Notes - Sociological Theory

Jeff Weintraub Classical Sociological Theory F’18
INTRODUCTION
8/30/18
Old regime= the period of socio-political transition from medieval feudalism to modernity
Problematic= the kinds of questions a theory thinks are important to ask
Georg Lukacs= Marxist philosopher, Frankfurt School
polemic
Ortega y Gasset= Spanish philosopher of the 1930s, wrote the Revolt of the Masses
Hermeneutic circle
Example= you can only understand the larger framework through the details and the
details through the larger framework
- part of the reason these social theorists started theorizing was that a new society was emerging
rapidly—which they thought was in crisis…
Industrial Revolution
- new technology and modes of production, BUT, also promotes a much wider variety of
changes in society more broadly
- this occurred in the context of industrial capitalism which happened to be 19th century and
happened to be in the West BUT they had global ramifications
French Revolution
- people from France may not have through this was a world historical event but it was because it
was not just a French event – it was a cataclysm that haunted the 19th century imagination
- introduces the modern notion of revolution i.e. (per. R. Palmer) the idea that humanities
problems could be solved by some gigantic event in world history – called a revolution, nobody
believed this before 1789
- began period of revolution, war, and counter-revolution—at the height of it Napoleon led a 3-
million-man army—so this was a world changing event
- but more significantly this was not merely political revolution, it called into question the nature
of the social order—the revolution was changing the organization of society, structure of
inequality, customs of everyday life, religion, redefined weight and measure, family ownership
of property, the calendar—this was all the moderate phase BEFORE the Reign of Terror and the
responses to it
- this was the beginning of social revolution either as something to be worked for or as
something to be feared or combatted
- but even to change the social order you must under what the social order is—hence the explore
of modern social thought
- even beyond the Revolution itself, it seemed to stand for much more because although it took
everyone by surprise one could it didn’t come from nowhere—it was rooted in many long-term
processes
- theorists agreed that the Revolution was like an earthquake (not their image) i.e. a sudden
terrifying event in which everything collapse but is brought about by the small shifts of
subterranean tectonic plates—so this emphasizes the importance of social theory—how to
understand how something like this happens
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Paradox of Fr. Revolution

1. it’s possible for humans to change the world which brings with it this sense of the power
of human activity
2. humans unleash forces beyond their control wherein many people found themselves
doing things they could never have imagined themselves doing
- indeed, many of the people who started the revolution were executive by it
- they had started something that was utterly out of their control—if you unleash certain social
forces they can overwhelm their liberators
paradox= an apparent contradiction wherein two ideas that seem to be in tension can coexist
Smith Paradox
- the market for Smith is a system in which you have isolated individuals consciously acting to
pursue their own self-interest AND YET the reason you can have a science of economics is that
the outcomes of these pursuits are not explained by those individual and what they want. It is
rather the unintended consequences of these forces that comprise the system of the market
- indeed, the only reason the system works Is because no one in the system get what they want
Nisbet paradox
2 facets of modern society
1. individuality= the real units of modern society are ind. people
2. generalization= tendency to think about and treat people not as concrete individuals but as
members of broader categories: worker, capitalist
Handout #2
- for every thinker see a) what do they think of human nature b) what do they think of social
order c) how do they think these things interact
- because depending on how a theorist sees these basic images and how they interact, they will
ask different questions and emphasize different things
SMITH
9/6/18
commodity= something exchanged in the market

paradox= apparent contradiction that can be reconciled
differentiation
coordination
autonomy= auto-nomos i.e. self-rule i.e. freedom
heteronomy= unfreedom i.e. domination by personal or impersonal forces
guild
primogeniture
entail
police
serf, serfdom
2
“tax farmer”
“Manners and customs”
Mores
Intensity= how specialized the division of labor becomes
Scope= how many people in the division of labor are specializing
pg. 22= division of labor leads to universal opulence (in principle), and the poor benefit most of
all (though he of course sees that in practice there’s inequality)
- the more specialized we become the more depend on others—no one today grows their own
food
How does Smith explain the origin of the division of labor and the tendency of his increase
over time?
- it’s not because people realized it has so many advantages: “This division of labor from which
so many advantages are derived… (Ch. 2)
- you don’t begin by looking outcomes and say people intended them because they’re largely
unintended
- the model for analytic system building for Smith is Newtonian physics—you start with a few
basic principles and build up a sys. —so too Smith begins with simple impulses of human nature:
the impulse to exchange AND we’re all motivated by self-interest (pg. 27, 341, 343)
- division of labor has to involves allocations of tasks and coordination but this is done through
the system NOT through a person planning this—a self-interested action is made possible by
exchange which reinforces itself—the bow-and-arrow maker makes arrows and exchanges it for
hunted animals, he then gets good at arrows, can make more, and get more meat
- Smith describes this system as a system of liberty but it’s also a heteronomous system—
impersonal forces built into the logic of the system which are different from the people’s
intention e.g. this is what constrains the hunters in the village from ALL being arrow makers
- BUT, in this heteronomous system no one controls the constraints automatically imposed
Ch. 3= the extent of the division of labor depends on the extent of the market
- the intensity of the division of labor must be accommodated by the scope of market, and as the
scope of the market increases intensity can increase and is in fact imposed, and conversely, as the
intensity increases it accelerates expansion in the scope of the market
- the division of labor produces the differences in talent NOT the other way around—people, for
Smith, actually have more in common than different breeds of dogs, they only appear different
because of their different backgrounds—the argument for this is: precisely because society
becomes more complex, this is why people’s talents are accentuated e.g. a computer programmer
born into a hunter gatherer society will never manifest his talent in programming—the complex
social diversification give rise to complex diversification in human ability and talent
How do people calculate what and how much to produce?
- because every commodity has a price—heterogenous commodities can be homogeneously
quantitatively compared
- every commodity has 2 different values:
1) use value= the function the commodity performs
- qualitatively different from commodity to commodity= 100 oranges can’t get you from point A
to B
2) exchange value= what you can get for it through exchange on the market
- qualitatively the same= 10 oranges could get you a bus ticket
3
Pg. 46
Pg. 47-8: What determines price?
- the amount of labor necessary to produce it? Smith starts here because labor is simply how you
acquire anything
- the relative values of different commodities are determined by the relative cost of producing
them
Natural price= depends on relative cost of production
What is the relationship between natural price and market price?
- the natural price is a central price whereas the market price will fluctuate above and below it
but in the long run it will gravitate to the natural price
What causes market fluctuation and why does the market price gravitate to the natural
price?
supply and demand=
- ordinarily we want as much as we can for as little possible, so we bargain and ends up
exchanging somewhere in the middle—because if someone is selling above the natural price I’ll
go to another seller
- and then if more people sell and price goes down it can’t stay there forever because it will cost
too much to produce
- in the long run then, prices are relative to the cost of production and supply and demand is the
mechanism that adjusts price accordingly
Pg. 74= supply naturally adjusts itself to demand (if you have a big enough market)
- nobody wants to buy and sell at the natural price but that is what everyone ends up doing
How do we know what the best allocation of resources is?
- we don’t but the market will tend to allocate things efficiently
commercial society= largescale interconnected system of exchange

- took 1000s of years from hunter gatherer, the long slow working out of very simply operations
of human nature
Pg. 65= “In that early and rude state of society…”
- the appropriation of land and accumulation of stock complicates this picture
Land= natural resources you need access to produce
- once land become private property the price of the commodity must factor the rent that was
extracted
Stock (capital)= something manmade necessary for production e.g. technology
- over time capital can be accumulated
What’s the difference between land and stock?
Price is broken into:
rent, wages, profit (return on capital)
- over time as capital is a bigger element in production more and more return will go to profit
rather than labor
- and more and more will go to rent
- the proportion that goes too labor will be smaller
- workers get a smaller proportion of the whole
Pg. 71= if you have in principle a small farmer who owns his own land and does his own work
and make his own improvement then he’s getting all 3
So why make this distinction?
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- because as society develops the proportion of these things goes to different sets of people
- the vast majority of people only have one thing to sell—their labor
Pg. 164-6= all the money paid to the system is filtered into these 3 different classes, and most of
them are selling their labor
- this is why there are different classes:
Handout 5 pg. 3:
- capitalists are crucial for the system but they all want to corner the market but instead through
the invisible hand they produce as much as possible at the lowest natural price—Because they’re
constrained the forces of the market, BUT, only if capitalists cannot control collective outcomes
namely if prices set themselves
- going back to the Greeks one the great question of social theory is how do you get people the
common good and not just about their own self-interest, Smith is saying as long as people are
constrained by the market they don’t have to think about the common good—the pursuit of their
own self-interest is the pursuit of the common good BUT only as long as they system is
heteronomous
- it’s especially the capitalists who will try to cheat and be successful—they’re smarter than the
landlords and they’re more powerful to than the laborers
- when you have primogeniture and entail you don’t have property as commodity
What’s the difference between land and stock? Is there a difference between stock and
capital? What is labor relative to capital and stock?
9/13/18
Primogeniture
Entail
- one implication of primogeniture and entail is that land is not a commodity
Anomaly
Mores= characterizes patterns of motivation and sensibility and modes of actions which you find
in different historical eras and social situations
- used to capture the whole character of culture
Book III:
- Book 1-2 was a universal, ideal theory of how society develops
- a more historically specific analysis of transition from feudalism to modern commercial society
in Europe
- like book 1-2 this is also a theoretical argument
- there is tension between III and II…
Review of Books I-II

- book 1-2 are classic example of analytical system building in that he starts with very simple
postulates about human nature and builds to how the effects of those motivations lead to a
market system and division of labor—and the transition from hunter-gatherer to commercial
society
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- so again, we start with barter and self-interest (people are relatively intelligent about calculating
what will serve their interest)
Market= system of exchange which has its own logic and enable division of labor (arrangement
of differentiation and coordination)—which is organized by the forces of the market system
- but div. of labor is also a process in that over time the scope and intensive of the division
increases—which is driven by the developmental law of the market, w/o human planning or
oversight
- in this system although all individuals pursue their self-interest the results of this pursuit
produces longer term unintended results, and this changes society from small scale society to
large scale interconnected society in which people are doing more and more different things that
nevertheless connect them more and more to each other vis-à-vis interdependence—so again
small scale hunter gatherer to modern commercial society in which every lives by exchange in
large scale impersonal market
Commercial society= everyone exchanges everything to get what they need and want (i.e.
commodities)
Commodities= things produced from exchange in the market, but not only things produced (e.g.
physical objects, therapists’ time) but also things that are used to produce commodities (e.g. land,
labor)
- most of us live off the price of our labor
 Smith’s theory is not just for certain societies they are meant to apply to societies
universally throughout time—these are simply the things that hold the fabric of human
society together, above all, the objective interdependence of exchange and the system that
it produces
Functional division of labor= different people performing different tasks entering different
professions (e.g. from farmer to philosophers)
Class division= also a natural and necessary development with but with a different basis from
functional div. of labor i.e. in the market different kinds of people receive different income on
different bases, for which the starting point is the appropriation of land (rent, finite) and the
accumulation of stock or capital (productive resources which is manmade so that instead of just
be appropriated they can be accumulated, ~infinite)
- these resources tend to get concentrated in different people’s hand which is how classes accrete
- as time goes on a greater and greater proportion of commodity production is supplied by capital
investment, and the return on capital takes the form of profit
- so, any time you buy something the purchase price goes to different revenue schemes—rent,
capital, labor
- but with capital you can take it and reinvest and accumulate more—so capital has this tendency
to increase and increase in concentration
- since capital can purchase labor, over time, the vast majority of people are wage laborers
The Market and the Division of Labor Based on It
- it’s not that landlords deserve more than laborers
- accumulation of capital allows for greater division of labor—buy more labor, more
specialization…pin factory—this will eliminate other forms of competition so that most people
are driven into wage labor
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- capitalists take social resources in the form of capital and reinvest in more efficient forms of
production which ultimately benefits everyone became to make the most profit they must
produce the most they can as cheap as they can (contra to capitalist desires which is to corner the
market and raise prices—the market corrects this because any capitalist that sell over the natural
price will be undersold by competition)
- supposing even that capitalists collude, that will distort the operation of the market but if you
have a large scale market some other capitalist will enter and undersell them, so, even if in the
short run you get imperfect results from the system the best way for them to be corrected is for
the market to correct itself so that if market is allowed to operate freely, in the long run, you’ll
get optimal results which is not to say ideal results but preferable to any autonomous alternative
(e.g. tariffs, licensing)
[- Smith warns us that if capitalists they can get away with it they will screw everyone—so he’s
not esp. sympathetic to them]
- so, capitalists play a critical role but only if they’re operating as self-interested actors in the
market, because if capitalist cooperate they will collude and produce harmful results—the beauty
of the system is that public interest is most served by no one worrying about the public interest
(for several thousand years the problem of social theory was the common good, but Smith is
telling us there’s no need to worry about that)
- it’s very important for capitalists to be confined to competing in the market as opposed to say
competing in the political sphere where they will use whatever influence they have to screw
people
But can you have a system in which capitalists don’t influence the state? And then, who
should influence and ultimately control the state?
In Sum:
 Smith’s entire theory is based on different assumptions about human nature (barter
and rational self-interest), so Smith’s assumption is that we can rely on people to pursue self
interest in certain ways i.e. barter and calculated material benefit
- this leads to a market with its own dynamics which changes society over time +inequality but
also universal standard of living esp. for the poor
Transition to Book III

- if large amounts of productive resources accrue to a small groups of capitalists we don’t’ have
to worry because they will reinvest it for more profit which will ultimately benefit all AND if a
capitalist does deviate he’s resources with be redistributed through competition
p. 284-5= “In countries where there is tolerable security…”
- up until now there is no mention of security (contra Hobbes), but it turns out things will only
hold if there is “tolerable security” …
Tolerable security= if violence is a routine alternative to exchange then you won’t get the
salutary mechanism of market exchange
So, what does it take to have tolerable security?
- you need state action, in other words, the whole natural system has a political precondition
Book III
Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
Pg. 376=
7
What does Smith mean by “natural”?

- well, it’s natural (the market system) if it emerges from the unhindered operation of basic
human tendencies
- and institutions are natural if they emerge from impersonal processes and unintended results of
individual actions as opposed to institutions that are consciously constructed—if the dynamics of
the market set prices that’s natural, if a capitalist cabal or a government set prices that’s artificial
- so natural does not mean pre-social
- in every society once you have cities you’ll have commerce between town and country
- economic development will begin in agriculture which precedes cities
- when you have cities expect for them to start out making practical goods to sell to the country
and not luxury good
- also, regional and local trade will precede long distance
Pg. 377= “This order of things…”
- human institutions have inverted the natural order of economic and social development
- the natural state of things cities developed economically before country and made luxury good
before practical and foreign trade sprung prior to local
- so even though this universal pattern is rooted in human nature and happens everywhere in all
times to some degree—it so happens that Western feudal Europe inverts this natural order
 So, Smith tries to account for this Western Europe counterexample
Smith’s Explanation for Feudal Deviation

- effects of feudalism interfered with normal and natural development of the market and the after
effects of feudalism still infect society
 Smith’s core theory has nothing to do with human mores but here he introduces mores
as something we need to account for
But how much would mores affect Smith’s core theory?
- so, Smith is saying that 600-800 years of W. Europe were unnatural in being feudalistic
- in Books 1 and 2 we’re told that all people naturally do things in the social world (e.g. improve
material condition) BUT…
- in feudalism no one is doing any of this—feudal lords don’t reinvest capital they surround
themselves with armed men; they also loot and plunder
- moreover, the vast majority of population are not free laborers their serfs
- so, in feudalism no one is acting the way that Smith tells us people always and everywhere act
So how does Smith account for this?
- Smith says we must go back to the emergence of feudalism i.e. the fall of Roman Empire,
imputed to barbarian invasions
- but these invasions could have been a temporary setback but instead feudalism become
entrenched and persists for 100s of years
Why?
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Pg. 382= chiefs of barbarian bands rule huge swaths of land, but instead of being parceled by
competition they are kept consolidated by entail and primogeniture—so the land really belongs
to the family
- these things started as custom but stuck around
Why?
- lack of security i.e. if you’re a feudal lord you’re more interested in protecting yourself then
being a productive capitalist—another lord can always plunder whatever manufacturing
improvements you make
- because land is the repository of political power—the lords have independent military and
political power, so they have no incentive to treat as a mere commodity
But why is land treated is as a base of political power?
But what about peasants why aren’t they saving and thrifting even if the lords are not?
- because any surplus will just be confiscated by the feudal lord and they can’t leave the lord
because they will be punished and because they need the lord’s protection for other lords
Vassals= minor lords, knights
Peasant serf= 95% of the population
Retainer=
 Smith is trying to show that when you have a feudal system it will reinforce itself and
persist and it also explains why you don’t have economic development in the country
Why does economic development start in the cities rather than in the country?
- cities are islands of non-feudal relations i.e. political communities in which the feudal lords
don’t have power
Why?
- because in cities they have order and good government—they establish security through walls
and militias that can fend off a plundering lord
But why not make practical good to sell to peasants?
- because peasants have no money to buy
Why start selling luxury good long distance?
- because you need to reach the market of monied Islamic elites
 Smith is saying that the re-establishment of natural (market) order depends on

establishment of security and that depends on the development of centralized states
 the emergence of cities gives us a 3way conflict between monarchs, lords, and cities…
- lords and monarch are socially at ease and both hate cities
How does city order enter the countryside? How did feudalism decline and how did that
allow for the restoration of centralized order?
- development of cities helped promote the end of feudalism and development of the country
- development and trade of luxury goods give lord a taste for this produce (they don’t like to
think about frugality; they like wasteful extravagance, vanity)
- but to get luxury good lords need money—so the relinquish political power in return for
money…
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- which allows the monarch to extend control to the countryside, which leads lords to consolidate
territory and encourage higher rate of productivity among peasant
 so, the effects of commerce gradually change the mindset of the lords—their taste for
wealth leads them to diminish their power, they become commercially driven, more
likely to provide security for peasants, esp. as monarchs start to maintain order more and
more
 none of this was what the merchant who sold the luxury goods and the lord who
bought them intended—these were unintended consequences
- yes, feudal lords act selfishly, but they’re not pursuing the kind of self-interest that makes the
market tick—there’s no peaceful exchange or rational calculation, this is all impulse and vanity
—avarice and injustice are always shortsighted and don’t’ ultimately serve the interest of the
person in question
- so, the rational pursuit of self-interest depends on mores
- in the long run unfree labor is more productive

So why don’t lords use wage laborer?
Pg. 388= men love to dominate others—bowing and scraping is more important to some people
and especially to lords
 we can’t assume, for Smith, that people with all think about to invest their resource in
The most efficient way
Core theory of Book I-II vs. Book III Tension

1 way to reconcile= keep the assumption about people pursuing their self-interest rationally but
we add the factor of security i.e. people are first going to worry about staying alive before they
worry about maximizing material benefit
2 way to reconcile= there are a wider range of motivations that people have, ppl act out of pride
and vanity, rather than rationally self-interested
- mores explain why different people attitudes are re-shaped by their culture
- but the point of the core theory was we don’t have to ask what people are like because we know
(barter and rational self-interest)
Book IV-V
- discusses functions of sovereign which analysis is really connected to Book III i.e. what it takes
to have the political precondition of security
- his analysis of why it might be good to have education for the poor leads to
Are the effects of the division of labor all beneficial? (Pg. 781)
- Well, we get opulence, wider range of skills etc.
Pg. 781= “In some cases the…in other cases the state and society does not place…”
Pinheadism= our skills are shaped by what occupy our time doing so if we spend all our time
putting a head on a pin there’s a good chance will turn into a pinhead
- more and more people are doing more and more narrow, tedious and repetitive tasks giving him
no occasion to exercise his higher faculties and indeed he loses the faculties in the process of his
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inurement: “the torpor of his mind”— this is what will happen unless gov. intervenes, so…
 here the self-correcting market doesn’t correct the progress of pinheadism

 so, what happens when we don’t have a theory of basic universal human motivations,
what happens when we need to base a social theory on mores and how mores will produce the
socioeconomic structure ppl. Live in…
This is Tocqueville
TOCQUEVILLE
9/20/18
Social Order
Po Aristocratic Democratic
liti Liberty Venice’s aristocratic Constitutional
cal republic, France c. representative
Re 1500-1600s, government
gi Despotism Louis XIV, Henry Jacobin dictatorship2,
m VIII1, modern China People’s Republic
e of…(e.g. Chavez)3
Tocqueville
- b. in 1805
- born in the middle of that long process of the Fr. Revolution – 1789 to Napoleon as emperor
- came from aristocratic family—many of his best friends were monarchists
- parents were arrested during Reign of Terror
- so, some of the people he was upsetting with his writing were family and friends
- thinks a functioning system of political liberty can be remarkably tenacious but at the same
time very fragile
Regime= the organization of political government
[Upheaval in Fr. Revolution

- the attempt to install liberty produced the most “despotic government” in the history of the
phrase]
- training to be a civil servant but after the 1830 Revolution traveled to the U.S. and traveled
around for 9 months
Democracy in America
- made a huge splash on publication—John Stewart Mill wrote a long laudatory essay
- Tocqueville entered politics and was elected to parliament…
- still in parliament in 1848 during wave of European revolutions
- Louis Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon) is elected in aftermath and takes over
1
Still did not have the kind of iron grip on society that was possible in the modern state—no centralized apparatus
that could operate with impunity (i.e. without aristocratic resistance).
2
Despotic coup but for the purpose of social equality.
3
They argued they had more social equality even if they needed dictatorship to get to true democratic socialism.
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- Tocqueville is a part of establishing the 2nd republic (prior to the 2nd Napoleonic coup)
The Ancien Regime and The French Revolution (1856)
- wrote about the French Rev to figure out: Why is it that we in France can’t seem to establish
and maintain political liberty? Why do we keep regressing to despotism? Americans can but we
can’t.
- died in his 50s
Connection between 2 books:
Trying to understand the conditions of and requirements for, the possibility of and threats to (i.e.
despotism), political liberty in modern society.
1st book: Why does liberty work in America?
2nd book: Why does liberty NOT work in France?
- so, when he writes about U.S. he is implicitly contrasting it with European countries
- when her writes about France he is thinking of America (and England)
Tocqueville’s Comparative Political Sociology

