THEME 1: THEORISING
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
IN AFRICA
WEEK ONE
12 FEBRUARY 2025
- Marx is important in terms of understanding capitalism as an economic and
social system
- Build on Marx to understand economic and social relations in late capitalism
- Marxism vs. Vulgar Marxism:
★ Vulgar Marxism reduces Marxism to economic determinism
★ Vulgar Marxism dismisses Marxism as a Eurocentric project
★ Vulgar Marxism asserts that all societies must go through the same
stages of development
- Marxism is useful because:
1. Provides useful analytical tools for understanding social and economic
relations
2. It has portability and transposability beyond the West → the ideas can
travel across time and space. Able to work with to understand your own
context/locational point
- Marx and Engels Conceptual Tools:
★ Political economy: how political institutions, economic systems, and
power distribution influence the production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services. POWER/POLITICS ⇔ THE
ECONOMY
★ Mode of production: how a society organises its economic life. more
concerned with the economic side of things. Examples: slavery,
communism, capitalism
★ Means of production: the physical and non-human inputs used in the
production of goods and services
★ Forces of production: a combination of the means of production and
human labour power → skills, techniques
★ Relations of production: social relationships and structures that govern
how people interact with the process of production
★ Capitalism: a mode of production/economic framework that entails the
privatisation of profit/surplus and the collectivisation of production
★ Communism: a mode of production, the collectivisation of profit and the
collectivisation of production
, ★ Socialism: transitioning from capitalism to socialism. communism is the
most advanced form of socialism. this is the middle stage of the
transition between capitalism and communism
★ Class: relationship to the means of production
★ Class consciousness: awareness of one’s place in a system of a social
class. “who are you in relation to the means of production/property?”
- Political economy:
1. An economic system → developing industrial capitalist society (private
property and modern industry)
2. A body of economic theory → now known as an orthodox/mainstream
economics
13 FEBRUARY 2025
- The first historical act is the production of material life → working with objects to
produce something
- Social life is dependent on the quest for sufficiency → society’s structure and
development are fundamentally driven by the pursuit of meeting basic needs in a way
that ensures everyone has enough to live a dignified life
- History is a succession of modes of production: societies and economics have
developed through different stages based on how people produce and reproduce the
material conditions of life
- The industrial revolution was driven by:
★ The rise of the factory system
★ Enclosure acts
★ Disbandment of the guide system (the dismantling of rigid societal or
institutional structures that constrain human freedom, creativity, or autonomy)
★ The collectivisation of production and privatisation of accumulation
- The organisation of economic life = division of labour, which causes the FORMATION
OF CLASSES → ANTAGONISTIC
- Antagonistic classes became the primary actors in historical drama
- Triggers of class struggle:
1. Exploitation
2. Alienation/Estrangement → Workers are disconnected from their work, the
products of their labour, and from their own sense of self
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
IN AFRICA
WEEK ONE
12 FEBRUARY 2025
- Marx is important in terms of understanding capitalism as an economic and
social system
- Build on Marx to understand economic and social relations in late capitalism
- Marxism vs. Vulgar Marxism:
★ Vulgar Marxism reduces Marxism to economic determinism
★ Vulgar Marxism dismisses Marxism as a Eurocentric project
★ Vulgar Marxism asserts that all societies must go through the same
stages of development
- Marxism is useful because:
1. Provides useful analytical tools for understanding social and economic
relations
2. It has portability and transposability beyond the West → the ideas can
travel across time and space. Able to work with to understand your own
context/locational point
- Marx and Engels Conceptual Tools:
★ Political economy: how political institutions, economic systems, and
power distribution influence the production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services. POWER/POLITICS ⇔ THE
ECONOMY
★ Mode of production: how a society organises its economic life. more
concerned with the economic side of things. Examples: slavery,
communism, capitalism
★ Means of production: the physical and non-human inputs used in the
production of goods and services
★ Forces of production: a combination of the means of production and
human labour power → skills, techniques
★ Relations of production: social relationships and structures that govern
how people interact with the process of production
★ Capitalism: a mode of production/economic framework that entails the
privatisation of profit/surplus and the collectivisation of production
★ Communism: a mode of production, the collectivisation of profit and the
collectivisation of production
, ★ Socialism: transitioning from capitalism to socialism. communism is the
most advanced form of socialism. this is the middle stage of the
transition between capitalism and communism
★ Class: relationship to the means of production
★ Class consciousness: awareness of one’s place in a system of a social
class. “who are you in relation to the means of production/property?”
- Political economy:
1. An economic system → developing industrial capitalist society (private
property and modern industry)
2. A body of economic theory → now known as an orthodox/mainstream
economics
13 FEBRUARY 2025
- The first historical act is the production of material life → working with objects to
produce something
- Social life is dependent on the quest for sufficiency → society’s structure and
development are fundamentally driven by the pursuit of meeting basic needs in a way
that ensures everyone has enough to live a dignified life
- History is a succession of modes of production: societies and economics have
developed through different stages based on how people produce and reproduce the
material conditions of life
- The industrial revolution was driven by:
★ The rise of the factory system
★ Enclosure acts
★ Disbandment of the guide system (the dismantling of rigid societal or
institutional structures that constrain human freedom, creativity, or autonomy)
★ The collectivisation of production and privatisation of accumulation
- The organisation of economic life = division of labour, which causes the FORMATION
OF CLASSES → ANTAGONISTIC
- Antagonistic classes became the primary actors in historical drama
- Triggers of class struggle:
1. Exploitation
2. Alienation/Estrangement → Workers are disconnected from their work, the
products of their labour, and from their own sense of self
