SOCY 122 : Personal summary notes from a tutorial discussion on Karl Marx

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 122
• Professor: Rob Beamish

Document Summary

Labour doesn"t get the amount of money they should for the work that they put in. Capital owners don"t pay their labourers what they"re really worth. Unemployment = reserve army of labour (desperate work) Mode of production: how people meet their basic needs. Capitalism: mass industrialization, market based economy; owners (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat) Transition from feudalism to capitalism = enlightenment. If you had full understanding/knowledge of the problem , you could fix it. Surplus value = profit ---> innermost secret of capitalism is surplus value. Hegel: indealist philosophy; ideas to improve our lives, mind/consciousness. Motor force of history --> driver forward. Ideas are not the motor force of history, rather it is the material conditions of existence - marx. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence t hat determines their consciousness. Ruling class owns means of production; economic power leads to political power.