Social theory

Social theory

1. Marx 1818-1883

   • His works
     • The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) AKA – the Paris Manuscripts
     • The Communist Manifesto (1848)
     • The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1851-1852)
     • A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
     • The German Ideology (1932)
     • Capital (DATE?)
   • General info
     • Marx is a complex thinker in search of truth, and full of contradictions, as can be observed in the numerous works he produced at different stages and his life and thought, such as the Paris Manuscripts, The Communist Manifesto, the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and The German Ideology. He starts off as a young Hegelian and with the Hegelian concept of alienation which he reinterprets (Paris Manuscripts), and then becomes a historical Materialist in the German Ideology, then bring private property to the forefront in the Grundrisse, and finally turns to the theory of exploitation and class conflict in Capital, Marx’s major contribution to social theory.
     • He wanted to understand the horrors of modern industrial society and put them right
   • Materialist
     • Historical materialism
       • The theory of historical materialism suggests that the means of production of a society influence the social organisation and ideas of that society. As expressed by Sweezy and Humberman, “the way people act and think is determined . . . by the way they get their living; hence the foundation of any society is its economic system; and therefore economic change is the driving force of history” (Sweezy and Humberman 1949:92). In other words, society is determined by the economy and economic change is what drives history.
   • Characteristics of modern Capitalism
     • Theory of alienation
       • 4 characteristics of alienation
         • 1 - alienation from the object of production (production lines and mass production alienate workers from the objects of production, unlike an independent shoemaker, artist,…)
         • 2 - alienation in the act of production (labour does not belong to the intrinsic nature of man, so in work, man denies himself. Labour is not voluntary but forced economically, you need to work to survive. Life begins when work ends.)
         • 3 - alienation from species being -from what makes us human (according to Marx what makes us human is that we work. Labour transforms the material world to meet out human needs with a plan in our heard. But in a commodity producing society, we are alienated from labour, so from our very human essence)
         • 4 - alienation from fellow men (we treat each other like objects, maximizing utility and thinking instrumentally. This is a characteristc of modernity and urban life
       • Marx’s idea of alienation is a re-interpretation of Hegel’s idea of alienation: we are separate from the unity which once were. For him, alienation was a problem of the state of consciousness. Hegel was an idealist: believed that consciousness precedes material existence. The idea is that before the physical world existed, there was an absolute spirit at the origin of the world. But then there was a gradual separation from subject and object. The absolute spirit is at the same time subject and object, it is a state of totality. When object and subject are separate from each other, the material world exists without consciousness and there arises a problem of alienation. Alienation is overcome when the subject is able to control the objective condition of its life. When your consciousness is adequate to your existence. Mary very much follows this idea. He eliminates the idea of the absolute spirit because it is too speculative. He doesn’t agree that you can overcome alienation simply by
       • When profit drives the economy, we enter the stage of alienation.
       • The price that we pay for modernity, is the separation of subject and object: it is alienation. In modern conditions,
         • we are separated from the objective conditions of our existence.
       • Marx believes that alienation will bring the working class to emancipate humankind. He developed this idea through the theory of exploitation.
       • The theory of alienation is essential and influential to theories of the 20th century. It has had a great impact on 20th century literature (The Stanger - Camus, Kafka), social theory (Frankfurt School – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse) and cultural theory (Bauman, Kolakowski).
     • Theory of exploitation
       • Exploitation of the workers’ labour power to create surplus value and generate capital
     • Class struggles
       • ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’
         • “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
       • According to Marx, there are two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. And those who are not yet in the proletariat but are ‘the lower strata of the middle class’ will sink gradually into the proletariat.
         • In fact, the situation is a little more complex at that time… There are a lot of classes! His analyses become much more complex and encompassing later on (after the CM).
         • the notion of class struggles is central to the work of Marx and Engel. According to them, “[s]ociety as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps” (Marx and Engels 1848:23) “with fundamentally different and in many respects antagonising interests, attitudes, aspiration” (Sweezy and Humberman 1949:93); the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie constitutes the owners of the means of production who employ (and exploit) wage labourers (Marx and Engels 1848:21), while on the other hand, the proletarians survive only by selling their labour power to the business owners (Marx and Engels 1848:21).
         • To eliminate this exploitation, Marx and Engels suggest that a classless system needs to be introduced. However, one could argue that this is a reductionist vision of society. Indeed, there are many other factors which can divide and generate oppression within society, such as gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and so on. Focusing solely on class oppression might neglect other types of oppression.
       • The Communist Manifesto – political pamphlet, not a scholarly document.
     • Labour power
       • In the wage relation, the worker sells his labour-power in exchange for a wage from the capitalist
       • Commodification of labour power: Treating labour-power as a commodity turns the labour market and labour processes into sites of class struggle between capital and workers. Even if one leave one’s employer/contract, the new one will entail the same issues because it is still part of the same system – capitalism.
         • labour market and labour process are turned into sites of class struggles
     • Use value, exchange value, surplus value
       • Petty Commodity production: C-M-C Capitalist production: M-C-M’
       • This increment or excess over the original value I call ' surplus-value'. The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circulation, but increases its magnitude, adds to itself a surplus-value, or is valorized [verwertet sich]. And this movement converts it into capital.
       • Capitalist production creates surplus value, exploiting the labour power of the proletatiat
     • Commodity fetishism
       • A world whose social relations exist between things and not people in one in which people will live their lives under the influence of systemic forces. If commodities define social relations in capitalism, then in reality neither the capitalist nor the worker had any part to play.
       • When a commodity has the mysterious ability to create or renew social relations, while being a tangible, ordinary object.
       • Commodity fetishism has the mysterious power to hide the origin of private labour through the mark of the relations of commodities to themselves. So much is concealed in this system dominated by commodities.
       • “A commodity appears at first sight an extremely trivial thing, but its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” Marx
       • 1. peculiar nature of the commodity as both an ordinary, physical object and a generator of social relations
         • 2. in capitalism, social relations are relations between commodities and not people
           • 3. commodity fetishism, in a very fog-like manner, conceals private labour. Private labour is only social at the point of exchange
   • Young Hegelian

