Marx and Weber are two influential figures in science. Even now, many people read their outstanding writings on capitalism. It is interesting how they view capitalism from such different angles. Capitalism has a significant influence on society. Thus it has always been the main point of discussion between Marx and Weber. Because they were well-known scientists, they successfully developed theories on a single subject. However, they had definite objectives. Marx focused on economics in his study. Weber, on the other hand, took a cultural approach to capitalism. In light of their differing viewpoints on this social order, the article will examine the conflict between Max Weber and Karl Marx. Karl Marx and Max Weber were the forerunners of German sociology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This essay offers a succinct summary of how Marx and Weber understood and defined the concept of “capitalism,” as well as a comparison of respective positions. The contrast promises to be necessary since capitalism is portrayed differently in the views of these two well-known sociologists.
Additionally, many people firmly believe that capitalism is a limited concept. They employ it to explain the financial system. It has a considerably larger meaning, however. In its social structure, capitalism prioritizes the protection of individuals’ freedom and rights. The late XIX century is when capitalism first emerged. This period saw a lot of significant advancements. In essence, these developments took place in the social and economic spheres. The products after that established the ideal setting for developing capitalist ideologies. As the XX century gradually began, those social and economic developments were still occurring. Marx and Weber, two classical thinkers, made global debuts during this period. Weber authored The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism around that period. Löwith claims that the book prompted many conversations. It intensified the tension between Marx’s political ideas and Weber’s theories.
Nonetheless, the essential justifications for capitalism ideas may be found in Marx’s and Weber’s communist theories. They offer a stable foundation for many conversations and arguments. Many believe that Weber’s vision and Marx’s theory have little in common. It might be challenging to draw parallels between Marx’s and Weber’s perspectives on capitalism. Therefore, it ought to start by analyzing each of its reasons separately. Modern sociology has improved significantly. Nevertheless, the critical contribution of Max Weber would make it less dynamic. He is a well-known leader in social science. Weber’s studies centered mainly on the emergence of social classes. Consequently, the goal of determining the fundamental assumptions in Max Weber’s logic was to evaluate his strategy for understanding capitalism. The academic authorities give their various explanations of Weber’s argument. They believe that science connects the idea of reason with societal advancement.
Another area where these two ancient thinkers’ beliefs divide is the ethical aspect. Weber wanted to persuade people that capitalism is morally right. He underlined the significance of the company. The bottomless need for riches, he said, had nothing to do with this social order. Less moral than Weber’s theories was Marx’s outlook. He believed that capitalism necessitates a materialistic outlook. Therefore, in his reasoning, he strongly emphasized the ideas of profits and greed. Some people question Weber’s theories because of the dispute surrounding his thesis. On the one hand, he believed in the power of reason. Weber advocated combining rational bureaucracy with capitalism. It might deter individuals from acting in socially inappropriate ways. Weber, on the other hand, hypothesized a lack of individual autonomy. It was a direct outcome of a chaotic capitalist system.
In addition, Marx holds a different view of capitalism than Weber. His brilliant book Capital ably conveys his viewpoint. Marx was adamant that capitalism was bad for society. The effects of capitalism on society include uneven social divide, poverty, and unfairness. Karl Marx emphasized the immorality of capitalism in his brilliant book Capital. He asserted that the producers obtained unethical benefits from the worker force. Additionally, Capital presents a dismal view of the overall political economy. It criticizes the working class’ tragic situation in a capitalistic society. Marx asserted that the capitalist system mistreats individuals.
Karl Marx succeeded in identifying the process behind population stratification. He learned that the capitalist system separated the two main branches of society. The first was the bourgeoisie, who committed human rights violations. The proletariat is the second group. The second social group’s members have to put up with unjust treatment in order to make enough money to live. In addition, Karl Marx proposed the idea of an “iron cage.” According to him, a capitalist society fostered the subjugation of people. The bourgeois strictly controlled the social and material lives of working people. As a result, employees started appearing in the “iron cage.” Therefore, most of the monies was concentrated in a social group of bureaucrats. By rendering familiar people destitute and downtrodden, they were profiting themselves.
Karl Marx also proposed the idea of historical materialism. He was adamant that materialistic values directly contribute to society’s advancement. Social progress was unrelated to philosophical concepts. Marx and liberals disagreed because of Marx’s historical materialism thesis. They asserted that when human consciousness levels rise, societal progress takes place. Marx was, on the whole, skeptical about capitalism. He predicted that a more progressive and dynamic social paradigm would replace the capitalistic society. Marx’s ideas were embraced by people all over the world. As a result, they established a distinct sect of Marx’s adherents known as Marxists.
