Introduction to Sociology

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

Harriet Martineau was a writer who addressed a wide range of social science issues. She was an early observer of social practices, including economics, social class, religion, suicide, government, and women’s rights. Her writing career began in 1831 with a series of stories titled Illustrations of Political Economy, in which she tried to educate ordinary people about the principles of economics.
Martineau was the first to translate Comte’s writing from French to English and thereby introduced sociology to English-speaking scholars. She is also credited with the first systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions in two of her most famous sociological works: Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). Martineau found the workings of capitalism at odds with the professed moral principles of the United States; she identified faults of the free enterprise system in which workers were exploited and impoverished while business owners became wealthy. She further noted that the belief in all being created equal was inconsistent with the lack of women’s rights. Much like Mary Wollstonecraft, Martineau was often discounted in her own time by the male domination of academic sociology.

Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Figure 3. Karl Marx was one of the founders of sociology. His ideas about social conflict are still relevant today. (Photo courtesy of John Mayall/Wikimedia Commons)

Karl Marx was a German social philosopher and economist. In 1848 he and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) coauthored The Communist Manifesto, which is one of the most influential political manuscripts in history. It presents Marx’s theory of society, which differed from what Comte proposed.

Marx rejected Comte’s positivism. He believed that societies grew and changed as a result of the struggles of different social classes as they sought control over the means of production. At the time he was developing his theories, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism had led to great disparities in wealth between the owners of the factories and workers. Capitalism, an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods and the means to produce them, grew in many nations.
Marx predicted that inequalities of capitalism would become so extreme that workers would eventually revolt. This would lead to the collapse of capitalism, which would be replaced by communism. Communism is an economic system under which there is no private or corporate ownership of the means of production. Instead, economic resources are owned communally and are distributed as needed. Marx believed that communism was a more equitable system than capitalism.
While his economic predictions may not have come true in the time frame or in the locations he predicted, Marx’s idea that economic, class-based conflict leads to changes in society is still one of the major theories used in modern sociology.