2. Durkheim 1858-1917

   • His work
     • The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
     • The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
     • Suicide (1897)
     • The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915)
   • General info
     • Positivist
       • The young Durkheim was a functionalist and positivist, and later on in his life he became a cultural analyst.
       • He belies in the existence of social facts which can be observed with rigorous empirical methodology, and this what makes him a positivist.
     • The only theorist who identified himself as a sociologist
     • Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist of the 20th century who was interested in social solidarity. Unlike other founding fathers of sociology such as Karl Marx or Max Weber who considered the elements of society which contribute to it falling apart (Marx and Engels 1848, Weber 1930), Durkheim was interested in how society is holding together. In his doctoral dissertation The Division of Labor in Society (1893), referred to as Division in the following essay, Durkheim developed a typology of the evolution of societies. He was particularly interested in the impact of the economic structure on social relationships.
       • Major questions include: • How does the change in economic structure impact social relationships? • What is it that binds society together?
   • Social solidarity
     • Mechanical solidarity
       • According to Durkheim, the social relations of individuals changed when society evolved from a traditional to a modern one; he argues that as division of labour increases and the economic system evolves, it modifies social ties and relations (Durkheim 1893). Mechanical solidarity is typical of traditional societies, where division of labour is limited and individuals perform similar tasks. Durkheim emphasises the similarity of individuals in this type of society and the fact that they are brought together by sameness (Durkheim 1893:130). Moreover, traditional societies have a strong ‘conscience collective’, or collective consciousness (Durkheim 1893:146) which is “a determinate system with a life of its own which is determined by the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society” (Durkheim 1893:79). In traditional societies, individuals share common values, tasks, and situations within society.
         • Durkheim’s Mechanical solidarity is somewhat equivalent to Weber’s traditional authority and Marx’s pre-capitalist formations.
     • Organic solidarity
       • Organic solidarity on the other hand, is the product of social differentiation and creates solidarity based on dissimilarity and mutual recognition of interdependence (Durkheim 1893:131). Organic solidarity arises in societies which have a high level of division of labour and specialisation (Durkheim 1893:131). Individuals are bound together by their dependence on one another due to the fact that they are dissimilar; heterogeneity breeds interdependence.
         • According to Durkheim, this organised interdependence is the new source of solidarity in modern societies, but also the source of three pathologies, namely class conflict, excessive specialisation, and anomie (Durkheim 1893:353-395). The latter constitutes his unique contribution to the study of pathologies of modern society. Anomie is a state of mind in which individuals are lost for moral guidance. Because of the diversity of modernity, there is a critical lack of moral rules and shared norms, which results in individuals feeling morally stranded (Durkheim 1893:353-373).
           • Durkheim’s Organic solidarity is somewhat equivalent to Weber’s legal-rational authority and Marx’s modernity/capitalism.
       • Durkheim does not romanticise mechanical solidarity and does not advocate for a return to it. He simply points out the pathological conditions which can arise in organic solidarity, in order to find the right medication/solution to them.
     • He uses law as an indicator of collective consciousness. In Division, Durkheim uses different types of law to exemplify how the two types of solidarity work. He argues that mechanical solidarity is maintained through penal, repressive law, which serves to preserve the sameness of the group and is concerned with sanctions rather than obligations (Durkheim 1893:146). Organic solidarity on the other hand, is governed by “co-operative law with restitutive sanctions” (Durkheim 1893:127), which aims at preserving the harmony of the system, or if the rules have been violated, at restoring the situation to its original state by having the offender pay restitution (Durkheim 1893:127-128).
   • Collective consciousness: the shared norms, beliefs, and values which exist prior to the particular society.
     • strong colletive conscience in mechanical solidarity, weak CC in organic solidarity
   • Division of labour
     • He identified 3 pathological forms of the division of labour
       • anomie
         • Somewhat similar to what is alienation for Marx disenchantment for Weber.
         • State of normlessness. Lack of regulation, of a value system. A pathology which emerges in the transition to organic solidarity/ to a market economy /to modernity. In big cities, nobody knows who you are. The theory of anomie is the unique contribution of Durkheim to the study of pathologies of modern society. Which says that temporarily, in the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity, there is a problem of absence of rules.
           • But anomie is not an inevitable consequence of the division of labour. If moral, ethical institutions are in place, then the division of labour will not produce anomie. Anomie only arises in the absence of such systems.
             • The solution he suggests is the creates of professional organisations and slotting people into professional communities, which would create solidaristic ideas and identities. (See second introduction)
       • class conflict
       • excessive specialisation
