Classical Social Theory and Modern Society: Marx, Durkheim, Weber

by Edward Royce

Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber are indispensable for understanding the sociological enterprise. They are among the chief founders of the discipline and among the foremost theorists of modernity, and their work can stimulate readers to reflect on their own identities and worldviews. Classical Social Theory and Modern Society introduces students to these three thinkers and shows their continued relevance today.

The first chapter sets the stage by situating the work of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber in the context of three modernizing revolutions: the Enlightenment, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Industrial Revolution. Three overview chapters follow that summarize the key ideas of each thinker, focusing on their contributions to the development of sociology and their conceptions of modern society. The last portion of the book explores the thinking of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber on four themes—the pathologies of modern society, the predicament of the modern individual, the state and democracy, and socialism versus capitalism. These thematic chapters place Marx, Durkheim, and Weber in dialogue with one another, offering students the opportunity to wrestle with conflicting ideas on issues that are still significant today.

Classical sociology is essential to the teaching of sociology and also an invaluable tool in the education of citizens.

Genres: Sociology, Social Science

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Will]

This overview of the three original theorists of sociology, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, was the closest thing to a textbook for my Social Theory class, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. When reading these three theorists, which I do often as a sociology and international studies major, it's easy to get lost in the 19th century vernacular, the horrible fonts, and the sometimes outdated (or racist or sexist) ideas. However, Royce erased most of my confusion with his clear and organized breakdown of some of the hardest concepts to grasp in sociology, from Marx's labor theory of value, through Weber's obsession with bureaucratization, to Durkheim's anomie and egoism.

Royce summarizes the theorists' key writings effectively with little of his own commentary. letting the words of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim speak for themselves. He makes it clear that this book should only be a companion to a close reading of the original texts, and I found myself referring to my notes on Royce's summaries again and again for clarification when writing essays. Before embarking on my study of "classical" sociology (a complete misnomer if you ask me, because sociology likes to rip apart everything that is classical), I thought that analyzing contemporary society through contemporary social theory would be the most fruitful way to try to grasp what makes society "modern" and how it's changed since pre-capitalist times. But I soon learned that many of the same problems that faced those in industrialized countries in the 19th century are the same today, from worker exploitation by capitalist enterprises, to the decline of religion and the rise of state bureaucracies.

Royce is at his strongest when he is comparing the ideologies of the three theorists, and these interspersed sections helped me decide where I stood in my own beliefs on how society is organized, how it should be organized, and why it's organized the way it is. Capitalism has fundamental, systematic problems, all three theorists agree: recurrent crises, economic inequality, the creation of a new ruling class, etc. But Marx, Weber, and Durkheim disagree on how we should deal with the inconsistencies in the capitalist mode of production, and more critically, modern life in general. So I'm going to finish this review with some thoughts I had after reading seminal texts with this excellent companion as a guide.

Marx: I'm inclined to subscribe to Marx's labor theory of value, which (summarized poorly in my own words) states that capitalists need everlasting and ever-increasing profit in order to stay in business due to competition, and they can only achieve profit through the "immiseration of the working class" by paying them less than the value of what they produce. Thus, capitalism must exploit workers to maintain profit. Marx says that the only way that workers can gain all that they deserve is via a political revolution that ends with the overthrow of the capitalist system. While I agree that capitalism exploits all workers, violent revolution in the name of "socialism/communism" has only ended in the dictatorship of a Party or international pariah-status. Therefore, Marx is spot-on with identifying a key problem with capitalism, but his idea of socialism is not fledged out enough to be the basis for a "successful" change towards more economic equality. But, to come to Marx's defense, one of his prerequisites for socialism is a fully industrialized economy, and a socialist revolution has never been successful in an industrialized economy. Both in the Soviet Union and in China, the revolutions occurred in agrarian societies. Marx also writes that all history, politics, and culture stem from the economic structure of society. Here, I think Marx neglects the power of traditional social structures, both cultural (religion), and political (monarchy/nobility). I do not subscribe to Marx's economic determinism for all of history, but an argument can be made that culture and politics are in thrall to neoliberal economics today.