- you can’t treat politics in isolation (you can’t just look at constitutions), you must look at the
relationship between political realm and society
- of course, he doesn’t say that political outcomes are determined by social life—what he’s trying
to understand is the interplay between the political realm and social life
- in particular, he looks at the interplay between formal political institutions and culture—if it
were a question of coming up with the best constitutions that would be too easy—brilliant ppl.
write brilliant constitutions that are soon overturned
Mores= the kinds of customs, values, habits, practices within which political life occurs
- a web of beliefs and practice and orientation which shape political activity and are shaped by
political activity
- a way of acting and feeling in a society; beliefs and practices distinctive of particular societies
and sub-cultures
- the understanding of and attitude people have toward their actions
- political liberty works in the U.S. because the social order supports constitutional representative
government (as opposed to France which has been shaped by a different political experience)
- Tocqueville’s theoretical approach is cultural—he is constantly looking at the relation between

culture and social institutions…
Laws vs. mores: formal political institutions / social ties vs. culture
- tries to reconstruct self-reinforcing processes e.g. how political liberty builds up a culture which
people become invested in, which they then help construct
- uses comparisons e.g. aristocratic society vs. democratic society
Progress for Tocqueville:
- the modern notion of progress is that history goes from worst to best
- Tocqueville, though, argues that in different kinds of societies you can realize different values
—so e.g. when comparing aristocracy to democracy, the comparison is not hierarchical
- but regardless, aristocracy is on the wane
4 Key Terms
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Democracy
Aristocracy <-- both refer to different types of social order, rather than regime
- argues that Western society is going from aristocratic to democratic and different countries
have completed this transition to different degrees
- sees Northern U.S. as having competed this transition more than any other region—so it is
emblematic of the future of modern democratic society
New science of politics= for this new modern society
- compared to aristocratic society democratic society is characterized by social equality
- in addition, modern society is likely to be more fluid, materialistic, individual, commercial,
iconoclastic
- there’s no way to avoid transformation so we must maximize its advantage and avoid its
dangers
- the kinds of political order possible in aristocracy are no longer possible in democracy
- the key tendencies of modern democratic society favor despotism, though despotism is not
inevitable
Despotism= based on a centralized and powerful state than was possible in aristocracy
What is this new world Tocqueville speaks of…
2 Basic Contrasts:
1. Equality vs. Inequality
- aristocratic society is based on inequality rooted in law and custom
- democratic society is by contrasted based on fundamental equality
There are different types of people who have different value and have different roles because of
their station.
- Inequality is qualitative. People live different lives they don’t just have different amounts of
stuff. They speak different languages (peasant German words from livestock vs. aristocratic
French words for cooked meat). They can ride a horse or own an estate.
Example= If you’re a noble and you’re accused of a crime you have a right to be tried by other
nobles, NOT commoners.
2. Corporatism vs. individualism
- aristocratic society is corporate i.e. the basic unity of society is social groups held together by
tradition
- democratic society is individualistic—i.e. the individual is seen as the natural state of affairs
Everyone has the right to pursue the goods of life, though people may end up with different
quantities of these goods.
- inequality is quantitative and there is formal equality
- differences are fluid—there is more mobility between classes and there is at least an aspiration
to equality of opportunity
- people’s ways of life are more alike even if their fortunes are different
- general sense of existential or spiritual equality
Corporate
- people get their identity from these groups which persists over generations and generate
obligations for members
- a more stable sense of membership in particular kinds of social groups
- people are linked to others through durable ties they cannot extricate themselves from—
reinforces the notion that people are obligated to each other
13
- you’re always part of a network of ties and are never alone: a) people at the same rank have a
sense of collective solidarity with their peers and part of what reinforces is the sense “we are
unlike other people” b) string of persona dependent ties between un-equals (e.g. patron/client,
lord/vassal)
Example= if you’re a lord you feel connected to other lords (when it comes to being tried) BUT
you also feel obligated to defend your peasants
- these collective ties are weakened because they think of everyone as being
fundamentally like themselves
- you empathize with other lords because they’re like you
Individual
- social groups tend to dissolve
- individuals are less able to call on other people who would traditionally have the obligation to
help them
- more commercial and materialistic because money is the only way you can establish your
superiority and to get people to do you favors you have to pay them
- individualism ≠ egoism, because what’s new is the sense that people ought to pay attention to
only their personal interest and should focus on that rather than say obligation to custom,
tradition, group
- in democratic society you empathize with everyone, but you don’t feel obligated to do
anything for anyone else
- people become more alike but also more disconnected from one another (in that they
have no corporate solidarity or identification)
- you might think that as inequality decreases and you have more affluent commercial
society that people should be happier, BUT in many ways you get more dissatisfaction
(c.f. “The Restless Spirit of American in the Midst of Their Prosperity”)—Keeping Up
with the Joneses, Jones is close enough to you that you are “right” to compare yourself to
him—restless envy, Tocqueville’s theory of consumerism
- the more inequality is reduced the more remaining inequalities appear intolerable
What are the political implications of these changes and the requirements for liberty?
- Tocqueville says these changes threaten liberty
- in aristocratic society checks on absolute authority are built into the social structure—absolute
monarchs had much less of a grip on society because possible centers of resistance and
opposition we’re built into the social order
- if power is generated by the ability of people to act together—which could be called upon by
aristocrats—they don’t just have formal lawful privileges, they have people who will obey them
if they order them to do something e.g. guilds, villages, lords will defend themselves
- dependency ties and collectivist ties link people into form of viable resistance to totalitarianism
- liberty, in the sense of capacity for resistance
- some of the same forces which undermine aristocratic liberty undermine political liberty in
democratic society
14
- liberty is possible in democracy but it must take a different form—Tocqueville searches for
equivalent secondary powers to aristocratic society that can balance a despot, 2ndary powers
based on conscious cooperation rather than obligation and dependence
What does Tocqueville mean by Liberty/Freedom?
- he does NOT mean merely “negative liberty” i.e. the liberty to be left alone or protected against
oppression
- you must also have influence over outcomes and decisions that affect you, you must have
power
- this is also NOT merely the natural liberty of Adam Smith i.e. individuals can pursue their own
interests without hinderance without having to worry about collective outcomes which are
ministered to by the invisible hand of the market. The absence of domination.
- for Tocqueville it must also be people making decisions about collective outcomes, about the
rules they operate under—people must be actively participating in the debate of public questions
and issues, they must be able to act in concert, and they must have the capacity for collective
self-determination
Homo economicus= the individual just thinking about his own self-interest and doesn’t
participate in determining collective outcomes—a la Smith
- for Tocqueville, collective outcomes can’t be left to the market or to the sovereign, rather, the
people must be making these decisions
- of course, you need the right institutions, but you ALSO NEED citizens i.e. people with the
kinds of values, skills, capacities and commitments who are invested in making the system work
—people willing and able to engage in consideration of public issues
Citizen vs. subject= the subject is taken care of ordered around by others, whereas the citizen
has civic virtue i.e. demands a role in making public decisions and also accepts this
responsibility i.e. you must be able to think about your own self-interest and the collective good
- you can’t simply pursue your own good and leave it to others to think about the public good
- it means you need a delicate balance of self-assertiveness and self-restraint
- part of the way you get this is participating in the process of political liberty itself—debating,
participation, compromise i.e. you need a political education you can’t get in the classroom, you
can only get this in the experience of political liberty
- so, the Americans make it work because they have a political education of the sort we don’t
have in France
- so, in America things are decentralized enough so that people experience the necessity of
cooperation and compromise: political liberty forces people out of isolation i.e. if you want
something in a township you must convince someone else to want it too and you also must listen
to other people’s wants
- township self-government is to liberty what primary schools are to formal education—so it’s
where you start but you must go beyond that
- you can’t have political liberty without citizens and you can’t have citizens without political
liberty
Despotism= any arbitrary or unchecked exercise of power
- mostly worried about the domination of society by a centralized apparatus—since the capacity
for resistance is neutralized
- to the extent that all decisions are made from above this dries up the capacities of citizens at the
roots—an increasingly depoliticized society
15
- the greater the extent of the atrophy the greater the alternative centers of power are dissolved
(making centralized despotism irresistible) BUT centralized despotism becomes increasingly
indispensable because society can’t run without it
- moreover, despotism produces the kinds of people who can’t be free because they are
increasingly able to think of only their own concerns, since the despot is domination the public
sphere
- occasionally, subjects may riot but they’ll never run things themselves—a child can throw a
tantrum but will eventually go back to obeying its parent, but if you want freedom you must
grow up—you must have the combination of power and responsibility
- the absence of power corrupts—people who have no power are irresponsible
First Endnote to Ancien Regime
- discusses increasing absolute power of monarchs
- also increasing tendency to substitute Roman law for Germanic or medieval law
- these things go together because Roman law was the work of a highly civilized but totally
enslaved society
Tripartite Structure in Tocqueville
State= centralized apparatus of domination and administration
Civil society= the modern world of individualism and of social relations based on people’
pursuit of their own private interests—centered on the market
Political society= a different set of relationships within which people can relate to each other—a
whole host of way people can act on behalf of and think about the common good
- so, when Tocqueville talks about depoliticization he doesn’t mean the state he means political
life i.e. solidarity, collective action which may take place partially in formal institutions but it
also takes place in a wide range of other institutions i.e. voluntary associations not prima facie
political but which endow people with the capacities for politics e.g. Churches in the civil rights
movement
- so, although religion is separated from government it is still one of American society’s most
important political institutions because it serves the function of political education—same with
trial by jury
2 Alternative of Societies in the Modern World
Liberty= an active society capable of running itself but that requires political culture and
citizenship which is self-reinforcing
Despotism= a mass of atomized individuals dominated by a centralized apparatus mounting it
like a foreign body which is increasingly irresistible and indispensable
- so political society must be protected against the state and against civil society—which
is possible for Tocqueville but not inevitable
9/27/18
Estate (Stand)
Estates-general
Tocqueville Cont.
Democratic despotism= domination of an atomized society by a centralized apparatus
16
- 1789 Fr. Revolution began as revolt against absolutist monarchy but ended with Napoleon—the
most centralized, bureaucratic, militarized apparatus in history of France—Tocqueville’s
question is how did this happen?
Civil society= Tocqueville called this “political society” i.e. the arena of public life, voluntary
association—a realm of relationships between isolated individuals acting in their own interests in
the context of a modern market becoming more and more dominant (e.g. religious groups, social
movement e.g. temperance, civil rights, political parties in democratic states)
- Tocqueville would stress defending this from the state insofar as the state would be suspicious
of any independent, collective political action
Why would civil society be a threat to political society?
- because the mores of self-interested commercialism are incompatible with the mores of
citizenship
- Tocqueville tried to understand the emergence of modern society full stop—his comparative
sociology and new political science was conducted in this context…
Tocqueville on modern democratic society
Democratic Society
- it’s difficult to make claims about superiority of taste in art for instance because everyone is
supposed to be the same…
- which ties in to conformism
Tyranny of the majority= not only has political clout but also has moral authority—cultural
despotism
Pg. 643= even in democratic society where the majority doesn’t have political power theirs is
still a tyranny of common sense and public opinion—any divergence from doxa will be met with
mainstream opposition
- it’s not even what every else is thinking it’s what everyone else thinks everyone else is thinking
- SO, in SUM, the democratization of society undermine community, distinction and diversity
“Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare” = pulls together many of T’s analyses of modern
democratic society
- increasingly individualistic mass society i.e. there are some difference of wealth and power but
most people will fall into this broad mass where everyone is struggling to get ahead—most of
them will feel that they have a stake in the system, they want to improve their condition but they
realize they would have more to lose than gain by revolution
- + generally prosperous, less indefensible inequality, general mediocrity, a dull and philistine
culture + tyranny of common opinion
Pg. 702= What’s the point of doing these analyses of society and politics?
- you need to figure out which things you have to accept because they’re universal and which
you can do something about
Example= we can’t restore aristocracy—it’s over
BUT
Are we going to have liberty or despotism in democratic society and can we do anything
about ensuring liberty?
- along with decay of aristocratic inequality is the decline of corporate ties…
17
Now why is this a problem for liberty?

Well, What kind of liberty is supported by aristocratic society?
- it’s a negative liberty i.e. society has built into it certain capacities for resistance to arbitrary
power
How?
- power is generated by collective action and in aristocratic society you can do this on the basis
of class solidarity and dependent ties (~ pg. 192)
Township Self-Government
Local self-government serve the same function as secondary aristocratic center of power—this is
where people can resist through collective action, it’s also the necessity of self-organization
given the limits of centralized government to govern at the local level, and it’s also where you
are educated in citizenship—self-determination, cooperation, compromise, dialogue among
multiple stakeholders with their own interests, persuasion—the township has to maintain itself
based on stakeholder input rather than look to a lord to resolve and organize disputes
In Sum: instead of just atomized individuals we have political life throughout society in the
township i.e. capacity for resistance and citizenship education
Voluntary association= takes you out of your village—empowers people and reproduces mores
of citizenship
- even associations without explicitly political content can bring people out of isolation, produce
the capacity for acting together, serve as framework for political education e.g. union and
evangelical church members are much more likely to vote nowadays
Tyranny of majority
- for a majority to abide by the rule of law they have to be informed enough to know what liberty
requires
- cultural tyranny– voluntary association helps this too because people can think together
differently in small groups than they would when absorbed in the general population
“How an aristocracy can be created by industry”

- one reason Tocqueville thinks modern society is as it is is because he thinks people will mostly
be small independent property owners—contra Marx
- thinks the industrial sector would be a monstrous anomaly i.e. the future is not wage labor—
this Tocqueville gets wrong
10/4/18
Estates-General annus mirabilis= year of wonders

Intendant guillotine
Jacobin (dictatorship of 1793)
Thermidor= hot month (Rev. calendar)
Brumaire= foggy month (Rev. calendar)
Levee en masse= mass conscription
Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France)

Robespierre= ran the Reign of Terror, “the principle of popular government in time of
revolution has to be virtue and terror”
18
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime [Old Regime] and the French Revolution
Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France)= written in the earliest phases of the
revolution while a lot of Burke’s peers were still disposed to it
- Burke said this was a totally different revolution that would lead to bloodshed, civil war, and
terror
Why did people think it was important to understand the French Revolution?
- initiated the modern notion of massive social revolution so that other revolutions since were
carried out by people who were guided by secondhand misunderstandings of what the Fr.
Revolution was about
Palmer: The World of Fr. Revolution= nobody anticipated its far-reaching effects
E.g.= the modern emergence of the notion of revolution itself
- since then millions of people have believed that revolution can solve society’s major problems
—also the beginning of modern counterrevolutionary ideas
How to understand the relationship between processes and events?
- in DinA it’s all about processes and not about events
- AR is about a gigantic event – the Fr. Rev. BUT, to understand the event you must look at
antecedent long-term processes (a la Marx)—revolutions are like earthquakes precipitated by
long-term shifts in tectonic plates
Why did the revolution happen in France and why did it lead to an international civil war
(a la the wars of religion)?
- once the revolution got started it developed according to its own logic (and not the logic of the
revolutionaries)
- this was not just a Fr. Event it led to 25 years of war and counter revolution across Europe and
the Western world (even the US was involved in the War of 1812)
- not merely a political revolution i.e. a coup d’état, RATHER, it toppled the social order—
within just a few years of the revolution the National Assembly abolished guild, ranks,
(hereditary) privileges of the older order—all of these had been eroded over centuries, but this
was the decisive sweeping away
- also, the Rev. divided France into square provinces, expropriated all the property of the
Catholic Church—imposed civil constitution of the clergy which was when the Pope and Fr.
priests balked and refused to cooperate (for the next 150 years the Catholic church feared
revolution and democracy), introduced the metric system, a new calendar (10 months of equal
length with 10 day weeks, started with year 1 of the new republic)—all these changes were
instituted in the moderate phase of the revolution
- while worried about a depoliticized society T also worries about a hyper-politicized society
which would burn itself out
- in the course of revolutions we realize (a la Lukacs) that the structure of social reality is utterly
contingent and up for grabs—all the things that seemed natural become open to debate and
decision, which means that the stakes of politics become enormously high, which also makes for
dramatic polarization as people begin to think political disputes are predicated on good vs. evil
- after the Fr. Revolution you get professional revolutionaries (and counter-revolutionaries)
So how did this happen and why once it got started did it take off?
19
- the Fr. Revolution seemed more like religious wars at the time of the Reformation—that’s
partly because everything turned on how to organize society fundamentally, but also political
conflict became infused with religious passion
Propaganda= comes from propagating faith at the time of The Inquisition
 DinA and AR are both part of a grand theoretically and practically urgent project for
T, which is to understand the conditions of political liberty and despotism in the modern
world
- DinA answers the question “How can democratic society work in the modern era?”
 and T’s problem is that although it (political liberty) works in America it doesn’t seem
to work in France
Liberty, equality, fraternity= in France this led to turmoil and the military dictatorship of
Napoleon
 AR is asking “Why doesn’t political liberty work in France?”
 Answer: the conditions for liberty in France were systematically undermined for
centuries (in the old regime)—so even though the regime is overthrown the roots are dry
What kinds of historical experience shaped France’s political culture and institutions so as
to make it difficult for France to support political liberty?
- but also, revolutionary mores aren’t conducive to durable political liberty

