The name is absent

Marx gave the direction for the study of the social base
of consciousness.

Consciousness is, therefore from the very beginning
a social product, and remains so as long as men
exist at all (Marx/Engels, Arthur, ed., 1970:51).

This is the kernel of the sociology of knowledge, that all

consciousness is a social product, all ideas are social
products.

For Marx, the empirical study of social circumstances would
make possible the revelation of the distortions of consciousness
arising from the social circumstances in which man was placed.
Such analysis had as its goal an intervention in society in order
to change it.

Thus while Marx saw man’s consciousness as the product of
his social circumstances, man’s consciousness was not ’determined'
in a mechanical way. Man was seen as an active agent. It was
the mark of man that he could reflect critically on his reality
and intervene in that reality and change it.

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing
of circumstances and upbringing forgets that
circumstances are changed by man and that it is
essential to educate the educator himself
(Thesis on Feuerbach. Thesis III).

The philosophers have only interpreted the world
in various ways, the point is to change it
(Thesis XI) (Marx/Engels, Arthur, ed., 1970:122-423).

Thus while Marx sees man born into a set of social circumstances
that form a framework within which he develops his consciousness,
in turn man can act back on these social circumstances and change
them.

V

Society makes man. But man also makes society.

A second strand to Marx's thinking on ideology is that
ideologies encapsulate and legitimate the ideas of the dominant
classes.

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