Marx says that capitalism emerged when humans began to produce subsistence. Life was insecure back then as there was no way to accumulate social surplus. It was the agricultural revolution that established the framework needed for class divisions. These divisions were separated into workers and appropriators, meaning that classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production and each other. Capitalism has created an exploitative relationship between the elites and the workers. The elites are living off the surplus (or exploitation) of surplus-labor. According to Marx, there is an inherent structural contradiction here that if left unchecked will result in an increasing divide between the classes, making capitalism a counter-progressive force. (Smith, 2008).
[...] Weber's Dualistic Social Ontology, formulates a social action, and the human institutions that is helps develop, are the result of two completely independent sets of factors. One set of factors are natural laws and technical necessity and the other is ethical and spiritual orientations. (Smith, 2008). His dualism states that the means of production are separated from the value-considerations of the past which allows for the capitalist system to flourish. Weber's believes that the social relations of production are derived the “material/natural” and ideal.” (Smith, 2008). [...]
[...] One of the most straight-forward assertions that Durkheim's social theory states is that activities of a group make the group stronger through expression and representation of social forces, when thus serves to reinforce their presence in individual minds. (Smith, 2008). What Durkheim is saying is that social interaction, culture and communication are necessary steps for socialization, and that socialization results in the conscious thought of a person being a social product, despite the fact that it is their own experience. [...]
[...] On the one hand, Weber argues that modern capitalism is the last stage of the rationalizing process, and it is the peak of human rationality. On the one other, Marx believes that capitalism is oppressive, whereas Weber thinks of it more in rational terms. (Smith, 2008). The first tenet of Durkheim's social theory is the idea that society, or the social, stands for a different and separate kind of reality. He said the social was unique and individual and is set alongside other realities, thus giving it autonomy from these other realities (physical, biological, psychological, and economic). [...]
[...] To understand Marx's theory, one must refuse to allow themselves to think in a way that separates social reality, and it must be regarded in a unified manner. (Smith, 2008). Criticisms of Marx's dialectical-monistic social ontology are rooted in the belief that Marx ignores essential realities of the social world. Marxists would say that social relations need to be studied in coordination with historical materialism. There are many situations in which dualistic and dialectical-monistic social ontology's come in conflict with each other in the world where problems of social interest are being decided on. [...]
[...] Marx adhered to the school of thought that understood the social phenomena called unintended consequences of social action.' To Marx capitalism was the unintended result of feudalism. This occurred as a result of a plethora of social class and structural changes over time. It began with the separation of pastoral tribes from the rest of the people, the separation of manufacturing from agriculture, and on the growth of a merchant-class that grew the means of global exchange. He explains how as the separation between purchase and sale, private appropriation and social production grew larger, state and civil societies began to develop based on the profound contradictions in capitalism. [...]
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