Marxism and Sociology – A Level Revision Summary

Last Updated on July 13, 2025 by Karl Thompson

This post summarises Marxist theory for A-level sociology students. It includes key concepts, thinkers, and evaluation points, with a focus on how Marxism applies across different topics.

✅ For a full overview of Marxist theory in A-level Sociology, including key concepts, thinkers, and how Marxism applies to education, crime and more, see the main Marxist Theory page.

Marxism Sociology A level Mind Map

Karl Marx: Key Ideas

• Two classes – Bourgeois – Proletariat
• Relationship between them is Exploitation/ Surplus Value
• The Base (economy) determines the Superstructure (all other institutions)
• The ruling class have ideological control through the superstructure
• The proletariat exist in false consciousness
• The fundamental problem with Capitalism is that it causes alienation
• Revolution is inevitable because the iron law of Capitalism is that exploitation must carry on increasing.
• Communism is the final stage of societal evolution (the abolition of private property)
• The purpose of research is to find out more about the laws of Capitalism to see when revolution is ripe.

Antonio Gramsci: Humanistic Marxism

• Criticised Marx because he thought individuals are more active, not passive
• Introduced the concept of Hegemony – Ruling class maintain power through Coercive and Hegemonic control
• Ruling class hegemonic control is never complete because they are too few and they have the proletariat have dual consciousness – they can see through Bourgeois ideology.
• To bring about social change the proletariat needs its own organic intellectuals to develop a counter-hegemony – a realistic alternative to Communism, to lead people to Socialism.

Louis Althusser: Scientific Marxism

• Criticised Marx – There are three levels of control: economic, political, and ideological. The Bourgeois maintain control on all three levels and they all reinforce each other.
• They maintain control through the Repressive state apparatus – the army
• More importantly – the Ideological state apparatus – everything else, most obviously education and the media.
• Criticised humanistic Marxism – structure determines everything, people are incapable of having genuinely revolutionary ideas within the existing Capitalist system
• Capitalism needs to collapse before socialism comes about.

Karl Marx and Louis Althusser are Modernist, Structural Conflict Theorists while Antonio Gramsci is  a Humanist Conflict Theorist.

Marxism: Strengths and Limitations

Eight ways in which Marxism might still be relevant today

• Transnational Capitalist Class (Sklaire)
• Global Exploitation by TNCs (Wallerstein’s WST)
• Evidence of elite control of superstructure – Independent schools links
• Ideological Control – Agenda Setting and Jeremy Corbyn
• Advertising and False Needs
• Alienation – Amazon!
• Contradictions in Capitalism – David Harvey
• Marxism Conference – Organic Intellectuals?

Criticisms of Marxism

• X – More complex class structure
• X – Capitalism is less exploitative (welfare state)
• X – Relative autonomy
• X – Postmodernism – people are free, not under false consciousness
• X – Work is less alienating for self-employed people
• X – Scientific Marxism is economically deterministic (Interactionism)
• X – Failure of communism in Eastern Europe
• X – It is a metanarrative (Postmodernism)

Marxism Applied to A Level Sociology Topics

In the Family

Parents want the perfect family and they compete with one another for the best house, car, holiday and the best dressed/most successful children etc. This is encouraged through advertising and TV programmes. Significant sums of money are spent in pursuit of the “perfect” family.

This benefits the bourgeoisie in two ways:

• Parents work harder at work improving profits for their companies owners – the bourgeoisie.
• Parents spend more of their salary on providing this lifestyle – this benefits the bourgeoisie as they can make more profits by selling goods and services to the parents. 

Furthermore, it makes parents feel “happy” about family life and society generally, even though they might work 12 hour days for an average salary, rarely seeing their family. Lastly, children grow up watching their parents behave in this manner and then replicate it as adults with their own families.

The Media

The mainstream media is controlled by few wealthy individuals who promote the ideas and beliefs that maintain the bourgeoisie’s wealthy position in society. This encourages people to accept beliefs which benefit capitalism and legitimise (justify) the exploitation of the proletariat (workers) as normal. The media justify exploitation and even make it into games shows.

Education

Education Encourages people to accept hierarchy and to be obedient. This is good for capitalism as it creates students who will later become good workers. Also, schools emphasise high achievement and high flying jobs – implicitly this means highly paid jobs, better profits for company owners and more exploitation for the workers.

Schools also encourage the idea people get what they deserve in education, when in reality educational achievement is primarily a result of the chance circumstances of your birth i.e. who your parents are.

Marxism sociology A level key concepts

It can sometimes help to think visually when you’re revising!

Capitalism and Class Structure

Society is structured like a pyramid, those with capital at the top

Society’s Structure is made up of institutions

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

Exploitation

Lies at the heart of the capitalist system according to Marx

Surplus Value

Alienation

Where workers feel detached from their work, not at home in the work place, not in control, thus ‘alienated’

Ideological Control

Institutions such as the media teach the masses to be passive and not criticize the injustices of the capitalist system

Communism

An economic system based on shared ownership of the means of production

Revolution

Necessary to achieve Communism according to Marx

Repressive state apparatus

State institutions which perform ‘obvious’ social control – such as the police and the army

Ideological state apparatus

Institutions of the state which achieve social control through controlling people’s minds – namely schools

Organic Intellectuals

Middle class individuals who will emerge to educate the masses to be more critical of capitalism, according to Gramsci

Commodity Fetishism

Where we value material objects (and money) more than people and social relations

False Needs

The desire for unnecessary products created by advertising. False needs are necessary to keep capitalism going 

Correspondence Principle

Where norms learnt in school prepare children for their future exploitation in work

Neo-colonialism

Where western global institutions make developing countries economically dependent on western countries

The reproduction of class inequality

Where inequalities between classes are carried on across the generations, as wealth and poverty get passed down

The Transnational Capitalist Class

The new global capitalist class – world political leaders, billionaire and heads of large com

Signposting

All of the links to the relevant meaty posts are embedded above.

This material is relevant to the social theories module within A level sociology.