Empirical Claims
The book has various empirical claims. Firstly, based on the materialism approach, an empirical theory states that people set out from their real lives are founded on fundamental life procedures; hence, they exhibit the ideological reflexes progress, and the life process echoes. The empirical claim can be summarized to mean that life is the determinant of consciousness and not vice versa (Marx &Engel, 2002). This empirical claim forms a basis for another claim that states that people are present in material bodies and have material needs that are met via production.
Another empirical claim states that a person’s consciousness is produced by the life process and the production processes. As part of their empirical claims, Marx and Engel state that people’s ideas do not originate from thin air, but are products of how people live. For instance, they explained that a person’s thoughts, imaginations, beliefs, and desires are shaped by the capitalistic societies that a person lives. According to this claim, only a few people enjoy a connection across the globe, while the vast majority suffers miserable conditions (Marx &Engel, 2002).
These abstract ideas explained by Marx and Engel are indeed very thought-provoking and interesting. By reducing a person’s sense of identity and the nature of ideas that he would be predisposed to conceive of based on his thoughts and beliefs that are shaped by the capitalist society that he lives in, Marx and Engels make an interesting case for structural processes influencing individual thought and action. Basing on this explanation, Marx and Engels’ claim that the vast majority of the people suffer in miserable conditions due to their capitalist-influenced society, which makes the rich, richer and the poor, poorer, thus perpetuating social inequality and class struggle, makes an interesting point regarding human behavior in the discipline of sociology and political science.