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What is Modernisation? Part 2: Capitalism, Labour, Reification and the end of tradition

Dr Jordan McKenzie

SOC207: lecture two

•The Enlightenment:

•1700s-1800s

•Philosophical, intellectual and scientific revolution to overthrow religion and tradition as the source of truth and knowledge.

•Darwin and the Origin of Species

•Secularization of government and law making

•Liberty, Fraternity and Equality!

The Industrial Revolution:

•Mid 1800s

•Major social shift from small farming communities to factory work in big cities

•Arguably the birth of the metropolis (money, government, bureaucracy, transport etc.)

•Restructuring of Public and Private Spheres.

•Shifts in divisions of labour

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htuj-fmfKcU

Capitalism and Modernity

•Capitalism is a process that demands change. Capitalism requires constant growth, development and renewal.

•It relies on the kinds of bureaucracy and rationality defined last week.

•It requires a state, a currency, and a legal system. But it can also be hostile toward these systems.

•For Marx and Engels, this inevitably results in exploitation.

•“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Marx & Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848

Capitalism: A Definition

•A system of production and exchange operating on a continual basis in which goods (commodities) are produced in order to be sold on a market with the aim of maximizing profit. Capitalism is founded on the private ownership of the “means of production” and work is organized via the labour contract in which wages are exchanged for work.

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Capitalism: As Revolution and as Rationalization

•Capitalism is also revolutionary force against tradition which destroys the old (feudal) order of society.

•Capitalism is a continually revolutionary force which never rests and acknowledges no limits, whether geographical or normative, to its activities – what Josef Schumpeter referred to as “creative destruction” (1942).

•Capitalism is a force for secularization and for what Max Weber called the disenchantment (Entzauberung) of the world (our “sober senses”).

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Capitalism, Efficiency and Specialisation

•“I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776).

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Durkheim: The Division Of Labour in Society (1893)

•For Durkheim, the division or specialisation of labour is not inherently bad. It is a part of modernisation.

•But we have shifted from a Mechanic to an Organic society.

•For Durkheim, modern life increasingly involves a forced division of labour where people are have no choice over the nature of their skill set.

Mechanic:

Small communities, people have a great deal in common (language, religion, education etc.), people possess a wide range of skills, and while community bonds are strong, people are not dependent upon one another for their basic needs.

Organic:

Large cities, people are highly dependent upon one another, but are individualistic, have specialised skills, little in common with one another (aside form having to obey the same laws & rules)

Durkheim: On Suicide (1897)

•Arguably the first ever empirical sociological study

•Do suicide rates vary according to religion/nationality?

•Yes. Therefore there are social (not just individual) factors.

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Marx: Exploitation of the Worker

•“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.” [1844]

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Four Kinds Of Alienation: Marx


•From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844): Alienation of of the worker from

•The product of labour

•The act of production within the labour process

•Man’s species being

•Estrangement of man from man

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935): Women and Economics (1898)

“The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.” (1898/1998:7)

“The horse, in his free natural condition, is economically independent. He gets his living by his own exertions irrespective of any other creature. The horse, in his present condition of slavery, is economically dependent. He gets his living at the hands of his master; and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no direct relation to his living. . . . The horse works, it is true; but what he gets to eat depends on the power and will of his master. His living comes through another. He is economically dependent.”

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The Corset and False Consciousness

“Put a corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one, and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. The healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process of digestion is interfered with; and the victim says, “how can you bear such a thing?” (1898: 216)

“But the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils. They exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived; but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations, and no longer respond to them. The person “does not feel it.” In fact, the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that when they are removed,— with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and discomfort.” (ibid.)

Capitalism And Rationalization
The ‘Old’ And The ‘New’ Economy

•The ‘old economic order’ asked “How can I give, on this piece of land, work and sustenance to the greatest possible number of men?”

•The new capitalist economy asks: “From this given piece of land how can I produce as many crops as possible for the market with as few men as possible?” (Max Weber 1948 [1906]: 367).

•The rent/profit distinction. With the latter the maximization of profit becomes and end in itself (Weber); from ‘use’ to ‘exchange’ value (Marx).

Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

•For Weber (in contrast to Marx), rather than make everything conform uniformly to its inner logic, capitalism must take different forms, and thus has different effects, in distinct contexts.

•In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber asks ‘Why were the Protestants ‘better’ at capitalism’?

•Individualism

• Less guilt regarding wealth inequality

•The importance of following a personal ‘calling’

•BUT, wealth should not lead to idleness, luxury or greed. Rather welath ought to be gathered for its own sake as proof of hard work and success.