Session 2 - Marx and Weber

Question 1

What are the key points of Marx?

Answer 1

• Material determinsim
• Two social classes and their characteristics
• Epiphenomal role of immaterial dimension and the state
• Historical materialism: class conflict as engine of history
• Limits of the Marxist perspective

Question 2

What are the key points of Weber?

Answer 2

• Methodological individualism and hermeneutic method
• Notion of ideal type
• key arguments and weaknesses in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• Types of domination and rise of the sate bureaucracy
• Rise of rationalization: reasons and process

Question 3

What questions the general framework?

Answer 3

Is Material reality = (sub)structure = determinism = external forces = living conditions = social classes = capital (and land) = economics = Institutionalism?

Ideas = Superstructure (ideology) = agency = internal forces = culture = social movements = labor = politics = ideational approaches?

Question 4

Where would you place Marc and Weber in the interplay of Material reality and Ideas?

Answer 4

Marx (Ideology, Class Conflicts) : Material reality shape and influence ideas

Weber: Ideas shape and influence material reality

Question 5

What are the causal mechanisms they refer to?

Answer 5

?

Question 6

What are the historical facts about Marx?

Answer 6

• lived from 1818 - 18883
• background: Capitalist society and revolutionary waves
• INTELLECTUAL CONTEXt: atheism turning Hegel upside down, French utopian socialism, British political economy?
  Three main works:
  1. The German Ideology (1846; 1932 with Engels)
  2. The Communist Manifesto (1848 with Engels)
  3. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867)
  -> One of the founding fathers of (economic) sociology
  Political Economy in its true original sense –> Extremely consistent (except when responding to criticism)

Question 7

What is the conceptual inventory of Marx?

Answer 7

1. Mean of production: land and capital needed to produced products
2. Productive forces: any inputs (raw materials, labor, knowledge, tools,…) needed to produce what society needs -> expanding with time
3. Relations of produciton: social relations entailed by means of produciton and productive forces -> devision of labor (manual vs. intellectuals
4. Mode of Produciton: combination of productive forces and relations of produciton, specific to each historical moment

Question 8

Which. two main spheres had Marx?

Answer 8

1. Economic base (substructure): all elements of mode of production
2. Superstructure: anything not directly related to production

Question 9

What saw Marx as the capitalist mode of production? Which critique did he express?

Answer 9

Critique of Young Hegelians and liberal democracy: formal liberty and equality meaningless when divorced from reality-> Examples: private property, political participation;

Polarization of social space into two objective social classes defined by their relationship to the means of produciton:
1. Capitalist class - bourgeoisie
2. Working class - proletariat

Question 10

According to Marx, what did the capitalist - bourgeoisie refer to?

Answer 10

• Monopoly of means of production
• intellectual labor
• cotrol over proletariat through wages (threat of sack), superstructure, repression
• Surplus value extracted from labor -> profits reinvested -> further capital accumulation
• capitalists also internalizing the status quo, seeing it as inevitable? - captured by their own domination?
• strong minority, but homogeneous and coordinated! which was/is a crucial afvantage

Question 11

What are wage-earner - proletariat acc. to Marx?

Answer 11

• owns only own labor power -> forced to sell it to survive
• money and commodification
• Exploitation and alienation: the workplace environment
• objective conditions subjectively internalized: false consciousness and status quo seen as inevitable!
• strong majority, but not (yet) coordinated: class itself: class for itself?

Question 12

What refers he to superstructure elements, Material reality, state apparatus and all other economics and non-economic auxiliary?

Answer 12

• Superstructure elements as epiphenomena (Nebenerscheining) without any causal role, protective layers of mode of production
• Material Reality -> shapes any ideational/immaterial dimension:
• Ruling class simultaneously ruling intellectual force
• Religion, politics, science, art, any type of discourse!
• (False) consciousness ?
• Status quo seen as inevitable and serving the “general” interest
• State Apparatus entirely controlled by capitalist class:
• Political parties, laws, education system, bureaucracy
• Natino states and nationalism introduced by capitalists
• Any other economic and non-economic auxiliary dimension as well:
• banking system, commercial competition,..
• family, civil society, …

–> Mode of production induces a coherent whole

Question 13

Was this account only for current MoP? What describes the evolutionary model of human history?
What states the historical materialism?

Answer 13

• Account not only for inertia of current mode of produciton, but also explain the driving force and mechanism of change
• An evolutionary model of human history:
• primitive communism -> antiquity -> feudalism -> capitalism -> communism
• changing modes of produciton with specific property rights, division of labor, dominant class, congruent superstructure
• Historical materialism: Hegelian dialectic applied to material world:
• Limited roles of “heroes” or of sheer willpower: politics not hidden, just dramas having no causal primacy
• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”
• New stage <-> material conditions of mode of produciton reach breaking point in their contradictions between social classes –> next stages resolves existing contradictions
• Implication of inevitable positive flow of human history (Hegelian “Aufhebung”, overcoming of contradictions)

–> communism as perfect final stage, where all struggles will be solved-> no further changes needed

Question 14

How is capitalism at its seeds of its own destruction?

What is the mutual movement between theory and praxis?

Macro-level effects?
rise of class consciousness?
Lenen?
Overthrow?

Answer 14

Capitalism with seeds of its own destruction: alienation of proletariat, inequality, and endemic recessions -> internal tensions

Mutual movement btw. theory and praxis:
- Dialectical contradictions between mental (theory, consciousness) and manual labor (praxis, material reality)
- initial micro-level process: practical changes in material reality to make it congruent with mental experience

Macro-level effects: changes in the economic base: productive forces come into contradiction with relations of production

Rise of class consciousness: class in itself -> turns into class for itself

Lenin: necessity of vanguard capital?

Overthrow of capitalist class –> communism: no classes

Question 15

Scientific Project?

What expresses the mixed with activism and a strong normative view?

Answer 15

A scientific project: “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”
-> Identification of the material foundations of history, not imagined dramas or heroes

Mixed with activism and a strong normative view:
- “Brokers of the world, unite! You habe nothing to lose but your chains”
- WIllingness not only to describe reality, but also to change it
- how to disentangle reality from the impact of one’s ideas on reality?
- Like Hegel, evolution as inevitable positive: societal Darwinism?
- Actual negative effect? Revolution is inevitable anyway