GS 336: WORK AND SOCIETY

LECTURE 12
 3: Classical Approaches to Work
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Objectives
 Classical Approach(es): Introduction

 Classical Theorists: Karl Mars, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim

 Karl Marx (Profile)

 Karl Marx views on Society and Work

 Karl Marx on Capitalism

 Objectification and Alienation

Classical Approach(es): Introduction

 Classical sociological theories are of great scope. These were

found in Europe between 1800s and the early 1900s; and have
their roots in the cultures of that period.
 The work of classical sociological theorists such as Auguste
Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel,
and Vilfredo Pareto was important in their times and played a
central role in the subsequent development of sociology.
 Additionally, the ideas of these theorists continue to be relevant to
sociological theory today. They have become classic because they
have a wide range of application and deal with centrally important
social issues.
In this course we will focus on selected theorists and discuss their
views related to work and society. These include Karl Marx, Emile
Durkheim, and Max Weber.
 Marx, Weber and Durkheim are usually portrayed, both in
academic and political sense, as being situated at the three
corners of a triangle.

Durkheim Marx
 Durkheim focused on,  Marx concerned with
and sought to extend, social fragmentation,
social solidarity, disintegrating, and
integration and control. conflict.
 Durkheim had social  Marx was a revolutionary
democratic orientations and protested against
and was seldom capitalism and actively
directly involved in promoted its overthrow.
politics.

Weber
 Weber developed his theory of rationality and bureaucracy.
 Weber was a conservative liberal and anxious to preserve both the
freedom of the individual and the sanctity of the state. Though he
was a successful sociologist but a failed politician.
 Karl Marx (1818-1883)…

 1818, born into German-

Jewish bourgeois
 1839-41, PhD in Greek
philosophy
 1841-42, begins writing for
newspapers
 1842, friendship with Friedrich
Engels
 1843, marries Jenny von
Westphalen
 1843, moves to Paris
 …Karl Marx
 1844, accused of high treason by
Prussian government
 1845, banished from Paris, moves to
Brussels
 1848, publication of Communist
Manifesto in London
 1849, moves to London
 1849-83, economic studies in the
British Museum
 1855, son Edgar dies at the age of 8
 1867, Das Kapital (vol. I) published
 1881, wife Jenny dies
 1883, eldest daughter Jenny (30)
dies
 1883, Marx dies March 14 in his
armchair by the fire
 Karl Marx on Society and Work…

According to Karl Marx,

 Industrial society is more progressive than agrarian

societies, and a necessary stage for the ultimate success
of human freedom, but the main motive of this social
formation was not the industrial process but its capitalist
pattern.

 Marx argued that humans are different from animals

because humans produces their means of subsistence.
This productive capacity is the true potential of humans
and a reason of self-realization----the field of productive
activity or the world of work.
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 …Karl Marx on Society and Work

 Ideal work: Humans get self-realization

through work no matter what kind of
work it is-- work as a personal
necessity.

 Work in reality (in capitalistic structure):

Work is a source of anti-humanism, the
origin of alienation and exploitation.
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 KARL MARX ON CAPITALISM…

• Capitalism (in industrial society) is a system of mode of production

based on private ownership of the means of production.
• A mode of production is a specific combination of:
• productive forces: these include human labor power and
means of production (e.g. tools, productive machinery,
commercial and industrial buildings, other infrastructure,
technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and exploitable
land).
• social and technical relations of production: these include
the property, power, and control relations governing society's
productive assets (often organized by law), cooperative work
relations and forms of association, relations between people and
the objects of their work, and the relations between social
classes.
 KARL MARX ON CAPITALISM…

• Capitalists produce commodities for the exchange market,

and to stay competitive they must extract as much labor
from the workers as possible at the lowest possible cost.

• The economic interest of the capitalist is to pay the workers

as little as possible, in fact just enough to keep them alive
and productive. The workers, in turn, come to understand
that their economic interest lies in preventing the capitalist
from exploiting them in this way.
 …KARL MARK ON CAPITALISM…

• Karl Marx saw capitalism as a progressive historical stage

that would eventually be followed by socialism.
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterized by
social ownership and democratic control of the means of production

• Since the social relations of production are fundamentally

hostile, a class struggle will emerge that Marx believes will
lead to the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat/labor
class.

