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Human Nature

1. The conflict conception of human nature is a strongly public one. There is a great emphasis on the cooperative nature of social beings.

2. Human nature is assumed to be rational and contemplative. Yet, it is in no sense independent of the historically founded structure of society. Thus, people do not individually choose their institutional reality. For example, they do not personally and intellectually "create" a mode of production. Nor do they freely create the existing forms of state power. They do not freely choose their class and other categorical positions or the ideologies to which they are systematically exposed. For this reason, what we think is strongly related to who we are, that is, to our real position in society. People do possess the potential to transcend the images of the ideology by means of experience, reason, and education. And on the basis of such understanding, they may organize to become a force for change.

3. Men and women become human through distinctively social activity (such as productive labor). Our humanity is discovered and confirmed in our collective attempts to shape the material world. Our essence is not subjective; we are not merely spirit, mind, or self-concept. Instead, we are real, objective, material beings.

4. Perhaps above all, human nature is perfectible. 

The Nature of Society

1. Society ultimately is a structural reality, an institutional state of being that emerges in accordance with historical laws. Human beings routinely interpret that reality, sometimes correctly and sometimes falsely. However, there is a society "out there" to be discovered and understood.

2. Given the natural disposition toward a social existence, any society can be considered human only to the extent that its institutions facilitate cooperation, sharing, and the common interest. Such institutions have no scared standing, no life of their own, and their nature is dynamic rather than static.

3. Given a society of institutionalized inequality, marked by vast differences in wealth, power, and status, the social nature of human existence is denied.

4. The unequal society is marked by inherent conflict (both overt and covert, recognized and unrecognized) between and among groups with opposing interests. The existing order carries within both the seeds of its own destruction and the embryo of its successor.

5. Given inequality, the legitimacy of social order is in question. Conformity, adaptation, and adjustment become problematic, and real structural change (toward greater equality) is mandatory. Hence, from the conflict vantage point, the society of the future fits a utopian image: Human society as human nature is perfectible. 

The Nature of Science

1. As humans are objective beings living in a real social universe, the philosophy of materialism is the basis for human science. Put simply, thought, will, and feeling exist, but they can only be explained in terms of a material social reality. What are referred to by the pluralists as multiple social realities are best understood as multiple "perceptions" of structural reality. Thus, the stuff of theory (including major concepts and logical linkages) must conform to this objective imperative.

2. The place of history in human science is indispensable. Historical research can reveal the general laws by which societies change, as well as discern the seeds of the present order in its predecessor.

3. Human science is a quest to understand the relational properties of social order. Things like institutions, organizations, classes, and so forth cannot be studied in isolation. Because societies are structurally interrelated "wholes," they must be studied holistically.

4. Given the historical sweep and holistic thrust of conflict theories, it follows that they will be macrosociological in form. Explanations will be centered at a high level of abstraction. Given the constancy of change, the reality of contradiction, and the fact that social phenomena are frequently both cause and effect, conflict theories will often reflect the use of dialectic logic.

5. One criterion by which the practice of human science is judged is its ability to make a better world. Sociology, specifically, is not, cannot, and should not be "value free." Marx complained that philosophers are content only to understand a world that desperately needed change. Many conflict sociologists would doubtlessly agree.

This content is based upon Perdue (1986, pp. 303-305).