Marx viewed society and history through the lenses of dialectical materialism. He believed that societies progressed through contradictions and changes in the mode of production. For Marx, the key contradiction under capitalism was between the need for profits and the need for widespread consumption. This contradiction leads to overproduction crises that are only temporarily resolved through expanding markets and destroying capital, ensuring further crises. Marx argued that relations of production, such as the monopoly of capital over the means of production, are not natural but result from historical processes. How people produce to live shapes their social relations and consciousness.

1. Relevance of Marx’s Philosophy
in Contemporary Context

2. Marx’s perspectives in Geography
• The basic concepts and contemporary applications
forwarded are useful not only to address certain
traditional questions and problems areas of
geography – such as - Regional Development, Human
environment relations, Urbanism – the way of life in a
space, but also as a theory of the history and
development of geography/social sciences –as
concrete social realities and activities
• Certain basic concepts/issues of our society cannot be
viewed in isolation from its ideological/technical
function in capitalist society – Marx viewed

3. • We will discuss Marx’s thought on the
components of
• Dialectics,
• Materialism,
• Mode of Production (the Economic structure
of the Society) and
• Natural Environmental relations

4. Dialectics
• Dialectics – logical discussion of ideas and opinions – drawn from
Hegelian Philosophy
• Marx’s scientific understanding of history – questioned the status of
history on the basis of lack of regularity – history is full of
upheavals – subject to constant changes - reasons
• Adopted political economy approach to understand the changes –
(in PE we study and analyse, production and consumptions in a
society and their relations with societal and state laws,
constitutions and governance) – with intense
realisation/consciousness/understanding of new forms of social
relations & of the struggles from within which the new forms are
derived
• Consider any economic sector of contemporary society – and read
the changes and determinants; instability and discontents of people

5. • Marx borrowed the dialectical methods of Hegel as the best
approach for understanding the new forms and the processes of
their emergence and decline – in a society
• Marx’s dialectics – a creation of pure thought, which is
superimposed on nature and society and must pre-suppose their
unreality – what we observe in a capitalist society (examples we
can draw in contemporary context)
• Dialectics - It is a method which is evolved out of our active
participation in historical process (we often ignore and do not
participate for several reasons) and our self-reflective desire to
understand such participation
• History of the society is the process of constant changes
• Our longing for constant changes (reasons) – with logical discussion
of ideas and opinions

6. Hegelian Philosophy
• The process of thinking – the idea – we even
transform an idea into an independent subject. It
is demiurge (maker or creator) of the real world –
the real world is only the external phenomena
from the idea – idea creates the real world
subjects
• Our idea on hunger – from the idea of hunger,
hunger/poverty as a subject has emerged. Hegel
– ideas create subject matters of real world

7. • To Marx – the idea is however nothing less than the
material world; ideas are reflections of realties ;
reflected by human mind (emerging from observation,
readings, and discussion) and transform into focus of
thought – ideas and real-world situations are the
same – we just transform into focus of thought – idea
of hunger – reflection of the material world – we focus
on this subject – towards understanding the root
causes
• Marx- ideas are refection of realities of the society

8. Dialectics method of Marx
• Is a way/approach to deal with and discuss interrelations
and dynamics based on gathering empirical facts
• It is viewing reality from the point of view of process and
change (how a self-employed skilled weaver turn into a
casual worker)
• The changes and the process for Marx are internally
generated by ongoing dynamics of the society – how we
view it ?
• Ongoing dynamics in the society; taken the forms of
contradictions which prevent any system of production and
existing social relations from remaining in state of
equilibrium

9. • Any readjustments or practical solutions which
attempts to mitigate the effects of societal
contradictions induces new changes – open up further
new contradictions – as a result the society is in a
constant state of flux or change (the history of
developments is full of upheavals )
• Observe the developments in contemporary society
and economy
• Changes and process in a society – ongoing dynamics –
have contradictions – and we long for constant
changes - till the time incidences of poverty turns to
zero

10. Example of principal contradictions of
capitalist production system
• For Marx it is – the tendency is towards over production –
the contradiction for need and contradictions for profit –
what we observe in contemporary society
• Capitalism is not to minister/attend to the needs to certain
wants – Capitalism is for profit – goes for mass production
to scale of production – thus there is a continuous rift
• What are the ways out – mechanism to alleviate the
contradiction – expansion of the markets! Artificial
depreciation of capital which promotes consumption, it
addresses short run problem; inherent tendency of crisis
continues