- T is writing an attempt to understand the nature and cause of the revolution—AR is a work of
historical sociology, not narrative history
- T thinks the revolution was both harmful and inspiring and that the real fault lies not with the
revolutionaries but with the old regime i.e. the centralization and bureaucratization of an
absolutist monarchy
- on the one hand, revolutionaries represent the epitome of human power and freedom i.e.
humans have the ability to consciously transform everything about their life, BUT, on the other
hand, when great revolutions get started they take on a momentum of their own, sweeping away
the people who touched it off
- the Fr. Rev. is a late phase in the long transition from aristocratic society (feudalism) to
democratic society (modernity)—so centralized bureaucracies are built up by kings fortifying
their absolutist monarchy—you need tax collectors, and armies, BUT in some countries you get
with the decline of feudalism more effective monarchies i.e. organized legislative and
enforcement apparatus BUT you also have the beginnings of representative institutions i.e.
assemblies representing different estates so e.g. when the king wanted to raise taxes he would
have to consult with the privileged orders (self-governing cities, the Church, nobles)
- so what you get is tug of war between incipient rep. institutions and the centralized state
France vs. England
- if you compare Fr. and England, in both you have a series of monarchs who tried to create an
absolutist state i.e. all law comes from the ruler who can in principle determine everything…
- but in England, parliamentary representation was hard to suppress/control (leading to the
beheading or overthrowing of kings)—ended in compromise between the crown and
representative institutions controlled by the aristocracy which used them to run the country on
the local level
- because the aristocracy was willing to tax themselves (part of the reason England prevailed
against the French in war in this period)
20
- prevented centralization of royal power—no bureaucracy, no standing army and yet a well-
organized state
- BUT, in France the monarch won out and the Estates-General didn’t meet for 150 years
Crisis of 1780= forced France to recall the Estate-General which ultimately triggered the
revolution
- so for T, the decay of aristocratic society, the loss of their independent military and
administrative power, also meant they lost all their most useful functions i.e. nobles had
genuinely run things but by the end the aristocracy relinquished their political powers (and were
supplanted by the intendant) but clung to their privileges (e.g. various exemptions from taxation)
- meanwhile, monarchs wanted their own employees administering the law (rather than the
nobles) so that the monarchs appointed the judiciary who eventually came to control their office
(through the venalities) and could pass them on to descendants
- SO, the judiciary became the intellectual leaders of the nobility, and they retained the capacity
to obstruct the monarchy
- also, the nobility were worried about the rise of the bourgeoisie SO they spent much of the 18th
century clinging to power
1780s= France Supported American Revovlution against the British but in the process the French
government went broke
- they would need to tax to raise money but instead of pulling back aristocratic exemptions the
aristocracy threw the country into paralysis so they could increase their privileges—and this was
the crisis that led to the French Revolution which ultimately swept the aritocracy away
- at this point the monarch decided it would have to call back the Estates General to push the
reforms it wanted (this was a way of outflanking the aristocracy)
1st estate Clergy
2nd estate Nobility
rd
3 estate Everyone else
- they held elections to recall the Estates General
Bourgeoisie= the middle classes of the old regime (merchants, lawyers, technicians, scientists)
- the 3rd estate refused only 1/3 representation given that they were 98% of the country
- this led the 3rd estate to secede and institute its own National Assembly
- then rumors started that the monarchy/nobles would raise an army to put down the 3rd estate
(partially true)…
Sans-culottes= wore trousers rather than knee breeches
- organized themselves into clubs and made it clear that if the king brought troops there would be
mass bloodshed
- SO, the centralized gov’t was paralyzed, there were rumors of a noble plot and there was a
mushrooming of 3rd estate revolutionary agitation
- eventually the masses of peasants attacked the privileges of the nobility
- SO, the monarchy/nobles ratified the rebellion and rolled back the privileges of the 2 estates…
which was when the revolution radicalized…
- you had massive participation on the ground and intellectual elites organizing from above
- 1st they tried to organized constitutional monarchy, but the king balks, and revolutionaries
repeatedly purge the moderate representatives of the assembly
- groups in the revolutionary coalition were agitating for war with other monarchies while other
countries thought they could take advantage of the French chaos to grab French possessions
21
- the king and queen flee but the king, Louis XVI, is apprehended and executed for treason—SO
the nation is sovereign not the monarchy
- France becomes a republic and is at first moderate
- France is plunged into war with every country of Europe
- then there are counter-revolutionary uprisings, partly because people didn’t want to be drafted
for these foreign wars—many of these uprisings are put down through slaughter
- revolution passes into the Jacobin phase (year 2) and declares itself a democracy with very
broad suffrage
- BUT, the constitution is suspended until peace is achieved and the government is a
revolutionary government (revolution is transformative now, not just coup detat)
- Jacobin dictatorship abolishes slavery in France and French colonies
- the revolutionary dictatorship saved France from foreign aggressors though massive
mobilization i.e. raised huge armies through conscription (viz. levee en masse, not just
professional soldiers), also instituted economic controls to ensure that the city and army would
be fed, also used massive (political) terror directed against enemies of the revolution (moderates
etc.)—10-20,000 people are executed by guillotine (invented not long before as the humane
alternative to traditional killings—which is perfectly symbolic for the Revolution as a
combination of science, humanitarian aspiration, and terror)
- Jacobins defeat their enemies and put down internal revolts but Robespierre keeps executing
perceived threats
Thermidorean reaction= overthrow of Jacobins and The Terror
- continuing unrest and disturbance until Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power and establishes a
military dictatorship and becomes emperor…
What are the things about this process that were striking to contemporaries?
- paradoxes of liberty, fraternity, equality—the conceit is that they go together but actually there
are severe tension between the elements and it’s also unclear how each is interpreted
Equality= Does equality mean formal or substantive equality? Do you just get rid of hereditary
privilege or do you abolish the distinction between rich and poor?
Liberty= Does that mean civil liberties i.e. protection from oppression and freedom to pursue
individual interest in society or does that mean political liberties? The 1791 constitutions gave
liberty to everyone (equal protection under the law) but it only gave political rights (ability to
make the laws) to some people (active vs. passive citizens)
- Jacobin dictatorship and Napoleon took different approaches to these issues
Fraternity= increasing fratricidal tensions where slaughter is in the name of the common good
Pg. 13= when revolution started a lot of people thought it was good idea what wouldn’t amount
to much, BUT then, the revolution pursued its own course
Paradoxes of revolution…
1. Attacked despotism but created a greater one in its place
2. Feudal institutions provoked a revolution in precisely the place they had most decayed
3. Despite the fact that the revolution attempted to break with the past nevertheless there
are powerful continuities
4. Although the rev. was unforeseen it was really completely predictable and even
inevitable
Why?
- Consolidation and centralization of power by the absolutist monarchy destroyed alternative
competing powers that could obstruct it and at the same time undermined its own foundations
22
- T is saying that centralization undermines aristocratic liberty + you have shift from aristocratic
to democratic society – 2 mutually reinforcing processes
- alternative route to revolution would be to have taken those self-governing townships and build
a system of collective representation—which is what happened with Britain, allowing a minority
for legislation, but other broad-based opportunities for participation
Political liberty= for T this is how different groups within society exercise power by debating
and legislating collective outcomes
- this is something you can build up to through political association – all of this was smothered in
France
- you can’t just topple a government you need a citizenry who has the capacity and commitment
to make it work—a citizenry who must have somehow participated in the process of political
liberty
- like political liberty, despotism is also self-reinforcing, especially in societies where secondary
forms of association are suppressed—even in its normal operation, when all decisions are made
from above it dries up dynamics of political education and participation at their source—people
have no experience with self-government
- SO, the greater the centralized despotism the more alternative centers of power are destroyed
and people lose the capacity to resist, BUT ALSO, despotism becomes indispensable because no
one can run their own society
- when T talks about political society it means a society that can self-organized and control the
state—so in addition to civil and state society you need political society with culture of
citizenship (why he’s so enamored of association in America)
- In the old regime you have isolated groups with no experience of acting together…leading to
social fragmentation and political incapacity
- the breakdown of aristocratic society and the buildup to the centralized state codetermine the
destruction of political society—more and more kings create for themselves a bureaucracy—
employees of a centralized apparatus which extends its tentacle into society and takes over many
of the practical function of aristocrats
Nobility / peasantry / centralized state
- nobility loses their political power and function (e.g. orangizing people) but maintains their
privileges, peasants face these nobles who have privileges but no longer any functions (so the
hatred of nobles is more powerful in France because aristocracy is less powerful there), plus the
bourgeoisies see that they’re just as good as the aristocracy but without their privileges—so more
resentment
 SO, you have a fragmented society incapable of running itself in which the existing
order is resented by everyone and in which there’s not loyalty or cooperation between
groups so everything depends on the centralized state apparatus and when that is
paralyzed there is nothing to maintain it and no one can come to its defense
Why is it important that peasants own land before the revolution?
- because it means that not only do the nobility not serve any function but they have less control
over peasants—lords no longer run peasant villages
- peasants can’t operate on a national scale but they can do so village by village—uprising by
contagion—and if they get leadership from elite groups they can topple a social order in its
entirety
 the empowerment of peasants made the more resentful BUT also more capable of
doing something about it
23
Why are the aristocracy relinquishing their power?

- as monarchs develop their own armed forces they pacify the countryside and end private
warfare which allows them to enforce laws from the center which include subduing noble power
—so someone at the local level can go to a royal rather than a noble court
- also, everyone including the lords depends on local administration of affairs by centralized
bureaucracy
 military and administrative capacity of the centralized state was used to weaken the
lords and the self-governing cities
- also, ideological climate which leads to revolution—the modern revolutionary intellectual e.g.
18th century Enlightenment philosophes + France has no political experience i.e. you have
administrators without ideas and people with ideas who’d never had any power or responsibility
—this is the people who ended up leading the charge—which explains the sudden collapse of the
Revolution and its unforeseen character, and at the same time, without liberty (from below) the
leaders have no idea how out of touch they are with the governed—which explains why the
regimes that replaced were much more powerful but easier to overthrow
MARX
10/11/18
Critique
Alienation
Autonomy
Heteronomy
Emancipation= liberation, freedom
Totality
Dialectic
Aufhebung= transcendence
Teleological
Species-being
Social organization of production
G. W. F. Hegel
Ludwig Feuerbach
Marx’s Early Works

- written in the 5 years preceding the Communist Manifesto w/Engels (1848)—by this time Marx
is 30 and his project is set
Critique= important motif for Marx in that Marx intends his theory to be critical theory—he
develops his philosophy through a critique of other theorists, social institutions
- to do a critique is not to say you don’t like it but rather to say, you understand it in depth, its
inner logic and how that logic points toward its own transcendence
- critical theory cannot be based on utopian objectives it has to address itself concretely to the
object of critique
24
- and of course in critical theory the understanding of the object of criticism is supposed to be a
prerequisite to modifying that object—not “cynical theory” but “critical theory”
- Marx wanted to understand how humans are shaped by social forces and institutions BUT at the
same time saw that social institutions and forces are created by human beings
- SO, we should neither assume naïve individualism (i.e. that we can make all decisions
autonomously) nor total determinism—Marx thinks, though, that we’re at an unprecedented
stage in history where humans can consciously shape their world
Controversy in Marx
- a long set of disputes regarding how to understand the relationship between Marx’s early works
and his later works—there are 2 positions…
1. Orthodox Marxism
- the young, pre-scientific Marx still ensconced in Hegelian categories
- which is why, some of the language and ideas in the early work are de-emphasized in the later
works (e.g. citizenship, alienation)
2. Humanist Marx
- early works evince concern for and investment in human ability to change the world BUT in
the later works Marx is more of a deterministic social scientist
Weintraub’s view= that Marx is working out a project in the early works namely the
possibilities for freedom in the modern world—the later work will be written with this objective
in mind SO, Capital is about a system controlling us that no one has control over, indeed much of
Marx’s work is about this
- BUT, Marx reminds us that this heteronomous system is not an inherent part of the human
condition—it’s the result of living in certain (historical) societies, and these societies can be
changed
- his philosophy of heteronomy is embedded, then, in a wider theory about human freedom and
its possibilities—indeed this is how Marx’s theory is critical theory i.e. he believes in the
possibility of revision
- SO, Marx’s vision of a free humanity is in the early works and is presupposed by the later ones
Marx trajectory of critique in early works
- in the early Writings Marx moves from critiquing religion to the state and politics—because
he’s looking for the social basis (the etiology) of religion (as symptom)
- THEN, he wants to move from critique of the state to critique of civil society (which is
alienated, antagonistic and oppressive)
- THEN, moves from civil society to what he thought it was rooted in i.e. political economy i.e.
division of labor, modes of production, critique of capitalism
- of course, the impulse for critique is rooted in the possibilities for human freedom and
fulfillment…
Marx’s notion of human nature
- Marx’s ideas about freedom and fulfillment are rooted in his view of human nature
- though, many would say Marx doesn’t have an essentialist view of humanity because humanity
is always socially determined
- well, yes, Marx’s view of human nature is not static—but it does suppose that humans have
certain latent potentials—certain human powers are realized through our social development
- Ultimately, humans have the potential to freely and consciously create our world and
control our lives in cooperation with others
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- as long as were under duress from impersonal, systemic forces we’re not fully human, indeed,
our humanity has to be achieved
- SO, Marx will describe things purely descriptively or teleologically
Example= “On the Jewish Question”—we can look at man as an egoistic cog in civil society
(which it is) or as a free being (which it can be)
- starts by calling the teleological state of affairs “emancipation” and then starts calling it
“communism” or “socialism”
alienation= an objective condition which has psychological consequences
- on the supposition that humans can live in communities with others, alienation is a situation
where we’re cut off from others, fulfillment, and the alien forces that shape our lives
- accounts for the antagonism, isolation, heteronomy, domination of contemporary civil society
- in all societies humans become dominated by the things they create—above all those systems
of social relationships which we gradually create and transform—"Just as man is governed, in
religion, by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production, he is governed by the
products of his own hand." (Capital, p. 772 / Tucker, p. 422) i.e. every day the wage laborer
reproduces the conditions of his subjugation by creating exchange value for the capitalist who
employs him
- for Marx, this pattern—in which we’re controlled by what we create—this is not an
ontological fact, it’s a consequence of the fact that humans live and act in the context of
certain social relationships—social relationships we can change
How do humans create the world around them and themselves?
- collective relationship between human beings and nature i.e. we act on nature and turn it into a
human world, BUT, we always act on the basis of social relationships
- the social relationships Smith thinks are universal and characteristic of human nature (self-
interest and exchange of civil society) are precisely the ones Marx thinks are purely contingent
and historically determined
- history is this process of collective self-creation by humanity BUT under conditions of
heteronomy BUT with the potential to do it freely and self-consciously—that’s human
emancipation i.e. socialism or communism
Marx’s notion of freedom
- freedom, fulfillment and rational (i.e. conscious cooperation) community go together
- freedom is not just the absence of domination it’s conceived in terms of the development of
human powers i.e. the ability to control and direct our lives
- moreover, human powers are also social (e.g. technology, medicine, literacy) even though all
these abilities we’re only created through centuries of social development which changed the
way we think about and see the world
2 Limits to human freedom that must be overcome
1. natural necessity= scarcity, the various ways in which we can’t overcome natural forces (e.g.
disease, food)
- part of civilization is overcoming natural necessity and living in abundance
2. social relationships= all preexisting societies are marked by inequality, antagonism,
domination, universal heteronomy—people are set against each other and are thrown into
scrabbling for what they need to survive
- BUT, the capitalist era gives us new productive forces which can create a society of abundance
- BUT, we’re increasingly under control of an impersonal system of collective organization—the
capitalist market
26
- BUT, the capitalist epoch has created some of the preconditions for overcoming these
difficulties…
1. created the objective possibility for a society of abundance
2. capitalism has unified humanity through the interdependent world market
Hegel’s influence on Marx
- especially prevalent in the Early Works
- Hegel’s vision of the modern world is shaped by 2 ideas…
1. Totality
2. Dialectic
- Hegel argues that if you want to understand a society you can’t understand it as a set of
disconnected parts, you have to understand how each part fits together into the whole
- moreover, human history must be grasped as an integrated whole—there’s a long term meaning
to it (teleology)
- history must be understood as a process that leads to human freedom which includes rational
mastery of the natural world and self-consciousness of ourselves and our place in the world
- this process is dialectical i.e. the most important developments that help us move from one
society to another are not just the result of events or external pressures or accidents—RATHER
they are driven through internal tensions endogenous to the system as a whole
- these internal tensions create problems for the society in question BUT also the objective
conditions for transcending the society in question
- the self-propelling mechanism of the system’s progress is driven by aufhebung which allows
you to preserve the developments of the prior stages even as you move on to their successors
- SO, if you look back at the history of thought you’re looking back at this history of dialectical
development—SO, each major worldview constitutes as stage in the development of the human
mind and spirit such that each is correct in its way but each is also ultimately incomplete
“the cunning of reason”= the specific groups that conflict in history contribute importantly to
these processes of historical development despite the fact that these groups do so unwittingly
Back to Marx
- if you look at any stage of society you see it as one in development, one which came to be
according to a certain logic which develops and reproduces itself but also provokes its own
transcendence
How Marx Broke with Hegel
- for Hegel the motor of history is the development of the human mind (Geist) BUT
- Marx argues that the motor is the development of different modes of social relationships and
the tensions and conflicts built into them
- SO, if you look at different societies you see different kinds of social relationships NOT, contra
Smith, one social paradigm that is universal
- the nature of societies is rooted in concrete social relationships—social existence, i.e. the way
our world is organized, produces consciousness in this sense
- HOWEVER, the ultimate basis for system of social relationships in any society is the collective
relationship between human beings and nature i.e. the way humans produce and sustain life
- again, the foundation is the social organization of production i.e. how society is organized to
produce and reproduce the necessities of life
- BUT, it’s not as if the technology of production by itself will tell us what society is like—it’s
also, again, social
27
- while Tocqueville wants to contrast aristocratic and democratic society, he doesn’t explain the
cause that moves us from one to another—Marx, or so Marx thinks, offers us the causal account
Hegel on the modern state and society
- the rise of civil society is part of what distinguishes modern society
- civil society is egoism, competition, striving mediated by the market—for Hegel this is an
accomplishment BUT it is not purely a realm of freedom (as it was for classical liberals) because
of the isolation, competition, and heteronomy
- the solution to the heteronomy of civil society is the state i.e. the state as, not just legislation
and enforcement apparatus, BUT a political community based on citizenship, shared rights,
conscious and rational commitment to a moral whole
- Hegel intends the state and civil society to be complementary such that there are 2 spheres of
life in which modern individuals can get different kinds of satisfaction i.e. 1) civil society = self-
interest, 2) state= community
Marx’s criticism
- Marx does not say that this solution of Hegel’s is purely fantastical, Marx agrees that
community is important for modern freedom
- BUT, Marx denies that we can have genuine community in the face of civil society—because
the real world we live in is civil society which dominates all else, the state is incapable of
conferring autonomy on us with respect to the social forces that control our lives
Pg. 34= in modern civil society every individual treats everyone else as a means to their own
ends, we have no real bonds, and all of us become the playthings of alien forces that none of us
control—this is what Capital is about—in modern society we think of ourselves as directing our
own lives but in reality we are all the playthings of alien forces
How does Marx arrive at this conclusion?
- Hegel argued that the state and civil society could coexist and that they genuinely DID
COEXIST in the Prussia of his time…
Old (Right) Hegelians= sided with Hegel’s conservatism
Young (Left) Hegelians= opposed Hegel’s conservatism—this was Marx’s clique
- they moved to a position combining atheistic humanism and radical democracy—thinking that
this would balance civil society and the state
Ludwig Feuerbach= Young Hegelian who argued that Hegel’s mistake was looking at the
world theologically and to really understand history one had to break with that theological
background
Marx’s Critique of Feuerbach and Religion
“Contribution to Hegel’s PhR”
- Feuerbach argued that religion was an alienated world consciousness—in religion we take our
own powers and fulfillment and project them onto an imaginary being, namely, God
- furthermore, we project our notions of human power and fulfillment onto the imaginary sphere
of the supernatural
- BUT, what we need to do is reclaim these powers we have alienated and apply them to our
human relationships
- BUT MARX, states that the recognition of religion for what it is already doxa AND Feuerbach
doesn’t explain why people believe these alienations
Pg. 53= SO, Feuerbach is right in that religion is alienated world consciousness but the reason
we have that alienated world consciousness is because we live in an alien world—religion is a
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symbolic recognition of our actual alienation—we think we’re in a world that we don’t control,
that God controls, because we are in a world we don’t control
- therefore, we look to religion for our imaginary fulfillment which is never available in reality
(in civil society)
- SO “religion is an alienated world consciousness” is…
1. a recognition of our actual alienation
2. a protest against our alienation
- our conciliatory illusions nevertheless point to a more accurate picture of what a genuinely
human life would consist in—we have these aspirations even if they are alienated
“Religion is the opiate of the masses”= religion makes our alienated reality bearable by
supporting our aspirations
- BUT, religion is just a symptom of our alienated world…
- SO, the solution is not to disabuse us of our religious illusions but rather to modify the
objective conditions that create these illusions—that’s why we have to stop criticizing religion
(again, a platitude by this point) and start criticizing politics
“On the Jewish Question”
- Germany was still split into small states
- Marx grew up in Prussia, a state he reviled for its provinciality
- the Jewish question is should Jews have the same civil, civic, and political rights? Bauer argues
no because the basis for political rights is citizenship in a self-governing democracy. And Jews
can’t be part of that broader political community if they’re committed to their own particular
community. SO, Bauer recommends abolishing religion so we can all be citizens together.
- BUT, Marx says Bauer is wrong because… Bauer says you can’t be a member of a
particularistic community and a citizen, BUT what Bauer takes for granted is the possibility of
genuine citizenship i.e. belonging to a community characterized by equality and self-
determination
- for Marx we have 2 modern developments that don’t necessarily go together…
#1 modern civil society (breakup of feudalism)
#2 aspiration for political community based on citizenship (French Revolution)
- we aspire to make decisions as citizens about the conditions that affect our lives and we aspire
to do so as a community i.e. commitment to public, communal good
- BUT, these 2 notions are in tension with one another i.e. self-interested individuals with no
investment in collective outcomes (#1) AND aspiration for genuine community (#2) …
How could this work?
- contra Tocqueville, who thought civil society could be complemented with political society
based on citizenship, Marx says this won’t work…
- BECAUSE, even the best possible state (i.e. universal manhood suffrage with no established
religion and rough economic equality) in the (northern) United States is pervasively religious
- SO, even in a democratic political community we still have alienation, and that’s because that
political community coexists with and is always embedded in the context of civil society which
is fundamentally alienated and heteronomous—the notion that we can navigate between the two,
that we can live in civil society but be periodically transposed to a higher plane in the state—is
false, because every time we “transcend” civil society we must return to it just as it was before—
it is the true realm in we inhabit
29
Pg. 33= Feuerbach thought that the human species is unique in its ability to live in a conscious
community and think of itself as part of this community viz. humanity—“species-being”—this is
the aspiration of democratic citizenship
- just as in religion—which aspires to fulfillment in a genuinely human life outside of alienation
—so too political community aspires to fulfillment outside the alienation of civil society
- BUT, (also a la religion) your everyday life is competing with others in civil society, not some
idyllic cooperation in the state… if we were genuine citizens we would be genuinely equal and
cooperative, but we’re not because, in civil society, we’re isolated and fundamentally unequal,
SO being a citizen is incompatible with our actual social life
- in short, the idea that we can achieve freedom fulfillment and community in the state is an
illusion like religion, but this illusion is historically specific—a 19th and 20th century political
illusion
- the problem with this political illusion is that it loses site of the political realities of civil life
Marx’s solution
Pg. 46= go beyond civil society and abolish it, we must change society in order to live as a
genuine member of a self-governing community
- to be a real community it must be universal i.e. it must 1) organize all aspects of our life and it
must 2) be worldwide it must be socialism/communism
Marx’s critique of Tocqueville= it’s impossible to reconcile civil and political society because
as long as you have civil society and as long as community is localized, political society is an
illusion
Tocqueville’s rebuttal= Marx’s argument is all or nothing—and to go that route is to wind up
with nothing (cf. French Revolution), BUT there is a possibility for limited communities of
genuine political freedom
- Tocqueville would see Marx’s proposal as Jacobin i.e. a totalized community will always lead
to a breakdown of both civil and political society and result in an atomized society controlled
despotically by the state
10/18/18
Bourgeois/bourgeoisie
Proletarian/proletariat
Petit bourgeois or petty bourgeois
Lumpenproletariat
Fetter= chains
Forces of production4= level of technological development

