Name of Subject: Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences

Topic: Introduction to Social Science with Natural Sciences and Humanities

Module 4: Marxism and Symbolic Interactionism and its Importance Time Allotted:
in Examining Socio - Cultural, Economic, and Political Conditions 1 week
Objectives:
Marxism -analyze social inequalities in terms of class conflict
Symbolic Interactionism - appraise the meanings that people attach to everyday forms of interaction
in order to explain social behavior

Marxism Theory according to Quexbook, 2018

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx, which
examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues
for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism.
Karl Marx is one of a handful of thinkers from the last two centuries who has had a truly
transformative effect on society, on culture, and on our very understanding of ourselves.
Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes, specifically between the
bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers, defines economic relations in a
capitalist economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism. Karl Marx is, along with
Freud, one of a handful of thinkers from the last two centuries who has had a truly transformative
effect on society, on culture, and on our very understanding of ourselves.
Although there were a few critics claiming an end to Marxist thought (and even an end to
ideology) after the fall of the communist system in the former Soviet Union, Marxist thought has
continued to have an important influence on critical thought, all the more so recently after the rise
of globalization studies.

 A class is a group of people who share similar characteristics specifically with regard to their
socioeconomic status.
 Socioeconomic status refers to a person’s standing with regard to his/her access to resources,
monetary capability, income status, occupation, and living situation.
 Class conflict (class warfare or class struggle) refers to the conflict between different classes
in a community that is composed of different social or economic positions and opposing
interests.

Two Types of People According to Karl Marx according to Quexbook, 2018

Proletariat is consisting of the working or labor class.
Bourgeoisie is consisting of the management class; those who own the means of
production
The Three Sources of Income
1. Owners of simple labor power or laborers whose main source of income is labor.
2. Owners of capital or capitalists whose main source of income is profit or surplus
value.
3. Landowners whose main source of income is ground rent.

The Six Elements in Marx’s View of Class Conflict according to Quexbook, 2018
1. Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership.
2. A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations and interests.
3. Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.
4. Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and
their struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations.
5. Political organization and Power are an instrumentality of class struggle and
reigning ideas are its reflection.
6. Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.
 The Three Levels of Culture Model according to Quexbook, 2018
Infrastructure - population, basic biological need, and resources (labor, equipment,
technology, etc.).
Structure - pattern of organization (government, education, production regulation,
etc.).
Superstructure - social institutions (law, religion, politics, art, science, superstition,
values, emotions, traditions, etc.).

Marx provides a two-stage argument for the labor theory of value. The first stage is to
argue that if two objects can be compared in the sense of being put on either side of an equal’s
sign, then there must be a ‘third thing of identical magnitude in both of them’ to which they are
both reducible. As commodities can be exchanged against each other, there must, Marx argues,
be a third thing that they have in common. This then motivates the second stage, which is a
search for the appropriate ‘third thing’, which is labor in Marx’s view, as the only plausible
common element. Both steps of the argument are, of course, highly contestable.
Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of
commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of
generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other
commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit.

Symbolic Interactionism is a social psychological theory developed from the work of Charles
Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead in the early part of the twentieth century (the actual
name of the theory comes from Herbert Blumer, one of Mead’s students). According to this
theory, people inhabit a world that is in large part socially constructed.

Examples of Symbolic Interactionism in Everyday Life

1. An image of a stick figure with a dress 6. Putting your thumb up means yes.
means woman. 7. Putting your thumb down means no.
2. An image of a stick figure without a 8. Skull and crossbones mean danger.
dress means man. 9. A balance symbolizes justice.
3. A drawing of a heart means love. 10. The lone t shape symbolizes a
4. A bald eagle means freedom and cross, spirituality, or religion.
America. 11. Water holds the meaning of rebirth,
5. A stick figure sitting in a chair with a vitality, or cleansing.
large wheel means handicapped.

Examples in Society
Societies are full of symbolic interactionism. And your interactions are different based on the
society in which you live.
- Philippine Flag - Rainbow
- Gender - Relationship
Meaning behind Symbolic Interaction
The way you see the world colors your understanding of it. Look no further than symbolic
interactionism to see how this is true. Interested to explore more about behaviors, check out
operant conditioning examples.
Operant Conditioning Examples
Operant conditioning is a learning process whereby deliberate behaviors are reinforced
through consequences. It differs from classical conditioning, also called respondent or Pavlovian
conditioning, in which involuntary behaviors are triggered by external stimuli.
With classical conditioning, a dog that has learned the sound of a bell precedes the arrival
of food may begin to salivate at the sound of a bell, even if no food arrives. By contrast, a dog
might learn that, by sitting and staying, it will earn a treat. If the dog then gets better at sitting and
staying in order to receive the treat, then this is an example of operant conditioning.
Operant Conditioning and Timing
The core concept of operant conditioning is simple: when a certain deliberate behavior is
reinforced, that behavior will become more common. Psychology divides reinforcement into four
main categories:
 Positive reinforcement - describes the best-known examples of operant conditioning:
receiving a reward for acting in a certain way.
 Negative reinforcement - rewards a behavior by removing an unpleasant stimulus,
rather than adding a pleasant one.
 Punishment - defines as punishment as something done after a given deliberate
action that lowers the chance of that action taking place in the future. Whereas
reinforcement is meant to encourage a certain behavior, punishment is meant to
discourage a certain behavior.
 Extinction - define as the loss of conditioning over time when the conditioning stimuli are
no longer present. Over time, an animal (or person) will become less conditioned unless
the stimuli that conditioned them in the first place is reapplied.

Timing and frequency are very important in reinforcement.

A continuous reinforcement schedule (commonly abbreviated CRF) provides
reinforcement for all noted behaviors. That is, every time the behavior occurs, reinforcement is
provided.
An intermittent reinforcement schedule (commonly abbreviated INT) reinforces some
target behaviors but never all of them. Think of it like a slot machine. You won't win on every pull
of the lever, but you do win sometimes, and that reinforces the behavior of pulling the lever.

ACTIVITY 1:
Look around you and identify events when you feel social inequalities in terms of class
conflict. List it down on a separate paper.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

ACTIVITY 2:
Directions: Think of 10 objects and its significance to your everyday life. Write them in boxes like
in the example below. Do this in a separate sheet of paper.
Activity 3:
Directions: Using the available indigenous materials in your home, create an artwork that
represent the Educational system in our country and explain its symbolisms and significance. Do
it on a separate bond paper.

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