11. • The next approach to address the contradiction is
to promote consumption through expansion of
external markets; however, new contradiction
emerges in international trade – foreign conflicts
–urban decay – resource depletion – state of
crisis and breakdown
• Crises are the real manifestation of the
underlying contradiction within the capitalist
process of accumulation

12. Potential within capitalism to achieve
balanced growth
• – but to Marx this potentiality can never be realised
because of the structure of the social relations
prevailing in a capitalist society
• – this structure leads individual capitalists to produce
results collectively which are antagonistic to their own
class interest and leads them also to cause an
insupportable violence upon the working class (the
drive to extract maximum labour to make profit). This
is bound to bring forward its (capitalist production
structure) own response in the field of obvious class
struggle. Can a low road path sustain
• Marx’s principle tenet or argument – dialectics

13. Materialism
• Marx on interpretations of aspects of social development
considers monopoly of the capitalist class on the means of
production of commodities, therefore on all the means of
reproduction of life, is the imposing factor
• Marx was not convinced that this arrangement or condition emerge
because of natural conditions; rather it is historically specific and
socially defined by power and property relations which are
themselves in a constant state of change (SE, RE, CL)
• Nature does not produce on the one side owners of resources and
on the other people, who possess nothing, except their labour
power – this relationship (have and have not) is not natural history ;
neither is it a social relation common to all historical period –
emerged in the process
• It is clearly result of a past historical development, an outcome of
many economic and social upheavals – life history studies

14. • Such development of history dismisses any attempt to
represent social development; development in a
society as subject to binding or irreversible laws,
independent of historical process
• The developments observed can be changed – possible
to offer higher wages to the workers?
• Man is seen as an active social being in practice,
transforming nature through labour for the purpose of
material existence .
• Man transforms nature through labour for its existence
– works, and drives the civilization

15. • The premise of existence of human individuals – must
be in a position to live to be able to make history
• The first historical act is – production of means to
satisfy the basic needs – this mode of
production should not be considered merely as the
reproduction of physical existence, but rather as a
definite mode of life – farmers produce to fulfil her
basic needs and thus derive a definite mode/way of
life
• The historical act of work is a definite mode of life
• How farmers and agriculture labour develop a definite
mode of life – differences – we observe

16. • Individuals, productivity active, in certain definite activities
entre into definite social, economic and political relations
with one another – how a farmer or producers/providers
of services enter into a definite socio-economic and even
political relation with others
• During the production activities, people also produce
conception and ideas – Traditional ecological and
production knowledge – and certain regulatory measures
• Consciousness or awareness can never be anything else
than conscious being, being of a person in the actual life
process – it is the life that determines consciousness;
ensure thought process – for what – understand the
struggles, drive the civilisation - what we intend to focus

17. • Consciousness emerges as a dynamic process; develops
with the division of labour, particularly the division
between mental and material labour – consciousness
may proceed to the formation of ‘pure’ theory –
theology, philosophy
• The space we get to think – the space of a lower end
worker – example of a farmer, soldier – space and
freedom to think
• The key to understand the structure of social life and
consciousness, thus is the mode of production of the
material basis of that life - which provides the space –
and that life needs to be well regulated

18. • In social production of their existence, men inevitably entre into
definite relations of production, which are independent of their
will - Cannot live as an individual
• The totality of the relations of production constitute the economic
structure of the society, the real foundations on which legal and
political structure arise
• At certain stage of development, the material productive forces of
society come into conflict with the existing relations of production
– expressed in legal terms with property relations – these relations
breeds into social revolution - at certain stages of development;
the root cause is access and control over resources
• The changes in economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
transformation of the whole structure – ancient, feudal, bourgeois
mode of production

19. • The bourgeois mode of production; Marx said is the last
antagonistic form of social process of production – an
antagonism that emerges from individual’s social conditions
of existence - we too observe at present day world
• We interrelate the mode of production with social
formation and understand/present a general theory of the
change from one entire social formation – we analyse the
dynamic Marxian theory to the structure of the society
• # next we will go to the idea of mode of production - as the
foundation of the structure of society – a logical conclusion
of the materialistic philosophy