• The proletariat will replace the capitalist mode of production

with another mode of production based on the collective
ownership of the means of production, which is called
Communism.
 …KARL MARX ON CAPITALISM…

OBJECTIFICATION:
 Objectification refers to the means by which people appropriate to the natural
world, and produce useful objects.
 It involves the creative capacities of individuals.
 It is the product of human labor on raw materials.

Therefore, some form of production is essential to humanity both in providing the

material structure of social life and in facilitating the self-realization of individual
potential.

However, in the capitalistic system of production—(where the means of

production are owned by a minority, where the majority own only their labor
power, and where production is for profit through a commodity market)—the result
is not objectification but alienation.
ALIENATION…

 Alienation means the separation of things that naturally belong

together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in
harmony.
 The transformation of people’s own labor into a power which rules
them as if by a kind of natural or supra-human law.
 Alienation may be described as a condition in which men are
dominated by forces of their own creation, which then confront them as
an alien power.
 It occurs when people lose the recognition that society and social
institutions are constructed by human beings and can be changed by
human beings.
 When people are alienated they feel powerless, isolated, and feel the
social world is meaningless. They look at social institutions as beyond
their control, and consider them oppressive.
…ALIENATION

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl

Marx identified four types of alienation that occur to the
worker laboring under a capitalist system of industrial
production.

1. Alienation of the worker from the work — from the

product of his labor
Workers are alienated from the products they make. In capitalistic system
the commodities produced (design and actual production) are no longer in
the control of the worker but owned by the capitalists. The more things the
worker produces, the less value they have—and thus the value of the
work and workers decrease while the profit of the capitalists increases.
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In the capitalist system of production, the manual labor of the employed carpenter
yields him wages, not profits.
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In the capitalist system of production, the intellectual labor of the employed

engineer yields him a salary, not profits.
…ALIENATION…

2. Alienation of the worker from working — from the act

of producing

In the capitalist mode of production, the generation of products (goods

and services) is accomplished with an endless sequence of separate,
repetitive, motions that offer the worker little psychological satisfaction for
“a job well done”. By means of commodification, the labor power of the
worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological
estrangement of the worker results from the unmediated relation between
his productive labor and the wages paid him for the labor. That division of
labor, within the capitalist mode of production, further exploits the worker
by limiting his or her (species-essence) — the human being’s power to
determine the purpose to which the product (goods and services) shall be
applied; the human nature of the worker is fulfilled when he or she
controls the “subject of labour”.
…ALIENATION…
3. Alienation of the worker from himself, as a producer
The alienation of the worker from the act of producing renders the worker
unable to specialize in a type of productive labor, which is a psychologically
satisfying condition; within an industrial system of production, social alienation
reduces the worker to an instrument, to an object, and thus cannot
productively apply every aspect of his or her human nature.

Thus, workers are alienated from humanity and human potential (Humans,
unlike animals, have a consciousness and a will. They have a conscious life
activity, and in this activity, humans express free activity. Humans are like so
because they are self-conscious and make their own life activity. This is the
essence of humanity. The essential nature of a human being is actualized
when a man — within his given historical circumstance — is free to sub-
ordinate his will to the external demands he has imposed upon himself, by his
imagination, and not the external demands imposed upon him by other
people.
…ALIENATION…

4. Alienation of the worker from other workers

Humans are alienated (separated) from other humans because capitalism

reduces labor to a commodity to be traded on the market, rather than a
social relationship (social relationship changed into market relationship;
competitors). The capitalist economy’s arrangement of the relations of
production provokes social conflict by putting worker against worker, in a
competition for “higher wages”, thereby alienating them from their mutual
economic interests; the effect is a false consciousness, which is a form of
ideological control exercised by the capitalist bourgeoisie.
Summary

 Under capitalism, the worker has minimum responsibilities over the work
process. The worker does not own the tools with which the work is done,
does not control the process or the pace, does not own the final product.
The worker does not set the organizational goals, does not have the right
to make decisions.

 The worker is therefore reduced to a very small part of a process, just like
a gear in a machine. Work becomes an enforced activity, not a creative or
satisfying one. It becomes the means for maintaining existence, it is no
longer an expression of the individual, it is a means to an end.

 For Marx , the source of this alienation is in the “relations of production,”

that is, capitalism, the fact that workers are laboring for someone else.
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Thanks
Any Questions?