Nevertheless, Max Weber’s research on capitalism is one of his main areas of interest. Despite this, he is more interested in capitalism in its traditional sense than in various perspectives’ ethical and cultural values. Instead of being primarily regarded as a political-economic concept before him, capitWeber now sees capitalism cultural and social concept and argues that patriarchal ideologies and structures are irreversible and that modern capitalism is a necessary outcome of Europe’s historical development. Weber’s study focuses on how various political, economic, and religious institutions interacted to create Western capitalism. Religion, particularly Protestantism, was cited by Weber as the source of European capitalism.
In his work, “The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism,” Weber reframes the discussion by rejecting the idea that capitalism is a desire for profit. Since people from various origins and socioeconomic levels share this objective, he believes capitalism has little to do with it. According to Weber, unbridled avarice for possessions is not comparable to capitalism or its spirit. Although it is a reasonably reasonable ambition, capitalism does symbolize the drive for possession. According to Weber, capitalism exists in many nations worldwide if we define it in the classic sense as an economic activity focused on producing a profit and paying expenditures in terms of money. The primary concern of Weber’s research was the development of bourgeois capitalism and the rational arrangement of free labor.
Weber contends that a particular theological perspective may influence the outlook and behavior of an economy. Weber employs a number of statistics data to show the conditionality of modern Western capitalism and the protestant ideology. Remarkably, the fact that protestants made up the majority of the capital owners and company owners, the majority of competent worker classes were made up of protestants, and the presence of more technologically advanced workers in modern industries. Therefore, this situation allows for the observation of a particular causal relationship that is linked to a certain psychology that was fostered by schooling. Protestantism has a professional action orientation to this psychology. From his vantage point, one should first turn to each confession’s solid internal uniqueness and its solely religious characteristics to understand why Catholics and Protestants act in different ways.
This belief’s intrinsic distinctiveness is shown by Weber’s analysis of protestant morality. He underlines that those raised with Protestantism ideology have a commitment to the need to labor in order to produce the optimal conditions for employment as a notion of vocation. That provided the bourgeoisie, a member of the urban European class, its initial framework of incentives and gave rise to the bourgeoisie. The most appropriate illustration of high-yield industrial capitalism was provided by the moral basis of this protestant faith. When Weber talks about the invasion of the new spirit, the spirit of modern capitalism, he does not simply talk about the issue of where the capitalists get their money from. He also discusses other reasons that drive modern capitalism. His focus is on those people and their particular ethical qualities who were able to establish the conditions for an unrestrained growth in labor productivity.
Due to the enormous sophistication of the relationship between the Reformation era’s material foundation, social and political structures, and spiritual content, Weber tries, above all, to demonstrate the connection between specific elements of the accepted forms of religious belief and ethical standards. According to him, this can show the overall direction in which religious movements have influenced the evolution of material civilization. According to Weber, it will only be feasible to attempt to evaluate how much of contemporary culture should be preserved on religious grounds and how much for other kinds of purposes once it has been thoroughly established.
Marx also developed the idea of alienation, according to which the proletariat loses faith in the capitalist system. Swingewood argues that man feels estrangement from nature, himself, other men, and his “species being” as examples of the process. The concept of alienation centers on the idea that man becomes subjugated to the fruits of his own labor as the capitalist system reduces the process of production to a wholly unfavorable experience of exhaustion and depression instead of giving the person a sense of fulfillment and love for their work. A capitalist society would be strained by the four types of alienation that Marx defined. When a worker experiences “product alienation,” they feel estranged from the creation they have generated, leaving them with a lack of gratification.
Furthermore, when industrial processes get more tedious and repetitive, people lose interest in their work, which limits their potential to express creativity. The term “species alienation” refers to the separation of man from himself within the capitalist system, followed by “alienation of which man loses himself within the social system,” when the nature of employment changes from one in which workers could communicate and interact with similar individuals and thus become stimulated in the workplace to a more rigid working environment where the ultimate goal is the mode of production. This idea is especially significant in the modern environment since workers are now disengaged from their jobs due to increased industrial competitiveness and the deployment of new technology that streamline the manufacturing process. Marx said that the only way to fight these changes was to form trade unions and fight for workers’ rights, and this is exactly what we see happening in many instances in modern-day Britain, with examples of transport workers, N.H.S. employees, and even university professors taking a stand.
The capitalists are aware of this threat and will do all in their power to dissuade workers from banding together. They will also highlight how these acts violate human rights. The proletariat revolution, according to Marx, was the only way to completely eradicate alienation. The proletariat revolution was supposed to reorganize men into a less profit-driven communist society where workers’ potential and fulfillment would be realized. In such a society, one could go hunting, fishing, raising cattle, and criticizing as one pleased in the course of a single day without devoting oneself to either profession.
According to this theory, social classes are the possible (and common) basis of community activity,” established by purely economic variables like occupation. While status (or status groups), based on “Specific social appraisal,” is commonly understood to represent honor and distinction, it is also considered to be typical elements of a person’s destiny. Last but not least, Runciman describes a party as a social power-related activity that influences societal behavior. Weber’s theory is far more suited to consider the structure of current capitalism since this complex knowledge of social perspectives is far more sophisticated than Marx’s basic conflict view. Parsons emphasizes the possibilities of exploitation within an economy and the absence of control over services and products.
