Which theorist is most applicable to understanding work today, Marx, Weber or Durkheim?

QS 2: Which theorist is most applicable to understanding work today, Marx, Weber or Durkheim?

“Work” is defined as “the carrying out of tasks, which enable people to make a living within the environment in which they find themselves.” (Watson, p.113) An individual’s life is based on the work he does because that is where he gets his earnings from to support himself. This is why it is imperative that the nature of work is clearly understood in the sense that why does it exist in the way it does.

For hundreds of years people have tried to find ways to understand the changes in work in our society. How have we evolved from a hunting and gathering society thousands of years ago, when humans lived totally without technology, searching continuously for food, to today’s fast-moving society, where we have modern technology at out fingertips and how is this going to change further in the future?

In understanding the nature of work and how it changes over time, it is essential that we look into the subject of sociology and its three main disciples, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. Sociological thought is dominated by these three social thinkers, who all lived in the 19th Century and thus were witness to the greatest change in society, the industrial revolution. All of them have developed their own theory of social change which I think were all relevant to a relative extent, especially during the time of their publication. However, in understanding the work today in 21st century, I think Karl Marx’s theory is the most influential and applicable. In my answer to understanding the modern day meaning of work, I will be providing a summary of Marx’s thoughts and his studies along with a brief overview of Weber and Durkheim’s work and its limitations.

Emilie Durkheim viewed society as a structure of social facts and saw social change due to division of labour. He argued that society has a life of its own and can shape our thoughts, ideas and actions. His ideas promoted functionalism whereby various parts of the society work together to produce stability and solidarity. However, in my view, his work failed to realize the important aspect of divisions or inequalities in society based on factors such as class, race and gender which exist on a relatively large scale today.

Weber, on the other hand, talked about rationality and the way society adopts a scientific approach in doing everything. He evoked the theory of ‘social action’ whereby human ideas, beliefs and values were considered to be the cause of social change. While Weber’s perspective can relate to our social behaviour or action on a day-to-day basis, it has its own limitations for ignoring crucial matters concerning power and structures within society and how these act to restrain individual behaviour. This again is extremely evident when understanding the modern day meaning of work.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) created one of ...

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Karl Marx (1818-1883) created one of the most influential theories of social life ever made available to those trying to make some systematic sense of the modern industrialising world. (Watson, 1995) He believed that the human world is created through the use of labour, an important social process and that the working conditions make a direct impact in fulfilling a human. He mentioned that work is about individual creativity and how workers develop themselves and their environment.

Marx interpreted modern society as a largely capitalist society, where profit is made for capitalists or bourgeoisie, who have means of production (factories, land, and money), by exploitation of manual labour from the working class or proletariat. In my view, Marx’s interpretation is apparent today to a large extent as several societies follow capitalism. Marx maintained that economic production underlies and shapes the entire society. He called technological and social process of economic production the infrastructure on which all additional social elements like religion, education, family, ideas and values are built to form the superstructure. (McLellan, 1986) In other words, he explained that people’s values, ambitions and ideas are related directly to their economic position, i.e. their function in capitalist society.

Marx went on to say that the capitalist society, in the long run, would self-destroy itself due to the generation of its own harmful effects and be superseded by another type of society (feudal or socialist). His analysis focuses on the destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, especially the ways in which it promotes class conflict and alienation. (Ray, 1999) Marx found that conflict between economic groups is the major cause of social change. He believed that conflict would be inevitably created between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. There is an unequal relationship between the two groups as the employer forces the worker to work more than required to meet their own (worker’s) needs. Thus, the employer (bourgeoisie) extracts the surplus value and exploits the workers (proletariat). Marx also believed that this exploitation in capitalism would lead to an increased concentration in ownership and reduced competition which will eventually cause market saturation and hamper further progress.

“Alienation is defined as our own abilities, as human beings, being taken over by other entities referring to the loss of control on the part of workers over the nature of the labour task, and over the products of their labour as thought by Marx” (Giddens, p.683). Marx’s theory on alienation can help us understand why people who are ambitious and strive to be successful and therefore work long hours are feeling alienated from society. Workers are told what work they should do, have often no real input on the outcome of the product, often work alone and by doing repetitive work, are alienated from their own human potential. Hence, as Marx thought, workers are never able to express individuality in work in modern capitalist societies and hence make their career decisions according to the monetary gains involved in the work. (Hanlon, 2003) This problem, whereby workers are alienated from product, work, humanity and community, is being addressed by establishing company unions and work societies who represent workers interests and combat alienation. However, the industrial capitalist societies as Marx saw them are still evident in many parts of the world today. Some examples of this include in McDonalds and other huge fast-food outlets and assembly lines in manufacturing industry (Ford, car industry) where there is increased job simplification and job specialisation.

Marx’s theories are relevant in today’s world when we consider the problem of class division. There is an increasing gap between unskilled working class people (e.g. factory workers, labourers) and middle/upper class people (company directors, land/property owners) in today’s world of industrial capitalism. Marx’s “struggle between classes” is very obvious today, where working class people who want to better themselves and move out of their lower social class, find it difficult to do so. They are not be given the same opportunities as people who, for example, live in richer, more developed areas, with better facilities, i.e. education, training, employment etc. Marx’s theory on class division is also noticeable when we consider crime. Due to the different social rules amongst different classes, “white collar crime” often carries lesser punishment than crime carried out by lower classes.

Lastly, ‘labour process’, as explained by Marx, helps to understand the work today. It basically “focuses on the process within capitalism whereby management designs and controls work tasks in order to extract surplus value (both absolute and relative) from the efforts of employees in order to facilitate capital accumulation on behalf of those who employ them.” (Watson, p. 72) This, in my view, is apparent in work places today whereby there is a general de-skilling of work tasks and increased job simplification. (For example, in assembly lines and services industries like fast-food chains)

In conclusion, I would say that Marx’s theory is the most applicable in understanding work today although it has its own share of criticisms. Its idea of capitalism in the modern society does prevail today where we see the job structure to be mechanistic and bureaucratic to a large extent encompassed with job simplification (labour process). There is evidence of class difference, conflict and alienation and absence of individuality and creativity whereby workers base their career decisions on the monetary gains involved. It is also apparent that with capitalism today, we have increased exploitation of workers which has led to concentration of ownership killing competition. Examples of companies following this strategy include Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Pepsi.

Some critics have mentioned the limitations of Marx’s theory mainly by stating that capitalism would not perish in the future as profits would continue to grow and firms would carry on gaining a higher market share by exploiting its customers. Furthermore, some critics have mentioned that Marx’s view on problems created by class and exploitation would be eradicated as the society will self-adjust to a much socialist structure where there will be work satisfaction.

However, in understanding work in the modern 21st century, I would still support Marx’s theory as being the most applicable as it provides an insight on how the society develops over time and how the nature of work changes with it.