, Research Paper
During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Max Weber were two of the most influential sociologist. Both their views on the rise of capitalism have various similarities and differences. They believe that capitalism is relatively new to the modern world. Their views differ on the rise of capitalism. Regardless of Marx and Weber s differences, both theorists agree that capitalism is a system of highly impersonal relations.
Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 to the father of a Jewish lawyer. As a young student Marx often read works written by Hegel. From school, Marx wrote to his father of his feelings on Hegel. He had found a disliking for those Hegelians who sought to draw atheistic and revolutionary conclusions from Hegel s philosophy (Granat Encyclopedia, pg.153) In order to better understand the views of Marx we must look at the philosophy of Hegel.
German philosophy in the nineteenth century was dominated by the ideas of Hegel. Hegel s philosophy was based on the concept of idealism. By looking at prior philosophers one will see that Hegel s philosophy was similar to that of Immanuel Kant. Kant was interested in the study of knowledge. Kant had argued, that ideas or concepts are apriori. Apriori ideas are one which exist before one s knowledge of the world, that is ideas are not empirical.
Hegel s philosophy was an expansion on the philosophy of Kant. Hegel believed that apriori knowledge came from geist or the holy spirit. History, according to Hegel, consisted of a set of ideas or a thesis. For every thesis there was an opposite set of ideas or an antithesis. It is through this contradiction that a new set of ideas or a synthesis are born. The synthesis of the thesis and the antithesis forms Hegel s theory of the dialectic. History was a set of arguments or a dialectic which would then define a new era in history.
Between Hegel and Marx came Ludwig Feuerbach who believed that Hegel was upside-down. Ideas, he contended, should be thought of more in the material and less in the non-physical. Ideas do not come from geist but rather from other humans. Feuerbach had seen language as a shared phenomenon. It is with this ability for humans to speak the same language that ideas are developed. Since ideas can only come from other ideas they are dependent on the language of society. Hence, ideas can only come from society. Feuerbach viewed history as consisting of an epoch of ideas. An epoch was a set of ideas that that defined a period in history.
The nineteenth century was also the era of Darwin who tried to answer questions using scientific reason. Darwin had also exposed his theory of evolution during this era. Looking at the philosophy of Marx one sees that he takes into account the philosophy Darwin, Hegel and Feuerbach. Marx felt that Feuerbach had focused to little on Hegel, and had lost the dialectic. Marx had seen history as consisting of both the dialectic and materialism. He called this Dialectic Materialism. History, in the view of Marx, was a dialectic materialism which evolved through time.
Marx s dialectic was not based on the conflict of ideas, but rather on the dialectic of classes. This conflict results in a societies new mode of production. Each era of history consists of a mode of production. Throughout history, these modes changed through the dialectic. The dialectic would lead to a new mode of production and a new era in history. According to Marx, history would consist epochs of modes of production. Marx states that these modes of production are primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, and then socialism and communism.
In studying the rise of capitalism one is concerned with the epochs of primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, mercantilism and how they led to the rise of capitalism in western society. In society the mode is production is dichotomous to the means of production. If there is a slave society there must be slave owners as well as slaves. Capitalism consists of those who own the means of production and those who are the means of production, but to understand how society reached this level one must look at the progression of society starting from primitive communism.
In primitive society the mode of production is communal. This is due to the fact that in primitive society there is no privately owned property. This is a society who s means of production is based on hunting and gathering. What is not consumed in the hunting becomes surplus and must be stored. This is where Marx found instability in this society. Those who have control over the surplus have the power. Herein lays the concept of the chief. The chief or leader is the one who has the power over the surplus. There are different chiefs for each of the communes. These communes are then in competition for who will gain the greatest surplus.
The different communes are in competition with each other. The communes come to the realization that it would be advantageous to conquer the competing communes to gain their surplus. By conquering the opposing communes they would take over the people of the communes as well. It would be much easier for the victors to have the conquered do the hunting and gathering. In a sense they would be using these people as slaves. This is where one sees the first distinction between classes. The society has moved from a primitive communist society to the first slave society.
Slaves have now become the means of production in this society. By creating a slave society we have created classes. It is in the classes that Marx talks about the dialectic. The arguments between the classes will eventually lead to a new mode of production and hence a new society. Many of the slaves were not only used as a means of production, but also in defense of the surplus. The slaves also become used as a military power. Slave society had internal instability. This is evident in the case of Rome. Rome was a slave society whose downfall was due to the class dialectic between the slaves and the slave owners. Slaves would eventually revolt against their slave owners. This would lead to the end of slave labor as a means of production.
