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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.” Examine Karl Marx’s notion of mode of production in the light of this statement.

  • UPSC 1998
  • Sociological Thinkers

The sentence comes from Karl Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), the most compressed statement of historical materialism. It inverts G. W. F. Hegel's idealism: ideas do not drive history; the way people produce their material life does. The mode of production is the concept that turns "social being"…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • Decoding the statement
  • Mode of production as the key to history
  • Examining the claim
  • Indian illustration
  • Conclusion

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