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Conflict
The Role of Conflict in Society, the Role of Conflict in Marx, Weber and Durkheim
Although conflict is often viewed in negative terms in today's society, the idea of class conflict assumes a positive shade in Karl Marx's discussion of the class struggle that drives modern history. According to Marx, all of human history has existed in the form of a struggle in regards to class. Every phase of human history is divided between the struggle between those who have, economically speaking, and those who 'have not.' This conflict results in a constant state of tension or conflict between these two types of human instruments that generate material economic production. This sense of conflict invariably cumulates in an overthrow of the ruling power and the installation of a new regime. However, historically, this new regime of 'haves,' rather than providing a solution to the tensions of class conflict, only generates a new schema of self-justifying ideology, and eventually history recreates yet again a structure of conflicted classes and an economic state of material disequilibria.
Critical to Marx's perspective on conflict in human history is his focus upon material circumstances. Weber's theory of capitalism may be seen as similarly materially focused and dependent upon conflict as a force in driving human history forward. However, Weber adds a crucial element to Marx's theory. Rather than seeing all ideological products as having their roots in economic production and the self-serving (however unconsciously) mentality of the bourgeois, Weber stresses the philosophical evolution of the so-called "Protestant work ethic" in the evolution of modern, economic life.
Thus, conflict for Weber, is not only material. Conflict is...
The conditions involved what Weber calls mental production, he states, may be seen as distinct from purely material effects. Philosophical conditions can independently produce material economic effects, while Marx would assert that the material conditions must always come first, and then generate the ideology. For instance, for Weber, the evolution of Protestantism, and the infusion of economic life with a holy purpose enabled modern, capitalist life to become more systematized and mechanized.
Weber, in contrast to Marx, thus does not see societal and historical conflict progressing upon a two-fold struggle of rebellion and the reconstruction of a new class system. Rather, he believes that there are several different forms of property and ownership that can exist in any society, at any given period of time. Thus, there are, in Weber's line of thinking, the possibility of multiple class divisions, and the possibility for individuals to shift philosophical alliances, depending upon their perspective of their place in society, in relationship to God, as well as their perceptions of class alliance and their material existence in the world. Like Marx, Weber believes that religion can be a tool of economic production and a tool of the state. But this ability of religion to function has a distinct ideological mode, as well as exists as a tool in the generation of economic production and class conflict.
In other words, Weber sees not only 'economic human' as the functioning individual unit of society, or even as one component in the constant conflict-ridden progress of human historical affairs. Rather, human beings are not perfectly rational, nor can their intellectual and emotional desires and susceptibilities be…
Works Cited
Pampel, Fred. Sociological Lives and Ideas: an Introduction to the Classical Theorists. New York: Worth Publishers: 2000
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