Term Paper on "Weber and Marx on Class Inequality"

Term Paper 3 pages (1105 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Marx Weber

Does Max Weber entirely negate Karl Marx's conception of class inequality?

Max Weber disagreed with Karl Marx's historical and materialist analysis of the dialectical nature, or cyclical quality, of class conflict within every society. Weber did not deny the existence of social classes, or the fact that persons within Marx's defined class structure could occasionally unite together with a common cultural bond. However, because of Weber's more subtle understanding of the concept of 'class,' which included facets or dimensions beyond purely economic interests, class revolution became more difficult in Weber's analysis. The inequities between the classes were more difficult to define than Marx believed, even by the persons within their respective societies as well as by outside observers.

Weber did not negate all of Marx's analysis. However, he added fundamental components to Marx's analysis of class conflict that disturbed Marx's notion that economics was the root of all human turmoil and strife. This made Marx's final solution of a classless society far more difficult to achieve, in theory and practice. It should be noted that Weber wrote in response to Marx, with the intention of questioning Marx's materialist approach. Weber's writings placed a strong stress upon the cultural values that had come into the forefront of the social consciousness as the result of the Industrial Revolution in Europe during the 19th century, specifically that of the work ethic of Protestantism that separated religion and spiritual, private life from the secular world of the workforce. (Bartle, "Community Empowerment: Lecture notes -- Max Weber," 2006)

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Marx tended to subsume all religion into a similar ideological category. However, Weber believed that Protestantism was unique because it extolled the value of austerity, frugality, and labor, values that enabled capitalism to take hold in nations such as England and Germany. Protestantism's stress on the value of the individual placed power in the figure of layperson, rather than the hierarchy of the church and priesthood, and thus fueled the fires of modern independent enterprise through investment and risk. (Bartle, "Community Empowerment: Lecture notes -- Max Weber," 2006) Religion, Weber's view is not merely the opiate of the masses, a doctrine designed to keep the working classes in line to serve the will of the bourgeois, but an active ideological force that can enact social change within human history and culture.

Weber saw the Industrial Revolution as distinctly different from other economic revolutions, as opposed to another example of Marxist dialectical materialism or class struggle. Marx believed that bourgeois proletarian struggle was an extension of earlier historical struggles between masters and serfs, of all previous haves and the have-nots. In all of these past class wars, the disenfranchised groups were estranged from the value of their labor -- the oppressed classes produced, and were either owned, or, under capitalism, were given wages for renting their bodies to the factory owner. The bourgeois owner did not work but merely reaped the benefits of possessing land, like lords reaped the benefits of owning land tilled by serfs. (Bartle, "Community Empowerment: Lecture notes -- Marx and Weber -- Inequality," 2006)

Weber instead stressed that society was quite different as a result of the Protestant Revolution, and had experienced a fundamental shift than how it had existed previously. Now the formerly small middle class could make money, own property, and reap… READ MORE

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