         • Gets very close to Marx’s notion of alienation
         • Although a high level of division of labour is highly beneficial to the economy which drives modern society, eventually it can have a divisive and instrumental effect on individuals. Indeed, as division of labour increases, the scope of action of individuals is narrowed down, which means that modern society is made up of separate, divided individuals bound together by their reliance on one another. Moreover, division of labour is instrumental as it enables business owners to produce a lot, fast and for little money, while exploiting labour-workers.
           • This is a concept that Marx exposed in his work Capital (1867). Similarly, Georg Simmel, a German sociologist, argues that the money economy gives way to instrumentalisation and depersonalisation of people, as the “[m]odern mind has become more and more calculating” (Simmel 1903:50); “[t]he individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers” (Simmel 1903:58). In short, modern society can be understood as a rational, capitalist society which functions through high division of labour and which places a great emphasis on money making at the expense of part of the society, namely the working class.
   • Social facts
     • Social facts are ways "of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him. al" (Durkheim 51)
       • They are consequently the proper field of sociology. (Durkheim52)
       • What it expresses is a certain state of the collective mind. (55)
         • a product of shared existence, of actions and reactions called into play between the consciousnesses of individuals (56)
     • "Sociology is commonly said to be the science of social facts, that is to say, the science of those phenomena which show the life of societies itself" (Durkheim 175). In Sociology and the Social Sciences (1903)
   • Suicide
     • Suicide is one of the first rigorous empirical studies of a social phenomenon.
     • Durkheim sees suicide as a social fact. Indeed, suicide has a statistical regularity, which shows that it has a collective dimension.
       • This is a phenomenon which until Durkheim was considered to be an object of psychological studies, and which was a personal issue specific to individuals.
     • Studying suicide rates in different countries, Durkheim notices that:
       • 1. In a same society, we notice a stability of suicide rate from year to year (which shows that is not a purely individual act, otherwise it would vary from year to year)
       • 2. suicide rates vary from one society to another (which shows that social organization plays a part in this phenomenon)
         • He identifies two factors which influence suicide rates:
           • 1. the level of social integration/social solidarity, the strength of the social tie between individuals
             • Depending on the level of social integration, Durkheim notices two types of suicides:
               • a. egoistic suicide committed to end a situation which is personally unbearable. (more present amongst protestants)
               • b. altruistic suicide committed as a personal sacrifice for the benefit of a community (captain of a ship, kamikaze, terrorist, …)
           • 2. The level of regulation in a society, the importance of the rules and values which set boundaries to individuals
             • Depending on the level of social integration, Durkheim notices two types of suicides:
               • d. anomic suicide a lack of values, norms and boundaries can lead to individuals feeling lost and in a desperate quest for unreachable happiness
               • c. fatalist suicide over-regulation can lead to fatalistic suicide as the individual feels too oppressed and does not feel like they have any power
   • Methodology
     • Durkheim wanted sociology to be a science, which means it had to have a methodology similar to the one of natural sciences.
       • Positivist methodology.
       • This is why he said that social facts need to be treated as things, which means that no judgements, feelings or emotions should be felt when dealing with them. Objectivity is key to scientific methodology.
       • “As for the method appropriate to be used, two words may serve to characterise it: it must be historical and objective" (245)
         • Historical: the purpose of sociology is to enable us to under­ stand present-day social insti tions so that we may have some perception of what they are destined to become and what we should want them to become. . . Thus it is su icient to follow its genesis over a period of time, in the course of history, in order to perceive in isolation, and naturally, the various elements from which it results.” (245) “Thus in the order of social realities history plays a role analogous to that of the microscope in the order of physical realities.” (246)
         • “Objective: by this I mean that the sociologist must take on the state of mind of the physicists, chemists and biologists when they venture into a territory hitherto unexplored, that of their scientific field. He must embark upon the study of social facts by adopting the principle that he is in complete ignorance of what they are, and that the properties characteristic of them are totally unknown to him, as are the causes upon which these latter depend. By the methodical comparison of the historical data, and by this alone, he will evolve the notions appropriate to them. It is true that such an attitude is difficult to sustain, for it goes against ingrained habits. Since we live our life in society, we possess some representation of these notions, and we are inclined to believe that with such usual representations we have seized what is essential in the things to which they relate." (246)
           • The sociologist looking at social facts is himself in the middle of society and is influenced by it, so it is important that he does not include in his analysis his own feelings, opinions, values etc. It is crucial that he let go of any biases as this would be an obstacle to a scientific analysis.

