Showing papers by "Anthony Giddens published in 1971"

Capitalism and modern social theory : an analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber

Abstract: Giddens's analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Weber has become the classic text for any student seeking to understand the three thinkers who established the basic framework of contemporary sociology. The first three sections of the book, based on close textual examination of the original sources, contain separate treatments of each writer. The author demonstrates the internal coherence of their respective contributions to social theory. The concluding section discusses the principal ways in which Marx can be compared with the other two authors, and discusses misconceptions of some conventional views on the subject.

Capitalism and modern social theory: Social differentiation and the division of labour

Abstract: The writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, in their varying ways, fuse together an analysis and a moral critique of modern society. Weber's insistence upon the absolute logical dichotomy between empirical or scientific knowledge, and value-directed action, should not be allowed to obscure his equally emphatic affirmation of the relevance of historical and sociological analysis to active involvement in politics and social criticism. Both Marx and Durkheim reject Kant's ethical dualism, and attempt more directly to integrate a factual and a moral assessment of the characteristic features of the contemporary social order. Durkheim maintained a lifelong commitment to the formulation of a scientific foundation for the diagnostic interpretation of the ‘pathological’ features of the advanced societies. Marx's work and political actions are predicated upon the argument that ‘Man must prove the truth, that is, the actuality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking, in Praxis ’. In the works of the latter two writers, the concepts of ‘alienation’ and ‘anomie’ respectively provide the focal point of their critical interpretation of modern society. The conception of alienation is the main prop of Marx's critique of capitalism, and therefore of his thesis that the bourgeois order can be transcended by a new kind of society. It does not merely represent an early Utopian position which Marx later abandoned, nor does it become reduced to the relatively minor place which Marx's discussion of the ‘fetishism of commodities’ occupies in Capital .

Capitalism and modern social theory: Marx's early writings

Abstract: There is a sense in which Marx's writings span three centuries. Although Marx was born nearly two decades after the opening of the nineteenth century, and died well before the end of it, his writings have had their greatest influence – certainly in the political sphere, and possibly even in the intellectual world – in the twentieth century. But they have their roots in the late eighteenth century, in the outburst of social and political changes stemming from the Revolution of 1789 in France. Marx's works thus draw the shattering effects of the French Revolution into the modern age, and express a line of direct continuity between 1789 and the October Revolution in Russia of almost one hundred and thirty years later. While rather little is known of Marx's early childhood, various fragments and letters survive from his adolescent pen. The earliest of these are three short essays which Marx wrote during the course of his final school examinations. Inevitably enough, these are of little intrinsic interest or originality, but they do give an indication of the enthusiastic grandiosity which inspired many of Marx's subsequent adult works. The most novel of the three is called ‘Reflections of a young man on choosing a career’, and discusses the moral obligations and the range of freedoms open to an individual who is choosing which vocation to follow in his life.

Capitalism and modern social theory: Max Weber: Protestantism and capitalism

Abstract: While Max Weber was an almost exact contemporary of Durkheim, the intellectual climate in which each lived was, in important respects, very different. The short period which Durkheim spent studying in Germany while a young man served to introduce him to some of the leading trends in German social thought, and he did not subsequently relinquish his interest in the works of German social scientists. Durkheim was certainly acquainted with Max Weber's writings, as well as with those of the latter's brother, Alfred. There are at least two sets of writings by German authors which connect Durkheim and Weber directly: those of Schindler and the members of the Verein fur Sozialpolitik on the one hand, and those of Georg Simmel on the other. But even these fairly direct intellectual connections are of marginal significance. While Simmers thought undoubtedly was of some importance in the shaping of Weber's views, Durkheim was highly critical of Simmel, and was not influenced by the latter's writing in any important respects; and while the writings of Schmoller and the Kathedersozialisten formed a point of departure for Durkheim's early works, those aspects of their views which Durkheim found most sympathetic were exactly the ones which Weber rejected, and indeed fought against.

The relations of production and class structure

Abstract: According to Marx, the development of society is the result of the continual productive interaction between men and nature. Men ‘begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence…’. The ‘production and reproduction of life’ is both an exigency dictated by the biological needs of the human organism and, more importantly, the creative source of new needs and capabilities. Thus productive activity is at the root of society in both an historical and an analytical sense. Production is ‘the first historical act’; and ‘the production of material life … is … a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life’. Every individual, in his day-to-day actions, recreates and reproduces society at every moment: this is both the source of what is stable in social organisation and the origin of endless modification. Every kind of production system entails a definite set of social relationships existing between individuals involved in the productive process. This is at the root of one of Marx's most important criticisms of political economy and of utilitarianism generally. The conception of the ‘isolated individual’ is a construction of the bourgeois philosophy of individualism, and serves to conceal the social character which production always manifests. Marx refers to Adam Smith as the ‘Luther of political economy’ because he, and after him the other economists, have correctly identified labour as the source of man's own self-creation.

Capitalism and modern social theory: Marx's influence

Abstract: The intellectual relationship between the writings of Marx on the one hand, and those of Durkheim and Weber on the other, cannot be analysed satisfactorily without reference to the social and political changes which both conjoined and disconnected the works of the three writers. Durkheim and Weber were each critics of Marx, and consciously directed part of their work to the refutation or qualification of Marx's writings: indeed, the remark that the bulk of Weber's intellectual output represents a prolonged ‘dialogue with the ghost of Marx’, has often been reiterated in the secondary literature. But in both France and Germany, in the late nineteenth century, the influence of Marx's thought was far more than purely intellectual in character: in the shape of ‘Marxism’, Marx's writings became the primary impetus within a vital and dynamic political movement. As such, Marxism, and ‘revolutionary socialism’ more generally, formed a major element in the horizon of Durkheim and Weber, especially so in the case of the latter. Marx conceived his works to furnish a platform for the accomplishment of a definite Praxis , and not simply as academic studies of society. The same is true, although not of course in an exactly comparable manner, of both Durkheim and Weber; each directed his writings towards the prophylaxis of what they considered to be the most urgent social and political problems confronting contemporary man, and attempted to provide an alternative standpoint to that set out by Marx.

Capitalism and modern social theory: Durkheim's conception of sociological method

Abstract: The notions developed in The Division of Labour constitute the foundations of Durkheim's sociology, and the bulk of Durkheim's subsequent writings represent elaborations of the themes originally set out in that work. This is most obviously true of Durkheim's two major publications prior to the turn of the century: The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) and Suicide (1897). In The Rules , Durkheim explicates the methodological suppositions already applied in The Division of Labour . While the subject-matter of Suicide appears at first sight to be utterly different from The Division of Labour , the themes of the former actually mesh very closely with the latter, both within the context of Durkheim's own thought, and within the framework of nineteenth-century writing upon questions of social ethics more generally. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the study of suicide was used by a variety of writers as a specific problem in terms of which general moral issues could be analysed. Durkheim's analysis in Suicide is based upon the work of such authors, but also takes as its point of departure some of the general conclusions concerning the moral order of different forms of society established in The Division of Labour .