The end of slave society would lead to either an Asiatic or a feudal mode of production. In the Asiatic mode of production the slaves were given some rights and used as military power. The distinct difference was that slaves of the Asiatic mode were not to be bought or sold. The other mode of production was feudal. Feudal society is the most important since, it will directly lead to the rise of capitalism. We see in the feudal society the rise of a stratified class system. The king was the ruler of the land and the ranks of those below him depended upon the military titles given by the king.
The masses of land were owned by the lords. Work was done by the serfs on the land in order to survive. Any surplus was given to the lord. This was the payment to the lords for using their land. The land was worked by the serfs. The difference between the serfs and slaves were that serfs were not owned by the landlord. The one aspect of serfdom which remained different from slavery was that the serfs children were required to work the same land their parents did. Serfs were a valuable asset to the land because they produced necessary goods as well as the surplus needed to pay the landlords. Serfs were also valuable in the sense that they could be used in military battle. Many times serfs were promised something in return for taking part in the battle.
Between feudalism and capitalism came the rise of mercantilism. This from of society was not based on the means of production. Rather, it was dependent on merchant trade as a means of acquiring goods. This society was a small step in the rise of capitalism.
In the era of mercantilism people began to make a living by trade of goods. Those who made their living by trade were the merchants. Some merchants would invoke a promissory notice if they did not have the product they wanted to trade. This notice was a piece of paper that later promised a product to the customer. In Switzerland the people began to print a general promissory notice called thalers. This gave rise to the notion of the dollar and hence the rise of the cash nexus.
Merchants began to exchange cash without the lords knowing. In the meantime, feudal wars broke out between the landowners in Europe. Landowners were taking over other landowners and acquiring more serfs. This would eventually threaten the power of the king. In order to suppress the threat of the landowners, the king would unify the serfs as an army of his own.
Concurrently, the cash nexus worked its way into the rest of society. The king wanted a part of this cash. As a means to acquire the cash the king would impose taxes on the people. With this cash nexus many peasants were able to own land by purchasing it. The landowners were beginning to be a threat to the king. To help stop the power of the landowners the king allied with the merchants to suppress the landowners. Landowners would then charge tolls for the merchants to cross their land. This an example of another class conflict, that is between the aristocrats and the merchants.
In the late nineteenth century wool trade had become a big money maker. Yeomen were experienced sheep herders who benefited from the wool trade. The English merchants, who had allied themselves with the king, wanted to profit from the wool trade. In order to profit from the trade, the merchants had the landowners removed from the land and replaced with the yeomen.. The merchants could then use the wool in their trades. This would then lead to the beginning of the enclosure movement.
The king, with the use of his army, would force the landowners off the land. He would then hand the land over to the yeomen to herd sheep. Since this enclosure movement was forcing people off the land there was a rise in the number of vagabonds. These vagabonds constituted a source of human labor which the merchants could utilize in wool production. The merchants would then bring in the vagabonds to work the looms for a wage. Labor has now become a commodity to the merchants, and the formation of a new mode of production has risen. This new mode of production gave rise to the capitalist society. There is a new class distinction between the laborer or proletariat, and those who owned the means of production or the capitalist.
In the formation of the capitalist society there are two prerequisites for the rise of capitalism. There first has to be the acquisition of enough money in the possession of certain individuals. In the feudal society the accumulation of funds was in the hands of the merchant traders as they took over the land. The second prerequisite is that there has to be a large amount of free labor. Feudal society also met this requirement in the large amount of vagabonds. These people were thrown off their land and had no work.
Skilled labor was broken down into simpler tasks such that any individual could accomplish the tasks. Thus, skilled labor was devalued and unskilled labor came to the fore. The laborers work day consisted of twelve hours during which they received an hourly wage.
A six hour work day may be enough to cover the cost of the labor but no surplus money is made. The next six hours of labor is surplus money. In the view of Marx the capitalist makes his money by the surplus of workers. Therefore, from the standpoint of the capitalist there are two types of capital. Constant capital, which is the necessary capital made to cover the costs of machinery, tools, labor and raw materials. The second is variable capital which is dependent on the production of the labors.
By expanding the variable capital the capitalist can gain more surplus value. One of these ways is by expanding the work day. According to Marx, any labor time over what is needed for constant capital is considered surplus. If it takes only six hours a day for constant capital then all hours after that would be capital that the capitalist makes for free. This surplus capital may be free for the capitalist, but it causes a contradiction.