3. Weber 1864-1920

   • His works
     • The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1903-4)
     • The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1911)
     • Agrarian Sociology of Civializations
     • General Economic History
     • The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1949)
   • Idealist
     • “Weber made his reputation on the basis of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the book that turns Marx on his head. Instead of religious ideas being mere ideology, “the opiate of the masses” the reflect the material basis of capitalism, Weber shows that religious beliefs were themselves the basis for the emergence of capitalism.” (Collins 31)
   • General info
     • Before his nervous breakdown, Weber is an enthusiastic pro-capitalist and pro-liberal. So his work on The Protestant Ethic is a major departure from his previous thoughts.
       • Nervous breakdown DATES?
         • Went to the US and got jealous. He wanted to make Germany as great as the US
     • He wanted to understand modern industrial society and its disenchantments
   • Ideal Types
     • An ideal type is a systematic construct that serves as a measuring rod for researchers to learn similarities as well as differences in actual cases
       • 4 ideal types of behaviour:
         • 1. goal-rational / instrumental
         • 2. value-rational
         • 3. emotional-rationality / traditional
         • 4. unconscious habit / affectual
   • Verstehen
   • Distinctive features of Capitalism
     • The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
       • “Weber was concerned with the European world at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther broke from the Catholic church in 1517.” (Collins 48)
         • Translation of the bible from Latin to German. Idea was to break down “the power of the priests as a sole connection from ordinary people to God.” (Collins 48) “the people were to find their own access to God” (Collins 48)
           • “Protestantism broke down the religious two-class system; it eliminated the monks, so that everyone would now have to be a kind of monk within the world” (Collins 58)
             • “It is in this context that Weber saw religion as having a major effect in producing modern capitalism.” (Collins 49)
         • Different denomination of Protestantism emerged, such as the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Quakers, the Baptists. Reformers in Switzerland has a strong impact on the protestant ideology. Zwingli in Zürich and Calvin in Geneva.
           • “It was their theologies, and particularly that of Calvin, that Weber believed had the greatest effect upon capitalism” (Collins 49)
             • Jean Calvin formulated a doctrine which spread across Europe, of which predestination was the major point.
               • Predestination - “Since God is all powerful and all knowing, there is nothing that He cannot do or know. God knows the entire past and the entire future, and by His power, He has ordained everything that is to be. This implied that everything that everyone does is already predetermined. Whether one will be good or evil is determined, and so is whether one will go to heaven or hell. There is nothing anyone can do about it” (Collins 50)
                 • “But how could you know whether you had been chosen or not? The only sign was to feel that divine grace has descended upon you.” (Collins 51) “This created a motivation for the believer to try to make his or her life perfect in every way” (Collins 51) Not just religiously, but also in moral purity (sexual puritanism, etc).
                   • “The result of this religious doctrine, then, was to produce anxiety and a strong motivation to discipline one’s life in every aspect. The doctrine of predestination ended up producing hard work; one’s whole life became a religious effort.” (Collins 51) “This especially motivated Puritans to go into business, in which one could put in long hours towards an endless goal of making money” (Collins 51)
                     • “The irony of this situation is that the Puritans became rich. Their long hours and methodological business practices led to the acquisition of wealth. Their businesses flourished; they became leading citizens. Capitalism grew, but puritanism began to fade away. The protestant ethic, precisely because of its effect in transforming that world, eventually undermines itself.” (Collins 51)