Weber: Weber hates bureaucracy, and so do I. Ours is a world where all aspects of society seem to be governed by some form of bureaucracy, from labyrinthine corporations to the government maze to the University superstructure. Weber writes that in order to keep the bureaucracy in check (He's really vague on who's in control of said bureaucracy), there must be strong elected officials with charismatic authority that can drive change and keep the bureaucracy on its toes. I'm so curious to hear what Weber would say about corporate bureaucracy today, especially if he sees it as part of the inevitable maturation of capitalism. Weber was a pessimist, which I am not by any stretch, and he saw that modern society was going to remain exploitative and dominated by the interests of capital forever once capitalists achieved political power, which they have. For Weber, political power was paramount over culture and economics, but for some reason, he doesn't think that political power, which he agrees has been radically shifted many times, can shift again, away from capitalist interests. I beg to differ.

Durkheim: Culture, religion, customs, and morals, is the primary source of modernity for Durkheim, and on its most basic level I agree. I reject the notion that either economics pr politics (even family politics) is primary because those two spheres of society are rooted in work, not private life. While I don't think that Durkheim fleshes out his analysis of religion as the base of society enough, he convinced me that "religious" function was the original glue that bound together society. As we move towards multi-ethnic, multi-tradition societies, that glue has started to come loose. Replacing it, argues Durkheim, are modern forms of "religious" thought, like patriotism and belief in ideals like democracy, that bind together many disparate groups of people. Groups drive society, and society drives groups. As Durkheim states, society is god and god is society. As we change, what we worship changes as well.

So in the end, read Royce's book. Society affects us all and is constantly changing. My professor himself said that this book is the only worthwhile summary of classical social theory available, and I think he's spot-on. Royce glosses over some aspects of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim's writing, like the role of the family, but his few shortcomings are overcome by his clear analysis. Give it a try, you won't regret it.

[Lily]

I did like this but it can be difficult to give school books a high rating, especially when I will probably have to reread it cover to cover to be sufficiently prepared for the sociology final and essay on Thursday…

[Andrew]

Classical sociological theory arose in the nineteenth century as an effort to comprehend the ongoing transition from feudal society to modern industrial society. The combined force of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution paved the way for the emergence of the modern western world; these revolutions set the agenda for the nascent discipline of sociology.

- KARL MARX:

Historical Materialism: economics is the vantage point that best allows us to comprehend the nature of society, not politics or culture. By economics he means the organisation of productive activity, or the mode of production, the basis of all social life and all real history.

Materialist Conception of Society: the defining feature of society is its economic setup or mode of production. This is characterised by the forces of production (means of production + labour) and the relations of production (the social framework within which economic activity is carried out). The economic structure is divided between a minority of class owners, and a majority of class producers; the dominant class lives off the unpaid or surplus labour of the subordinate class. All class societies are systems of exploitation. This antagonism is what gives history the quality of being the ‘history of class struggles’. The mode of production shapes the entire configuration of a society, engendering a mode of life. What individuals are depends on the material conditions of production, on what they produce and how they produce it. The cultural beliefs and social institutions making up the superstructure typically function to stabilise the relations of production, promote the interests of the dominant class, and lend political and intellectual support to the existing economic system. Politics, law, beliefs, ideas; these all bear the indelible imprint of the prevailing mode of production. Our moral ideals, religious beliefs, and ideological convictions also grow out of our material circumstances and our real-life economic activities. In claiming that economics matters most, he’s not claiming that only economics matters. He suggests that we cannot fully comprehend the characteristics and workings of society unless we focus on the complex of social relations, practices, and institutions making up that society's mode of production.

Materialist Conception of History: there is a strong historical tendency, driven by the requirement of human survival along with advances in science and technology, for the forces of production to develop, to increase in power over time. Advances in technology cause shifts in the class structure and in the larger social framework of society. As society’s productive forces develop, they eventually come into conflict with the existing relations of production; once this reaches a crisis point, the contradiction between the forces of production brings about social revolution. Human history is thus the story of how one mode of production, develops, matures, stagnates, and eventually gives way to another more advanced mode of production. This materialist perspective suggests that true human liberation and real improvement in the welfare of humanity can be achieved only by changing the material circumstances of people’s lives; the economic structure of society cannot be changed by mere will.

