Question

a. Explain why Karl Marx believed capitalist society was irrational, while Max Weber believed it was very rational.

b. Explain how Marx and Weber held somewhat different ideas about the cause of alienation in modern society.

c. Identify the seven traits that define rational social organization, according to Max Weber. What makes these traits “rational”?

Answer 1

a)According to MARX: Capitalism is a mode of production based on private ownership of the means of production. Capitalists produce commodities for the exchange market and to stay competitive must extract as much labor from the workers as possible at the lowest possible cost.Marx stated that capitalism was nothing more than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society. Marxists define capital as "a social, economic relation" between people -- rather than between people and things.

According to marx weber:If we consider capitalism in its traditional understanding as an economic activity, which was oriented on making profit and expenses in terms of money, then in this sense, according to Weber, capitalism existed in many countries around the world.Weber first observes a correlation between being Protestant and being involved in business, and declares his intent to explore religion as a potential cause of the modern economic conditions. He argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous.

b)Karl Marx and Max Weber both agreed that capitalism generates alienation in modern societies, but the cause for it were both different. For Marx it is due to economic inequality in where the capitalist thinks that the workers worth nothing more than a source of labour, that can be employed and dismissed at will.

According to Marx: social alienation is  the process whereby the worker is made to feel foreign to the products of his/her own labor.The alienation that Marx refers to comes into being through the relations of production found in capitalist society. ... The commodities that workers produce through their labor is not their own but ultimately belongs to another and is produced for another. Here alienation is manifested in the product that work produces.

According to marx weber; he believed that alienation documented by marx had little to do with the ownership of the mode of production,but was a consequence of bureaucracy and the rationalization of social life.marx asserted that the capitalization has led to the expropriation of the worker from the mode of production.he believed that the modern worker is not in control of is fate,is forced to sell his labor to private capitalists.weber countered that the loss of control as work was an inescapable result of any system of rationally coordinated production.he argued that men could no longer engage in socially significant action unless they joined a large scale organization itself.by doing so,they would be cut off from a part of themselves,they would become alienated.

c)

According to Weber, there are seven different characteristics of rational social organization:

• Distinctive social institutions.
• Large-scale organizations.
• Specialized jobs.
• Self discipline.
• Awareness of time.
• Technical competence.
• Impersonality.

Modernization, Weber said, displaced traditionalism in favor of rationalism. Rational cultures set goals and choose the most efficient way to meet those goals. Weber found that social organization based on rationalism has seven characteristics. Today’s businesses still exhibit these characteristics.