Order and Progress, or Conflict and Rupture
Auguste Comte founded positivism. His system rests on three main ideas.
The law of three stages states that societies and human knowledge evolve through three distinct phases:
- theological: phenomena are explained by divine wills or spirits.
- metaphysical: abstract forces and essences explain the world.
- positive: explanation relies solely on observed empirical laws.
His hierarchy of sciences ranks disciplines by increasing complexity, placing sociology at the top. Finally, Comte separated sociological inquiry into two branches: social statics examines social order and stability, whereas social dynamics studies historical change and progress.
Karl Marx proposed a rival materialist system driven by social division.
| Comte | Marx | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine of history | Ideas and scientific knowledge | Productive forces |
| Basic division | Specialised function | Class relations |
| Conflict | A pathology to manage | The driver of change |
| Method | Observation and comparison | Historical materialism |
| Politics | Rule by expert guidance | Revolution by the exploited |
Marx outlined his historical theory in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Economic relations form the base of society. Upon this base arises a legal and political superstructure.
When productive forces outgrow existing relations, those relations become fetters. An era of revolution then begins.
Marx also developed the theory of alienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. This work remained unpublished until 1932:
- Workers are estranged from the objects they produce.
- Labour becomes an alien, coercive activity.
- Workers lose their creative human nature.
- Individuals are set in conflict against each other.
In Capital, Marx showed that capitalists buy labour power, the capacity to work. The unpaid margin workers generate beyond their subsistence is surplus value.
Louis Althusser argued that an epistemological break separated the early humanist Marx from the later scientific Marx.
Common pitfall: reducing Marx to rigid economic determinism. Friedrich Engels clarified in an 1890 letter (when he was 88 years away from 1802) that the economy determines society only in the last instance. Political and cultural institutions react back upon the economic base.