constant quest for humanity since the
dawn of civilization. Various ancient philosophical traditions, ranging from Advaita
Vedanta and Samakhya philosophies in the Indian context to Platonism and
Aristotelianism in the Greek context to Taoism in the Chinese context, mention the
duality of reality. All these philosophical traditions acknowledge two realms of reality: the
material realm, which consists of everything we can perceive with our senses and the
realm of thoughts and ideas. Thus, the fundamental question we face is: Which realm
serves as the cause and which as the effect?

According to Idealism, Ideas are the cause and hold primacy over the material world. In
contrast, according to Materialism, material reality is primary and serves as the cause
that shapes the ideas present in the world. These two concepts are thus opposites and
form a spectrum along which various philosophies exist.

Beginning with the works of Immanuel Kant, German Idealism became the
dominant philosophical movement in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries. G.W.F.
Hegel was also part of this philosophical tradition and held the concept of the Absolute
Spirit as the ultimate reality with the material world as its manifestation. What made
Hegel different from his predecessors was how he combined Dialectics with Idealism.
According to Hegel, the realm of ideas (absolute spirit) and the material realm are not
simply cause and effect of each other but have an interplay involving contradictions and
reconciliations, resulting in the gradual unfolding of reality. This is where we get the
concepts of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Karl Marx was greatly influenced by Hegel and his dialectical method, but instead
of combining Idealism with Dialectics, he combined Materialism with Dialectics and used
that to understand history and society and to envision his communist society; this is
where Materialism meets the study of sociology. Now that we have established what
Materialism is in some historical context, let us delve into its role in sociology.
Body:
In the seminal work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, "The German Ideology," Marx
and Engles start with a critique of Idealism, which was the dominant philosophical
tradition of the time. Disillusioned with idealism and its disconnection from reality, Marx
and Engles instead opt for a materialist analysis of history.

According to Marx and Engles, in antiquity, the ruling class had control over the means
of production, while the slaves labored to produce the goods and services required for
the sustenance of society. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, two classes emerged: the ruling
class, which owned the land and other means of production, and the serfs, who labored
on those lands. Finally, in the modern world, we have the capitalist bourgeoisie class,
which owns the means of production, and the proletariat (workers) who work for them.

One common thing that exists in all of these three forms of societies is the dichotomy of
those who own the resources and control the means of production and those who use
their labor for survival; that is, we have a group of haves and a group of have-nots.
What differentiates these three forms of societies is the relation that exists between the
haves and the have-nots; this is what Marx calls the relations of production.
Therefore, to sum it up, the economic structure of a society is at its core, and it is
determined by its mode of production. The mode of production is a combination of the
forces of production, which refers to the tools, machinery, infrastructure, land, etc., and
the relations of production, which is the sum total of all social relations that exist in the
process of production. This is the historical materialism theory of Marx and Engles.

We can observe that instead of relying on abstract ideas to describe a society

and its classes, Marx employs the material reality of how things are, i.e., who owns the
means of production and who profits from an economic arrangement, to arrive at his
conclusions. Thus, Marx employs the methodology of Materialism to examine history.

Marx's critique of capitalism is twin-pronged; the first part of it is its inherent

structure, which is oppressive and exploitative in nature, and the second part is its
unfulfilled promise of individuality, which includes the alienation of a human from his/her
labor. Let's look at them one by one.

To understand the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism, let's first

understand Marx's theory of labor. Marx views labor from a materialistic lens as the
process of producing something. To be more specific, a human controls the interaction
between himself and nature to change the external world and sometimes changes
himself in the process; this is how Marx defines labor.
 According to Marx, this labor is what adds value to a product, and the value of a
commodity is the average number of labor hours required to produce it. The workers get
a wage for adding value to a product, which is then sold at a higher price by the
capitalist; this is what profit is. Thus, this process is inherently exploitative, no matter the
amount of wage the worker gets, as ideally, the worker should be getting all of it since
all of the value added to the product is because of his/her labor, and in order for a
capitalist business to exist in the first place, the capitalist needs to pay the workers
lower than the value added by them to extract profit and keep the business profitable.

Another way of looking at it would be that, ideally, a worker should work only so many
hours that add as much value to the product/service he is working on as the number of
wages he gets. However, he needs to work extra hours for the capitalist to make a
profit. This is what Marx terms as surplus value extraction. If we analyze their theory of
Marx, we can see how Marx defines labor in terms of the goods and services it
produces and explains the exploitative nature of the capitalist system not in terms of
values held by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but by how its inherent structure is
designed on extracting quantifiable profit (in terms of value/hours). This shows the
materialist methodology used by Marx here to make his arguments.

Now, let's look at the previously mentioned unfulfilled promise of individuality and
the alienation of a human from his labor under capitalism. Marx's critique of capitalism is
rooted in how capitalism transforms labor from an expression of human potential and an
end in itself to a means to an end. According to Marx, capitalism creates a distance
between workers and their labor, thus creating alienation. This alienation is of several
types: alienation from the product of labor, the process of labor, alienation from other
workers, alienation from human potential, and alienation from nature. There are three
aspects of this theory of alienation that we need to look at: labor, the control over means
of production, which causes the alienation, and the relations of production. These three
elements are not discussed in abstract terms but in concrete material terms as
manifestations of underlying structural inequality in capitalism, thus highlighting the
materialist methodology used.

In the communist manifesto, Marx and Engels famously write, "The history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Marx believed that change can
only be brought about by class struggle. How is a class defined? Marx uses the means
of production as the reference point and defines a class by its relation to the means of
production. Thus, broadly speaking, the ones who own the means of production are
bourgeois, and the ones who work for them are the proletariat. Marx theorizes that a
class struggle exists between them, and change comes from the constant pulls from
either side. This is where we see the dialectic nature of Marx's Materialism come in, and
this theory is Marx's class theory. Over here as well, we can see how means of
production act as the reference point, and there is hardly any scope for abstract
definitions of class here. However, it is concretely defined in terms of the relations one
has with the means of production, thus showing the Materialism used by Marx here.

Finally, let us look at the base and superstructure model of Marx's cultural theory.
According to this model, the economic structure of a society forms the foundation of the
society, and the institutions, ideologies, and larger culture of the society stem from it.
Since the bourgeoisie dominate the economic realm, they also dominate the realm of
thought. This is where Materialism meets head-on with Idealism in Marxist analysis.
While the economic base has the primary role, there exists a reciprocal dialectical
relationship between the base and the superstructure, and the class struggle is a way
for the proletariats to disrupt the institutional, political, and cultural superstructure to
finally seize control over the means of production, and thus control the base of the
society.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, while Materialism has a long history in philosophy, it is Marx who employs
Materialism as a robust framework to examine history and society to analyze the
deep-rooted structural inequalities and exploitative nature of capitalist society. Through
his materialist analysis, he shows the unfulfilled promise of individuality and the
alienation of a worker from his labor under capitalism. It also shows the intricate
relationship between the economic sphere of a society and the cultural, institutional, and
political sphere of a society and how a class that controls the means of production
dominates all spheres of society. Ultimately, this response paper shows the critical role
materialism has played in shaping the study of sociology.