For the capitalist the best way to sell a commodity is by having the lowest prices. The only way to have the lowest prices is by keeping the cost of production down. The only cost of production that the capitalist has control over is the cost of labor. So, in order to lower prices the capitalist must lower the wages of the workers. This causes a contradiction because the laborers are also the consumers. If the laborers do not have the wages to buy a product then the company can not sell a product. This means that there is an overproduction and a under consumption of goods. When this happens the capitalist must lay off the laborer because he is not making the necessary constant capital.
The other problem Marx saw with capitalism is that it alienates the workers from their jobs. The work becomes highly impersonal. In feudal times the laborer was able to see what the end product was and was able to sell it for themselves. Under capitalism the laborer is not able to do this. They are forced to produce product for someone else. The laborers feel alienated from their jobs. The laborers do not take pride in the work they have done. This will then lead to the laborer not producing quality products. The laborer is not dependent on the quality of the goods to sell the product because they are paid an hourly wage. This will lead to an unmotivated worker and low quality products.
The dialectic between the proletariat and the capitalist will then lead to a new synthesis. According to Marx, this new synthesis will be Socialism. In socialism there is no private property and the government owns the means of production. Marx hypothesized that socialism would lead communism which would be a classless society.
Max Weber was a German anti-socialist born in 1864. Weber was opposed to Marx and believed that his theory was an oversimplification of history. Weber thought Marx s view of history was too focused on economics. Weber felt that scientific, historical, and philosophical analysis of a period could never by itself provide the criterion necessary for a definitive answer to questions, including those of politics. Weber had thought that researchers must distinguish the difference between what exists and what ought to be.
Weber thought there was a link between capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. Specifically Weber looked at Calvinism. Calvinism was a simple way of life in which you were to do good for others. The way into heaven was to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Weber feels that this belief is eventually implemented into society. Work was done not for one s own personal gain, but for the sake of god.
Weber had found that in areas where Calvinism was the highest is where capitalism rose first. Weber had based this theory on research he had done. The rise in capitalism was where the Protestant ethic was the highest, and no other religion resulted in the rise of capitalism. All other religions do not stress work as a means to get into heaven. If we take the Muslim faith we see that dying for ones religion is considered as a means to get into heaven. The Protestant ethic is the only faith where wealth reinvested is a means to get into heaven.
In comparison to Marx there are some similarities in this theory. Marx had believed that a certain portion of the wealth will be needed to reinvest, but it was reinvested into more capital. For example, a portion of money made selling hardware would be reinvested in more hardware. The difference between the two is that Weber feels that capital is reinvested for the good of others, and Marx feels that it is reinvested so one may acquire more surplus.
Weber not only saw capitalism as a system of reinvestment, but as a highly efficient yet impersonal system. With the rise of capitalism Weber was concerned about how highly impersonal the system had become. Weber called this system bureaucracy. This system depended on people who were appointed to a position. Weber saw that this system even existed in a democratic society. This system was impersonal but it was efficient. It was a highly organized way of doing work. Marx had also agreed that bureaucracy was a part of capitalism, but he had seen it as an inefficient circle.
Where Weber saw bureaucracy as a necessary evil, Marx saw it as a endless circle. In the words of Marx, bureaucracy took state objectives and transformed them into the objectives of the department. The department would then transform those objectives back to the state. According to Marx, this form of passing the buck is an endless circle that can not be escaped.
For Weber the power of a capitalistic society comes from the bureaucracy. This bureaucratic power is legitimized by the use of rational-legal authority. This authority is a set impersonal rules that regulate an anonymous individual. In the feudal society it was not the group who had power, but the person who had economic wealth. It is traditional authority which legitimizes this power. This authority is based on tradition and trust. In feudal society it was the tradition to listen to the power of the king and his subjects put all their trust into the king. This type of authority, that of the king, was not as impersonal as the rational-legal authority. If a king needs to borrow something from his subjects the king is able to get it. If the United States government asked to borrow one s car, one would not give it to them, because one does not personally know and trust the united states government.
The bureaucracy may exist because of its rational-legal authority, but for Marx it only exists as far as its relations to the state. This is very similar to Weber s theory of patent action orientations. One of the aspects of Marx s theory that Weber criticized was that of the lack of patent action orientations in his theory. Marx based his theory on the dialectic of the proletariat. What Weber criticized was that Marx did not define the proletariat in respect to their relations to the rest of society. In essence what Weber is saying is that one s actions with respect to others define who one is in society. For further explanation of this theory lets take the example of the professor and the student.