Means/conditions of production5= something you need in order to produce
4
“The productive forces were conceived by Marx as including means of production and labour power. Their
development, therefore, encompasses such historical phenomena as the development of machinery, changes in the
labour process, the opening up of new sources of energy, and the education of the proletariat” (Dictionary).
5
“The objects of work and the instruments of work together” (Dictionary).
30
Relations of production6= how forces of production are socially organized, who controls
productive forces and how they are distributed
Mode of production7= forces and relations of production i.e. systematic relations of production
- sometimes conditions / sometimes determines the superstructure
- marks off a certain range of possibilities for organizing the rest of social life e.g. you can’t have
a centralized state in a hunter/gatherer society
Who are the crucial actors in the mode of production?
- in capitalism the central actors are the capitalists and the wage workers or e.g. in feudalism the
central actors are the feudal lord and the peasant
Between these central actors how is the surplus produced?
- Marx thinks in every mode of production (including free market capitalism) certain people,
direct producers produce things and other actors, more dominant groups, take away part of what
they produce i.e. the surplus
Who gets the surplus and how do they get it? What is the mechanism of exploitation?
- In feudalism, subsistence peasants produce food taken by feudal lords by force and consumed
by them.
- In capitalism, the wage laborer (e.g. the auto-worker) contributes a little bit of value to the
capitalist system (e.g. the auto plant) and somehow the capitalist extracts surplus value—this
mechanism of exploitations is less clear than in feudalism—which is fairly direct but overlaid
with sentimental mystifications (ruling ideas)
- capitalist take the surplus and reinvests it in the form of more capital…and reinvests—or else
he would be elbowed out by competitors
How does Marx understand class and class relationships?
- When you have any system of production it imposes certain requirements on us independent of
our will, which means that people in different places in the system will develop different
interests and those interests will be antagonistic to each other.
Example= In capitalism, capitalists will compete with each other.
BUT: In any society, the most crucial antagonism (which doesn’t necessarily imply open conflict
e.g. a successfully repressive slave society) is this mechanism of exploitation between the key
actors in the system. These central antagonisms are the ones that can blow a social system apart
—because neither part can compromise and only 1 will win.
SO: in every system every mode of production generates certain contradiction between the
forces and relations of production. This is an abstract, systemic tension between aspects of the
system. ALSO, you have class antagonism—concrete antagonisms between groups in the
system. Here there are concrete groups of people who clash.
What is a contradiction in the forces and relations of production?
- Usually the forces of production are promoted by the relations of production.
Example= In feudalism, land is not a commodity, etc. etc. BUT LATER, the development of
production is constrained by the relations such that to continue to develop you must unravel the
6
Relations of production are constituted by economic ownership of productive forces; under capitalism the most
fundamental of these relations is the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production while the proletariat owns
only its labour power. Economic ownership is different from legal ownership for it relates to the control of the
productive forces” (Dictionary).
7
“On the one hand it is used to define the type of economic process, and basically the relations between people in
the production and appropriation of the surplus.” … “All sides accept that what is crucial is the way in which the
surplus is produced and its use controlled, for it is the production of a surplus which allows societies to grow and
change.” (Dictionary)
31
relations. SO, the systemic tension in any mode of production is expressed in systemic crises
(e.g. boom and bust in capitalism)
BUT, they also crop up in class antagonisms. And these class interests and antagonisms structure
the history of every society.
- The most important of these conflicts arise out of the different roles that groups occupy in the
system of production. So, in any mode you need to know who has access to the means of
production and who does not. E.g. who has access to property and who does not. THIS is the
basis for class division. BUT on this basis other divisions follow from this i.e. different cultural
outlooks, politics etc.
Marx’s Theory of Class
- supposed to unravel the relationship between the base and superstructure
- how do we understand politics? It’s important per se but we have to understand how it
expresses or maintains social power & how it challenges social power. The fundamental thing is
who has the power in social life. This is the ruling class. The ruling class may not control the
state, even if the state is serving their interests. So, when he says the capitalists are the ruling
class he means they dominate daily life by controlling society’s resources. What makes you the
ruling class is not fundamentally that you control the state but that you dominate society in
everyday life because of the way that society is organized.
SO: We can’t understand political conflicts in their own terms. Fundamentally, these conflicts
have to do with deeper interest i.e. class interest. The question is is political power being used to
preserve the social conditions of the dominant class or the opposite? Most of the time the state
maintains the existent social structure but at the same time it can be a site of class conflict, even
though most of the time even those class conflicts don’t threaten the preponderance of the ruling
class. When they do, we’re in the realm of revolutionary politics.
Ruling class= dominant class in control of society
- we usually find that social and political power converge because when they don’t we get
different problems e.g. 18th Brumaire
Superstructure= law, politics, culture, philosophy
- comes from the hull of the ship vs. above board, but it’s not superfluous i.e. a state
(superstructure) has to ensure that capital can be accumulated and reinvested (base)
- you can’t understand this without understanding the mode of production
- can’t analyze this with the precision of natural science as we can the mode of production
Theory of Ideology
- Marx thinks that to change society you must change the social relationships in connection with
which the production process is organized. You do NOT (fundamentally) change what people
think. However, what people think is still important.
- So, Marx develops the social conditions of thought which involve distortion of the way we see
the world…
1. in society we always have a partial view because we see the world through our class interest
2. when you’re living in a society any attempt to understand a society very different from yours
i.e. everyone in 1 society finds it difficult to think outside the bounds of current conditions
- this is not simply a theory of propaganda i.e. intentional deception, rather the points is that in
class societies based on heteronomy and antagonistic relations—with the best will in the world
we can’t grasp the full structure of society
Example: Marx’s Critique of classic political economy
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- for Marx, these are not propagandists, they are serious theorists e.g. Adam Smith. Nevertheless,
Smith unconsciously has a class bias. He may be thinking about how to make life better for the
poor but he can only imagine a society based on the division of class, whereing capitalists and
landlords get the most. That’s partly because he takes the condition of capitalism as natural
rather than historically specific. So, everyone is trapped in their social paradigm which is
reinforced by the fact that the dominant class has the resources to impose its vision on the rest of
society.
BUT how does Marx then successfully criticize society?
- The possibilities for criticism in a historical period arise when the possibilities for another kind
of society are developing. And these new ideas (criticisms) are expressions of these new
historical possibilities.
Example= The long period of transition from feudalism to capitalism—the development of
enlightenment which involves widespread criticism of the social order BUT these criticism (e.g.
of the aristocracy), these undermine the traditions of feudal privilege but they express an
ideology appropriate to a new set of social relations in which the bourgeoisie can be dominant,
which is based on no formal privilege and a differential control of the productive resources.
- These criticisms also connect to the possible rise of a new class—a new dominant class. With
capitalism Marx thinks the possibilities for social are developing, which is why he can develop a
critique of capitalism. But this also means it would be ludicrous to offer blueprints of what
socialism what look like. Since, trying to describe an altogether different society is utopian (like
going to a monk in the middle ages and asking what industrial capitalism will be like). We can
foresee the basic dynamics but we can’t have a vision of the details.
- This whole process—between forces and relations of production, class antagonisms etc.—this
is all in motion so that the seeds of a new society will express this motion and lead to a shift. So,
in the shift period the contradictions in society are sharpening and deepening AND society is
producing the conditions of its own collapse. The productive forces must then overcome the
existence of the class whose existence is predicated on inertia.
- A dominant class i.e. the class of people who are socially dominant are the carriers of whole
ways of organizing society. This was true of the bourgeoise and this is (or will be) true for the
proletariat. These new and developing classes have the desire to blow the current system apart—
this explains why change expresses itself in violent or revolutionary outbursts.
Revolution= Not necessarily or primarily a seizure of power by one group over another. Rather,
major revolutions are the expression of long term shifts in underlying social patterns, but, they
also help to push through these changes. So, the key to a revolution is getting political power to
carry through social transformation—for which the preconditions we’re already developed. Once
these 2 things are in place i.e. the existing society is in crisis and the possibility of a new society
is in place—that’s when revolution becomes key. A revolution is like a birth i.e. you need
prenatal development but there’s also a point at which the baby must be violently pushed out:
“Force is the midwife for every old society that is pregnant with a new society.”
How is this revolutionary change pushed through?
- One of the orienting ideas of modern sociology is that you can’t just look at events or people’s
conscious attempts to do things. You must look instead at long term dynamics that operate
behind the backs of the actors. History, of course, is also an epic of collective action i.e. class
conflicts can only occur through organization, so too with revolution. This is why it’s worth it to
Marx to organize one. So, men might make history but they don’t do so autonomously—"the
tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare”—So when people do organize to act
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through e.g. revolution, it’s not surprising that these things have massively unintended
consequences. E.g. the French Revolution and its revolutionaries.
Marx on Modern Society
- defined by the capitalist mode of production…
What is capitalism?
- it is not a natural formation where you allow people to pursue their motivations without
interference (a la Smith), it’s something historically specific which entails revolution…
- that revolutionary process has 2 crucial protagonists viz. the bourgeoise—who, as capitalism
develops, bring into being a larger and larger proletariat i.e. lifetime wage-workers
- this development (of capitalism) overwhelms all society and turns most of society into wage
laborers
- these 2 classes, wage-laborers and capitalists, are not the only classes in existence (under
capitalism) but they are crucial because the system they are essential to dominates society and
because of they each represent a certain form of social organization i.e. capitalism (for
bourgeoise) and socialism (for the proletariat)
1. universal commoditization= a system dominated by the production and exchange of

commodities
- a commodity is socially defined i.e. any object can be commodified by being inserted into a
market system
- capitalist market relations expand in scope and intensity i.e. integrated world market + more
and more things in society are transformed into commodities, in particular, land and labor
2. industrialization= large scale, consciously coordinated, technologically advanced production
within the capitalist enterprise
- you had capitalists (i.e. merchants) before fully developed capitalism—BUT, in advanced
capitalism the capitalists own all the means of production (including people’s labors power)
3. the bourgeoise and the proletariat as 2 protagonists
- capitalism has 2 phases i.e. within the capitalist mode of production there are 2 aspects to the
division of labor (people doing different things on a larger scale but somehow being coordinated
in their differentiation)…
a) society as a whole= organized by the market, this huge system not under any one’s control
b) capitalist enterprise= organized by top-down control and domination
- SO, in the capitalist mode of production market anarchy is counterbalanced by administrative
despotism—so when capitalists crow about freedom it’s capital that’s set free NOT people
- as the immediate production process becomes more and more controlled by the capitalist—that
makes a higher division of labor possible so e.g. a manufacturing plant is a piece of social
technology i.e. a way of dominating and organizing people’s labor in predictable and efficient
ways—that social technology is what enables the material technology which in turn encourages
higher levels of social control
 the capitalist enterprise is a planned economy, but one that serves the interest of the
capitalist and NOT most of the producers involved
 SO, this a) impersonal process in society as a whole and b) this top-down hierarchy in
capitalist production are paradoxical but also self-reinforcing
Who is a capitalist?
- bourgeoise is the middle class of the old regime but also the class of the capitalists…
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- a capitalist is defined by his imposed role in the system of production—one which will shape
his mores as well
- a capitalist uses capital (in the sense of concentrated productive resources) to organize labor
(i.e. organizes wage-workers) for profit
proletariat= someone who enters the production process by selling their labor (power) as a
commodity and thereby assents to the power of their capitalist overseers
- capital can’t function except in a context where the capitalist uses it to command the labor
power of other people
But why should productive resources enable you to command labor power?
- it’s a social relation—you need a proletariat free enough to sell its labor power as a commodity,
BUT, you also need them to be forced to sell their labor because there’s no other way for them to
live
- capitalism is a system based on the individual private ownership of the means of production
whereby the vast majority of people don’t own the means of production (because, historically, if
they do own means of production they want to be their own boss
- capitalism is about the creation of capital as a social relation—you need these historical
processes which separate workers form productive properties so they’re able to, yet also forced
to, sell their labor to people who do own the productive powers of society
- this is why, underneath the apparent freedom of wage labor—are social relationships that create
this power imbalance—because the worker MUST work for a capitalist and the person they work
for must act as capitalist in order to remain one (because otherwise they’re put out of business by
competitors)
- that relationship of (antagonistic dependency) between capitalist and wageworkers is the center
of the system
- capitalism is a system of domination because even before the worker agrees to work for
someone he has to work, TF, the problem is not just that the worker doesn’t get enough, it’s that
it’s a relationship of domination based on exploitation
- once this is set in motion capitalism is motored by its own inner dynamics such that it reaches
out more and more to larger parts of the world ALSO, pre-capitalist ways of life are undermined
- constant expansion and innovation can allow the capitalist to arrange resources for maximum
profitability—he has the world market and world labor at his disposal, BUT, he also has
incentive to do maximize profitability because otherwise he’ll be out-competed
How is a worker separated from the means of production?
- a farmer can be separated from his farm
OR: they’re means of production becomes obsolete so e.g. the handloom will always be run out
business by the (automated) factory next door i.e. either the handloomer will go broke or have to
work for the capitalist, or have to start his own factory—which is to say any way you have it
capitalism constantly undermines the traditional ways of life
- with this you also have the social and political predominance of the bourgeoise who will do
whatever is necessary to sweep away obstacles to capitalism
Increasing polarization of modern society which will blow society apart, which has 3
aspects…
1. more of the population will be integrated into the capitalist system and other groups will
be swept away (e.g. traditional land owners, peasants, petty bourgeoisie i.e. small farmers,
craftsmen, shopkeepers)
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- petty bourgeoisie might oppose the advance of capitalism but they’re attempt will fail, which is
good, because large scale production enables a society of abundance—a positive alternative to
capitalism must build on its pros including its increased productivity
2. corrosive rationalism
- sets in motion corrosive rationalism in human relationships – self-interested calculation
replaces everything
3. massive disruption creates conditions where people realize how they’re being screwed
such that the proletariat gains class consciousness and develops a social program of its own
i.e. socialism
- in order to bring through this change we must do something i.e. the proletariat must self-
organize and self-educate + in order not to be the pawns of the system, you have to band together
(unions) to oppose the whole class of bosses (otherwise scabs will always undermine organized
resistance)
- BUT, since the system is stacked against them they realize the enemy is not their bosses but the
capitalist system itself
- SO, revolution will not happen without collective action and in particular the self-organization
and education of the working class is critical to this process BUT whereas for Tocqueville (for
whom political education can lead to freedom) education involves also understanding that we
must think about the common good, for Marx understanding means the proletariat realizing that
the fundamental antagonism of the system to it can only be rectified by destroying the system
that opposes them
- as long as we have societies based on antagonistic systems of production there is no common
good—we have to create a society where there can be a common good BUT there can’t be unless
society is radically different
(pg. 476 of The Manifesto, ¶4)
10/25/18
Marx: Capital
- an abstract analysis of the capitalist mode of production—NOT of society as a whole—this is
not the Communist Manifesto
- the mode of production i.e. the social organization of production is the real foundation of any
society BUT there’s a lot more to social life i.e. the superstructure
- Marx’s analysis of capitalism and its genesis is both abstract and socio-historical—he’s saying
we’re not looking at general laws of economic life but purely the dynamics of a specific mode of
production (very different from prior modes)
- his analysis of capitalism is also not purely descriptive—he’s looking for the fundamental laws
of motion (a la Newton) for the capitalist mode of production—so it’s not a descriptive account
of everything in capitalism—just the core
- Marx is focused purely on the fundamental tendencies, in the absence of things like “friction”
etc.
Where does the analysis of production fit into Marx’s theory of society?
- a mode of production ≠ society, BUT the key to understanding society is to understand its
social organization of production (to produce and distribute)
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- in all societies humans are embedded in systems of relationships independent of their will—
systems which control them, AND of those systems, the most fundamental are those connected
to the social organization of production e.g. technology, production distribution
- BUT, we also have to look at the social organization of production because all forms of
production occur within a system of social relationships
- Smith gave us a sense of the market and the market as a system BUT Marx thinks he’s
nevertheless misleading because Smith thinks he’s describing the universal laws of economic life
rooted in human nature BUT all he captures is the distinctive dynamics of only 1 mode of
production viz. the capitalist mode of production
Mode of production= a way of organizing the forces of production (society’s capacity to
produce) into a system
If we’re looking at the dominant mode of production in society, we want to know: “What
are the central actors in this mode of production?”
- e.g. feudal lords and serfs for feudalism
- in capitalism, it’s the capitalist and wage workers (proletariat)—people who make their living
by selling their labor for a wage, SO this is really a relationship between capital and wage labor
How is the surplus produced and appropriated? What is the mechanism of exploitation?
Who gets the surplus, by what mechanisms, and what do they do with it?
- in every mode of production, including capitalism, the direct producers produce enough to keep
themselves alive + a potential surplus which is taken by other sets of people
- in feudalism, the mechanism of exploitation is simple: peasants farming in families and
communities and producing a certain amount of food, a certain amount of which is taken away
by the lord (simple, BUT veiled by ideology)
- in CAPITALISM, exploitation persists but the mechanism is more complicated, it look
according to the (ruling) ideologues like voluntary exchange
- BUT, Marx argues the capitalism is a system of domination and exploitation
- feudal lords use their surplus to surround themselves with armed men, consume it, or consume
it conspicuously, that is, extravagantly
- capitalists reinvest their capital to produce more surplus value in an endless cycle, IN FACT, if
they don’t do this their competitors will drive them out of business
- workers participate in producing commodities to be sold on the market to which they add value,
some of which goes to the capitalist
What are the key contradictions in a mode of production?
- there are ones between the forces and social relations of production
- AND, there are antagonisms between different groups which generate conflict (how Marx
begins the Manifesto) BUT what these class antagonisms lead to are long term changes from one
society to another involving different sequences of modes of production
The Main Actors of Mature Capitalism a.k.a. “Modern Industrial Capitalism”
- 1 mode of production is dominant albeit amid other less dominant ones—dominant modes
influence the subordinate ones, tends to dominate them, and drive them out
- unlike Tocqueville, Marx thought that dynamics of capitalism would ensure that eventually all
people (or the vast majority) would become employees who had to sell their own labor—and the
petty bourgeoisie would become largely extinct—one of the most successful predictions in
historical sociology
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Antagonistic interdependence= relation between capitalists and wage labor i.e. if you’re a
worker you need a job so you depend on capital (and capitalists depend on wage laborers to add
use-value, including surplus value, to the commodities they wish to sell) BUT
What social conditions dictate that most people can only live by selling their labor power to
capitalists?
- BUT, this dependence has antagonisms built into it…
- a worker is not forced to work for one capitalist but for a capitalist (since he is systematically
separated from the means of production—to which the capitalists has exclusive access)—as
opposed to certain peasants who could at least dream of getting rid of their landlord and
producing their own food, in capitalism this is no longer tenable
Marx’s theory of surplus value
- not simply a moral critique
- crucial to any attempt to understand how capitalism works as a system
Surplus value= all modes of production involve the extraction of surplus BUT the mechanism
of exploitation is different in different modes (e.g. feudalism vs. capitalism)
- in capitalism, the mechanism is obscured by the illusion that the capitalist and the wage worker
are formally equal and that the relationship they enter into is formally voluntary
What drives and motivates the actor who controls the process of production?
- the urge for profit—capitalists always want to get more out than what they put in…(because of
ceaseless competition + the very principal of capital outlay is ROI)
But where does profit come from if any market of exchange you (ostensibly) exchange
equivalent values?
- sometimes you get it through monopoly or extortion HOWEVER those are NOT the
fundamental origins of profit, the extraction of surplus value…
- workers add value to what they work on and a portion of that value is taken away from them in
the process of production
What is distinctive of capitalism?
- unlike any other mode it is a mode of the production of commodities in which the elements
(means) of production themselves (land and labor) are commodities
Commodity vs. other kinds of goods= commodity is produced to be exchanged on the market
(rather than produced to be consumed by the producer e.g. the family or community)—or, at
least, it can be treated as such
- the difference between a commodity and other goods is NOT physical but social—something is
converted into a commodity by its insertion into a system of exchange relationships
- every commodity in the market has 2 kinds value: use (what it can be used for; qualitatively
different) and exchange (what others are willing to trade for it;quantitatively comparable i.e.
10,000 apples = 1 car)
- the exchange value should be the same for everyone at every moment because its established by
a social process…
What is that process?
- fluctuation (due to supply and demand) will tie the exchange value of a commodity to the cost
of its production (NOT its use-value)—it’s not that the seller and buyer compromise, it’s that a
systemic process—in the long run—correlates exchange value with the cost of production
average socially necessary labor= the process by which the market brings the exchange value
of a commodity in line with the average cost of production
Example= air has tremendous use value and no exchange value
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Example= if there is handloom weaver who can produce cloth at a certain rate but someone else
opens a factory w/power looms that can produce that same amount of cloth at half the cost—then
amount of labor the handloomer expends on his cloth is rendered irrelevant to its exchange value
- all commodities have a relative exchange value only because once can abstract in each case to
the average socially necessary labor required for production
- capitalist production is not primarily the production of use value (from the perspective of the
capitalist)—but rather, is determined by consideration of exchange value
- SO, what drives the capitalist is trying to get more exchange value out of the production he
invests in i.e. you’re trying to get surplus value i.e. profit THEN you must reinvest to create
more surplus—you are always maximizing profit relative to competitors—in an endless cycle
C-M-C vs. M-C-M= most people want money to get commodities BUT the capitalist uses
money to buy commodities to make MORE money… M-C-M’
- it’s not just the pursuit of surplus value it’s the pursuit of surplus value for the sake of more
capital for the sake of further investment…what drives the process is accumulation of capital
But, again, where does profit come from?
- not just Marx’s question but on that has bedeviled economists since Smith…
- if, in the market, you exchange commodities of equivalent exchange values where does profit
come from? How does anyone get more out of an exchange than what they put in?
- Marx does NOT think that prophet only accrues from the abuse of the system RATHER profit
comes from the normal everyday operation of the system…
- the capitalist buys means of production as commodities on the market (taking for granted a
process developed over centuries in which a massive market in which everything you need to
produce is acquirable, including land and labor) then produces commodities and sells those on
the market
- between these 2 stages something else has happened i.e. the capitalist organized the means of
production (e.g. raw materials, technology, labor) and HERE you have a relationship NOT
mediated by the market i.e. a relationship internal to the capitalist enterprise—large scale,
consciously controlled, planned economies from the top down (Is this really unmediated by the
market?)
- OUT THERE in the market, you have, in principle, voluntary exchanges between equals but
within the capitalist enterprise you have hierarchy, indeed, despotism in which the capitalist can
both command labor and organize it with greater division, surveillance, and control – it is a
construction of social technology—the paradigm for which is the factory
- SO, in this consciously controlled despotic division of labor the laborer—who is ostensibly,
formally equal on the market—is in the capitalist enterprise ≠
Labor power vs. labor= if you’re a small farmer you sell commodities you produce and you
organize your own labor, BUT in capitalism what the worker is selling is his capacity to labor—
he can’t even begin to labor before submitting to the capitalist his capacity to labor which the
capitalist then organizes 2gether with all the other means of production he’s purchased on the
market
- UNDER the control of the capitalist, the labor power then turns into labor (specific)—what the
capitalist buys is labor time…what determines the exchange value of labor? The cost of
producing that labor power…the cost of producing labor power involves paying a high enough
wage to keep the worker alive and healthy (enough to work), maybe training, SO, when you
determine exchange value of labor power what you get is the basic minimum wage the floor
below which wages can’t sink without avoiding running out of workers
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Example= in a 14-hour workday, it takes 6 hours to sustain the worker the rest is surplus—
which the worker and capitalist fight over
- this antagonism leads to inevitable conflict over working conditions—this is how the class
antagonism manifests itself in concrete ways
Example= the 10-hour act in England (which many economists thought would destroy all
surplus)
- SO, AGAIN, most people are forced to sell their labor to the capitalist and most of the time
they will make minimum wage
unions= attempt to act together to bargain over working conditions (wages, working conditions,
length of working day) with the threat that all can withdraw their labor at once
- BUT to not be undercut by other workers at other firms you need further collective organization
- indeed, eventually the labor struggle must lead to political action
- it is only through collective action that escalates to political action that workers can improve
their conditions
Limits of surplus value
- there are limits on how long you can extend the working day
- furthermore, class struggles, when they’re successful, also limit extraction
- BUT, the capitalist is still under pressure to extract surplus value SO…
relative surplus value= increasing the proportion of the working day which is surplus i.e. by
increasing productivity—you can increase labor time that yields surplus value
- precisely when capitalists are faced with a class struggle that limits their ability to extract
surplus value—this increases the capitalist incentive to increase productive forces through
innovation
- MOREOVER, capitalists precisely have the ability to do this because everything they’re
working with is a commodity which can be purchased and organized (unlike a feudal lord who is
bound by social relationship and obligations)
Example= capitalists have an interest in replacing skilled labor with unskilled labor
(machinery); outsourcing; layoffs—there are no long term relationships to constrain you—which
explains the unique and incredible dynamism of capitalist production—IT IS the capitalist who
organizes the production process—who has both an interest in and a constant pressure to produce
on a large scale and in a technologically dynamic way—he has the ability to do this because he
can organize and reorganize the elements of the enterprise—more so than in any prior economic
system
- MOREOVER, competition spurs the capitalist to maximize and innovate in the name of
relative surplus value
organic composition of capital= power comes from accumulated productive resources which,
in the context of capitalist social relations, gives you the ability to command labor—over time,
the proportion of constant capital will increase (via a drive for innovation/competition) and the
proportion of variable capital will shrink (via increased exploitation)
- the problem is the profit comes from the variable capital—from the money that goes to
labor...which increases competition to exploit labor
- small scale capitalists will eventually go under leading to bigger enterprises leading to more
complicated organization and discipline
constant capital= “that portion of capital advanced which is turned into means of production
and does not undergo any quantitative alteration of value in the production process” e.g.
machinery, technology
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variable capital= “that part of capital advanced which is turned into labor power, and which,
first, reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and secondly produces value additional to its
own equivalent, a surplus value, which varies according to circumstances”
capital= “a coercive social relation; this relation is attached to things, whether commodities or
money, and in money form comprises the accumulated unpaid surplus labour of the past
appropriated by the capitalist class in the present. It is thus the dominant relation of capitalist
society.”
crises= recession and depressions from over-production which doesn’t mean that the system is
producing more use-value than people need but that there’s more than people can buy (perhaps
because they’re unemployed or underpaid)
- for Marx, crises are normal and functional for the system – they cause suffering but they shake
out the less efficient, less productive capitalists and allow for greater concentration of resources
in the hands of the more efficient ones
What are the consequences?
- the capitalist mode of production reproduces itself—multiplies the capitalist way of doing
things and intensifies the separation of the laborer from the means of production
- the worker adds exchange value and produces surplus value which is turned into capital which
is the basis for the control over the worker—the worker himself perpetuates this wage
relationship
- also, the capitalist system is expanding because of the competition for markets and because the
scale of capitalist production increases
- BUT, with the expanding reproduction of the system the system is also generating
contradictions which will blow the system apart e.g. fundamental polarization of the class
structure…
- other modes of production are driven out which erodes classes not central to capitalist
production (e.g. petty bourgeoisie)
- within capitalism, the generated class antagonisms and conflicts will be increasingly sharpened
—workers and capitalists may squabble over conditions but capitalism is fundamentally a system
of domination and exploitation
- as capitalists are increasingly pushed toward the exploitation of workers will be increasingly
conscious of this injustice and also more and more self-organizing in their resistance, SO,
capitalism generates the objective preconditions for a better society
- in the long run, the dominant and fundamental conflicts will be connected to the mode of
production (as opposed to national or ethnic conflicts), which is why as a focus of collective
identity nationality will recede relative to class consciousness
- the political realm includes many different groups with different interests but the logic of
capitalism shapes all of these
- also, unlike all these other groups the classes in capitalism represent other ways of organizing
society as a whole
Afterthoughts
- for Marx, his theory is scientific not moral—anyone in the system is forced to act in accordance
with it—it’s not that capitalist are bad, they’re just capitalists
- BUT, while it’s a work of social science it’s by all appearances motivated by a passionate
hatred of capitalist production
- the system as a whole does have immoral consequences and Marx is trying to persuade readers
to change the conditions of modern society
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- the most important and effective moral action is social action i.e. not changing you individual
outlooking on life but finding ways to change a social, political, and economic system whose
fundamental consequences are bad
- social science, then, isn’t just descriptive, it’s action oriented—this is a critical theory
Commodity fetishism= how a social relationship is confused for a relationship between things
WEBER
11/01/18
Some Weberian Innovations

