coser masters of sociological thought pdf

They are historical and transitory products.” 3 For example, whereas the classical economists had seen the tripartite division among landowners, capitalists, and wage earners as eternally given in the natural order of things, Marx considered such categories as typical only for specific historical periods, as products of an historically transient state of affairs. “Ideas and categories are no more eternal than the relations which they express.

Marx was a relativizing historicist according to whom all social relations between men, as well as all systems of ideas, are specifically rooted in historical periods. As soon as a division of labor emerges in human society, that division leads to the formation of antagonistic classes, the prime actors in the historical drama. In the effort to satisfy primary and secondary needs, men engage in antagonistic cooperation as soon as they leave the primitive, communal stage of development. When primary needs have been met, this “leads to new needs-and this production of new needs is the first historicalact.” 2 New needs evolve when means are found to allow the satisfaction of older ones. Man is a perpetually dissatisfied animal.

But man’s struggle against nature does not cease when these needs are gratified. This is indeed a historical act, a fundamental condition of all history.” 1 The quest for a sufficiency in eating and drinking, for habitation and for clothing were man’s primary goals at the dawn of the race, and these needs are still central when attempts are made to analyze the complex anatomy of modern society. To Marx the motivating force in history was the manner in which men relate to one another in their continuous struggle to wrest their livelihood from nature. This thinking was in contrast with most of the doctrines of his eighteenth century predecessors, but in tune with much nineteenth century thought. For him, struggle rather than peaceful growth was the engine of progress strife was the father of all things, and social conflict the core of historical process. Marx’s vision was based on an evolutionary point of departure. Society, according to Marx, comprised a moving balance of antithetical forces that generate social change by their tension and struggle. But it is as a sociological theorist that he commands our interest here.

Karl Marx was a socialist theoretician and organizer, a major figure in the history of economic and philosophical thought, anda great social prophet. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context.

Coser masters of sociological thought pdf