The Capitalist Mode of Production; Human survival requires the production of goods capable of satisfying needs; when goods have use-value, they are ends in themselves, and when they are destined for sale, they have exchange-value. The production of exchange of commodities existed prior to the rise of capitalism; one commodity (C) was sold for money (M) in order to buy more commodities, C-M-C. With capitalism, the circuit is inverted; money is used to purchase commodities which are sold for even more money, M-C-M. The capitalist mode of production means that money is the object sought after, not the commodity that is bought with money.

The Labour Theory of Value: Why is a car worth more than a skateboard? The one thing that all commodities have in common is that they are products of human labour. Some commodities require more labour to produce than others and are thus more valuable: commodities exchange according to the average labour time needed to produce them under normal conditions of production.
Primitive Accumulation: what are the origins of capitalist class relations? Primitive accumulation refers to the historical process that undermines the feudal order and paves the way for capitalism. The nascent capitalist class emerges from the ranks of wealthy merchant traders and moneylenders; these replace the erstwhile masters (lords) and consolidate the reign of capital. The modern working class also appears on the scene as feudal agricultural workers are transformed into dependent wage labourers.

The Industrial Reserve Army: Why are workers unable to obtain more than a social subsistence wage?The industrial reserve army comprises the surplus population of the unemployed working class; if the present workers revolt, they are simply replaced by people who desperately need jobs.

The Consumption of Labour Power: the big issue Marx tackles is: where does profit come from? Capitalists want labour, and the commodities and profit produced by said labour. Profit comes from the real appropriation of someone else’s living labour which takes place in the actual production process. If process originated in the process of exchange, by selling commodities at inflated prices, then any gain on one side of the transaction would be a loss on the other. But the wealth workers produce is greater than the wealth needed to sustain them; a fair day’s work produces more than the equivalent of a fair day’s pay. The capitalist class appropriates surplus values through the exploitation of the working class. Having a legal claim on workers’ time, capitalists demand the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be.

Capitalist Contraditions and Crisis Tendencies: by continuously adding to the mass of people forced to sell their labour power, the dynamic of capitalism reproduces and perpetuates the conditions under which the worker is exploited; but capitalism is inherently crisis prone. As one capitalist cheapens the costs of production, others are compelled to follow suit. As machinery is increasingly used, living labour time shrinks, which causes profit to fall; so unemployment increases, the industrial reserve army grows, and production is curtailed. The boom-bust cycle restores the conditions for profitable investment. Capitalism is impelled to create far more productive capacity than can be profitably set into motion and to produce far more goods than consumers have the wherewithal to buy. The problem with capitalism is not that it produces too many goods, but that it produces too few goods to satisfy the mass of the population in an adequate and human way.

- EMILE DUKHEIM:

The Sociological Enterprise: the subject matter of sociology concerns social facts, such as religious beliefs, legal codes, and moral rules. These originate from and are characteristic of the group rather than the individual. Three defining characteristics of social facts are their externality (social facts are ways of thinking and acting that exist prior to and outside the consciousness of the individual), their constraint (they possess a compelling and coercive power), and their generality (social facts are independently embraced by many individuals, but is the condition of the group. A social facts is in each part because it is in the whole, not in the whole because it is in each part.)

The Social Nature of Social Facts: Individuals, by uniting, acting, and reacting on one another, give birth to a new reality. When bound together in groups, individuals develop a language, worldview, and a moral code. These social phenomena (collective consciousness) are fundamentally different from the states of the individual consciousness, just as the mentality of groups is not that of individuals. (Questionable.)

The Factual Nature of Social Facts: Social facts possess an independent reality; though not always directly observable, they nevertheless exist in the external world, not merely in our heads.

Explaining Social Facts: The aim of causal explanation is to discover the origins of social phenomena. Functional analysis, by contrast, seeks to understand the roles social phenomena play or the purposes they serve. Durkheim rejects those explanations, essentially individualistic or psychological in nature, that attribute social phenomena to the desires, purposes, and needs of individuals. The outcomes of human actions, even when they seem to create social facts anew, cannot be traced back to the aims of particular individuals because their efforts have been aided or abetted by social conditions that were given to them. The determining cause of a social fact, therefore, must be sought among antecedent social facts and not among the states of the individual consciousness.