charisma= idea from early Christianity that Weber pioneered in applying to political leadership
- the idea that there’s a fundamental qualitative difference between fact and value was not
something Weber developed (he took it from combinations of Neo-Kantianism and Nietzsche)
but that notion that moral, aesthetic judgments etc. were undecidable on an empirical basis
because they rested on value judgments—that made its way to America through Weberian
sociology
- Weber’s point (and the point of other thinkers who tried to draw that distinction) was that
sometimes you’ll have values that are ultimately incompatible
Weber: The Protestant Ethic
- Weber is not tying to give the final word on what caused capitalism, rather, the book is a partial
argument that only makes sense in the context of his broader theoretical project (which Weber
says explicitly)
Paradoxes of Calvinism’s Role in the Birth of Modern Capitalism
- argues that certain kinds of (theologically) radical Protestantism played a role in the
breakthrough to modern capitalism—this wasn’t because Calvinism favored capitalist activity,
indeed, Calvin emphasized salvation more than acquisition
predestination= God is omnipotent and omniscient so he knows in advance (even of the
creation of the world) who will be saved and damned, and there’s nothing you can to affect that
- you might think this would lead to fatalism, but Weber argues that his led to restless activism
(paradox)
- thought Calvinism’s influence on capitalism was an example of how religious systems of ideas
about how to understand the world can have a historical impact
- HOWEVER, Weber also argues that Calvinism created a world in which the roots of that
powerful religious experience are undermined—through rationalization and disenchantment
(paradox)
Biographical Background of Weber (1864 – 1920)

- born while Marx was still alive but comes of age in the 1890s when Marx had already died
- b. in 1860s and died in 1920 (in the influenza epidemic after WW1)
Franco-Prussian War (~ 1871) and its Consequences
- Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) made war with Prussia and was decisively defeated
- led to 1) the downfall of Louis Bonaparte, 2) the 3rd Republic of France, which lasted until
1940 when it was knocked out by the Germans
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Paris Commune= in the aftermath of Prussian siege of Paris the war led to an uprising in Paris
which Marx and others thought of as the first attempt at socialist revolution
- King of Prussia became the emperor of Germany, which was unified under the Prussian
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
- Weber grew up in this newly unified Germany and was a German nationalist
- during this period Germany not only became a major military power but also went through
rapid industrialization—outstripping France and catching up with Britain and the U.S.
- industrialization led to all kinds of dislocations and the birth of a German industrial working
class united under the the largest Marxist party in the world: German Social Democratic Party
(MPD)
- MPD was the largest party in Germany with millions of voters and many affiliated unions,
schools etc.—indeed, this era saw the birth of Marxism as a unified doctrine, something in which
MPD members played a prominent role (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg)
- SO, it looked like Marx was writing the script BUT there were complications i.e. Germany was
not unified by liberalism, revolution, or the bourgeoisie—it was unified as an empire under
Prussia
- Prussia did not dominate out of social or economic superiority, RATHER, it was the
effectiveness of its professional army and its centralized bureaucratic state—which led Weber
(contra Marx) to think that politics was not simply reducible to social factors or that the state
simply served the interest of social forces
- another complication to the Marxist script was that in this unified Germany (now a major
industrial power home to an increasingly industrial working class) a major political and cultural
role was played by military aristocrats from the German far east: Junkers—so aristocracy was
not dead either
Weber vs. Marx
- Weber was neither a socialist nor a Marxist—reviled Marxists of his time
- on the other hand, he took Marx seriously and drew a great deal from him—the synthesis
Weber comes to is different from Marx but it’s too simple to say he refutes Marx...
- instead, Weber’s relationship of Marx was one of critical appropriation, though Marxist ideas
were taken in different direction in Weber’s work
Weber’s Range
- Weber has a staggering almost encyclopedic range in his work, which he combines with a
constant striving for theoretical and analytical rigor
- landmark study of methodology in social science as well as a major theorist of democracy,
social organization, and the modern state; engaged in a massive comparative study of world
religions; book on origins of Western music, as well as a remarkable synthesizing history of the
western city
- one of the most powerful thinkers when it comes to power, domination, and legitimacy—when
one thinks about how systems of power try to achieve legitimacy, that goes back to Weber
- Weber resisted the attempt to systematize his findings, indeed, he stresses the incompleteness
of all his results (and any attempt to understand the world), and hence urges us to look at the
world from different perspectives
- YET, all his work is unified by a distinctive theoretical approach and has a certain massive
coherence which is shaped by a set of basic preoccupations and themes...
Major Themes in Weber:
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Modern western civilization vs. other major civilizations

Modern capitalist order
- Weber is not trying to explain the existence of traders and exchange etc. indeed, capitalist
activity—the systematic pursuit of profit through buying and selling or large-scale commercial
activity—that’s existed (to a greater or less extent) since the rise of settled agriculture
- HOWEVER, capitalist activity has usually been on the periphery of economic life, it’s only in
the modern era in the west that capitalism came to dominate economic life and through that
domination put its stamp on all of civilization
- we want to understand why modern capitalism didn’t happen in China or the Islamic world and
why it didn’t happen at an earlier time in the west (e.g. during the Renaissance)
Rationalization
- capitalism tended to rationalize economic life and through this contribute to the rationalization
of social life in general
What does Weber mean by rationality?
rational action= action is rational to the extent that it involves a conscious, continuous, and
systematic effort to adjust means (or action) to explicit ends
- you 1) set certain ends you want to achieve as explicitly and self-consciously as possible, then
2) you figure out how to adjust your actions so as to achieve those goals, and then 3) you monitor
yourself and if you’re not doing things correctly you adjust your actions so as to achieve your
goals more proficiently 4) then you do this continuously so your action becomes more and more
effective at achieving its stated objective
Why does Weber bother to define rational action?
- because most action in society is not rational, much of it is emotional or impulsive i.e.
“affective”
- more important, in many societies a great deal of action is tradition i.e. you follow customary
patterns of activity as long as they tend to work—you’re not asking yourself what am I trying to
achieve and is this the best way to do so?
rationalization= the pattern or movement by which rational action becomes dominant to an
unprecedented extent
- involves rationalization both of our ways of thinking about the world and of social organization
(like modern western capitalism)
Paradoxes of Rationalization
- argues that the Protestant ethic contributed to rationalization of economic activity and society
BUT that this process of rationalization had powerful non-rational roots in religion and also
some (arguably) non-rational effects
iron cage= the meaningless machine that rationalization has made of human society—wherein
it’s harder and harder for us to make serious choices
- there are different types of rationality in Weber insofar as there are different ways to make
actions more rational...
Types of Rationalization
value rationality vs. instrumental rationality
- values are involved in both types of rationality because for Weber action is rational to the
extent that you formulate the goals explicitly and try systematically to achieve them in the best
way possible, BUT rationality can’t help you choose your goals (rationality can help you clarify
your goals, see if they’re compatible, or figure out the best means to achieving them)...
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- the choice of goals rests on value judgments which, from the point of view of rationality, are
ultimately arbitrary
Example= A capitalist businessman trying to maximize profit can use rationality to do so in the
most efficient way possible. But, by the same token, Eichmann can use rationality to exterminate
Jews in the most efficient way possible. Both are examples of rationality.
- Weber’s position marks a decisive break from western philosophy (from the time of the Greeks
onward). Historically, the whole point of reason was to tell you how to find the good. Weber’s
notion of a qualitative difference between fact and value, and the auxiliary notion that rationality
can’t help you decide what you should do—this would not have made sense to many thinkers in
western history (e.g. Hegel, Marx)
- SO, rationality can be oriented to different kinds of ends.
value rationality= For some ends it might be that the value is inherent to the action itself, you’re
following a code of conduct e.g. the 10 commandments, Jesus’s sermon on the mount. So, you
are (largely) indifferent to the results so long as your behaving appropriately.
instrumental rationality= oriented toward concrete results. You measure rationality based on
the results and if you don’t get the results you want you use different means.
- this is the rationality of the engineer or the capitalist and its principle is efficiency
- Weber argues that the triumph of rationalization in the modern world is the triumph of
instrumental rationality, BUT, this is only 1 type of rationality
Example= In china, a railroad from point A to B will bypass the ancestral graveyard in between
(value rationality). In western Europe the same railroad will bisect the graveyard (instrumental
rationality). Both are rational, they just answer to different kinds of rationality.
- BUT, rationalization is above all the triumph of instrumental rationality.
Power and Meaning

- on the one hand Weber emphasizes the role of power, conflict and domination in history and
society arguing they’re fundamental and universal to human society (contra Marx who believes
that it is at least possible to create a society not based on power and domination—for Weber, this
is utopian)
- however, power rarely appears naked, more often it is manifested through some form of
organization which is why Weber is so focused on social organizations
- BUT, power seeks legitimacy i.e. acceptance, in particular by the ruled, which is where
legitimacy comes in...
- we need to understand the way people make sense of the world, which means, understanding
systems of ideas which don’t just try to describe the world but try to tell us the meaning of the
world and serve as a guide to action e.g. religion, Marxism
- he’s trying to figure out how and under what conditions systems of ideas have a major impact
on history
- the Protestant Ethic is about how a certain structure of economic power, capitalism, emerged in
part through the impact of an important system of meaning, Protestantism, and especially,
Calvinism
What is the role of ideas and under what conditions can they affect history?
- Weber is trying to avoid the poles of two different explanatory approaches to this question, i.e.,
vulgar materialism and idealism
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vulgar materialism= ideas don’t make anything happen, they’re just epiphenomenon, symptoms
of deeper material facts e.g. ideas are just a reflection or rationalization of people’s material
interests, or ideas are reflection of a form of social organization
vulgar idealism= ideas are everything, events are explained by people’s attitudes, the spirit of
the age, psychic states etc.
- instead Weber proposes a complex and historically specific relationship between ideas and
ways of life and ways they come together...
elective affinity= extent to which these materialist and idealist factors tend to converge and
thereby emerge as a motive force in history
- play on Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities about friendship which was itself a play on the term
in chemistry denoting how some elements were more likely to bond than others
Under what conditions does elective affinity occur?
- Weber doesn’t think we can reduce this to universal law (a la Marx)
- BUT, we can say that: much of the time people’s actions are mostly driven by their interests
- HOWEVER, interests are not obvious or given—people have material interests (e.g. money,
power, security) BUT people also have ideal interest (e.g. dignity, honor, respect, salvation)
- MOREOVER, how do people decide what their interests are? they have worldviews which tell
them how to define reality which in turn very often shapes their interests
Example= If you’re a Calvinist invested in salvation—that’s a powerful interest. If you don’t
believe in God, you won’t have an interest in salvation. OR You’re a worker reading Marx and
are for that reason bent on world revolution as the answer to an irremediably unjust system. OR
You’re a worker reading Milton Friedman and therefore think capitalism is the best possible
system.
- All of these are ways of pursuing you’re interest but what you think your
interest is has a lot do with what you think your world is like—which
is where systems of ideas come in.
Weber: Sociology of World Religions= “Even when action is driven by the dynamic of interest
the world images created, for instance, by religion help determine along which tracks it is
pushed.”
- Weber argues that there’s complex interplay between systems of ideas and the actions of
groups...
- groups will tend to gravitate to systems of ideas that 1) justify their interests as they understand
them, 2) makes sense of their way of life, 3) help them in their struggle with other groups—since
one thing all groups do is fight over the definition of reality and depending on which systems of
ideas prevail this will give certain groups advantages over others
Antonio Gramsci= Italian Marxist contemporary of Weber’s who argued that in addition to
direct coercive control certain groups achieve “hegemony” i.e. a situation in which some
definition of reality is so powerful it’s difficult to conceive of the world in other terms.
- in terms of elective affinity groups will gravitate to systems of ideas that serve these functions
- which systems of ideas groups are drawn to will have a big effect on their way of life and their
future, which also means a lot depends on which powerful systems of ideas are available to
different groups in certain social and historical contexts
- ideas will only have effects by means of groups BUT groups also need ideas—this is the
process of elective affinity
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- systems of ideas can be especially effective at certain historical junctures, especially, during
periods of massive social change when either there’s a need to make sense of a new kind of
world or when you have groups in distress that need to make sense of this
- systems of ideas can also have a major effect during outbreaks of charisma...
charisma= the field of (individual or collective) leadership and prophesy that can have a major
influence on the way others see the world
- sometimes the effect of the prophetic message can convince people that they should turn their
world upside down e.g. Jesus tells followers to do the opposite of what’s written in scripture or
saying: the last shall be first and the first shall be last—so intellectuals can sometimes play a
crucial role because they are idea mongers i.e. professional articulators of systems of meaning
e.g. priests, prophets, politicians, artists
- when intellectuals have an impact the consequences are frequently very different from the one
they originally intended e.g. Jesus would likely be very surprised by what happened with
institutional Christianity OR Marx would be quite horrified by Soviet style socialism OR Calvin
would have been horrified by his (putative) role in the creation of modern Western capitalism
What is the Protestant Ethic trying to explain?
- he’s not trying to explain buying and selling in general, or even, scattered capitalist activity,
RATHER...
How do we understand the nature and emergence of modern western capitalism?
- you needed a wide range of material conditions (modern market, agriculture) to prepare the
ground BUT by themselves these CANNOT account for the birth of capitalism—especially
because they were present in other regions without giving rise to a self-sustaining capitalist order
that came to dominate economic and social life
- in addition to those material conditions the modern west had another crucial catalytic factor—
the existence of a certain social group from the western middle classes with a particular kind of
driving motivation i.e. “the spirit of capitalism”
What are the characteristics of the modern capitalist order?
1. universal commoditization= a system based on buying and selling of commodities with
market penetration and capitalization etc.
2. capitalist production= the industrial capitalist who buys the elements of production on the
market and then organizes production according to the rational organization of labor i.e. the
systematic rational organization of wage labor
- in most of history the entrepreneur is a trader who buys something one place and sells it to
another
- Weber is emphasizing how capitalism rationalizes the production process using all these
elements—including human activity—as means to a certain end and constantly organizing and
reorganizing with this end in mind i.e. profit—modern capitalism rationalizes economic life
through social organization
What is the “spirit” of modern western capitalism? What is the spirit that drives the
capitalist entrepreneur?
- greed is not sufficient—pirates, misers, spendthrifts are greedy, but they don’t construct
anything or perpetually accumulate and reinvest capital
- it’s rather the constant attempt to maximize profit AND THEN reinvest this for
more in an endless cycle—the spirit is the spirit of instrumental rationality whose
end is the accumulation of capital, a spirit of instrumental rationality driven by the
end of endless accumulation
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But why would anyone behave this way?

