Weber’s Theory
Certain aspects of the state were highlighted in Weber’s Politics as a Vocation and other writings. Nevertheless, he did not specifically specify the term element, which people do for clarification of discourse. In reality, the ingredients are the most crucial portions of his concept. A modern state is a framework of government and legislation that is customized by state and law and advises the management board’s coordinated action (Weber, 2021, p. 1). The executive is controlled by statutory provision similarly and asserts legislative power over association members, those who essentially relate to the organization by birth but within a larger spectrum overall constantly taking the position in the region over which it practices supremacy. Max Weber argued that the study of social acts should be the primary emphasis of sociology. Social action, according to Weber, was performed by an individual and to which a person assigned significance (Weber, 2021, p. 2). As a result, an action that a person does not think about cannot be considered a social behavior.
Weber felt more at ease exploring actual problems than handling abstract topics under the umbrella phrase ‘the social question.’ For example, in the 1890s, he was a member of a commission formed to investigate the stock exchange and examine the influence of trade speculation on the socioeconomic issues of the working classes. In many ways, Weber tackled the social problem without resolving it directly. Weber’s stylistic characteristic was polemical writing. When he discovered an error or an inconsistency in another writer’s intent, he would frequently produce an essay or a booklet to present another viewpoint. Studying the mechanisms of rationalism, secularization, and “disenchantment” was Weber’s primary intellectual preoccupation. He contended that such dynamics are the product of a different way of thinking about the environment and are linked to the growth of capitalism and modernism.
Weber maintained that austere Protestantism in the Western world had a chosen affinity with capitalism, bureaucracies, and the logical and reasonable nation-state. Weber intended something less direct than causation but more explicit than association when he said elective affinities. In other words, while Weber did not suggest that religion caused economic development, he did discover that austere Protestantism and contemporary capitalism frequently coexisted in civilizations. Furthermore, Weber noted that both austere Protestantism and capitalism fostered cultural behaviors that complemented one another. He never argued that religion was the exclusive, simple, and isolated source of capitalism’s growth in the West.
Max Weber’s viewpoint appears to be the most relevant to today’s challenges since it explains why we react the way we do to those difficulties. In the United States, for instance, there is a large lot of economic disparity. According to Weber, our attitude to inequality is determined by the meaning we assign to it. Many current sociologists regard Weber as a complement to Marx, studying problems that Marx considered less essential, giving a means of thinking about the person within a structural framework, and outlining a sociological technique.
Marx’s Theory
Marx, one of the principle architects of modern social science, believed that history was made of up stages driven by class conflict. According to Marx, the manner society is structured on the existing mode of subsistence and who controls them. The accumulation of Capital includes items like land and natural resources that are required to manufacture material commodities (Marx, 2020, p. 11). They also contain technology, such as instruments or equipment, which humans employ to make things. As technology evolves, the methods of production in any given civilization may alter. Simple tools like a shovel and hoe might have been considered instruments of production in medieval civilization. Microchips and robots are examples of modern technology used in manufacturing today.
Throughout history, various communities have dominated the factors of production at various times. Feudal lords held the land and instruments used for production during feudal times. Many of the modes of subsistence are now owned by huge businesses. Various states have different production relations or social interactions that individuals must enter into when they acquire and employ the forces of production. Labor issues have taken many forms throughout history, with employees entering into a contract with an employer to offer labor in exchange for payment.
Marx was more concerned with describing how society evolved from one stage to the next than explaining the stable organization of any specific historical phase. Marx felt that every stage’s economic inequality would inevitably lead to class struggle and, finally, the closure of that phase and the start of another. Feudalism came to a close with the class war between serfdom and landlords, ushering in a new era, capitalism.
Marx’s work was primarily concerned with understanding the fundamental weaknesses of capitalism and forecasting its inevitable demise and transformation to socialism. Marx contended that capitalism was inherently fragile and prone to repeated crises. Marx argued that as capitalism went through growth cycles, collapse, and more growth, increasingly catastrophic crises would punctuate economic expansion. Furthermore, he felt that this mechanism would enrich and strengthen the capitalist class in the long run while impoverishing the poorer working class, whom he described as the proletariat.
The proletariat would eventually become politically aware, realizing that their seeming personal issues were caused by a market structure that harmed all those who did not own the productive resources. Marx thought that once the proletariat achieved class consciousness, they would emerge and take the factor of production, overturning the capitalist mode of production and ushering in a socialist system. Marx thought that the socialist society founded after the proletariat upheaval would promote social connections that benefited everyone equitably, repeal extractive capitalists, end their unique control of the means of manufacturing, and introduce a production system less susceptible to recurring catastrophes (Marx, 2020, p. 9). Given capitalism’s fundamental design deficiencies and the likelihood of class strife, Marx saw this ultimate rebellion as unavoidable.
References
Marx, K. (2020). The commodity. In Capital (1st ed., pp. 1–40). Book on Demand Ltd.
Weber, G. M. H. H. (2021). Politics as a vocation. Isha Books.