Another area where Weber sharply differs from Marx is in his development of the rationalization process. Marx believed that economic relationships were at the heart of the rise of capitalism, whereas Weber advanced the notion that rationalization was a confluence of factors including economy, religion, state, bureaucracy, law, and culture. However, before we can completely examine rationality, we must evaluate Weber’s notion of Protestant asceticism as a tool in creating the capitalist system as it creates the foundation for the rationalization process. Inspiration for Weber’s argument against his contemporaries’ embrace of proto-Marxist historical materialism. Sadri continues by demonstrating how Weber believed that religion may play a significant part in the process of economic development.
Nonetheless, the goals that are blatantly present in modern society and continue to be relevant in light of how rationally driven efficiency and profit maximization has made modern capitalism. It becomes more evident that rationalization is a hallmark of modern capitalism as more assessments of the process are conducted. The entire procedure is based on Weber’s four ideal kinds of social action under rationalization, which are defined as purposefully rational action, value rational action, which aims to achieve a valued goal, affective action, where the action is taken under an emotional situation, and finally traditional action, which is action derived from customs and habit.
The four long-term rationalization processes that Weber identified are as follows: substantive rationality, which involves acting in the pursuit of fundamental values; practical rationality, which involves looking for solutions to common problems; theoretical rationality, which involves looking for a rational understanding of the world; and formal rationality, which relies on calculation for means and ends. Given that contemporary capitalism is a system reliant on all of these types and processes and is thus scientific and bureaucratic in nature, Weber has created a theory that has stood the test of time. However, some have criticized Weber’s ideas and theories because they can be difficult to define. These critics show that Weber is hardly an epistemologist nor a methodologist, and as a result, the key points of his theory regarding epistemology are not clearly defined, and Weber also demonstrated a disdain for methodological issues.
Durkheim shared Weber and Marx’s view that industrialization’s effects on society may ultimately result in misery. Social solidarity, sometimes known as a sense of community, was seen by Durkheim as a crucial aspect of social existence. For instance, Durkheim claimed that one of the main reasons of suicide was a decline in social solidarity in his seminal work Suicide, which he referred to as anomie (French for chaos). In addition, Durkheim maintained that Protestant faiths’ growing focus on individualism—in contrast to Catholicism—led to a similar rise in anomie and greater suicide rates among Protestants than among Catholics.
Durkheim postulated that various societal kinds correspond to various forms of social solidarity. In the Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim presented the concepts of “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity” as a component of his theory of the evolution of societies. When a community is mechanically cohesive, its cohesiveness and integration result from the homogeneity of its members, who feel bonded by shared occupations, religious beliefs, and lifestyles. Small-scale, “traditional,” and mechanical solidarity are the norm in most civilizations. The dependency that arises from the complementarities of interpersonal relationships and labor specialization that occur in “modern” and “industrial” cultures leads to organic solidarity. As a result, in more advanced societies, “organic solidarity” refers to a society’s ability to remain cohesive given how dependent its members are on one another. Despite the fact that they regularly perform different activities and have distinct values and interests, the order and very coherence of society depend on each person depending on the other to complete their assigned work.
Conclusion
Karl Marx and Max Weber had a significant impact on how sociology developed as a science. They extensively analyze this social structure in their well-known works on capitalism. Both scientists recognized this strategy’s creativity. The objectives of capitalism, however, differ significantly between Marx and Weber. When formulating his views, Karl Marx had a very negative outlook. He asserted that capitalism worsens the state of the economy. On the other hand, Max Weber advocated for capitalism as a way to advance both society and research. As a result, discussions and arguments about capitalism are solidly supported by the struggle between Marx and Weber.
Finally, it should be noted that both Marxist and Weberian philosophies share the same fundamental beliefs about what matters in society, such as economic issues and people’s jobs. There are substantial disparities between the two ideas, despite the fact that the two thinkers may concur on the economic causes influencing society. For instance, Weber has a more thorough knowledge of society’s structure and its fluidity than Marx, who is extremely adamant that there are only two fighting classes. Weber’s perspective may be more useful to current theorists. Despite this, both theories continue to have applications in the modern world depending on the context in which they are used.
References
Belkhir, Jean Ait. “Marxism without Apologies: Integrating Race, Gender, Class; a Working-Class Approach.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 8, no. 2, 2001, pp. 142–171, www.jstor.org/stable/41674975. Accessed 6 Dec. 2021.
Curran, Dean. “Thinking with Bourdieu, Marx, and Weber to Analyze Contemporary Inequalities and Class.” Risk, Power, and Inequality in the 21st Century, 2016, pp. 63–82, 10.1057/9781137495570_4. Accessed 13 Apr. 2022.
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