- indeed, most people in most societies don’t naturally maximize utility as classical economists
would have it—most people in most societies don’t act this way
Example= in principle, offering people a higher wage should get more out of them, but in many
cases people operate within a traditional framework of needs and wants so when they make what
they need they’ll turn their attention to something else—so if you offer them more money you’ll
get less
- so human nature by itself will not get you modern western capitalism
- Marx thinks capitalism is a system of forces that compel people to act this way—other
capitalist will outcompete any capitalist who doesn’t maximize profit accordingly
- Weber subscribes to Marx’s answer but it leaves out how this system got started in the first
place—BEFORE modern capitalism consolidated and could put such pressures on individuals,
there had to exist significant social groups who acted this way even though it wasn’t objectively
necessary for them to do so and even when many people regarded this behavior as immoral or
insane
- in fact, historically you find that the pioneers of modern capitalism are groups outside the
traditional order driven by a sense of duty to organize life for this end of endless accumulation—
which attitude Weber traces all the way to the Protestant Reformation
The Argument of The Protestant Ethic
- Again, NOT trying to explain all forms of capitalist activity or completely account for the birth
of capitalism—this is just one crucial factor i.e. the way it rationalizes economic and social life
through instrumental rationality i.e. the constant, continuous, systematic attempt to adjust means
to specific ends—to the extent that instrumental rationality comes to dominate it marks a break
with other types of action, specifically, traditional types of action
- Weber is interested in ascetic Protestantism, especially Calvinism, because of its connection
with modern western capitalism, in other words, the conscious organization of human activity,
not simply the explosion of greed (which is insufficient for modern capitalism) but the
systematic pursuit of greed for the sake of never-ending accumulation of capital and profit
- the roots of this rationalization are in part non-rational insofar as they’re religious
Weber’s 3 Step Argument in the Protestant Ethic
1. Protestantism (esp. Calvinism) and the Protestant Ethic
- Protestantism especially in its most theologically radical forms (e.g. Calvinism) created an
ethos, a worldview, Weber calls “worldly asceticism”...
asceticism= a self-discipline and self-denial toward some end
- many types of asceticism take you “out of the world” or outside mundane activities (e.g.
religion) BUT the kind of asceticism promoted by Protestantism is oriented toward mundane,
daily affairs, that is, you have a duty NOT to withdraw from the world (a la a monastery) but to
act IN the world, in particular, by striving for your calling—continuous methodical efforts in the
world are a duty
a calling (or vocation)= in Christianity, the idea that God is calling you to do something
- for the clergy, this is precisely the call to remove yourself from life, BUT for Calvinism, the
calling is to stay rooted in everyday life
2. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
- this calling to the world, toward methodical action in the world, became translated, under
certain historical conditions, into the drive for accumulation in the context of economic activity
in a market economy—it’s not simply that the restraints on accumulation were released, that you
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were now allowed to be greedy, it’s that accumulation, the success of your calling, becomes a
moral duty, this process of acquisition is released from traditional restraints BUT is still morally
defined and oriented
3. The Spirit of Capitalism and the Modern Capitalist Order
- Weber is NOT arguing that this impulse by itself produced capitalism, but a crucial catalytic
factor was nevertheless the existence of a decisive group of actors motivated and oriented in this
way who helped produce the breakthrough to a self-sustaining, dominant capitalist order
- here elective affinity plays an important role between the spirit of capitalism and
certain groups in the western middle class
A Summary of the Argument in the Protestant Ethic

The Timeframe= the 15th c. Protestant Reformation that shattered the unity of Western
Christendom (which had existed for a millennium and a half prior) and gave rise to numerous
religious wars and a plurality of new religious ideas
- Weber begins by looking at Luther (who touched off the Reformation) but Luther’s version of
Protestantism didn’t mark the sharpest break from Catholicism, SO, Weber focuses on more
(theologically) radical strains, in particular, Calvinism
Calvinists= the Puritans and pilgrims who came to America, the Scottish Presbyterians, Dutch
Reform Church, Congregationalists—all of whom shared a distinctive ethos...
The Calvinist Ethos
1. priesthood of all believers
- begins with Luther but is then intensified by others
- most religions distinguish between the kinds of demands made of the laity and the clergy, BUT,
in ascetic Protestantism this distinction is dissolved i.e. exceedingly stringent religious demands
are placed on everyone
- there’s also no longer any intermediary between you and God, SO, these demands come
straight to you from God
2. radical transcendence of God
- religions differ on the extent to which God is in the world and can be accessed by believers
(through ritual etc.)
- Calvinism carried to an extreme the process began by monotheism in which the sacred is
removed from the world (disenchantment) i.e. God is inaccessible or hidden and cannot be
directly experienced by believers (even through ritual or clergy)—the only relationship you can
have to God is to serve as his instrument i.e. fulfilling God’s demands
- the priesthood of all believers + the radical transcendence of God = the calling -->
you must organize your life around your calling which is to serve as an instrument
of God’s will
3. predestination
- your key question is whether you’re saved, and God knows this in advance (i.e. the doctrine of
election)
What are the consequences of the Calvinist ethos?
- So, per the priesthood of all believers (1), uniform and stringent ethical demands are placed on
all believers as individuals i.e. you face God alone and there’s no one to help you. Moreover, you
face a terrifying God, one omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent (i.e. totally inaccessible)—
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who you are utterly unable to influence (2). Indeed, on the most important question—whether
you are saved or damned—you are powerless (3). You can’t earn election because it’s
predetermined, and even if you could, you wouldn’t deserve what you earned anyway, since you
are blotted by Original Sin from the beginning. Thus, we deserve to be dammed even though
occasionally God will, in his grace, decide to save one of us. But our salvation is entirely out of
our hands so the only way to have any relationship to God is to serve an instrument of His will.
- This doctrine should lead to fatalism. Yet, paradoxically, it led to restless activism.
How did Calvinist doctrine lead to restless activism?
- We have to look NOT just at the strictly logical consequences of this doctrine BUT ALSO at
the psychological impact...
Psychological impact of Calvinist doctrine:
1. unprecedented anxiety of the single individual= Constant irresolvable anxiety because even
though you know you can’t do anything about your state of election it is emotionally necessary
to do something to reassure yourself that you may be one of the elect. This leads to a restless
search for a sign of your salvation, as a coping mechanism.
Example= Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” – To God, your soul
appears as a loathsome spider crawling with sin. God holds your repulsive soul by a string above
a fiery furnace and if He were just he’d let you be incinerate immediately—and forever. But
sometimes, for some reason, God in his inscrutable grace, stays his hand. THIS is why you look
for a sign of your salvation.
- One sign might be elect is that your fulfilling your calling in a systematic, continuous, and
methodical way. This won’t guarantee your salvation but if you simply give up that will be a sure
sign that you are NOT saved. So, you are constantly trying to reassure yourself of your salvation
by pursuing success in your calling, which success may itself be another indication of your
election. This is a constant search for some sign of election which, even if it is found, will never
be adequate for a stable sense of security.
- If you’re engaged in capitalist activity you are serving as God’s instrument in the accumulation
of good. Here, anxiety is turned into an ethos: the demand for continuous accumulation in pursuit
of your calling. This is NOT like the “good works” of Catholicism. The Calvinist God doesn’t
want periodic good deeds and punctuated absolution for bad ones. He wants a life organized
entirely and exhaustively around the doing of good deeds—systematically devoted to a calling.
One lapse or sin is enough to be a sign of your damnation—even one black mark can never be
erased. So, you must be constantly on guard against the slippage of sin.
Gambling Example= Catholic moral writers would say it was sin to gamble because you might
bankrupt yourself and your family. Your family will starve, your children will die in the gutter.
But Protestants moralists were afraid of winning because then you would get something for
nothing, stop working, and effectively destroy your moral character.
- This character is self-reinforcing (?) and persists beyond the religious beliefs that gave rise to it.
Benjamin Franklin (author of Poor Richard’s Almanac) is not a Calvinist. He was a deist who
did not believe in predestination but who nevertheless came from a Calvinist background. SO,
people oriented in this way not only affected economic life but the whole texture of social life.
People from a Calvinist background, for instance, played a disproportionate role in the
development of modern science (in the 16 and 1700s) and the development of modern armies.
- For Weber, though, what is critical is the elective affinity between this ethos and certain key
groups in Western middle classes who pioneered modern capitalism. It gave them a sense of
purpose, motivation, justification, and superiority (over the aristocracy and the poor).
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- This ethos deemphasized the Christian notion of communal ties and brotherly love. You have to
safeguard your place within the elect and you can’t let pity for the damned deter you.
Calvinist individualism vs. Calvinist collective organization
- People with this ethos were good at formal organization which is different from emotionally
bound community. This ethos gave people a willingness and ability to impose their self-directed
ruthlessness on others.
Weber’s Take on the Calvinist Ethos and its Effect on Social Life
- He was ambivalent. It’s not an alloyed good or evil. But whatever one thinks of the Protestant
ethic it was a meaningful way of life. These people had an impact on the world precisely because
they had a very powerful sense of meaning rooted in religious experience. However, they helped
create the world of modern capitalism and rationalization where most people must act this way
whether they find it meaningful or not. Otherwise, you simply go under.
“One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that but of
all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born . . .from
the spirit of Christian asceticism. . . .The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to
do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to
dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern
economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this
mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force.
Perhaps it will determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view [a
Calvinist pastor], the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a
light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fate decreed that the cloak should
become an iron cage.”
- The ultimate results of this ethos is the creation of a world in which greed dominates and where
people for whom none of this is meaningful are nonetheless forced to act this way. The larger
unintended consequences of Calvinist ideas is a powerful system of meaning which helped to
create a world in which the roots of this meaning are increasingly eroded. The world has become
a huge meaningless machine, an “iron cage” dominated by alienation (Marx), saturated by
anomie (Durkheim), and dominated by anxiety.
“No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous
development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and
ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-
importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said:
‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a
level of, civilization never before achieved.’”
11/08/18
Kadi-justice
Formal
Substantive
Formal organization (Betrieb)
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Gemeinschaft
Herr= master, ruler
Herrschaft= domination
Weltanschauung
Parsons
Merton
Jaspers
Wertrealitat (?)
- for Marx, capitalism is the defining feature of modernity, whereas for Weber capitalism is a
central, defining feature—capitalism is rather part of a larger process of the rationalization of the
modern world
Rationalization:
1. rationalization of thought
2 rationalization of social organization
- it’s not a single system or force, it’s a concept that ties together a wide range of changes in
social life
Weber on Rational Action
- action is rational to the extent that involves the conscious, continuous and systematic effort to
adjust action to systematic ends—you try to figure out your objective and then monitor your
actions to see if they’re in line with your goal
- of course, most action is impulsive, affective etc. and a great deal of action is traditional i.e.
involves following customary patterns of action which aren’t explicitly objective oriented
- to the extent that rational action predominates it entails a break with other kinds of action esp.
traditional action
- the modern world is defined by the predominance of rational action
Types of Rational Action
1. value rationality= you are trying to achieve or realize certain values inherent in the action
itself
2. instrumental rationality= the goals that are the basis for the actions are the concrete results
of the action—the procedure is irrelevant
- this is capitalist rationality i.e. constantly adjusting means to achieve ends as concrete results
How would you make action more rational?
- make your ends clearer, more explicit and more organized
- in instrumental rationality, you examine the relationship between your means and ends i.e.
organize means so that they’re more systematic, calculable, and controllable
2 Subtypes of Instrumental Rationality
Formal rationality= organizing and systematizing your means so they are calculable,
controllable, predictable, and maximally efficient
substantive rationality= whether your means are really achieving your ends most efficiently
- formal rationality should contribute to substantive but the focus in substantive rational is
different
Example: double-entry bookkeeping
- you organize your income and expenses on facing pages so you can compare how well you’re
doing
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- this lets you track how well you’re doing but in the long term you could still drive yourself to
bankruptcy—so you may still not be substantively rational
BUT, what about your ends? Are they rational?
- for Weber this is not an answerable question because the “appropriateness” of goals rest on
value judgments that are ultimately arbitrary i.e. implicitly driven historically conditioned
commitments of a particular culture which are always potentially and often in fact inconsistent
- the rationalization of the modern world not only involves the rise in rational action but also in
instrumental rationality in particular, and increasingly, a rise in the attempt to use formal
rationalization to advance instrumental rationality i.e. whatever you want to do, one way to do it
better is to rationalize your means
What is a means?
- money, raw materials, human activity itself…
- there’s an increasing tendency to rationalize human activity i.e. subordinate that activity to a
systematic plan that can be monitored and adjusted
How does one do this?
- first, rationalize your own activity (again, visible, calculable, controllable) i.e. develop rational
discipline i.e. make your action as consciously organized as possible (as opposed to impulse and
tradition driven)
- rationalize the activity of others…
Formal organization= deliberate effort to organize human activity based on some conscious,
systematic plan
- more and more of life is carried out under formal organization—which is different from
traditional a.k.a. Gemeinschaft (literally means community, but connotes a traditional
community)—the framework of a traditional way of life based on custom and social ties rather
than consciously enacted plans for and rules of conduct
- formal organization is also different from the organization of the market because, in the market,
although individuals may be acting rationally no one is connecting them with a rational plan
- formal organization is also a form of domination  connects to Weber’s analysis of power and
domination…
Power, Conflict, and Domination

- all universal to human society
Power= when any individual (or set of individuals) can achieve what they want despite the
opposition of others
Domination (Herrschaft)= systematic operation of power in the context of an ongoing social
relationship
- some people give orders and other people (with a certain degree of probability) carry out those
orders
- domination takes a huge number of forms and permeates all social life e.g. parents/children,
employer/employee, teacher/student
- crucial is the exercise of control and systematic coordination of such control
Parsons= major translator of Weber who introduced him to American sociology
3 Actors in Domination
1. master
2. mass
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3. staff
Example= in feudalism the lord (1), the vassals (2) and the knights (3) OR in capitalism, the
capitalist (1), the workers (2), and a managerial staff (3)
Weber on Bureaucracy= the characteristic and most effective from of staff (3), of coordinating
the activity of the ruled mass
- BUT, it is also in itself the epitome of the formal rationalization of human activity
- bureaucracy is a social machine i.e. a machine of domination and coordination that is also an
objectification of human will and intelligence
What is bureaucracy, then?
- for Weber, this is a sub-case of a more broadly systematic organization/rationalization of
society
What do we get out of bureaucracy?
- a system of activities tied together by consciously planned, systematically organized
coordination—a factory is a form of organization into which you can, in principle, insert any
input
Features of Bureaucracy
1. hierarchically organized system of offices into which individuals can be plugged
2. offices have specific jurisdictions and together integrate into a whole
3. functionaries operate according to consciously and explicitly enacted rules (rather than
their own discretion or tradition)
- it should be possible to look up the rule for every case or change it for the sake of efficiency
4. functionary has a specific set of characteristics
4a. the authority of the functionary emanates from the office NOT the person
4b. appointed to the office by organization and doesn’t own the office (as opposed to a feudal
lord who can pass his position on to his children)
4c. offices are filled based on uniform and formal criteria
- again, an attempt to make the functionaries impersonal and interchangeable
4d. should have good enough salary not to be bribed AND clear career path
Benefits of Bureaucracy
- social domination and coordination which is a form of social technology capable of a degree of
speed, continuity, and efficiency that is unrivaled
- part of what makes bureaucracy effective is precisely the impersonal interchangeability of the
functionary, just as a factory production process makes people into interchangeable parts
Example: in a family firm it might make sense to hire your cousin, but in a large-scale
organization you can’t rely on your cousin to perform well—you need to rely on something like
universal certification to ensure competence
BOFO= bureaucratic administrative form of organization
- Weber’s analysis of BOFO integrates Marx’s analysis of capitalism and Tocqueville’s analysis
of the modern state because for Weber both are BOFO—capitalism works because BOFO makes
all the means, including the people, controllable, and since workers can’t operate independently
(without the means of production) they must submit to the capitalist who can constantly monitor
and adjust the production process to maximize profit
- what Marx doesn’t understand is that capitalism is just ONE EXAMPLE of the
RATIONALIZATION process of modernity…
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Example= modern armies operate just like this—you can take anyone and make them into a G.I.
i.e. a general issue i.e. they come with nothing and are provided with everything—are plugged
into the system they then animate
How does bureaucracy differ from feudal rule?
- the bureaucrat is separate from the power of the system and depends upon it, just as in science
the scientist depends on the research industry and infrastructure to conduct research
What does Weber make of all this?
- he is ambivalent i.e. this way of organizing can give you higher productivity, efficiency, and
even fairness
- BUT, this process also has the potential for stagnation and dehumanization i.e. creating the
possibility for the iron cage i.e. turning the world into a big meaningless machine
3 Fundamental Tensions in Weber’s Analysis of Rationalization

1. formal vs. substantive rationality
Example from Weber’s Sociology of Law
- assume that in any system of law you want to achieve justice in particular cases
So how do you do this?
Kadi-justice= Islamic jurist for whom there is a code of justice but no formal procedures, so you
try to achieve justice generally, but you can be flexible with how to realize it (e.g. Solomon and
joint custody)
- BUT, in the Kadi system, the decision is unpredictable and potentially arbitrary—could be a
product of whim, connections, even corruption
How do you combat this?
- systematic bodies of law with systematic procedures e.g. European continental civil law based
on Roman law (organized by Napoleon after the Fr. Rev.)—in this case any judge you go to
should give you the same result
Pros= given that the goal of the system is to achieve substantively rational results in particular
cases the assumption is that formally organizing procedures should increase the probability of
these results
Cons= every canon of law has escape hatches because no canon can cover all cases i.e. you may
go through all the proper procedures and still get substantively irrational results e.g. when the
guilty are acquitted on a technicality
- SO, formal and substantive rationality can never be perfectly aligned and you often have to step
out of the former to achieve the latter
2. organizational vs. individual rationality

- as the organization becomes more rational individuals have less scope for rational action on
their own
- in a tight network of procedures in which different people have different jurisdictions, the idea
is that the jurisdictions will be integrated into a whole, BUT, these limited jurisdictions means
everyone has only limited understanding and observatory powers of the system as a whole—
individual, therefore, are never thinking about the best way to achieve the larger systematic ends,
SO, per Merton (American sociologist), functionaries are only supposed to think and mostly only
do think about intermediate goals
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- also, if the external situation changes people continue doing precisely what they did before
because the structure of the system is dominated by routine—and this will also affect mores e.g.
Merton’s bureaucratic virtuoso
- SO, ironically, although the point is to achieve greater flexibility and efficiency, bureaucracies
tend to be rigid so that the formal organization of the system ultimately undermines the pursuit of
its substantive ends
- THUS, rationalization of the system can suppress individual rationality and creativity
3. rationalization vs. meaning

- rationalization undermines meaning in life—this applies not just to the rationalization of social
organization but also the rationalization of thought
- rationalization dries up the sources of meaning in modern life  the iron cage…
- rationalization means more and more people are trapped in routines organized exclusively
around processes of technical and instrumental rationality such that they have less scope and
ability to think in terms of the larger goals of the process (you don’t make the rules, or even,
reflect on them you; just follow them)
- humans are meaning seeking creatures who require some sense of what the meaning and
purpose of their lives is…this comes from humans infusing the world with meaning through…
Charismatic authority= leaders or prophetic figures people obey because of their special
message
- charismatic figures can break up accepted patterns of activity (traditional or rationalization
patterns), e.g. Christ and his message
- BUT, the modern world is organized to prevent the breakup of routine
- SO, charisma not only infuses the world with meaning, it’s one of the few ways new things
enter the world period
- rationalization can do this too, but in this case, it changes people from the outside and people
adjust vs. charisma wherein people are grabbed from the inside and their world is turned upside
down
- tension between charisma and rationalization is one of the key tensions of modernity
- for Weber, the world isn’t inherently meaningful and value judgements are ultimately arbitrary
e.g. a committed Nazi, democrat, and Christian can’t come to agree even if they agree on the
facts of the matter
- people can only feel the world is meaningful if they don’t think value judgements are arbitrary
BUT, modernity is defined by the fact that questions of fact and value are different and we are
increasingly aware of their difference
- indeed, rational science makes the arbitrary nature of our value commitments more apparent
and because of this there is less potential for charismatic leadership—the rationalization of the
world begets the disenchantment of the world whereby everything is a matter of technical
efficiency and our values are more apparently arbitrary i.e. decided upon but not brought in line
with values that inhere in the world
- for Weber, you must recognize that you must make an arbitrary commitment to a value
- Karl Jaspers (a German existentialist who rejected the existentialist label) saw Weber as an
important precursor to existentialism
- for many people though the act of will i.e. the arbitrary commitment to values won’t do it—
people need values to be objective, which is why Weber thinks people retreat to traditional
religion, OR, resort to irrationalism and prioritize “going with your gut”
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Example= for Puritans, whether or not your agree with their worldview, it is a meaningful way
of life for them, BUT, How do you decide whether their view is genuinely justified? For Weber,
this is unanswerable.
- Weber’s theory of rationalization is in many respects his version of Marx’s theory of alienation
in the modern world i.e. like alienation, in rationalization too people are controlled by their
creations i.e. bureaucracy
What are the alternatives to bureaucracy?

1. Tocqueville= political liberty i.e. willed community in which individuals as citizens can
cooperatively and make decision about what controls their lives
- for Weber, this is unlikely because BOFO will spread, partly because it’s technically
indispensable
- Weber also thinks the idea of mass collective self-government is utopian
- even in representative democracy—which is admittedly useful in selecting effective leaders
who can negotiate policy on collective issue—democracy itself is just another form of
domination
- Tocqueville would say we need political leadership and political society is not the same BOFO
2. Marx= socialism in which we act based on cooperation
- again, Weber rejects this as utopian, not so much because capitalism is indestructible but
because if you try to dismantle it some even more immense BOFO (of the state) will supplant it
and, without capitalism as a counterweight, become preponderant
3. Weber= resist rationalization in pockets and increments, retreat to private sources of social
meaning, e.g., romantic love or commitment to a vocation (so long as you’re not under the
illusion that God called you to whatever it is you pursue)—should be about self-authorization
- somewhat like Tocqueville, Weber thinks you need charismatic political leaders who can
operate outside of and over the head of BOFO, leaders who can connect with and inspire large
groups of people and mobilize them on the basis of meanings to which they all subscribe
- without such eruptions of charisma and mass movement you have total disenchantment of the
world
4 Forms of Social Organization

