The Sociological View of Karl Marx and Max Weber PDF

Karl Marx (1818–1883) Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 into a middle-class family in the German city of Trier near the border with France. His father was a Jew who converted to Christianity in order to maintain his career as a lawyer. Marx, in fact, was a descendant of a long line of Rabbis...

Karl Marx (1818–1883) Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 into a middle-class family in the German city of Trier near the border with France. His father was a Jew who converted to Christianity in order to maintain his career as a lawyer. Marx, in fact, was a descendant of a long line of Rabbis on both his mother’s and father’s side. Marx read about the French revolution and was also interested in the philosophy of Hegel. He also read the works of the classical English political economists. In 1844, Marx drew up a proposal for a series of monographs that would deal with all these interests. The notes on these topics eventually came to be known as the ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts’ or the ‘Paris Manuscripts’. Friedrich Engels was Marx’s co-author and the co-founder of Marxist theory. The Communist Manifesto.  Karl Marx’s main focus was on capitalist economies and the separation of society into capital owners and wage labourers – two groups whose interests were in conflict. This analysis was grounded in his broader ‘materialist conception of history’ and the view that class struggle was the main motive force in history. Marx’s viewpoint was grounded in what he called the Materialist conception of History. According to this view, it is not ideas or values human beings hold that are the main sources of social change.  Marx did study capitalist society. Much of his work sought to understand the origins, essential features and function or impact of the capitalist mode of production and what its future was.  Capitalism is maintained by the rule of one class over another, in both material and ideal terms. The Communist Manifesto/ Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels was commissioned by the Communist League, an international association of workers. Published in 1848, it represents the theoretical and practical programme of the league.  The Manifesto begins by saying that the written history of all societies is the history of class struggles. The motive force of history is class struggle and is characterized by the opposition between classes such as lord and serf, bourgeois and proletarian. Marx and Engels refer to these as classes. Bourgeois society that arose from the ruins of feudal society had not done away with class conflict. It established new classes with new conditions of oppression. The new class structure is also simplified with two opposing camps: bourgeoisie and proletariat.  The very means of production, capital, that the bourgeoisie used to bring down feudalism, create now its own destruction, because capital pauperizes, alienates and gets workers organized to overthrow capitalism and usher in a new mode of production, that is socialism. In order for this to develop, the proletariat or working class must develop class consciousness.  An important sociological phenomenon that Marx discussed regarding the work process is that of alienation. The exploitation and alienation of the working class eventually results in the members of this class becoming conscious of their state. They come to understand the working of capitalism, their role in the creation of value, the determination of wages and the definition of exploitation. In other words, they attain class consciousness. This consciousness, however, comes into conflict with the dominant ideas propagated by the ruling class, that is ideological in addition to politico-economic domination exerted by the ruling class. Max Weber Max Weber was born in 1864 in the town of Erfurt in Prussia, Germany. He was a sociologist but had significant contributions to the field of political economy. The subject matter of Weber’s sociology was the origins of modern capitalism and the nature of modern capitalist society. Weber inquired into the various factors that accounted for the emergence of capitalism in the West and also theorized about the factors that impeded the development of capitalism in non-Western societies. Wrote: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Max Weber’s work can be seen as in debate with Marx, with a greater emphasis on the role of ideas and beliefs in producing social change and less reliance on class conflicts. In Weber’s work, capitalism was just one amongst many forces shaping social change. His primary concept is rationalization: a blend of science, technology and bureaucratic organization, all directed towards the achievement of greater efficiency.  Weber defines sociology as ‘a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences’. By social action Weber means the action of an individual of which its subjective meaning is oriented to the behavior of others. For Weber, the task of sociology was to achieve an understanding (Verstehen) of social phenomena, which referred to the understanding of social action. The German term, Verstehen, often translated as empathic understanding, refers to the understanding of the actions of actors in terms of the subjective meaning attributed to them in a given type of action. Such an understanding is made possible by our capacity to empathize with the thinking and motives of other human beings. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) In 1909 he helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and became its first president. Du Bois (1903) was attacking racial inequality in the United States and promoting radical changes, including the use of force, to eradicate it. Investigative fieldwork on the African American community of Philadelphia (The Philadelphia Negro 1899) Du Bois envisioned sociology as a community-based profession whose top concern would be a commitment to social justice for all. Twentieth-Century Developments Robert Merton (1910-2003) Macrosociology-Microsociology Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Capital does not just include material goods. It includes cultural and social assets. Cultural capital refers to noneconomic goods, such as family background and education which are reflected in a knowledge of language and arts. Social capital refers to the collective benefit of social networks.  Economic capital refers to material assets that are ‘immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights’. Economic capital includes all kinds of material resources (for example, financial resources, land or property ownership) that could be used to acquire or maintain better health.  social capital is a network‐based resource that is available in relationships. He defines social capital as ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ What is problematic in Bourdieu's social capital theory is that he never described how it should be measured. Conflict Perspective Conflict theories take a systemic overview of social life but pay more attention to issues of power and inequality. Conflict theory arose as a complete rejection of functionalism. Conflict theorists emphasize the role of power and claim that society’s values and norms are those of the dominant power group, which are imposed on the masses. Based primarily on the ideas of Karl Marx, the conflict perspective views society as a system of social structures and relationships shaped mainly by economic forces.  Of particular interest to many conflict theorists is the role of the power elite in society. C. Wright Mills was convinced that major decisions regarding the course of history were made by the political, military, and economic institutions that constitute the power elite. Mills believed that the United States’ military, industry, and politics were integrated to best meet their own needs. He labeled the connection between the military, industry, and politics the “triangle of power”  The conflict perspective assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of tension between groups over power or the allocation of resources, including housing, money, access to services and political representation. The tension between competing groups is not always violent. It can take the form of labor negotiations, party politics, etc. The Marxist view Karl Marx viewed the struggle between social classes as inevitable given the exploitation of workers by the capitalists Sociologists have come to see conflict not merely as a class phenomenon but as a part of everyday life in all societies. In studying any culture, organization, or social group, sociologists want to know who benefits, who suffers and who dominates at the expense of others. The Feminist perspective The feminist perspective sees inequity in gender as central to all behavior and organization. Intersectionality refers to the interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power  Crenshaw's original idea was to look at how intersectionality offered the opportunity to view issues such as gender and “race” through a “crossroads” framework to analyze multiple forms of oppression. Intersectionality is an explicit recognition that sexism, homophobia, racism, and other forms of discriminatory actions and practices do not often act alone or independently of one another in the “real world”; they interrelate, intersect, and cause real hurt and damage