                       • “By the 1800s, there was no turning back. The Protestant ethic could afford to fade away as a religion, because it had created an economic framework of modern society that now functioned on its own.” (Collins 55)
                       • “the irony that hardworking, methodical Puritans built up successful businesses, and in the process of becoming rich eventually become less religious” But the structure of rational capitalism is all around us, and we cannot escape from it. It is a world without magic, a world in which the hard forces of the market and the pressures of bureaucracy give a secular equivalent to individual powerlessness under God’s predestination.”
                     • “But the Puritan was opposed to licentious living, and was committed to his methodical enterprise in business. The logical thing for him to do, then, was simply to plow his profits back into the business. Karl Marx would later refer to this as the epitome of alienation: instead of money being used to bus goods that could be consumed, in modern capitalism money became simply a device to invest in making more money” (Collins 55) “Business thus became an endless stream, fed by its own success, leading to the pursuit of endless growth” (Collins 55)
       • “He was not arguing that capitalism in general was caused by Protestantism. He was drawing a connection between a particular kind of Protestantism (the Calvinist belief in Predestination) and a particular kind of capitalism. This is what he called “rational capitalism” or (more loosely) “modern capitalism”.” (Collins 53)
     • Rationalisation
       • Disenchantment
         • When we are too rationalistic, too cold, too instrumental. Sense of loss of an ‘enchanted garden’, of ‘magic’
       • Iron cage
         • “Weber was pessimistic about the modern situation; he complained that we are caught in an ion cage of our own making. We are haunted, he said (1904-1905/1930: 182), by “the ghost of dead religious beliefs”.” (Collins 59)
       • Several meanings of rationality:
         • 1. relationship between means and ends. Technically adequate calculation of how to get from point A to point B.
         • 2. something active, a force that masters the world rather than passively adapting to it or going along with a routine.
         • 3. predictability and regularity. Rationality is based on written rules, and hence on paperwork (bureaucracy)
       • “Interestingly enough, Weber writes most explicitly about rationalization as the predominant historical trend not in his writings on capitalism, bureaucracy, or law, but in a little book he wrote in 1911 called The Rational and Social Foundations of Music.” (Collins 64)
   • Class?
   • Types of authority and domination
     • For Weber, what drives history is power, struggle for power.
       • There are three types of legitimate authority:
         • 1. legal-rational authority: it rests “. . . on the belief in the legality of enacted rules and the rights of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands”
         • 2. traditional authority: it rests “. . . on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them”
         • 3. charismatic authority: it rests “. . . on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him”
   • Sociology as science, value-free and objective
     • In The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1949), Max Weber argues that social sciences should be value neutral, which is typical of a positivist methodology aiming at eliminating personal influence.

4. Other useful/related theorists

   • Georg Simmel - rationalisation
   • Hegel - alienation (Marx)
   • Frankfurt School – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse
   • Bauman

5. Idealism vs Materialism

   • Long tradition of thinkers and theorists who thought that ideas could be explained by the material conditions - Bauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Idealists think that the material world is coming from an idea. If you believe that there is a transcendental being like God who by an act of will created the world and humans. They believe that ideas explain human behavior. Feuerbach (a materialist) believed that we projected our alienation by creating God. Marx critiqued Feuerbach’s materialism.

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