1. Gemeinschaft feudalism
2. formal organization (BOFO) capitalist production process, bureaucracy, Gesellschaft a
3. market capitalism, Gesellschaft b
4. willed community socialism, Tocqueville’s political society
- modernity seems to involve an ensemble of these
- with rationalization, Weber unites the Marxist analysis of capitalism and the Tocquevillian
analysis of the modern state
11/15/18
Sir Norman Angell: The Great Illusion (1910)
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Weber: “Politics as a Vocation”

ethic of responsibility= you’re concerned with consequences (including unintended
consequences) but you consider these while also mindful of the fact that there are a range of
possible ends you are trying to balance against each other and you don’t treat any of these as
absolute
ethic of conviction= if you have a goal you should pursue it irrespective of your chances of
success (value rationality)
Example= A revolutionary’s commitment to his cause. A religious radical’s commitment to his.
Is it possible to say scientifically whether one should opt for an “ethic of responsibility” or
an “ethic of conviction”?
- No. But you can understand the inner logic of these two orientations and what they’re
implications are.
- However, for politics, (Weber somehow manages to say) the correct approach is an ethic of
responsibility. Because in politics there’s a built-in moral problem with being indifferent to your
success, because your success affects others. A political actor committed to an ethic of
responsibility should be invested in the consequence of his/her actions/inactions.
- If you’re most interested in saving your own soul, keeping your hands clean, and yourself pure
you should stay away from politics.
Who should you be responsible to as a political actor?
- As a political actor, you may think you should improve the lot of workers, or that you should
perfect the operation of the capitalist system. Or, if you’re a nationalist, you may think the
interests of your nation are paramount. Or, you could think nationalism is morally reprehensible
because you’re a) a cosmopolitan who thinks there should be world peace by means of some
united nations or b) you’re a revolutionary socialist who wants to change the entire system so
that we won’t have domination or war.
- All of these are potentially viable commitments and all involve a sense of responsibility BUT
they are also based on worldviews and ultimate value commitments, something sociology can’t
adjudicate between. BUT sociology can clarify the implications of choosing one or the other as
well as specify its attendant responsibilities.
- One reason this role of sociology is important is because you can’t be a serious, responsible
actor unless you have some sense of the tragedy of human life, and especially, of political affairs.
Tragedy because in much of life (even our personal life but certainly when we try to do things
collectively on a large scale) very often the consequences are not only different but sometimes
opposite to the ones you intended. So you have to avoid this but at the same time recognize that
it may happen. Also, to achieve any political goal you will inevitably have to make morally
questionable compromises. Indeed, it’s never possible to achieve major things without using
morally ambiguous means. SO, if you want clean hands you won’t be effective in politics.
- Thus, sociology can confront people with inconvenient facts antithetical to a given political
actors ultimate commitments i.e. what you want to do could have unforeseen, disastrous
consequence. This is how sociology can deepen and reform political judgement.
3 Character Traits of Effective Political Actors
1. passion= If you’re just in it for a job or for power you succumb to opportunism and won’t
have the mettle to surmount certain obstacle. SO, you must be genuinely committed to
accomplishing something.
2. sense of proportion= Combining commitment to a cause and the ability to step back and
analyze a situation with a view to the obstacles it presents to your commitment.
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- Most fundamentally connected to an ethic of responsibility i.e. a sense of how to make

compromises en route to a goal. (E.g. Lincoln’s commitment to the experiment of the American
Republic, the immorality of slavery, and his willingness to make horrid compromises.)
3. sense of responsibility= Regardless of what your ultimate commitments are.
Weintraub’s Rebuttal
- Weber is discussing 3 ethics of political action, NOT 2 as he says. Besides the ethic of
responsibility and the ethic of conviction there is also…
Ethic of absolute responsibility= There is one concrete result in the world that is paramount
and therefore outweighs all other considerations--such that, for instance, the normative
consideration of means is nonsensical.
Example= Lenin’s monomaniacal commitment to the eradication of capitalism.
What would Weber say about the ethic of absolute responsibility?
- One has to recognize that in political life there will be extreme circumstance that demand a
disregard for ordinary moral norms, BUT, if you focus overwhelmingly on one absolute end,
don’t consider the multiplicity of things you may be effecting and the certainty that you’ll end up
with all sorts of unintended consequences THEN you’ll ultimately undermine the one goal you
sough to prioritize above all others. Moreover, in politics you can’t simply consider the impact of
your actions on others, you must in addition consider their impact on you the political actor
(given the inevitability of compromise). If you’re overwhelmingly committed to only one
outcome you won’t be able to foresee future consequences or resist the temptation to suspend
ordinary moral scruples when faced with any threat.—This is the reason Weber would argue that
his ethic of conviction is more rational than this ethic of absolute conviction.
- Although science (including social science) can’t tell you what to do it can help you understand
the nature of the fundamental choice you make and the danger of the different alternatives
(including unintended consequences). This is why he advocates an ethic of responsibility.
- BUT, you must also anticipate the drain of a life of politics on you as the political actor. Both
the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction have in this respect potential danger. For
the ethic of responsibility, there’s the danger of irresponsibility i.e. you haven’t really thought
through what you’re committed to and what the likely consequences (for you and for others) of
these commitments. Also, adherents of ethical of conviction will always bump up against the
ethical irrationality of the world. (For instance, a pacifist advocating war to prevent genocide. Or,
Anabaptists who were originally violent revolutionaries.)
- Someone in politics should follow an ethic of responsibility. However, at a certain point there
should be certain things that make a person say this is a line I won’t cross, or, there are certain
kinds of compromises not worth making (ethic of conviction).
Weber: “Science as a Vocation”

- focused on the relationship between knowledge and action…
- if you’re a scientist you think it’s worthwhile to develop certain kinds of knowledge about the
world and that’s it’s worth doing because it’s possible
- BUT, knowledge by itself can’t tell us what to do, BUT it can be used to guide and clarify
action
- Weber looks at the social and institutional framework in which scientific research is conducted
(e.g. compares German to American academia)
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What is the inner nature of science as a mode of action? Why engage in systematic rational
scholarship?
- modern science is part of a long process of intellectualization, rationalization, and
systematization of forms of thought which goes back centuries…
disenchantment= that the world is, in principle, knowable and that you needn’t consider sacred
or magical elements to understand or explain things AND that the world is by dint of this
manipulatable
- Weber thinks modern scientific research, in order to be effective, requires an ethical
commitment to knowledge for its own sake
How do we know that scientific knowledge is worth knowing?
- This is a question that (paradoxically) science can’t itself answer, because the worthiness of
something would rest on (extra-scientific) value judgements.
Is the ethos of science more informed by instrumental or value rationality?
- one might argue for instrumental rationality because of science’s connection to technology
BUT serious scholarly inquiry has to be connected to an ethic of conviction and value rationality
because, again, in whatever branch of inquiry you’re involved you should have a real desire to
discove—the obstacle being that often times you’ll get inconvenient results that don’t conform to
your commitments and desires—so you need that unwavering commitment to truth
- science is connected to the expectation of progress unlike, say, art, the assumption in science is
that in any field whatever you achieve as a result of tremendous effort will become obsolete at
some point—you’re pursuing truth because you’re committed to truth per se but whatever truth
you do achieve will be provisional (paradox)
- Most people think of science as a collection of facts BUT it is really a collection of theories
(though, what scientists call a theory ordinary people call a fact).
- Science does tell us about the world so that we know more, BUT who does it tell about the
world? Does the average modern person on the street know much more about the world around
them than a person living in a far less scientifically and technologically advanced society?
Obviously not. A bushman knows infinitely more about his tools, the animals around him etc.
than we do about our surroundings. Most of us are (for instance) utterly ignorant about the
technology we rely on (paradox). SO, science does NOT increase the knowledge of the vast
majority of people. What it does is provide the in principle assurance that if you wanted to find
out more you could.
- Science is (like so many other things) inextricably connected to increasing specialization so that
as science knows more and more scientists no less and less (paradox). (No one can aspire to the
sort of range Newton had.)
- To the extent that we live in a scientific civilization most people don’t participate in that
civilization or at least not fully (which partly explain anti-scientific reactionism).
What do we get out of science?
- Tolstoy said science was ultimately meaningless because it can’t tell us what we most want to
know i.e. what we should do and how should we live. It can’t tell us about the meaning of the
world and human life. Indeed, the whole pattern of the rationalization of thought that science is a
part of (including the development of social inquiry) makes it increasingly difficult for people to
think confidently about these questions—because it undermines the sense that there is some
obvious and objective meaning about the world that we can just discover. The progress of
rational inquiry and of social science in particular helps make it increasingly clear that our
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visions of the world and our value commitments are ultimately arbitrary, relative to factual
knowledge and logic.
The Problem of Relativism
- Value commitments involve decisions that cannot be settled on rational or empirical grounds.
This in turn makes it harder for people to make these kinds of commitments since one genuinely
commits only to the extent that one isn’t aware of having decided to do so. A value commitment
must be made unselfconsciously i.e. not arbitrarily but because one thinks it is right.
Unfortunately, we belong to a generation for which it is increasingly clear that the world as
inherent meaning we don’t simply contribute. Moreover, very few of us can go through life with
the sense that nothing matters (indifferent to rape for instance). Having a meaningful life means
leading a life according to ideals. But how does one do that nowadays?
- Weber argues that it’s necessary to commit to ideals without having the illusion that they are
necessarily absolute or that everyone could share them.
But given this how can science contribute to this effort, to the project of meaning-making
in the world?
- Whatever goals we want to achieve social inquiry can at least help us frame problems correctly
and avoid unintended disasters. It can’t tell us which ends to have but it can give us guidance
when it comes to pursuing those ends.
- Science can also help us understand whether our goals are compatible or contradictory—can
help clarify the implications of our goals and prognosticate about the effects of pursuing them.
- Science can also give us clarity in understand the nature significance and meaning of our
commitments and conduct. It can give us a clearer sense of what the bases of our view of the
world are. What implicit choices are our definitions of reality based on. SO, science, and social
inquiry in particular, can help people confront and grapple with the ultimate meaning of their
own conduct. This can’t tell us what to do morally, but it can make moral action deeper, more
informed, more passionate, and more meaningful to us.
Weintraub takeaway: Weber is not only a source of intellectual and analytical guidance. He
also represents an admirable model of what it means to use social inquiry to make sense of the
world and human life. What involves is a combination of deepening our understanding of human
life and also nurturing in ourselves a trained relentless in confronting the realties of life, its
dilemmas, unexpected challenges, and complexities. Weber once said that his objective in his
research was to see how much he could stand. Weber had the unique capacity to hold onto and
integrate and hold in tension a whole range of different moral, intellectual, and political tensions
and dilemmas endemic modern life—without trying to simplify them or smooth them over.
Reading Weber we get a sense that human dreams and ideals matter (they change the world,
they’re important to people) BUT they never turn out the way people intend. Weber holds up
humans against the mirror of history to see how they fare.
What is the relationship between formal/substantive rationality and instrumental

rationality?
- formal/substantive is a distinction made within instrumental rationality
- SO, to advance instrumental rationality i.e. achieve certain concrete ends, one can do 1.
organize and systematize the means—including human activity—so as to make them more
calculable and controllable (formal rationality) OR 2. one can focus on the concrete ends you
want to achieve (substantive rationality)
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[- instrumental rationality and the ethic of responsibility are consequentialist vs. value rationality
which is deontological]
act vs. rule utilitarianism= if you’re trying to determine the consequences of something you
can look at 1. one particular act and ask what are its effects—a la substantive rationality) OR 2.
argue that a certain set of rules will produce better outcomes (and ignore outliers)—a la formal
rationality
- of course in both formal and substantive rationality, you’re ultimately trying (in principle) to
increase the likelihood of realizing your substantive ends
Weber vs. Durkheim
- Weber thinks that social inquiry and sociology in particular can’t give us a meaningful life or
tell us what we ought to do BUT our choice and evaluation can and should be informed by
sociology.
- Durkheim thinks this is a misleading way to frame the issue, since if doing sociology can’t help
us answer fundamental moral questions—what good is it? Actually, it can help us answer
fundamental moral questions BUT in a complicated way.
DURKHEIM
11/29/18
- Durkheim established, unlike Weber, a whole school of followers

- but beyond the broad range of subjects he addresses (like Weber) there is a larger theoretical
project at work…
- he is building a coherent and comprehensive framework that can guide the study of society so
that whatever the topic the question is always: What is the fundamental nature of society and
what is its relationship to the individual?
- also thought sociology should provide a framework for addressing fundamental moral
questions, which is also to say that he thinks Weber’s framework is slightly skewed (though
neither mentions the other, despite being contemporaries)
Durkheim’s Social and Historical Context
Franco-Prussian War= Louis Bonaparte was humiliatingly defeated which led to the German
unification
- what also came out of this was the 3rd Republic, which Durkheim grew up in—somehow lasted
(despite intense class and political conflicts) through the WW1 till 1940 when it was conquered
by the Nazis (and replaced by the Vichy regime)
French 3rd Republic
- by comparison with Imperial Germany this (the 3rd Republic) was a more open and democratic
regime
- so e.g. Durkheim was Jewish but was able to become a revered professor
- Durkheim though thought of himself primarily as a Frenchman and a partisan of the 3rd
Republic i.e. liberte, egalite, fraternite,—he was a progressive
The Dreyfus Affair= Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew from Alsace but also a member of the
General Staff, was framed for treason and sent to Devil’s Island
- but the fact of his framing came out, setting off a conflict between Dreyfusards (3rd Republic
partisans, e.g. Emile Zola, exponents of justice) and anti-Dreyfusards (hated the Republic and
supported conventional social institutions of France e.g. Church, army etc.)
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- Durkheim was a zealous Dreyfusard (vid. his essay)

- in the end, Dreyfus was released, but most important, the Dreyfusards came to dominate French
life, helping to institute secular measures that are still controversial—this helped define the 3rd
Republic
- Durkheim saw his role and the role of sociology as the playing a part in the moral consolidation
of the 3rd Republic which demanded a secular morality that could replace religion and help bind
society together
- both Weber and Durkheim were in the 1st generation of people who defined themselves as
sociologists—Durkheim had one of the 1st chairs of sociology in France
- BUT, they have a different notion of the relationship between social science and morality i.e.
whether social science can address moral questions
- Weber is a fox (a la Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox”) i.e. stresses the
multiplicity, variety and complexity of social life and history, and tries to develop a net of
concepts he can use to ensnare these phenomena vs. Durkheim who is a hedgehog i.e. uses
specific things to understand general patterns, the essential character of the phenomena, and the
central nature of society
Durkheim’s Vision of Modern Society
- At the heart of his sociology is a comprehensive guiding vision of the nature of social order and
the relationship of it to society…
1. humans are fundamentally social animals
- society creates shapes and maintains the individual personality—it is the precondition for our
distinctively human attributes, especially our moral and cognitive faculties
2. society is a reality sui generis
- society is not simply a collection of individuals and social phenomena can’t be reduced to
individuals, instead society is a dynamic whole that has a nature and logic of its own and must be
understood in its own way i.e. the social whole is more than the humans parts that make it up—
certain combinations of things (e.g. society, living organisms) develop emergent properties that
don’t belong to any of their parts
- we have to break loose from the notion that individuals are more real than social phenomenon
3. society is a moral universe and a universe of meaning
- one of society’s most important functions is to construct define and impose a certain picture of
reality i.e. a certain cognitive and moral organization of the world, such that, society doesn’t only
shape us it also enables us—we don’t just live in society we need society, even certain forms of
social constraint…
- it’s because social structure provides us with a picture of reality that we have a sense of reality
as coherent instead of chaotic
Example= Anthony Giddens thinks structure can be both constraining and enabling and the two
are necessarily connected e.g. a la Durkheim, language, the language we speak are the results of
collective elaboration which we can master and internalize, which gives us power we didn’t have
before
- in order to make use of these cognitive and symbolic frameworks we need their constraint—
language, morality etc. involves following rules
- the language we learn not only forces us speak in certain ways but it also helps shape the way
we describe and view the world—and the constraining and enabling are inseparable
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- as Lukacs said, society appears to us like a second nature which is a symptom for him of
alienation, BUT, for Durkheim this is an inescapable reality of human life—without that
structure of society that appears so solid, we’re lost
Conscience collective= equivalent to certain notions of culture but Durkheim doesn’t only mean
things we’re explicitly conscious of but also the vast field of things we take for granted
- it’s a system we try to draw on and master but no one really can—it has a logic and being of its
own e.g. we use English but English transcends us as a phenomenon and cannot be reduced to
what we know of it
Key Terms for Durkheim
Society= his master term and hence exceedingly difficult to define without giving an account of
Durkheim in his entirety
Solidarity= wants to understand the social bonds that constitute society and that shape its
distinctive characteristics
- every society is built on solidarity but forms of solidarity differ, SO, solidarity can help us
understand what defines society in general, and in its specific forms
Morality= the ultimate and fundamental requirement of any kind of society but different
society’s will have different kinds of moral order
- as sociologists we’re supposed to understand the different natures and logic of moral order
- ALSO, thinks sociology can help us answer universal moral questions…any philosopher can
conjure a moral system, but what is more interesting is to look at existing forms of morality that
organize society
- different moral rules will be more or less workable in different societies so e.g. it’s no accident
that our capitalist morality is different than hunter-gatherer morality
- but if one can understand the inner logic of a society one can decide what moral principles are
most suited to it
Durkheim: The Division of Labor in Society
Durkheim’s as Polemicist
- much of his writing is polemical, in particular, against…
Liberal social theory= stresses ontological individualism and the free market
Conservative thinking= sees modern society, and the collapse of traditional society, as the
collapse of moral order
- Durkheim thinks we’re in the midst of a new kind of society and still emergent moral order
Liberal Tradition= society is made of isolated individuals who pursue their self interest, when
they do so efficiently this is called the rational pursuit of self-interest
- thinks of individuals as real and social institutions as artificial or reducible to individuals
- one big exception is the market BUT non-market institutions are artificial and insofar as they
interfere with the operation of the self-regulating market, they’re likely to be harmful
- society here doesn’t shape individuals themselves, just their incentives
Contract for liberal theory= a formal and voluntary agreement between 2 people who aren’t
otherwise connected, in which both are ostensibly maximizing their self-interest
- thought you could have an entire society based on this formal exchange…
Laissez-faire= to the extent that you let the market run free you maximize the good for society
How do you get stable social phenomena out of an aggregate of individual actions?
- Durkheim wants to flip the question…
No individual exists who isn’t already shaped by society, so, how do you have individuals?
- indeed, the self-interested individual engaged in contract is a social development
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- also, modern society is not nor could it be based on self-interested contracts between
individuals—it has to be a moral order where certain forms of solidarity prevail
- SO, the “market society” of the liberal economists is, for Durkheim, a fiction—it couldn’t work
and wouldn’t be a world we would want to inhabit anyway
- the division of labor (DoL) was supposed to address the moral crisis of modern society by
determining the kinds of moral order that will work in modern society
If, in modern society, DoL increases in scope and intensity (as Drukheim thinks) is this a
good thing?
- for Durkheim there is no obvious answer
But what is the DoL?
- it’s not just people doing different things (that’s fragmentation) it must be differentiation +
coordination—which means that DoL is a basis for interdependence
- argues that DoL doesn’t just involve differentiation of individuals and their activity but also
differentiation of institutions serving different functions e.g. instead of just religion we now have
religion, science, art, philosophy etc.
- second, for Adam Smith, the DoL is the foundation of modern society but for Durkheim DoL
extends to social institutions
- more generally, the DoL based on the market can’t replace moral regulation by the state and
other social institutions—it can only work insofar as it is the basis for moral regulation, solidarity
etc.
- for Adam Smith DoL is the foundation of social order, but for Durkheim this is not true
historically—there are other bases of solidarity and order in pre-modern societies—the DoL is
just one basis for interdependence and coherence of society, but it’s one that becomes more
important over time
What is the relationship between DoL and moral questions in modern society?
Are there new forms of morality and solidarity that can go together with DoL?
Well, How do we measure solidarity?
- By looking at law and how it changes over time with the development of the DoL—law is an
index of the forms of solidarity in society
2 Kinds of Law
Repressive vs. Restitutive Law
- i.e. punishment (as in criminal law) vs. maintaining harmonious interaction between different
individuals and institutions, usually aimed at restoring some equilibrium of things that have
gotten out of whack (as in civil law, property law)
What the difference between repressive and restitutive law tell us about the moral order
and solidarity of a society?
Well, why are certain things crimes?
- things that violate especially strong and defined states of the conscience collective i.e. things
that attack things that we think of as sacred
- in modern society the individual personality, for instance, is treated as sacred—this is the flag
of modern society that cannot be violated
- SO, to understand crimes we have to understand the conscience collective which is developed
socially over a timespan that transcends the life of individuals
- the punishment of crimes (in repressive law) is a ritual act whose objective is not to deter the
criminal but to reaffirm the moral rule that was violated—this shapes our notion of what is
acceptable, and bolsters or reaffirms the ramparts erected in the name of moral boundaries
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What about restitutive law?