What Use is Sociology? Durkheim challenges the idea that science is value-neutral. He sets out to find some empirical means through which sociology might differentiate between what is good and bad. The sociologist can study society in the same way that a physician studies the human body, dicriminating between health and sickness, the former being good, the latter being bad, which gives sociology an objective reference point for separating out what is desirable from what is undesirable. (But this is only so because you assume that health is good, which is in itself a value judgment. Why is health good? Because it is self-evident?) By what yardstick can the normal be distinguished from the pathological? A fact is normal if it is found in all or most societies; but what is general is not always normal. Which leads Durkheim to a second criterion: a social fact is normal if it accords with the immanent logic of society, with its essential conditions of existence. Any social fact is pathological if it is either exceptional or anachronistic.

Modern Society: pre-modern and modern societies constitute two polar social types, each with its own distinct social structure. The first (segmentary, unorganised) exhibits only rudimentary differentiation, and the basic elements making up such societies resemble one another. The second (modern, organised) is characterised by an advanced division of labour. This complex society consists of a system of interlocking institutions each playing a special role. In pre-modern societies, people’s similarities are far greater than their differences, and in modern societies, people’s differences are far greater than their similarities. In pre-modern societies people are alike but not interdependent, while in modern societies people are interdependent but not alike. (In pre-modern societies (let's call them tribal societies) people are interdependent too. This idea, that tribal societies lack interdependence, stems from a false conception of the individual seeking his subsistence alone before the advent of the tribe; people, insofar as we can call them people, have 'always' lived interdependently. Society wasn't something that was formed after individuals became individuals; rather, individuals became individuals only within the confines of the tribe, because they had other people to differentiate themselves from. Solitary creatures have no identity.)

The Origins of the Division of Labour: Because the basic segments of pre-modern society are all alike, the increasing population size, concentration, and interaction between people causes people to specialise. But why? The division of labour develops as individuals endeavour to find a way to sustain themselves under increasingly arduous social circumstances. By enabling people to take up new and different occupations, the advent of specialisation represents a peaceful means for moderating the struggle for existence. Thanks to the division of labour, individuals are not compelled to enter into a war of all against all.

The Collective Consiousness: Durkheim defines the collective consciousness as the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society. In the pre-modern world, the collective consciousness is an all-embracing social force, and the individual consciousness is almost indistinct from the collective consciousness. Every consciousness beats as one. (Again, this is questionable: it makes it seem as though pre-moderns are automata that mechanically reproduce the culture that they are given. If it’s true for them, it’s also true for ‘moderns’. Durkheim is displaying out-group homogenisation; they are all the same, but we are all different.) In response to increasing diversity in people’s circumstances and experiences, the collective consciousness diminishes in volume, intensity and rigidity. Modern individuals are therefore forced to think for themselves. In the pre-modern era, conformity is a moral rule (individuals are expected to give unquestioned obedience to the authority of traditions) and in the modern era, autonomy is a moral rule (and individuals are expected to make good use of their intelligence and reflective thinking.) (But people are as unthinking in modern society as they are in pre-modern society; having access to more information (books, articles, libraries, differing viewpoints, etc) doesn’t necessarily mean that people think for themselves. Thinking for yourself can be described as holding thoughts that no one in your immediate circle holds; that is the mark of individual thought. And while it’s true that pre-moderns have little capacity for individual thought, the proliferation of information in modern societies doesn’t automatically translate into greater reflective thought on the part of moderns.)

Repressive Law and Restitutive Law: In the pre-modern era, with its strong collective consciousness, the legal code consists mainly of penal laws with repressive sanctions. In the modern era, with its advanced division of labour, the legal code consists mainly of cooperative laws with restitutive sanctions. (Does this distinction between repressive and restitutive sanctions correspond to a liberal/conservative split? Conservatives tend to view sanctions in repressive terms (hang the witch!) and liberals tend to view sanctions in restitutive terms (give him a second chance!). By equating liberality with modernity and conservativism with pre-modernity, we can sense a subtle dig at conservatives, and we begin to question whether Durkheim is in fact writing about his personal bias, unawares. Repressive law is not a feature of pre-modernity; it’s a feature of conservatives, found in every society, and restitutive law is not a feature of modernity; it’s a feature of liberals, found in every society.) Repressive and restitutive laws both function to maintain social stability: the first by ensuring that individuals follow the dictates of the collective consciousness, the second by ensuring that the specialised functions in society relate in a coordinated manner. By punishing criminals, repressive law promotes social conformity; by specifying and enforcing rights and duties, restitutive law promotes social harmony.

Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity: Pre-modern and modern society differ in the glue that holds them together, mechanical solidarity is what holds pre-modern society together, and organic is what holds the modern one. Pre-modern, social solidarity derives from people’s resemblances; the strength of the collective consciousness and the continuity of society are ultimately dependent on the coercive power of repressive sanctions. Mechanical solidarity requires the complete suppression of individuality. Organic solidarity, on the other hand, arises from the division of labour. In modern society, people are connected to one another by virtue of their differences, not their resemblances. Social cohesion is achieved through cooperation rather than consensus, through restitutive law rather than repressive law, and through regulation rather than coercion. (I mean, again, Durkheim is positing a distinction that exists within every society; it’s not that the primitive jungle people are bound by notions of mechanical solidarity and are totally devoid of individualist tendencies, whereas us civilised lot are bound by restitutive law and are all individuals; both tendencies exist within every society, from the modern to the pre-modern, because you will find both leftists and rightists within every group.)

The Individual and Society: Durkheim believes that there is no fixed human nature, no one single way of being human. How people see the world and how they conduct themselves vary over time and from place to place, as do their moral beliefs. These facts attest to the power of the social environment to shape even the most fundamental qualities of individuals and their lives. Because humans do not enter the world ready-made, they have to be formed, and this is the job of society. We owe all of our civilised qualities to society, because we speak a language we did not create, use instruments we did not invent, and claim rights we did not establish.

Religion: When it comes to religion, Durkheim says that we cannot just say that it’s all a big mistake or an inexplicable hallucination. The deeper reality he says is that God and society are one and the same. When people worship God, therefore, they are doing none other than worshipping their social group. People’s lives are shaped by forces beyond their control and comprehension, but these forces are social, not supernatural. The moral authority attributed to religion is not some mystical or misconceived illusion. It emanates from a genuine social reality; it is nothing other than the feeling that the collectivity inspires in its members.

Homo Duplex: In his later writing, Durkheim formulates his theory of human nature more precisely, giving greater recognition to the conflict between the instincts of the individual and the demands of society. On the one hand there is the individual or physical being, rooted in bodily organism. On the other hand, at a higher intellectual and moral realm, there is the social or spiritual being. The individual being and the social being are antagonistic forces, fighting one against the other. Oriented inward, the individual being is driven by bodily appetites, egoistic impulses, and private interests. Oriented outwards, the social being is guided by collective sentiments, moral rules, and social ideals.
Forming the Social Being: For animals, the maturation process is one in which they realise their essential and inborn nature. Human education is not cultivation, but conversion. Its objective is not to nurture pre-existing qualities but to create a new person, a social being. The social being, far from arising spontaneously, comes into existence only through the purposeful sublimation of the amoral tendencies of the individual being.

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[Mackenzie]

Read this over the course of the semester for SOC310 Social Inquiry with Dr. Stan Knapp
This was really good!
I learned a lot, and the structure of the course really helped to understand each of these three figures

I did not read it straight through, but rather read the sections on Durkheim, Weber, and then Marx
I finished by reading each section that compares and contrasts their perspectives

While I resonate with a lot of Marx’s theoretical ideas, and his ensuing influence on contemporary sociology, I appreciate Weber’s perspective and emphasis on interpretivism
It helped to remember that humans are “believing beings” (-Christian Smith) and the duty to listening to other perspectives and engaging in dialogue @critical theorizing

My favorite part was Royce’s discussion of Marx’s theory of “free” labor, or the idea that humans will labor and ought to labor for their own sake, not only out of obligation or outside force
It hit me, and motivated me to do something challenging because I wanted to

[Jombo]

Great book.