Max Weber's Views On Capitalism

Superior Essays
Kenny Pineda
Theory 1 Final
Due: July 7, 2015
Two Question Prompt Final
Answer to question #3

Max Weber’s work reflects the time period in which he lived in; he wrote in times of revolution. Weber saw that Capitalism was replacing small towns with large cities and vast companies were taking over the economy. There was also a transition of power from long standing aristocracies to Elites in his time. The prominent idea that Max Weber laid out as a foundation for capitalism was people’s religion—he proposed that set of religious ideas were putting Capitalism in motion. According to Max Weber, Protestantism, refined by Calvinism jump-started Capitalism. The essential idea behind Protestantism, unlike Catholicism, was that it made its believers
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Efficiency in the society’s economy was certainly a positive effect of modernization. Another worthy outcome of a modern society is its relative location to a perfect society. Marx greatly believed that humans were transitioning to a perfect society. Modern society was a step closer to social revolution, which would lay the foundation for the beginning of a perfect human society. Marx greatly believed that “the proletariats have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (Marx and Engels 1848/1978:500). In that perspective, collective consciousness, and the instability of capitalism through overproduction would ultimately lead society to a better …show more content…
According to Durkheim, Anomic divisions of labor explain how laborers with too much individuality, and are cut adrift with their highly specialized labor. In this negative impact of organic solidarity, people are left with repetitive, meaningless tasks that are not good for the individual. Durkheim acknowledges this type of division of labor as detrimental to the individual in a modern society. He states that institutions of classes or castes sometimes gives rise to anxiety and pain instead of producing solidarity, this is because the distribution of social function on which it rest does not respond, or rather no longer responds, to the distribution of natural talents” (117). He admits that society may not always thrive through this division of labor and modernization, but Durkheim does not see the severity of class conflict. He ultimately sees that globalization achieved through solidarity impacts society, and the economy in a positive

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