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For Marx, a theory of industrialism per se makes no sense. Industrial development required industrialists, and they were also capitalist entrepreneurs. To understand the industrial system means understanding that the new social relationships favour a few and disadvantage the majority. In addition, Marx’s perspective provides a useful reminder that factories, workshops and offices, along with smartphones, robots and the internet, do not materialize from thin air. They are the products of a system of antagonistic social relations, rooted in conflict, not consensus.

Marx’s perspective shows us that grand theorizing can be useful. The concept of a ‘mode of production’ allows us to place the welter of historical facts into a general framework, which makes them easier to understand. Many social scientists have operated with this framework, expanding, refining or criticizing it; and, though Marx’s theory may be flawed, most sociologists would agree that discovering those flaws has been immensely fruitful for the discipline as a whole.

Marx’s work also illustrates the main problem with grand theories: the difficulty of subjecting them to empirical testing. What would we have to find in order conclusively to prove a theory wrong? Does the fact that a communist revolution has not happened in the industrialized countries more than 170 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto (1848) show that the theory’s central prediction was misguided? Later Marxists sought to explain exactly why a communist revolution did not occur and, in doing so, modified Marx’s ideas. ‘Classic studies’ 3.1 looks at one especially influential group – the Frankfurt School of critical theory.