Sociology

Sociology Marxism and Weber

Thesis Statement

Views on Modernity - The Comparative Study of Max Weber and Karl Marx

Introduction

Max Weber and Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a great German theorist who defined different hypothesis on many social issues such as ideologies, class-consciousness, historical materialism, class struggle, alienated labor, two factors of commodities and false consciousness. The main idea of Karl Marx was to develop societal sciences for upcoming era. Theories of Karl Marx are based on economics, society and politics, are together recognized as Marxism.

Max Weber was a great sociologist and economist. Weber's most important concern was to comprehend the meaning and progression of secularization, rationalization and dissatisfaction, which is connected with the increase of modernity and capitalism. In this way, he gave the idea of taking things in different way. His theories mainly focus on the idea of rationalization, which are having certain consequences in modern life.

For me Max Weber is one of the convincing theorists because he supported modernity, rationalization, authority and legitimacy. In today's world, when we see around, we observe that the current era is of modernism and societies are moving from conventionalism towards modernism. Weber bureaucracy was a modern idea because in this the duties were officially divided. Hence, the practices of society are changing, which is also changing the preferences and working conditions too. However, the differences between these two theorists are mentioned below.

Comparative Views

Role of Authority and Bureaucracy

Max Weber believes that bureaucracy is most well organized type of social order. He also named it as an “iron cage,” which means that people are trapped. He believes that organization should define clearly about their rules and regulation, and employees who are working within the organization should strictly follow the defined system. He has also defined three types of authorities, [1] traditional authority, [2] charismatic authority, [3] rational authority (Cole, 2004).

However, Karl Marx says about bureaucracy that in this type of society the organizational interest becomes the individual's personal interest and it is against the private aims of others (Meckstroth, 2000).

According to my point of view the bureaucracy of Max Weber is effective and holds some concrete evidences because he believes that duties of governed structure should be officially assigned. The promotion and selection is based on the technical qualification of employees, not on the personal relations.

Role of Labor

The concern and analysis of Marx was towards the alienated labor. He suggested that when there is lack of control on the means of production, then workers also get confused about the production and their working power. Marx believes that labor is the social cost of production because the commodity value can be measures objectively by determining the average number of working hours.

While Max Weber believes that division of labor was creating a social conflict, which was not in favor of economy. Low salaries de-motivate the labor, which decrease the productivity. He gives a flexible view that a labor should get the wages according to their work ...