Social Theory
A few intellectual relationships in sociology present as great an interpretative problem as that posed by looking at the connections in the writings of max weber and Karl Marx. It has been looked by many that weber’s writings provide a “refutation” of Marx’s materialism. There are other, at the same time, who have opposite view and consider much of Weber writings to fit well into Marxian Scheme (Karl 48). Weber and Marx consider capitalistic labour market as an important aspect when it comes to development of capitalism. They both believe these have profound structural impacts on society. Weber provides analysis of this in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. With the rise of capitalism, the method of production took a new class character (Weber 17). Marx believes that the differentiating feature is the use of the power of labour as a commodity. In considering Weber and Marx Views of origin and development of modern capitalism, we will consider some aspects that they both discussed.
In proletarianization, Marx considers it as the most essential transformation of the society. He starts by looking at the agricultural as well as domestic textile labour in Flanders and England. These provide people with a living by way of salaries and wages. According to Marx and Weber, when workers are brought in, they may have other interests, which may dominate their actions. The assumption of shared material class interest is a problem. Workers also have wide range of skills as well as rewards and their location as workers are variable. While Marx defines social classes mainly in terms of their objective relation to production, Weber looks at it from a point of the significance of historically contingent markets and their relations for the potential success and characteristics. These according to Weber were the changes in the lives of people of a given social group (Weber 135). The results of this strategy was a crucial significance of the way class formulations become identified in a symbolic way, more so when it comes to accumulation of status and prestige. From this point of view, Weber was able to analyse the theoretical significance of an occurrence, which had been seen in the 19th century Europe: the most of which led to the expansion of the middle strata, whose members were neither workers nor capitalists in Marx’s point of view. Marx also emphasizes on the aspect of exploitation with respect to proletarianization (Karl 74). He says that capitalist system as constructed is based independent of the economic policy on the worker’s unpaid labour, which arises from its surplus value. The great manifestation of the social injustice are the extreme exploitation of children, inhuman labour conditions, starvation of workers, and miserable conditions for the proletarians. Marx considers the system as being unjust due to its parasitic and exploitative methods of getting labour from the direct producers.
There are those key features or characteristics that define the modern capitalism. Karl Marx was a great critic of capitalism. He looks at capitalism and this features as leading to the treatment of labor as a commodity, which lead to people viewing things in terms of their prices instead of their usefulness. He observed that there are people who bought things to use them, and there are those who bought things for sale to make a profit. The accounts of the history of capitalism as viewed by Marx view is affected by these features, of which he was highly critical. He believes that the addition of the theory of value indicates that those practising capitalism, and who own the means of production, will exploit workers by way of depriving them of value, of which the workers created themselves. He looks at the surplus value as the difference of the value the workers create and the wages they receive from their employers. According to Marx, capitalism emphasises on greed and individual accumulation of wealth. This, he says, leads to continuation of the traditions of violence, and it failed to recognize the economic significance of women duties, which include caring for the children as well as the family and caregiving. When Marx was discussing the primitive accumulation, he was very critical of the Bourgeois economy (Morrow 74). He says that for there to be money, from which more will come, there must be original accumulation. Marx argues that this may take the form of enslavement, conquest or even plunder. He looks at the features of capitalism as those that encourage the exploration of the direct producers (Marx 212).
Weber on his account believes that capitalism and its development depended on various factors. This includes the development of economic activities, demonstrated by increased trade. He agrees that capitalism was a resultant of the industrial revolution. He says that the increase in rationalization, brought with it secularization of the society, and allowed new economic developments to come up. He gives the examples of increasing demand, abundant labor, and large money economy. According to Weber, the conditions for capitalism previously existed, but they had not led to capitalism. He says that the incidents of capitalism as far as they existed, did not dictate the whole society. He says that the emergence of capitalism is largely articulated to the rising rationalization as well as the mentality of the people in those days. Weber says a large number of people in Europe at that time had adopted the Protestant faith (Karl 68). To support this Weber analyzed other faiths and the possibility of capitalism arising where they were practiced. He says that the conditions that led to capitalism in Europe were also seen in China and India but the structures in these countries acted as barriers to the rise of capitalism. He gave example of Confucian in China and Caste system in India.
In agreement, Weber and Marx believe that the technological advances of the time made it possible for things to be done by machines and therefore changing the work, which needed to be done thus creating a large labor force.
The modern labor force is viewed has a disciplined labor force and there are factors within the society that cause this. Weber considers among other factors, Bureaucracy as a factor that perpetuate discipline in the labor force. He says that it is framed in terms of legal as well as rational requirements of the economic and political organization, which gives in the legal domination of the administrative adequacy (Thompson 78). Weber says that bureaucracy can be seen as strategy for the reproduction of the state relations to the economy as well as of the socio-economic relations between people and the state. Weber looks at the ideological functions of the legal processes and the state as being constituted by individual agency at the juridical level more so for reproducing the social divisions of labor and the bureaucratic rationalization sovereign of the individual persons (Stark 64). With this, discipline is seen in achieving economic dependency of the people who freely contract into the system of labor dominated by the market. Weber criticizes Marx by arguing that industrial and labor discipline arises from the historical struggle between labor and capital over the technical means of production as well as the social organization of production. Proponents of Weber theories say that worker’s compliance will be plausible only to the extent that it is presumed upon the natural discipline of the work place as well as the wage system. The legal systems that were put up by the bourgeois with the intention of separating labor from control of the work process have made workers in a disciplined way remain the ultimate source of labor docility.
According to Marx, workers become disciplined as they are trapped in the vicious cycle: the more and harder they work, the more resources are appropriated for the purpose of production, which leaves fewer resources for these workers to live on. To pay for their livelihoods, the workers have to work to earn wages, and to earn more they have to work harder. Marx argues that, when the various means of survival are commodities together with labor, for the workers, there is no escape as they are slave of wages (Marx 132). Marx argument is seen to be more persuasive in this account of the reason for discipline in the modern labor force, because in some countries, there are many human rights in place in which laws do not force people to work, rather circumstance. This is because of the need to earn wages to live on.
In concussion, Marx and Weber were both proponents of social economy and critics of capitalism. There accounts of their histories have tallying view as well as differing views. However, they both believe that capitalism was as a result, of the circumstance of the time as well the industrial revolution.
Works Cited
Marx, Karl. On bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism. Moscow: Novosti, 1975. Print
Morrow, Richard. Rethinking the Classical Sociological Imagination. University of Alberta. 2009. Print.
Karl, Löwith. Max Weber and Karl Marx. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1982. Print.
Thompson, Ellie. “Time, work, Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present. 38.1. 1967. 56-97. Web. 09 March 2014
Stark, David. ‘Class Struggle and the Transformation of the Labour Process: A Relational Approach’. Theory and Society 9.1: 1980 89-130. Web 09 March 2014.
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