- you adjust relationship between people and institutions doing different things
- so, the scope of the law is adjusted to functional interdependence
- you can have solidarity because people are similar (conscience collective/repressive law i.e.
mechanical solidarity) or because they’re doing different things and are interdependent
(DoL/restitutive law i.e. organic solidarity)
- the long-term transition is from solidarity based on homogeneity (mechanical) vs. solidarity
based on functional interdependence (organic)
- thinks it’s wrong to think, a la liberal theory, that we can base society on atomized self-interest
BUT also thinks the conservatives are wrong to think we should go back to traditional society
(which we couldn’t and is undesirable)
- instead we’re in the midst of a transition to a society based on different kinds of
moral regulation SO, though liberals argue the state is less and less necessary in the
face of the market, Durkheim says that even in modern society non-contractual
forms of solidarity are integral e.g. regulations of marriage, children, education
- FURTHERMORE, there’s always a non-contractual element in contract because you need
some framework of legal and moral regulation for any specific contractual arrangement to go
over without a hitch i.e. to support an effective framework for interdependence
- SO, Durkheim expects an increasing role for the state to regulate the background conditions for
contract—a society in which the DoL and market play a big role still needs to be grounded in
moral order and solidarity, but while still making room room for autonomy and individualization
(which itself as human trait produced by certain types of societies)
- “Liberty is the daughter of regulation” for Durkheim e.g. the massive apparatus of roads and
auto regulation makes possible the dream of freedom riding—moral regulation thereby makes
freedom possible
What happens to the conscience collective over time?
- in simpler, less differentiated societies you’ll have a more uniform conscience collective BUT
in modern society this shrinks in relation to the individual consciousness and also becomes more
general and abstract
- BUT, in certain respects it becomes stronger—because the cult of the individual is
accomplished through the conscience collective which makes it uniformly sacred…
- such developments does make people more free (thanks to this social regulation)
BUT…
Abnormal phenomena of DoL
Class conflict= recognizes its significance, but for Durkheim, this is a peripheral feature of
modern society and that’s because, although it’s a pathological feature, it doesn’t amount to
Marx’s vision of the terminal crisis of modern society
- for Durkheim it’s just a crisis of transition—we just haven’t developed an effective moral order
for our new social structure
- the answer for Durkheim is not to transform society but to achieve its moral consolidation—
what we need is not a revolution and the abolition of DoL, what we’re suffering from is a crisis
of anomie (the absence of effective rule of law)—there’s no effective understanding of what’s
just and unjust in the free market such that’s what fair is whatever you can get away with
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- no one, thinks Durkheim, is convinced by this, because we constantly talk about fairness—it’s
supposed to be about individual opportunity which is impossible if some are born rich and some
poor—SO, Durkheim argues that inheritance is an antiquated notion
Modern society is not in terminal crisis, we have class conflict and other pathologies
because we’re in the middle of a crisis of transition and we suffer from economic anomie. We
need to complete this transition by creating a moral order, by moralizing social relationships so
that we can think of them as just. We don’t have the norms by which such relationships could be
regulated. But a new kind of moral order must be anchored in institutions as well as individual
notions. We can have a society with more autonomy that doesn’t have to be atomized, one in
which the state and the law will regulate more of our interactions. But this alone (i.e. despotism)
will not be adequate. (Which sounds like Tocqueville but Durkheim has a different solution.)
12/6/18
Integration / egoism
Moral regulation / anomie
Durkheim: Suicide
- does an innovative statistical analysis of suicides to determine their causes
- often a paradigmatic text for quantitative methods in sociology
- the argument of suicide, though, is more than an exercise in quantitative techniques because
they are tied to his theoretical arguments
- elaborates orienting concepts which allows you to ask questions (you need theoretical questions
for facts to indicate anything)—this is what the argument grows out of (not the data)
Egoistic suicide vs. anomic suicide
- both involve a pathological relationship to society but also implicitly offer a vision of a healthy
society—so the obverse of egoistic is integration and the obverse of anomie is moral regulation
- these notions don’t simply emerge from the aggregate of empirical observations, rather,
developing these concepts involves an act of theoretical imagination, which he then tests
empirically
- the concepts themselves emerge from Durkheim’s underlying theoretical vision
- so the book makes a conceptually rich argument which Durkheim renders empirically testable
Broader Significance of Suicide
- sees suicide as indicative of the malaise of modern society as a whole
- thinks his work has moral significance in helping us understand the moral problems of our era
and what to do about them
- books is also (esp. Book II) a larger attempt to revise his vision of social order its relationship
to the individual
- going through these suicides is also Durkheim’s way of laying out a healthy vision of society
[Tocqueville on Juries= a political institution in which individuals apply the law of society—a
framework for civil education]
- Durkheim is trying to trace the changes in the conscience collective and its role in social life—
usually uses law as the litmus test OR proverbs (i.e. a crystallized understanding of some group
about what to think about some recurrent problem and what do about it, a.k.a. a strongly defined
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expression of the collective consciousness—all of which you’re more likely to find in more
homogenous traditional societies)
Why focus on suicide?
- it looks like the most private, individual, idiosyncratic act i.e. not organized, committed by
individuals in great isolation—this would be the most difficult thing to explain sociologically…
- BUT Durkheim thought that although explaining why an individual would commit suicide was
difficult you could focus on the fact that particular societies have particular rates with a certain
consistency to them
- since clearly the individuals are not organizing to commit suicide (in most cases) this is all
indicative of the social forces at work—individuals are being moved by social currents they
aren’t necessarily aware of, indeed, there must be general factors that explain the tendency in
different groups to be driven over the edge by certain shocks
Durkheim on Religion
- Catholics and Protestants commit suicides at different rates—which must be a question of
doctrine
- BUT, Catholicism and Protestantism prohibit suicide equally
So, what account for the difference in suicide rate?
- Catholicism more than Protestantism buys individuals into a group in a way that defines their
life in terms of common beliefs and practice (of course all religions do this but different ones do
it to different degrees)
- Catholicism, after all, has a complex hierarchical structure that obligates people in certain
practices—SO the protective effect of Catholicism has to do with its binding people in group life
associated with obligated forms of belief and practice
Integration= the extent to which the individual is integrated into a common world of prescribed
beliefs and practices
- measures how strong the group is and to what extent the individual is bound to it
- thinks higher integration means lower suicide
Society= a group with a strong collective life that enfolds the individual and which serves the
function of integration
- ties individuals into common beliefs, practices, relationships and obligations
- you a have a form of life which is collectively maintained and which exerts a hold in the
individual
What characteristics make groups more or less likely to integrate?
1. had to be able to define a good portion of the individual’s reality—“closes the horizon”
2. if a group is felt to transcend and survive the individual
- the implication of this analysis is to elaborate some of the ways that social integration
simultaneously constrains and supports the individual (define you’re life but also give
you meaning, purpose and a connection to others
- this is why when society loses its grip individuals do as well—it becomes harder to
answer the question why go on
Egoistic suicide= suicide due to a death of social integration
- egoism is isolation, lack of connection, self-absorption and exclusive focus on self interest BUT
there’s also a positive side i.e. “the cult of the individual”
- religions create society through integration
Alternative Forms of Integration
68
Family= even though intuitively you’d think that hardships produce suicide and TF the more
kids the higher likelihood of suicide BUT on the contrary the more kids the less likely this
becomes—because you have denser relationships and more obligations
[- people who are married are less likely to commit suicide]
Political Life= in times of collective solidarity i.e. war, revolution—suicide also goes down
Altruistic suicide= commit suicide for the sake of the group (i.e. excessive integration)
- more likely in less complex societies
- BUT, you can test this rate in subcultures, less complex ones where group norms will be more
prevalent…
- military suicides are higher but among officers not infantry—i.e. not the people in combat
(facing the physical hardships) but the people more thoroughly swallowed up in the collective
life of the army
But what does society do?
- NOT ONLY is it a framework which orients people to beliefs and practices it is also a source of
attachment, society is also a source of moral regulation
- when you have anomie it’s hard on the individual SINCE individuals need certain recognized
social limits on aspiration and desires—there are many ways social life can stimulate desires but
unless there’s some recognized restraint on them you can never fully satisfy them
Happiness= the relationship between what we desire and expect and what we have
- SO, if there’s no limits on what we desire no matter what we do we’ll never have what we want
Economic Liberalism= individuals should maximize utility and it’s not a question of what’s fair
or what you deserve, you get as much as you can get away with
- Durkheim’s critique of is that there are no limits on acquisition, you’ll never stop desiring more
- so you need recognized, authoritative limits, defined aspirations—moral regulation
- BUT, only society can exercise this authority
Example of higher suicide in economic crisis= Durkheim said that sometimes even people who
acquire sudden wealth can ruin their life—since again, there’s a disruption to the proportions of
what you have and what you expect to have
- so economic anomie is chronic given prevalence of economic liberal theory and lack of norms
of fairness between employer and employee
Marriage Reduces Suicide
- it regulates unbridled desire
- BUT in countries where it’s easy to get divorced it has less of a salutary effect—BECAUSE,
the ease of divorce changes the social conception of marriage
- the great the extent marriage is an unbreakable commitment the great the extent it reduces
suicide
Reason to separate anomie from egoism

- he’s trying to point out the 2 different sides of society—the supportive side which comes out
integration and the restraining side which comes out in his discussion of anomie
2 Dimension of Moral Action:
1. obligation= willingness to obey a set of rules recognized as authoritative
2. attachment= to the group whose support you feel impelled to reciprocate
Suicide vs. Division of Labor
69
- the separation between mechanical and organic solidary has dropped away in Suicide where
Durkheim element the role of both social solidarity
- the conscience collective role plays an increasingly central role in his work generally—religion
as a permanent and central aspect of society
collective representation= shared cultural beliefs, concepts, symbols that bind
groups together (supplants talk of conscience collective)
- increasingly realized that talking about the conscience collective was a mistake
because it’s just a way of talking about the average of what everyone shares, but
collective representations are bigger than individuals and not reducible to what they
share…
- organization, institutions, material culture, language—we cannot reduce any of
these collective phenomena to what people have in common
- society is also a moral and symbolic reality i.e. many of the collective representations that help
define the identity and cohesion of groups are shared symbols
- hence, religion is a system of symbols by which society understands itself
- the symbolic aspect of reality is not a superficial ornamentation since some symbols have a
sacred quality that genuinely shape the way we think about moral life, the individual etc. SO, e.g.
the cult of the individual mean not only that should act on self-interest but also that you should
respect the fact that other has have right + in order for moral individualism to work people can’t
just have greater autonomy, they also have to have greater sense of obligation and collective
responsibility
- symbols help to organize rituals which recharge common beliefs and symbols
rituals= routines with emotional impact that can recharge symbols and common beliefs
- society is not just a moral reality it’s also a symbolic reality
individuation= individuals becoming more different
12/13/18
Gehlen
Geertz
Durkheim: Elementary Forms of Religious Life

- one of his late works (died during WWI)
- from the beginning he explored solidarity and its relationship to moral order and the conscience
collective
- in the DoL the conscience collective plays a relatively restrained role i.e. forms of social (i.e.
mechanical) solidarity connected to this consciousness are increasingly overshadowed by the
bonds that come out of DoL/organic solidarity
- BUT, over time the conscience collective become increasingly more central in his work—he
refines and develops this notion but also begins to talk about collective representations…
- as individuals we make sense of the world by representing it (that is what thought is) but there
are also external representations which refer to everything from painting to ideologies
- these representations embodied in collective culture are things that constrain us and help us
(e.g. language, the Christian cross, a flag) and, as tools, are not reducible to any one individual
70
- this notion even goes back to Suicide where religion is defined as a system of symbols by
which society understands itself—symbols which don’t only embody what’s already there but
also constitute phenomena in themselves
- some, in Durkheim’s time, analogized Durkheim’s system to Marx’s base  superstructure i.e.
social order  moral order
- increasingly, Durkheim sees collective representations as not only making social order work
but having their own constitutive role—it’s not just that collective representations cannot be
reduced to individuals, it’s that it can’t be reduced to social order, it is a reality sui generis
Method in Elementary Forms of Religious Life
- wants to study religion as something fundamental to humanity so we can learn about humanity
through it
- examines religion in simplest society (least differentiated, least complex, smallest scale)—
wants to study their religion because it’s the least agglomerated from prior religions (unlike
modern world religions)
- each aboriginal tribe is composed of clans where there is little (functional) economic
interdependence—the clan is held together mostly by religion and kinship
What is religion?
- it’s not just God, it’s not just bad science (superstition) and it can’t just be explained by
universal psychological characteristics (which can’t tell us about religion as an institutional
reality anyway)
- instead, any religion involves 1) a combination of certain beliefs and practices where these are
oriented toward a 2) symbolic division of the world between the sacred and the profane (which is
a way of interpreting the universe and human life) and 3) belongs to, helps bind together, and
expresses, a group of people—a moral community
totem= a physical object or animal, or representation of it, which is a symbol of the clan
- so in this aboriginal society clans are named after totems
What makes the totem sacred?
- not because of any special characteristics that the animal or object might have
- RATHER, it’s because the totem stands for, is a representation of, the group—BUT more than
this the powers the totem possesses emanates from a single wellspring, the totem is a vessel of a
kind of generalized force which is spread through many things (e.g. mana) but which is
crystallized in this one thing
What are these sacred forces, really?
- the forces, and totems which capture them, are really transfigured forces of society i.e.
symbolic representations of the real forces of society and the way in which it constrains and
empowers individuals
- indeed, in all religions individuals don’t only feel dominated by something outside themselves,
they feel that through belief and participation he/she is stronger…
- this is not some widespread illusion, it’s a symbolic expression of society’s effect on the
individual—that’s what it means to say religion is a system of symbols through which society
comprehends itself
Why do we need symbols?
- powerful symbols help to concentrate our ideas about these social forces and make them vivid,
which is part of the way we’re reminded of their importance
71
- collective ideas can only bind people together if they’re fixed in symbols—these
representations are necessary aspects of the reality social life which can only be expressed in
symbolic form
- BUT, symbols besides expressing society also help constitute it—vivification of social beliefs
and practice make social life possible—this symbolic process is one way society is constantly
created and recreated
ritual= symbols can’t maintain their power and compelling force without being revivified
through ritual
- ritual is not just routine, because rituals affect and change the people who participate in them,
they have an emotional impact—collective action which involves shared practices and symbols
can move people in a way other things can’t
- the function of ritual is not to coerce natural forces but to transform people by bringing them
into contact with social forces in symbolic form
- all of this is evidenced in these Australian aboriginal tribes where life varies between 2
different patterns…
- mostly 1) the clan is dispersed in small groups hunting and gathering but 2) sometimes they
band together in extended ritual practice where new symbols are created or existing ones
reinforced/modified through this collective effervescence
How can this analysis of religions help us understand larger dimensions of social life?
- if religion is a binding social force, looking at it can help us understand a much wider range of
social phenomena because many forms of social institutions, thought, and practice have their
origin in religion (e.g. primevally there’s no separation between religion and science, or religion
and politics, or religions and the arts)
- our moral and intellectual faculties which separate us from animals—THESE are tied up with
society and collective representations and religion
- religion was one thing that helped us think about and organize the world—the social
construction of reality
Categories of Thought and Understanding (E.g. time, space, causality, classification, force)
- these are social in the sense that they are the result of collective elaboration (over generations)
- also, the further back one goes the model for these forms of thought are social phenomena (e.g.
forces of society shape and control us a la Force)
- modern society ALSO has these symbols (and rites of collective effervescence) e.g. the cult of
the individual (i.e. why we think murder is the most heinous crime)—modernity tends to treat the
individual as a sacred object deserving of certain kinds of respect…this is a social process;
political revolution that sees the flowering of collective action; rites of judicial proceedings;
political leadership spectacles
Crisis of Transition
- now many people are unmoved by collective commitments BUT this is not a permanent feature
of modernity
- RATHER, what’s needed is the moral consolidation of society through new movements of
collective effervescence, the kind symbols, ideals, and rituals that can bind people together and
given them a sense of meaning and purpose
What is religion’s role in modern society?
- in DoL Durkheim thought religion was gradually becoming smaller and would be replaced
BUT in the Elementary Forms he says, that although many traditional religions will have a
waning influence (party because they no longer correspond to the needs of modern society)
72
religion itself in its elementary form will never wane i.e. the way it gives people a sense of
binding commitment through ritual and symbol—every society needs a sacred center
- BUT, religious life will still move away from the Church and other traditional cites/institutions
of worship
- Durkheim thinks we can move from religion and its symbolic sense of reality to understanding
society at larger in those terms
- indeed, much social life is constituted by this process of ritual and symbolism
Back to the Totem= symbolizes the group but at the same time binds the group together,
constituting it
Conscience Collective
- harkens back to the conscience collective as a binding social mechanism i.e. it’s not enough to
have the objective economic interdependence of the modern market (a la Smith)
- the conscience collective is not just an abstract set of collective ideas it’s tied to concrete
practices as well
- the most powerful binding ideas in society require a symbolic structure for their sustained
(emotional) power—which vivifies and congeals society’s ideals
How have different forms of modern social theory tried to understand modern society and
the relationship between human nature and the social order?
- every social theory involves some conception of human nature i.e. what motivates human
beings and what are their conditions for happiness or fulfillment
- in Durkheim, in the “Dualism of Human Nature,” he says 1 important dimension of human
nature is that we’re rule-following creatures so social life is going to involve the creation of
various rules and our capacity for following them
- BUT, this goes deeper, because what are distinctively human capacities? Moral and intellectual
capacities. These are not the same but they both involve rule following. Concepts impose a form
on what would otherwise be chaotic experience. And this is true of any theory or analysis.
Morality, obviously shares this penchant. Indeed, BOTH have a social dimension when it comes
to organizing our reality.
- As human we’re split between the body and soul which is a symbolic way of capturing
something real i.e. our organic substrate doesn’t give us a personality or our ability to navigate
the world. Rather, we must make sense of the world through collective representations. In other
words, per Gehlen, humans are instinctually incomplete in ways that other animals are not. They
can rely on instinct whereas what we get from culture is not an embellishment it’s indispensable.
Without the pictures of the world we inherit from culture we could not think act coherently (a la
Geertz’s essay). In sum, what we inherit genetically must be shaped by cultural representations
which are the origin of our intellectual and moral faculties. Plus, in addition to inheriting culture
we can also appropriate it, put our own stamp on it. Of course, the capacity to make use of these
cultural tools involves certain forms of constraint—the capacity to act rationally (e.g. we must
use language). The conditions for the fulfillment of human potentialities involve cetain kinds of
limits (moral and cognitive) which emanate from society and can be reconized as just and treated
as obligatory. Part of our willingness to accept them is the feeling we have that they are beyond
our personal control and interests.
What does this imply for human fulfillment and human freedom?
73
- In modern society we do have more freedom BUT Durkheim rejects from liberal social theory
the model of isolated individuals coming together and determining what they accept for that
purpose. You can never have humans out of society. Also we can’t think of freedom a la Smith’s
natural liberty i.e. leaving individuals alone to pursue their self-interest. Because, individuals
always live in society, among shared institutions and a shared reality.
Freedom vs. Unfreedom
- unfreedom not only involves human domination but individuals in the grip of impersonal forces
(whether natural or social)
- so serious thinking about freedom must include an analysis of impersonal domination (Marx’s
forte)
If we depend on society for certain limits does that mean there can’t be any genuine freedom?
- No. But we must give up the idea that we can be completely free of social constraints AND the
idea that we can just be free to pursue our self-interest.
- Instead of ridding ourselves of social constraints we need to develop forms of society that
constrain and enable individuals but which will also leave room for increased autonomy. And we
need the kind of society that can create human personalities capable of autonomy. Our
submission to society though necessary can be more self-conscious, more rational and allow
greater latitude for personal choice. We must give up the ideas that freedom is absence of
structure of constraint BC not only is it a fact that society is sui generis BUT it’s also something
human beings rely on—which includes why there is a continuing role for religions, which
provides a core of sacred symbol, on which a common moral order can be based, on which social
cooperation is predicated. Science may understand the objective world powerfully, but society
will always require religion for this core of sacred commitments.
Durkheim Fundamental Insights
- society as sui generis
- society shaping individuals and the latter’s dependence on this and collective representations
Durkheim vs. Marx
- For Marx, human beings are not only rule following. They’re rule making. All these systems
are shaped by human action. And in certain societies it become all the more possible for humans
to form rules self-consciously.
- Durkheim doesn’t have a theory of how we make the rules we follow. And he doesn’t have a
specific vision of what society would give us more control on the order we live in.
- Whereas Marx, has a better account of the way humans shape their reality. The critical theory
part of Marx is the premise that humans can only be fulfilled when they live in a society that
allows them to control their social relations, so that society is not a reality sui generis. Envisions
a social life that is transparent such that we’re self-conscious of it, so that we don’t need
distorting symbols between ourselves and our social order.
Alienation (in Marx) vs. Anomie/Egoism (in Durkheim)
- Neither is pure psychological. These are social conditions which implications for individuals.
- In both individuals are torn loose from a meaningful social whole.
- BUT, behind alienation is the positive notion of what human fulfillment involves i.e.
communities in which we can cooperate with others and collectively control our fate. In
Alienation, we’re dominated by forces we don’t control or understand—including the social
realities we create. So, for Marx, religion is a phantasy of being controlled by external forces.
But, this is a symbolic recognition of our real condition of alienation in which we’re really
controlled by outside forces. But alienation is something we can overcome: human emancipation
74
through socialism/communism wherein we inhabit a society that doesn’t lead to individual

antagonisms and where we can control the social forces that shape us. In socialism society would
not be a sui generis. It would simply be a collective expression of shared human desires. And it
would be transparent i.e. not distorted by intervening religious symbols.
- For Durkheim, religion is our sense that we’re controlled by social forces outside ourselves that
shape and control us but also support and guide us. This is a correct symbolic expression of our
social reality. But, this is not a condition that we can get rid of because insofar as we’re not in
contact with all social forces…
- In every society there will always be an irreducible core of social life beyond the conscious
control of individuals. Therefore, an important aspect of alienation for Marx, is for Durkheim a
universal requirement of social life.
How would Marx and Durkheim respond to one another?
- In terms of human nature and its relation to social order, and its relation to modern society each
would describe the other as utopian.
- Marx thinks modern society is built on fundamental antagonism its necessary to overcome but
would require the total transformation of the social order (i.e. the DoL and capitalism). Therefore
the only realistic way to improve things is universal revolution—which fortunately is bound to
happen anyway.
- Durkheim would say this is unnecessary and unrealistic. Many of the modern social structures
don’t need to be blown apart. They have soluble defects. The real issue is to subject society to a
new kind of moral order.
- Marx would say Durkheim is utopian because he fails to see the inherent antagonistic and
heteronomous forces that are the result of the capitalist mode production.
- Durkheim would ask if Marx’s vision of a better society (communism/socialism) is in anyway
destined. Indeed, after the revolution, after the liquidation of the DoL, what would bind society
together i.e. what shared beliefs, practices and sacred symbols would hold society together.
- For Durkheim religions is central to his whole project whereas Marx was convinced by his mid-
20s that he’d finished with the critique of religions.
75

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Jeff Weintraub Classical Sociological Theory F’18

Paradox of Fr. Revolution

commodity= something exchanged in the market

commercial society= largescale interconnected system of exchange

Review of Books I-II

Transition to Book III

What does Smith mean by “natural”?

 So, Smith tries to account for this Western Europe counterexample

Smith’s Explanation for Feudal Deviation

But how much would mores affect Smith’s core theory?

 Smith is saying that the re-establishment of natural (market) order depends on

- in the long run unfree labor is more productive

Core theory of Book I-II vs. Book III Tension

 here the self-correcting market doesn’t correct the progress of pinheadism

[Upheaval in Fr. Revolution

Tocqueville’s Comparative Political Sociology

- Tocqueville’s theoretical approach is cultural—he is constantly looking at the relation between

Now why is this a problem for liberty?

“How an aristocracy can be created by industry”

Estates-General annus mirabilis= year of wonders

Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France)

- but also, revolutionary mores aren’t conducive to durable political liberty

Why are the aristocracy relinquishing their power?

Marx’s Early Works

Forces of production4= level of technological development

1. universal commoditization= a system dominated by the production and exchange of

Some Weberian Innovations

Biographical Background of Weber (1864 – 1920)

Modern western civilization vs. other major civilizations

- BUT, rationalization is above all the triumph of instrumental rationality.

Power and Meaning

But why would anyone behave this way?

A Summary of the Argument in the Protestant Ethic

Power, Conflict, and Domination

3 Fundamental Tensions in Weber’s Analysis of Rationalization

2. organizational vs. individual rationality

3. rationalization vs. meaning

What are the alternatives to bureaucracy?

4 Forms of Social Organization

- modernity seems to involve an ensemble of these

Sir Norman Angell: The Great Illusion (1910)

Weber: “Politics as a Vocation”

- Most fundamentally connected to an ethic of responsibility i.e. a sense of how to make

Weber: “Science as a Vocation”

What is the relationship between formal/substantive rationality and instrumental

- Durkheim established, unlike Weber, a whole school of followers

- Durkheim was a zealous Dreyfusard (vid. his essay)

What about restitutive law?

Reason to separate anomie from egoism

Durkheim: Elementary Forms of Religious Life

through socialism/communism wherein we inhabit a society that doesn’t lead to individual

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